Biden is expected to announce that over 200 million shots have been administered in the US. I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but in New York most of the state-run sites have appointments available. If I weren’t vaccinated and I really wanted a shot today, I’m pretty sure I could get it done. The Kaiser Family Foundation has this take on it:
Our polls, and others, have shown that the share of adults who have either received one vaccine dose or want to get vaccinated as soon as they can has continually increased. As of March 21, it was 61% (up from 55% the month before). This increase reflects a shift from those saying they want to “wait and see” into the vaccine enthusiasm group. In fact, the share saying they want to “wait and see” has consistently fallen, as more people become enthusiastic about getting vaccinated.
If we use 61% as a current “outer edge” of vaccine enthusiasm, it translates into about 157 million adults. The latest data from the CDC indicate that almost 131 million adults (or 50.7% of all adults), had received at least one vaccine dose as of April 19. That leaves an additional 27 million adults to go before we hit up against the “enthusiasm limit”. At the current rate of first doses administered per day (using a 7-day rolling average, as of April 13) – or approximately, 1.7 million per day – we would reach the tipping point in about 15 days. Of course if the pace of vaccination picks up, it could be sooner. However, if those who say they want to get vaccinated right away face challenges in accessing vaccination, it could take longer.
Writers like Paul Campos and Josh Marshall are concerned about the US reaching herd immunity. I am, too, but my concern is tempered by some (admittedly anecdotal) personal experiences:
- I know more than one young person who was eligible to get a shot, got an appointment pretty far in advance, and didn’t bother to try to get an earlier appointment. These people are “in the pipeline” and they went through an appointment process that they judged, fairly, to be a pain in the ass. They don’t want to do it again, but they’ll end up vaccinated.
- One of my relatives is a bit of a n’er do well who doesn’t have much contact with the medical system. I would assume, sadly, that his next contact with our wonderful healthcare system will be when an ambulance crew carries him out of a bar on a stretcher. This guy isn’t going to go out of his way to get vaccinated, but I certainly could imagine him stopping at a pop-up clinic in a grocery store parking lot to get a shot of J&J. He, and a lot of people like him, are vaccine indifferent and would get a shot when the barriers to entry are lessened. By the way, he’s neither homeless nor unemployed — he just is generally medical system adverse.
Overall, most of the readers and front-pagers of this blog (including me) are vaccine try-hards. As soon as we were eligible, we were seeking out ways to get vaccinated. Unlike try-hards, folks can be vaccine indifferent due to a variety of life experiences as well as inclination. For example, I think the number of young people who don’t get much medical care is bigger than we might imagine, because of their life experience that a trip to a medical provider is potentially thousands of dollars of expense, even for something relatively minor. When vaccines are less of a precious, hard-to-get commodity, and it’s clear that they’re free, these people will get their shots. When the J&J hiatus is over, it will probably be a major tool in the arsenal for the indifferent via pop-up clinics in suburban/small town parking lots as well as underserved communities.
I’m a life-long “glass half-empty with a spot on it” person, and I still believe that more people will get vaccinated than polls might indicate.
Baud
Agree. Get shots to everyone who wants one; make sure the stragglers have access and are given constant reminders; wear the anti-vax folks down over the longer term. A lot of them will come around when it’s required for travel or work, and when it’s no longer “cool” to go all Cleek’s Law on this issue.
schrodingers_cat
Not so in the CommonWealth. Became eligible to get the vaccine this Monday but still no vaccine appointments. Hopefully soon.
JustRuss
Friend of mine got the J&J at a truck stop, the county has mobile vaccine unit trying to hit people where they are. They need to publicize it better, but I applaud the effort.
Seanly
Yeah, I hope there is a big undercurrent of folks who will get vaccinated, but are just waiting it out. My circle of friends & family is, of course, very self-selected and most of them have gotten the shot or will soon.
Co-workers is a different matter – I know a few of them got the shot and others might have but didn’t feel a need to say anything.
My diabetic stepMIL (who lost a boyfriend to Covid) posts prayers & blue line/Fox News BS on FB, but I hope she’s at least smart enough to get the shot. Her biological daughter is the prototypical ammosexual and she’s got her own health issues, but maybe she still has the brains to get the shot. Her hubby is on disability due to working in plane manufacturing for 20 years, but he’s a racist, paranoid ammosexual so he probably won’t get the shot.
