l hate to say this, because it sounds so, horrible, but I’m glad my parents were too old, that they lived out their natural lives well before Covid.
My dad lived most of the last decade of his life in care homes, because of Alzheimers. Mom only spent the last year or so in a care home and lived 94 yrs 364 days. People my age or older grew up and lived with the fear of many diseases that crippled or worse because there were not vaccines for them.
And even people half my age still lived with chicken pox and have the fun of shingles, for which there is now an effective vaccine, of course after I had a go round. Fun times. It makes the concept that so many think Covid is a lark, something to live through, far, far more infuriating for their stupidity.
But I guess that they, and a lot of their families didn’t have to see all that or have forgotten all that, or that they lived through it unscathed so they can get through this as well. I knew/know 4 people with polio, and 3 lived within a mile and one about 5 miles away.
Life is different today, and yet, not so different. We know more and yet many are even more ignorant. And something new to have experienced, an insurrection and attempted overthrowing of our government, and all to keep an absolutely worse than useless ass as a worse than useless president because of our national illness – racism.
Where is the vaccine for that?
Thanks for submitting your essay! (WG)
Nicole
Good piece.
A friend of mine talks about how her parents would let her and her sisters go to the public swimming pool in the summer because of their fear of polio.
Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of humankind. I don’t know what’s wrong with people.
My cousin’s wife often has trouble with vaccines, and she did, in fact, go into anaphylactic shock after her 1st Covid shot (she’s a nurse). Fortunately, she was at work, so help was readily available. She’s been home ill for two weeks, but she’s okay now. She’s not going to get the second shot. And that reminds me that those of us who no problems with vaccines are REALLY responsible for getting vaccinated, to protect the few among us who can’t take them.
Just Some Fuckhead
My mom passed in March and then her only sibling, my aunt, passed in May, both from kidney disease. Although to be fair. mom also had congestive heart failure and NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis of the liver) and diabetes and thyroid problems that kept her in and out of the hospital with atrial fibrillation. But she woulda definitely succumbed to Covid had she lived. They ate out four times a day and were card carrying members of the Trump cult.
WaterGirl
@Just Some Fuckhead: Wow, that’s a tough year. Very sorry for your loss.
Starfish
The relationship that people have with vaccines has changed since people do not remember other people getting some of these awful vaccine-preventable diseases. In my state, the anti-vaxxers are protesting at the capital several times a year.
People point out that most people are not hardcore anti-vaxxers just vaccine hesitant. I have very little patience for all the “I am smarter than all the medical professionals” nonsense. I wish our state would close up the “philosophical exemption” loophole. If you want a philosophical exemption, show me the philosophy book that you have written. If you have not written a philosophy book, get out of here with your nonsense.
I am also a person who has experienced anaphylaxis, so I am a little concerned about the people who have experienced that with the current COVID-19 vaccine. It bothers me that we don’t quite know what was in those vaccines that was causing the problems. One of the people who reacted had shellfish allergies like I do.
bcw
Just heard a talk by Joe DeRisi who runs the biohub lab that switched over to do COVID testing and does about half of all testing for CA. They set up street units in the Mission district of SF (high pop density, middlish class, fairly Hispanic, about half contractors and other can’t work-from-home types.) Test everyone for free. They found 90% of sick were in the “can’t work from home” group or family of them in same home. Also viral loads were highest in first week so fast testing is really important. Also viral loads (meaning likelihood of infecting other people) were the same whether symptomatic or not and the same over all age groups. So school kids not superspreaders but not safe either. Found the 15minute tests catch all but the low virus level people unlikely to infect others. Made a big point that these fast tests have to become common. Said the longer the time that many people are sick, the greater the risk that vaccine resistance could occur. Need to track people who get vaccinated and watch for changes so the fast adaptability of mRNA vaccines could be used to keep vaccine effective.
The Thin Black Duke
Anti-vaxxers don’t have the memories to seeing iron lungs and those damned metal braces on people’s legs. I do. That’s why they can go fuck themselves.
bcw
@Starfish: The data coming in shows COVID vaccines are about the same as flu vaccine and other typical vaccines as far as reaction risk. There is evidence that the UK high transmission rate strains are becoming prevalent which means the next couple of months are going to be really bad. Vaccination is going to be really important.