My wife is employed by a local hospital & got Moderna as soon as she could. I get my 2nd Moderna on Friday.
I posted on LGM that if the USA has excess shots, we need to share them with countries that might have trouble buying them. If our own citizens are too stupid to get vaccinated, we should at least help other countries.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Shots available and convenient are too different things. I have Kaiser and the nearest Kaiser facility that was offering appointments was over 40 miles aways, which is a bit too far for something that there is the possibility of adverse side effects. Ended up at CVS down the street from my house.
MattF
I was mildly vaccination-averse at first— this was back several weeks ago when all the local efforts were bogged down with startup issues. But an old friend got on my case and persuaded me to make the effort. I suspect there’s a similar dynamic going in currently marginal cases, and that the final numbers will be better than one would predict from polling.
TaMara (HFG)
CO just started having drive-up, no appointment clinics – hopefully, they’ll expand them to areas with vulnerable populations. FEMA took over the Pueblo drive-up clinic that’s now offering no-appointment vaccinations at the state fairgrounds. But still, we need to address the folks who may not be able to drive to an appointment.
And as a note, 894 breakthrough covid cases – none hospitalized out of almost 2M vaccinations. The remainder of the covid cases, including hospitalizations, are non-vaccinated people.
I believe as more and more organizations are requiring proof of vaccinations, more people will jump on board. They’re reluctant, possibly anti-vaxxers, but inconvenience is a powerful motivator, as is peer pressure.
Ohio Mom
I know a handful of college students (they are children of my friends) who are waiting until after the semester is over to get their shots.
They are in the midst of finishing term projects and papers, and studying for finals, and need every moment they can get. They are afraid to risk losing any time to vaccine side effects.
It will be interesting to see if there is an uptick in young people getting shots in a month or so.
sdhays
I’ve been contemplating that silly story from the other day about people half-jokingly considering the Pfizer vaccine to be the fancy one. A lot of those people say they had a huge reaction when they heard that the Pfizer vaccine was ready to be submitted for FDA approval, and I realized I didn’t. I was happy, of course, but I didn’t feel this huge sense of euphoria. Part of that is that I’m fairly even-keeled emotionally, my highs aren’t super high and my lows usually aren’t super low. But the other part of that is that I figured that my family and I probably wouldn’t be getting a vaccine until September at the earliest – I just assumed that production for the mRNA vaccines would be slow and I had lost all faith in our country’s ability to martial its resources to combat the problem. I figured it would take months for Biden to unfuck the COVID response.
If you had told me I would be getting my first shot in April, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I’m signed up and ready to go. I still can’t really believe it.
dmsilev
With ‘Republican’ being the single largest subgroup of vaccine-resisting (not just ambivalent) people, herd immunity is going to be very geographic. Massachusetts and coastal California are going to be in great shape soon, but rural Texas rather less so. Some of that will go away once not being vaccinated becomes inconvenient (required for live concerts or whatever), but it’s not like forging those cards is particularly difficult so a lot of those people will go that route instead.
VOR
My state changed the rules March 30th to allow anyone 16+ to get the vaccine. But our clinic’s systems still would not allow a 20 year old to schedule an appointment as of April 5th. Being older, I was able to make an appointment for myself. I just brought the 20 year old along to the appointment and asked if they had any open slots. They did, and were able to work him in on the spot. The clinic made sure the second dose was scheduled before we left.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I’m hoping/waiting for corporate ‘Murka, after the first lawsuit from someone who caught it while doing something in said corporation’s sphere, mandate “you don’t come in here w/o a passport”.
Of course I’d also be fine with the feds mandating that and trampling on those assholes’s rahts.
I have a co-worker in another state, retired Navy Chief (although most was in the Reserves) in the medical line. Is located in Charleston WV. I asked him last week about this. Pause, slow reply “I’ve done the research…lots of uncertainty…even if I get it it won’t be bad”, blah, blah, blah. He also related that he wears a mask to get into Wal-Mart, then immediately takes it off.
The real reason he’s not gonna get it is he’s a RWNJ who’s always tried to hide his politics but this was a massive tell. The thing is, in order to have been in the Navy, he would have been vaccinated for all kinds of things, otherwise, gtfu out of here.
Thankfully my work path will never cross with his again. Dumbass. No sympathy, he could die tomorrow and I wouldn’t shed a tear.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TaMara (HFG):
Until maybe a week ago, CO has been a clusterfuck in terms of vaccine availability…up and down the Front Range. However, there’s been plenty since Day 1 on the Western Slopes. The red, rurl Western Slopes. Not a coincidence but then you live here, you know that. ;)
Falling Diphthong
Anecdote: Despite being eager to get a shot as soon as possible, back when I wasn’t eligible I was intimidated by the thought of my state’s main mass vaccination site, the football stadium. It’s quite far from my house and long car rides are physically hard; I’ve never been there so I’d have to figure the route out; etc. Had it been an option, it would definitely have involved a high level of talking myself into it. Once I was eligible, I got vaxxed at a site that’s one town over and I’ve driven there before.
So I don’t scoff at those who say they want a vaccine but grow hesitant when barriers start popping up. We want this to be as easy as possible–lots of shots, available near people’s homes or work. Like voting should be–there’s no honor in the “well if you REALLY wanted it, you would defeat any obstacle in your path” sermonizing. Make this easy for people.
Ned F.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
My son’s friend, who is in he reserves, just got his first shot. (he’s 22). He was in DC on Jan 7th keeping order. I was surprised it took this long.
Redshift
Yeah, I still remember my younger days of “I don’t think it’s broken,” and that wasn’t even because of worries about cost, just not wanting to spend hours in the emergency room waiting room.
BTW, I’m getting a very nice ad up top from Vaccinate Virginia, “Sign up to get your free COVID-19 vaccine” with a phone number and TTY in addition to a link.
Felanius Kootea
There’s a need for walk up vaccine clinics in urban areas for those who (1) don’t have cars and/or (2) don’t have the time or resources to spend three hours early in the morning online hunting for a vaccine appointment for several weeks (which is how I found an appointment for my husband).
I got my shots fairly early (done with second shot in February) because the health center for one of the universities I’m affiliated with reached out to me (to my great surprise). My husband got his second shot yesterday. The lone holdout in his family was a nurse who has had access to a COVID vaccine since December but only gave in and got her shot last week (even her children got their shots before she did). She took some convincing, which is insane, but lots of people have doubts that are alleviated when they are the only person left in their circle who remains unvaccinated and they can clearly see that none of their loved ones has sprouted two new heads.
zhena gogolia
@Falling Diphthong:
Right. I did not drive up to East Hartford to a giant parking lot. I waited for a smaller parking lot ten minutes from my house.
oldster
“I’m a life-long “glass half-empty with a spot on it” person, and I still believe that more people will get vaccinated than polls might indicate.”
That’s where I’m at, too. I think there’s a growing enthusiasm and acceptance.
“Writers like Paul Campos and Josh Marshall are concerned about the US reaching herd immunity. ”
See, that’s slightly confused. The population is going to achieve herd immunity, one way or another. If you vaccinate everyone, then it reaches herd immunity with a low number of deaths. If you don’t vaccinate anyone, then it reaches herd immunity with a very large number of deaths. But it will get there, one way or another.
So, if what happens is that Democratic populations reach herd immunity through vaccination, and Republican populations reach herd immunity the slow and stupid way, then I can live with that. And they can die with that.
Ken
Publicity must be a nightmare. “Come to the FEMA vaccination site” isn’t going to play well for a lot of people. Then again, they’re probably already unhinged about 5G chips in the vaccine, so adding FEMA to the mix doesn’t make it any worse…
Roger Moore
I assume a lot of the vaccine resisters are soft resisters: they won’t get vaccinated as long as it’s voluntary, but they’ll change their mind when they’re required to get vaccinated for one reason or another. It might be a requirement from their school or employer, or it might be that there’s something they want to do- go to a ballgame, fly on an airplane, go on a cruise, or whatever- that either requires vaccination or is easier to do if you’re vaccinated. It could also be a person in their life who demands they get vaccinated before meeting them in person. The number of hard core antivaxers who will make a serious sacrifice to avoid getting vaccinated is a lot lower than the number who will cave to pressure.
Betty Cracker
I think you’re right. My Fox News-watching family elders (dad, aunts, uncles, etc.) either have or are in the process of getting vaccinated. My dad was holding out for J&J, which hasn’t been available in this area, because he wanted the one-and-done convenience. After the J&J pause announcement, he went ahead and got his first Moderna shot last week.