JustRuss
My mom passed a couple months before covid started, and I’m so grateful for that. My mother-in-law is going in to hospice next week, and dealing with covid restrictions on top of everything else has been really hard. I feel for everyone going through this.
I don’t know what we do about the anti-maskers and deniers…some of whom are in my family. They believe what they’re told, what their church tells them and all their friends believe. It’s so tribal, stupid, and frustrating.
trollhattan
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yup and yup. Dread of the invisible is nothing new and when somebody offers freedom from that dread, run, do not walk to get it. Is this really that hard?
Baud
My mother passed a while ago. Dealing with Covid restrictions would have been impossible for her, and she would not have done well if she had caught it.
Chetan Murthy
Not *just* people your age, Ruckus. I remember growing up, we’d get chided to never drink from someone else’s (even a sibling’s) cup, never eat from someone else’s plate, never pick up food from the ground. I remember seeing my mom and my (a bit older) cousin as they drank from a soda can/bottle: they would never let it touch their lips — so it could be shared. We in America are unaware of the massive work performed to rid our country of malaria and various other diseases. We take it all for granted.
It’s just another example of the “ceteris paribus” fallacy: “this little change I wanna make (less taxes on MEEeeEE!) will not change anything else. Nopes. Nopes. Everything else will remain the same!”
I remember learning about The Big Lie in high school. I guess my fellow classmates didn’t learn that lesson. Ah, well.
cope
Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, three specters of doom terrified the young me: life in an iron lung if I got polio (thanks, “Life Magazine”); death of myself or one of my four siblings from childhood leukemia (I should have waited until I was older to read “Death, Be Not Proud”); and, nuclear war. I was fortunate not to experience any of those fates and so glad that they all became minimized over time. There are probably reasons why so many people can be so cavalier about vaccines and such but I do not understand the thinking that allows these ideas to proliferate.
Just Some Fuckhead
Vaccines have been publicly available in the US since the late 1700s. SCOTUS ruled 116 years ago that states can force compulsory vaccinations in the interest of public health. We are truly living in an Idiocracy.
Van Buren
@JustRuss: “Tribal” hits the nail on the head. Facts won’t change someone’s mind if accepting the facts means being rejected by one’s friends and peers. That’s just the way our brains are wired. The way to break through is to replace their fairy-tale believing social support system with a new reality based one, and that means, and God, I know how how hard it is, trying to understand them, and showing empathy.
VeniceRiley
C-Dificile felled my father. I’m glad it was that a few years back and not now and not this. I don’t think he would have handled isolation well at all, and Covid would surely have taken him, in his condition.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m so sorry.
Nicole
@Starfish: My cousin’s wife, as far as I know, has no food allergies; I think is specific to how her body overreacts to vaccines. Her level of reaction is very, very, very rare.
Nicole
I’m one who’s very sorry my dad is not still here (he died in 2016). Mainly, it would mean my stepmom wouldn’t be alone through all of this, but he was such a wonderful conversationalist; I’m sure he would have had all kinds of interesting things to say about this crazy time. In the first weeks of the shutdown I missed him with a physical pain because I wanted so much to be able to talk with him about everything going on.
That said, while he quit drinking the last year of his life, he did not quit smoking (which is probably what killed him), so if he’d caught Covid it would likely have been a very miserable last few weeks on Earth, rather than dying in his sleep at home like he did.
Malovich
Covid might be the answer to the white supremecists.
Weird little scientific paper, courtesy of (in)famous author, Peter Watts, in which it is discussed that COVID literally goes for the balls.
The researcher’s name is Seymen, so there’s there too.
It estimates that a significant portion of the men who contracted COVID, even in the mildest cases, are likely to become sterile. This is one of those long-term effects that could not be predicted that anyone with sense dreaded and did their best to adhere to safety guidelines where available. I’m aware that people can try their best and get infected by one randomn dolt and my heart goes out to them, because life just isn’t fucking fair sometimes.
So, just how manly was it to not wear a mask again? Because the intersection between white supremecists and anti-maskers is kinda high…
I’m just relishing the conseuqences of being a dumbass having such a direct link to karma and the entire white supremecist population being unable to breed.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: She had a good run and she was basically a terrible person. She didn’t think people should have access to affordable health care, for instance, unless they earned it like she did by marrying a veteran after leaving my dad
Or my favorite, she’d call me for money in a panic telling me the state had cut my mentally disabled brother’s checks while she literally voted for that outcome.