Some of these same relatives were saying stupid, politicized shit about the pandemic for months, like the media played up the dangers to dislodge Trump from the presidency, people who are taking the danger seriously are using it as an excuse or virtue signaling, etc. But at the end of the day, they’re not willing to die to own the libs, so that’s something.
I’m getting my second Moderna shot a week from today. Unfortunately, the county closed down the drive-thru site where I got my first shot, so I have to schlep all the way across the county to an indoor site, which sucks. I wonder how many people who don’t have transportation and/or flexible schedules are waiting for an easier opportunity. A lot, probably.
Jay C
Our problem is slightly different: we live in NYC, and are “clients” of a major medical Megacorp, so we were on a list for an early round of vaccine (Pfizer) appointments: Feb. 27 for Mar. 1 and 22. Which was no problem for me, but my wife is a chronic-pain patient (and mobility-impaired), so couldn’t make them. We signed on to an NYC program to vaccinate the homebound, but that seems to have been on near-permanent hold, since they were using the J&J vaccine. And haven’t gotten back to us (after three weeks) in any case.
Yes, getting TO a vaccine will likely become easier in the near future: but getting a vaccine TO YOU is still another story….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Open-thread? John Kennedy, Vanderbilt, U VA Law, Magdalene College (Oxford), tries to bring his Foghorn T Cornpone schtick to Stacey Abrams, uses Zoom delays to try to throw her off, retreats.
Nobody has more contempt for trumpsters than the Ivy League/Oxbridge Republicans, but nobody makes it as obvious as this dickhead, and they eat it up.
Joe Falco
I have a SIL that recently got a job as a healthcare assistant for a retirement community in NW Georgia. She’s had COVID once last year (thankfully, it didn’t spread to her teenage sons), had no serious symptoms but remained vaccine hesitant until recently. I had asked her if her new work place required her to get the vaccine. She told me no, but she surprised me when she said she would get the vaccine because she didn’t want to risk getting it and then spreading it to her patients. She didn’t feel the same when she was working in the restaurant industry as a shift supervisor. I’m glad she’s going to get vaccinated, but I can’t get over the fact she would risk the health of her coworkers (and her family) before doing anything to protect her patients from herself. I’m sure it has to do with the different job, but it’s annoying.
oldster
@Roger Moore:
“I assume a lot of the vaccine resisters are soft resisters: they won’t get vaccinated as long as it’s voluntary, but they’ll change their mind when they’re required”
“I’ll get the shot, but I want to be able to claim that I’m being persecuted and oppressed by big gummint and my freedoms and rights are being stolen from me!”
Yeah, okay, just get the shot. You were going to whine one way or another, just get the shot.
evap
Two university systems in the Atlanta area (including the one where I work) have announced that students will have to be vaccinated to return to campus in the fall. Of course, there will be exceptions, and I imagine that a student who really really doesn’t want to get vaccinated can get out of it, but I’m guessing this will be rare. Meanwhile, in my state (GA), everyone over 16 is eligible and in the Atlanta area there is a mega site (10K shots/day) that no longer requires an appointment. I’m not sure what is happening outside Atlanta, though. GA is no longer in the bottom as far as vaccination rates go.
Old School
I got my second shot at a Walgreens this morning. They gave me a $5 coupon to use at their store. If that’s a nation-wide promotion, that should be more widely promoted.
“Sure, the vaccine will prevent death, so maybe I’ll get it someday. What? I’ll save $5?!! Let’s go!”
randy khan
Commenters over at LGM have pointed out that there’s no actual basis for the conclusion that we know what the upper bound on willingness to get vaccinated will be. The numbers keep moving up as time goes by. Certainly, we’ll hit a point where we can’t go higher, but I am doubtful that we know what it is right now.
Not to mention (although here I am mentioning it) that we have about 10% of the population that’s already had COVID-19, so they have at least some level of immunity already. You have to consider them in determining when we might reach herd immunity.
TinRoofRusted
@Ohio Mom: That is my daughter and her friends. Classes end next week and then finals and then graduation (knock on wood, spit 3 times etc). She is in DC and will remain there until her lease runs out. After that who knows – she is job hunting with a few good leads. But her first priority is vaccination. She was aiming for J& J but will now probably go for whichever of the other 2 is available.
West of the Rockies
@Ohio Mom: I hope you’re right. My daughter in OR just scheduled both vaccinations. Her roommate though (also a student) is reluctant. She is on the spectrum and is worried about crowds and too much socialization. She’ll come around when the crowds shrink a bit.