Narya
I admit to a tiny bit of anxiety about dose 2. I got dose 1 two weeks ago; a week in, arm swelled up at the site, got hot and red for a day. There is still the faintest bit of redness. I don’t have allergies and have never had a reaction like this. BUT I will do it! Apparently they ARE seeing this reaction.
Chetan Murthy
@Malovich: And she’s a woman! Talk about ball-crushing females! Aieeeeee! *grin
Jager
@The Thin Black Duke:
When I was a kid, a four-block stretch of my neighborhood, had two kids on crutches, another in the hospital in an iron lung. My mom was in a panic and she was overjoyed when the first vaccine hit our school. All of our parents were, they grew up in mortal fear of TB and other nasty things that have virtually disappeared.
Betty
@Starfish: I heard something about horseshoe crabs being a needed ingredient for one of the vaccines. Could that be it?
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m sorry for that, too. My dad’s alcoholism sucked, but he was always a kind person, and since we had a year of him sober before we lost him, my grief was very uncomplicated. I imagine a relationship with a parent when your set of ethics are very different must be very challenging. My husband’s dad was a right-winger and while they loved each other, conversations could be very fraught.
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
Two of those polio victims I wrote about were moms of friends of my and both had iron lungs in their front rooms. The other two were my age, 71, one I went to school with K-12. I saw her at our 10 yr reunion with no braces or crutches, she walked in like she owned the place, and it was grand seeing her like that. The 4th lives in my complex and is back to wearing a brace on one leg and spending most of the time in a wheel chair. She managed the same route as my school friend, she had a life, from about 19 till about 15 yrs ago.
But of course that was my point, we have generations that have not really seen what the lack of vaccines really means.
Nicole
I’m very much looking forward to the release of the findings from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine since it could be a single-dose:
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/coronavirus/2021/01/21/johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine-results-soon-one-dose/4202974001/
(As I have had Covid I’m figuring I have at least a few months of immunity ahead and can wait for J&J’s if it looks to be as effective as the other two)
Betty
@Malovich: A key to the plot in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos.
MomSense
It could be that because I am a PK and dad’s office was always surrounded by a cemetery, I never fell for the anti vaccine nonsense. I’ve seen too many gravestones for children who died very young from childhood illnesses.
There are some funny tiktok videos about the irrational fear of vaccines. I hope mockery and peer pressure will help push people to get vaccinated.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I talked to some co-workers today. Asked them if they were getting one of the vaccines. Both are young guys a few years younger than myself. They both said they’re going to wait and see about the vaccine. Didn’t matter that I told them that these vaccines went through extensive trials, that if any adverse effects existed they would’ve shown up by now (they haven’t), that the technology behind these vaccines has been in development since the 2003 SARS epidemic, or that the CDC and FDA have said they are safe and effective. One said they had an uncle in NYC who works as a nurse. Uncle said there “needs to be more research” on the vaccines. The other told me he’d ask his family doctor.
I don’t understand these people. I really don’t. The RN uncle is especially bad; I learned how vaccines work in nursing school. I learned about mRNA in biology class in HS and college. Guy should know better.
Anyway, my mother took my 85 y/o grandmother to get one of the COVID-19 vaccines this morning at a local fairground. It was run by the health department for the county my grandmother lives in. It was surprisingly well-run given it’s a GOP county
MomSense
@Ruckus:
I had a classmate who had polio. He was a refugee from Vietnam.
Chetan Murthy
@Betty: From what I understand, it’s b/c it has amazing power to detect bacterial contamination. So it’s used to detect contamination in vaccines, but …. pretty much everywhere else in the medical industry. Poor crabs: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-vaccine-ingredient.html
Starfish
@bcw: For sure! My mom recently got her first dose of the vaccine, and I will take it once it seems to be more widely available to people like me.
MagdaInBlack
My mother was born in 1915, just in time for the Spanish Flu, and died in 2010, 3 days after her 95th. Her mother died of TB, when my mother was 6. I was born in 1958 and you can bet my parents made damn sure I got all the vaccines available.