Martin
This is a normal polling dynamic. We see this in college admissions as well. A hypothetical choice is different from a real choice. When I’m not allowed to make an appointment for a vaccine, I have the luxury of saying ‘well, maybe not’ because that choice has no cost. It’s not like I can make an appt anyway. And having that choice feels good because it’s your choice, not the choice of the CDC about who can get the shot. But once you are allowed to make that appointment, well, your choice is no longer hypothetical and you can make it in a different way.
This is why the sooner you can admit a student increases your chances of getting them. You are shifting that choice from hypothetical to real, and at least in the window of time between your admission and the next schools, you have that student, they’re at least making plans in their head about attending, even if you’re their safety, in those days you’re their only choice and therefore you become their first choice.
terry chay
In my neck of the woods (San Francisco), I am having to go 60+ miles to a Red county (Napa) to get my first shot this Saturday. Our city is disbursing shots like mad but there are so many in line (just look at How we voted in the last election) and having a home and being healthy means we’re at the bottom.
Kay
We know that a lot of conservatives operate on a zero sum/scarcity idea for health care.
Biden should announce the US will offer “excess, unused” vaccine stockpiles to any country who needs in 90 days. The whole Trumpster population will be clamoring for “their” shot.
NeenerNeener
My RWNJ brother is vaccine-resistant, although his RWNJ twin sister made sure she got her 2nd dose while she was in the hospital for a broken knee cap. She values her life more than he values his, I guess. When his corporate overlords mandate it he’ll probably give up his Republican virtue signaling and get it, but not before.
Cheryl Rofer
This is what I’ve been saying. People say they won’t get vaccinated for one trivial reason or another, but when everyone around them is doing it, or even competing for it, they’ll come along.
My take of how the rollout has been planned is that a large factor has been metering demand so that the system doesn’t crash on the day when vaccination is opened to everyone, along with getting the limited supplies to the most vulnerable first, or as close to that as possible.
We’re starting to see incentives – Krispy Kreme donuts and, I saw yesterday, marijuana in one of the states where it’s legal. We’re also starting to see efforts to take the vaccine to where people are.
At some point, we’ll see campaigns in places where the spread is still significant. I give that another month or two.
We’ll get this.
trollhattan
@Ohio Mom:
Mine hesitated but ended up going for the J&J one-and-done. Her big concern was timing it between track meets, I don’t think schoolwork disruption entered into it TBH (fine there, pulling a 4.0 so far).
Everybody’s got their own calculus. Mine was simple: ASAP!
Roger Moore
@oldster:
This isn’t really true. It’s very hard to reach herd immunity without vaccination, because the effective reproductive ratio drops as more and more people have had it, so the process of everyone getting immunity drags out indefinitely. What happens then is that the disease switches from epidemic to endemic. You don’t naturally reach the kind of resistance to outbreaks we have with polio or measles.
Brachiator
Pundits and lay people keep hanging onto the idea of herd immunity even though they don’t understand what it means or even if it is applicable to current circumstances. This is part of the prattle about how soon we can return to “normal” and forget that the pandemic ever happened. This is a waste of time.
I am concerned about those people who are still reluctant to get the vaccine for whatever reason. But I am even more concerned about the uneven distribution and application of the vaccine. Too many people in lower income communities still have problems getting the vaccine. There may be older people, disabled people, others in difficult circumstances who have not been able to easily get to a place where they can get the vaccine. And for some people, it is still difficult to easily make an appointment.
In some communities we may need to do more to get the vaccine to people, instead of expecting them to go somewhere to get the shot.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Haha, he got more than he bargained for! If the people who return that phony pile of shit to office had the faintest idea of how his act mocks and degrades them, they’d ride him out of town on a rail or worse. But he’s betting on their stupidity, which is a good bet.
Baud
On a more meta level, I’ve generally become wary of our ability of divining the future based on current data. We just don’t deal with uncertainties of long time horizons very well. We have a proper aversion to faith-based decision-making, but we sometimes go too far in the other direction.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I’m just furious at them for that reason. They ruin everything.
My son is in Denmark and he and wife want the vaccine but can’t get it. I mean, Christ. Can they just be grateful for once? Whole countries can’t get it and want it and these people are still incessantly whining.