I recall several people in my parents circle who had polio as a child. I recall asking my mother about all the headstones for very young people at the cemetery, and she explained people died of things that we had science and vaccines for now.
The generation after me/us has no frame of reference for what those diseases did to people.
Mike in NC
A damn shame Donald Trump previously bred five kids with three women. His loser son Jr also bred five kids, but I presume with one woman (ex-wife now).
debbie
Both my parents were Rockefeller-leaning Republicans, living through the Depression, WWII, and Vietnam, among other things. My father died in 1974 and my mother died in 2005. COVID-19 certainly would have terrified them, but if they had lived to see the rise of Trump, it would have killed them a second time. And if my father had seen that two of his three sons supported Trump, he would have risen from his grave yet again to beat the crap out of both of them.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: Mom wasn’t an alcoholic. She was drunk on Jesus. She and my stepdad were IFB’ers. And they didn’t have a single political position that could be reconciled with Jesus.
Just Some Fuckhead
@debbie: We got lucky in that religious rightwing political extremism seems to have dissipated with my mom’s generation. My little sister – and her adult children – have gone full-on liberal after the horror show of Trump. Well, to be fair, it was probably that her second son came out as gay and the church rejected him. She sided with her kid.
Ruckus
I’ve written here before about my vaccine reactions, the flu vaccines have always given me days of very high fever and chills, etc. Shingles gave me no effect whatsoever. And I was hospitalized with 7 days of 105 fever after inoculation day in boot camp. But I’m getting the Covid shots. I say shots unless the first one kills me. I lived for some time with a sometimes side effect of the measles which was not all that pleasant, and this seems a far, far worse disease.
I get my first shot in 7 days. We’ll see how it goes but without it I’m at very high risk and if I was 3 yrs older I’d already have a shot. I realize that life isn’t fair, which was a lot of what I was trying to say, my reminder to people is:
Life is what it is, how it hits you, how it misses you. It will never be all grand, it might be all shit, you take the good, the bad, the shit, the problems, the solutions. It is what it is.
Enjoy what you can, live through what doesn’t kill you and don’t make it worse for others.
Jager
@Ruckus:
I went to high school with a kid in full leg braces from polio. From the waist up, Jimmy looked like an NFL Offensive tackle. He’d been on his sticks since he was 4 years old. Great guy, when we started doing weights in phy-ed, Jimmy was the bench press champ. He could go up and down the stairs in our three-story school as fast as kids with a good set of legs. He’s a retired teacher now and one hell of a guy. BTW, by the time he was in HS, his dad had to have a welding shop make him a set of iron crutches, he was too big and strong for the lightweight kind.
Dan B
@The Thin Black Duke: My memories of polio are vivid and awful, also of Chicken Pox, Measles, Mumps, and being out of my mind from pain with the Hong Kong flu. Plus there were a few people who bore the scars of Smallpox. My partner’s sister has fallen into the “Covid vaccine changes your DNA” trap. She must be smarter than Doctors. She’s in her seventies and morbidly obese so is very unlikely to survive Covid. It’s freaking out my partner.
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Ruckus, you always have words of wisdom.
Great new song by Bette Midler:
Ruckus
@debbie:
Sounds like I would have liked your dad.
JPL
The NYTimes has a new article detailing how trump was going to fire the Acting Atty. Gen and replace him with someone who was going to overturn the GA election. good times It might be time for republicans to think about convicting him, and preventing him from running again.
LINK
debbie
@Dan B:
By the time they reach their 70s, who fucking cares about their DNA?!?
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
Heard that. Bette seems to be completely out of fucks.
I likey.
AnotherBruce
@Chetan Murthy: I guess that I never learned about the “Big Lie”, from my teachers. Is that an Orwellian concept?
Kudos to your teachers, we need to grab civics by the horns.
debbie
@JPL:
Did he not realize he was running out of time? //
Ruckus
@Jager:
I repeat.
Enjoy what you can, live through what doesn’t kill you and don’t make it worse for others.
Sounds like your man did that very well.
debbie
@Ruckus:
Yep. I still miss him all these years later.
Ruckus
@debbie:
There is an entire world he didn’t realize anything about. And never will.
JPL
@debbie: The question is Did he not realize, it was illegal? Clark should lose his law license.
Hoodie
@Ruckus: You’re less than 10 years older than I am, but it’s a testament to the effectiveness of polio vaccination programs that I don’t recall any peers having polio. I do recall getting vaccinated in school; no one thought twice about it. If these vaccine shy types could only realize what huge beneficial effects an effective vaccination program can have in a relatively short time. I think part of the problem is that a lot of people only view vaccines as protecting themselves, and do not understand the collective benefits that flow to everyone, including things beyond health, e.g., economic and other benefits.
Chetan Murthy
@AnotherBruce: IIRC it was presented in the context of Hitler’s propaganda and demagoguery before WWII. But don’t think well of my schooling (in Weatherford, TX [spit]): Tulsa is 300mi away, and yet not a peep about the Black Wall Street Massacre; the Texas Revolution was significantly due to Mexico about to outlaw slavery and yet not a peep; and on and on and on about carpetbaggers, etc. Not much discussion of Jim Crow, either.
It was disgusting how giant the gaps were, that I only filled-in in the last ten years [much of it due to historians over at LG&M].
Tenar Arha
My mother was unusual both because she worked & was a bit older, & my father was always unusual bc he was the oldest compared to my friends’ parents. That made a huge difference in my life, including when the first warnings went around last year.
It was probably their stories about the last polio epidemic in Boston that made me so cautious & thus prepared. Plus, when I was growing up my parents had a friend in their circle who’d had severe polio growing up & used to mention he’d had to learn to walk again.
But though my mother spoke of the pools & other places closing, my father spoke of his best friend dying in about 48 hours. He still felt that pain & often talked about how he was a normal healthy adult, then dead after a briefest of illnesses. It was impossible to forget.
Dan B
@debbie: I’m not sure if my partner’s sister has a clue about DNA. It’s a scary concept that scares her – you know, that level of logic. “I’m scared because of SCARED!”
Jager
@Ruckus:
We were at a “dance” (remember those) at a lakeside Pavillion one night, some asshole was laying cripple crap on Jimmy. He put one of his crutches on the guy’s chest and said, “you don’t want to fuck with me.” The guy walked.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I had almost 20 yrs of my dad with Alzheimers, he was gone before he was gone. I did get to work for him, with him and in his last few years of work, he worked for me. It’s a strange world sometimes. The first time he actually treated me like an adult, rather than one of his kids (which was not bad at all, just as a kid) was at work one day. Dad had smoked, not heavily but he did smoke and his doc told him to quit or not come back. He did. Stop smoking, but not tobacco. He used chew. It was disgusting. So one day I’m walking behind him carrying a heavy steel plate and he’s talking to an employee and he turns towards me and lets go a big wad, heading right for me. I called him a fucking asshole. He damn near laughed his ass off. It was a good day. I miss my old fart dad as well, gone for 20 yrs.
RSA
Good post, Ruckus.
I’ve had maybe similar conflicted feelings. My wife died in March, in a congregate living home. It was a difficult time, right after the quarantines started. But it could be that some suffering was avoided.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Many of the people my age with shitforbrains syndrome should remember those days, everyone I went to school with did at my 50th HS reunion. We talked about it, we all had all the regular diseases, some as we know had polio, I remember getting the polio vaccine, a blue dot on a sugar cube, when I was 5.
JPL
@Jager: Lucky that he was able to walk away. Nice story.
Honus
@Jager: yes, and smallpox too. My siblings and I all have that little scar on our shoulders.
I remember getting vaccinated at school for diphtheria, polio and tetanus. Also lining up at the courthouse in the center of town to get a sugar cube which I think was the polio vaccine, and which was received with great joy by the populace.
vaccinate all the school kids for Covid when they come to school to protect them and the teachers. If parents want to refuse, let the kids school remotely or home school.
Dan B
I got a vaccine appointment with Kaiser for March 6th. It appears Seattleites are showing up in droves to get jabbed. My partner managed to sign up via the website and got an appointment for next Thursday in Tacoma. He tried to get me on the Kaiser website but discovered that I was correct that I cannot access it. My passwords and answers to who is your favorite minister are rejected. Sigh.
Ruckus
I want to thank John for putting these posts up and for including mine.
I was a little hesitant about the first sentence, I have a different outlook about living and dying than a lot of people and sometimes it comes off as cold or self absorbed. As I said above my dad had Alzheimers and lived with dementia for 19 yrs. The last ten he was pretty out of it but not angry as a lot of sufferers get. I sat in bed with him his last hour and had my arm around him as he passed. It is a feeling I will never forget, that one that you get when you feel a life ends. But that’s sort of my point, I’ll never forget it, but I can also say that it was OK, that he didn’t have to suffer any longer. I was also the last person to speak to my sister before she went to sleep and never woke up again. She died of cancer that had metastasized.
Life, as I said above, is what you make of it. Make it as good as you can, be a better person, it’s not difficult (most of the time!), enjoy what you’ve got, someone always has more, someone always has less.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Is it just me or are the BS memes getting a tad annoying.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: Thanks for sharing, my favorite essay so far.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat: It aint just you. They’re getting old real fast.
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: I fear it might be you. Sure, it’s a little repetitive. But he’s better than many of his most vocal surrogates and supporters, so I’m kinda OK with the hero-worship. I think this time around (unlike last time) he’s understood the importance of this moment in the life-story of our Republic, and he’s actually rising to it. Sure, we’d all have preferred that he did so 4yr ago, but …. water under the bridge, and at the end of the day, he’s no Steve Schmidt.
Still don’t want him in any executive capacity, but as a Senator, he seems fine.
P.S. Hillary was right. 100% right.
Honus
@Ruckus: As Faulkner said “If the choice is between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”
Nobody in particular
The disease model
Not always a perfect analogy or metaphor but Einstein was right.
I might substitute hypernationalism or even false patritiotism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: at least it’s silent, and I am all for promoting any use of recycled bottles.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: His actions put us through four years of hell. He started the rigged election nonsense after he lost 2016 elections poisoning the well for HRC. Sorry I don’t find his inability to dress appropriately for the occasion endearing in the least. He was dressed like he was just going to shovel his driveway. Hard pass.
His cult is not endearing either.
Nobody in particular
@AnotherBruce:
Coined by Hitler in MK. Deployed by Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, etc. Both Orwell and Hitler were observing the same phenomena and process from differing perspectives.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ruckus: My dad passed in ’97. (Not my step-dad, that bastard is still going at the age of 83.) My dad basically divorced the kids when my mom left him. We’d visit him some summers and he always paid child support and in the early years, someone would actually give us Christmas gifts on his behalf (it was probably my mom.)
When I turned 18, I drove to the small town in Virginia he lived in a few hours away looking for him. Stopped at the company he managed, he was gone. Found his house in Cumberland County, he was gone. Found him almost a year later living with his sister in Richmond. I was told he had a nervous breakdown.
I spent the next 13 years going up to Richmond a couple times a year to see him. I usually had to see him at work and then spend many hours killing time at a cousins house until he was at home at his efficiency apartment when I could visit. He was less than receptive to my visits, although he did like meeting his grand-daughter when she was two.
I got a call from State Police around Christmas 1997 telling me he was found dead in his apartment. I had to go up and put his affairs in order and bury him. Imagine my surprise when his next door neighbor, a very kindly black woman, told me that he had left his blinds open for the few weeks prior so they could keep a deathwatch on him because he said none of his kids cared if he lived or died.
Nobody in particular
@AnotherBruce:
Coined by Hitler in MK. Deployed by Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, etc. Both Orwell and Hitler were observing the same phenomena and process from differing perspectives.
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: Thanks! Good to know that I am not the only one who finds this tiresome.
AnotherBruce
@Dan B: Yeah, I’m waiting it out. I really don’t want to jump the line. Only problem. I’m 63, but in good health. I really only want to get the vaccine so I can go back to work. I have no complaints. I have good savings which are slowly going down. I can wait it out for awhile. Also I’m on the exchange. Hoping that we can get the promise of Medicare available at 50 or 60 years old. Soon.
Nobody in particular
@Chetan Murthy:
A productive workshop has a place for every tool and every tool has its place.
Chetan Murthy
@Nobody in particular: Yes, and while I have NFLTG for imbeciles like Sirota, it seems like Sanders and his more-reasonable supporters are fine Dems. I’m not gonna spit on them. Sirota? Different story.
Original Lee
I’m conflicted, too, but mostly because I’ve been battling anti-vaxxers for years. I want them to get their shots so I don’t have to worry so much about me and mine, but OTOH the more of them who refuse, the sooner my loved ones and I can get ours. I’ve had it with their “Live child with autism is worse than dead child from measles” bullshit.
I was finally able to pre-register for my vaccination, but nobody knows even approximately when my group will open up. We found out yesterday that folks from the wealthy, white county next door swooped in and signed up for most of the current group’s spots in our county because many of the people in our county don’t have good enough internet access at home to fill out the online form. My next-door neighbors are in their 80s and don’t have an appointment yet because they needed my help with the form, which took just long enough with their one-step-up-from-dialup system that they’re waitlisted.
I’m just young enough not to have needed the smallpox vaccine but old enough to have gotten the sugar cube polio vaccine at the health department. Nobody I know had polio. But my mother told us often about her high school boyfriend, who died from polio. He was in an iron lung for months, and my mom visited him twice a week all that time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
My step-daughter came over for my pre-b-day celebration on Wednesday, I asked her about vaccine refusal among her fellow nurses. She just said nurses are a skeptical lot. She’s had both jabs.
Ruckus
I found a voice last night that I’ve never heard of before.
Eva Cassidy. She passed from cancer at a young age 25 yrs ago.
Her voice is amazing. So smooth, so on the note, that it is just stunning. There are a number of Y Tube videos of her singing and playing guitar. She never made the big time because she wouldn’t pander to what sells, but stayed true to her talent and desires to sing. Give her a listen, her music may not be your ideal but her voice is beyond words.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy:
mostly…. I still think Pelosi should set up some kind of exchange program where Sanders acolytes go to districts where Democrats actually have to work to win elections to get a better idea of what the non-twitter parts of the country are like
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: Eva Cassidy is local for me. She was from the Washington, DC area.
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
So sad that such a marvelous talent did not get a longer life.
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: One of the reasons they expanded the 1a priority from 75 up to 65 up how few health care people (relatively) were not getting it.
Dan B
@AnotherBruce: My concern is if the B117 variant gets here in February, likely, that it will be much riskier before I get the first jab. I got up this morning with the news that my partner was getting his first in 6 days but he didn’t tell me it was fastest in Tacoma, an hours drive away. The woman on the phone only checked on clinics near us so I was shocked it was going to be six weeks instead of six days.
StringOnAStick
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The uncle who is a nurse probably doesn’t have even close to the educational background you have just because of when he was in nursing school. It wasn’t that long ago that an RN was a two year degree. I would see this when I was an RDH, the older ones near retirement couldn’t explain gum disease etiology to patients because they just didn’t have the education that we newer RDH’s had. Periodontics as a class flunked a couple of them out of my program in the 2000’s.
Tazj
@schrodingers_cat: I found it funny at first but I’m over it now. For the most part I have no problems with him as a senator.
What I found hilarious were the reactions to the inauguration from the progressives or leftists on social media. All the scolding about people celebrating “Everything isn’t ok now you know!” Making fun of people enjoying the fashion-The Coats of the Oligarchy!(this was said jokingly back to them on Twitter not by me)In general, I thought most of them were complete killjoys during the inauguration, until the Bernie meme.
I follow many progressives on social media because I’m generally in agreement with them on policy goals but it’s frustrating that so many believe it’s easier to make big policy changes than it is, or that Democrats are more worthy of their vitriol than Republicans.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ruckus: Eva Cassidy. Extraordinary talent. I’ll have to check her out again. Thanks for sharing this, Ruckus.
Soprano2
Today at work we got a survey about the vaccine – how likely are you to get it when it’s available (I answered VERY!), what questions do you have about it, stuff like that. I figure they’re trying to see how much resistance there is among employees. Eventually they’ll probably have shot clinics for city employees and their spouses. According to our state guidelines being a “wastewater worker” puts me in tier 3 of group 2, but I have no idea what that means as far as a timeline goes. The sooner the better.
patrick II
@Dan B:
She has seen “The Fly”.
MoCA Ace
I’m 57 and had a neighbor that must have been one of the last kids in the US with polio. He was partially paralyzed as a result of the illness. I see through social media that he is a toxic “patriot” and anti-vaxer… the mind, it reels.
No name
@Just Some Fuckhead: Such a sad story for everyone involved.