Matt McIrvin
@VOR: I had a similar experience: Massachusetts opened up eligibility to all adults on Monday, but when I went to sign up at the city clinic’s website for the shot I got today, I followed a link that explicitly said all adults were eligible, but the mandatory drop-down that asked what priority group you were in UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY (with no option for “none”) was still there. Reader, I lied.
The actual experience of getting the shot was fine, but they need to update that sign-up form if they haven’t already.
smedley the uncertain
@TaMara (HFG): Disturbing news in recent WaPo article about fake shot cards.
“The focus group revealed another unexpected development: Most participants said they would want a fake vaccination card that would allow them to claim they had received shots, after Luntz granted them anonymity to speak honestly.”
Anti Vax plague carriers circulating thru the newly opening venues.
Origuy
@terry chay: Why do you think Napa is a Red county? In the last election, 69% voted for Biden. The Democratic Congressman, Mike Thompson, got 73% of the vote.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Their entire approach seems to have been to try to get Stacey Abrams to say “Republicans are racist” so they can act affronted and then discount anything she has to say.
Abrams didn’t do this, and pushed back very effectively over and over again.
VOR
@evap: My son’s college announced they intend to go back to campus for Fall semester 2021 (late August) and are demanding proof of vaccination. There is an exception process.
Ric Drywall
“Admittedly anecdotal” says it all. Sorry, but those sorts of anecdotes mean nothing.
I get that people like telling stories of people near them, but they don’t actually tell us anything about general trends.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer:
I saw a New Orleans bar was doing “Get a shot with your shot”
Eric S.
Anecdata! to support the idea we’ll get there albeit slower than would be ideal.
My TFG-loving, COVID denying great-aunt living in deep read, rural IL got her first shot about week ago after spending months claiming she wouldn’t.
The crotchety old man at our local bar wasn’t going to get a shot. A couple of us got together found an appointment and agreed to drive him to the facility. He’s been fully vaccinated for a month.
A coworker who is self described as “a bit of an anti-vaxxer” has gotten her first shot.
Served
@smedley the uncertain:
I don’t know what the solution is for fake vaccination cards, aside from a passport (pros and cons) and full immunization (pipe dream at this point).
Maybe there is some way to create an authenticated official document based on dose # and date administered that can verify status without compromising personal information?
This is going to be a growing problem going forward and I don’t really trust a patchwork of private companies to solve it effectively.
Redshift
@Kay:
Even better, make it clear that Mooslim and sh*thole countries are at the top of that list, and they’ll be asking if they can take extra shots. ?
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Also, too, fundraise off the OUTRAGE!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve been thinking we might want to give some of our stock to Canada and Mexico just out of pure national self-interest. People in Canada are just stricken right now (their infection levels are lower than here, but they’re having a hard time getting those vaccines).
And, of course, what’s happening in India is just a humanitarian disaster; I don’t see how we can ignore it for long even if it’s largely of the Modi government’s making.
Ken
@West of the Rockies: It might help to point out to the roommate that if she schedules at a pharmacy, there won’t be crowds. One person every 10 minutes or so.
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
Red is a relative term here in California. There aren’t a lot of actually red counties, but you may have an easier time if you go to some place less red than San Francisco.
Baud
@Redshift:
Better still, Massachusetts.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Massachusetts is now pretty flush with vaccine though; it’d be hard to make it plausible…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know what the schedule or vote count is on Kristen Clarke
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer:
You have to admire the synergy there.
Jess
@schrodingers_cat: Same here. I was eligible as of April 5 and registered a few days before that. I finally was able to grab a slot for this coming Saturday–an hour’s drive away. I don’t know why we’re having this problem here.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think so too. Start moving it out if there aren’t enough takers. Plenty of people want and can’t get.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Good. S. Cat’s comment made me think there was a shortage.
trollhattan
@Served:
My card is in the CDC data base. It could easily be faked but would not be in the database; whether that makes a difference I couldn’t say.
Hoping California comes through with the “vaccine passport.”
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not the furrowed brow one? That’s pretty extreme.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
I’ve heard a serious suggestion that we should send vaccine to Iran as a good faith gesture ahead of negotiating on getting back into the JCPOA. It seems like a really good idea.
hrprogressive
I considered myself in the “Wait and See” crowd for a couple of reasons;
Well, then; The data came in and although I am still very wary about when “The After Times” begins, if it ever does; There is a lot of strong data suggesting protection. Israel’s data looks phenomenal, for example. If they roll back to “Pre-COVID” and…COVID doesn’t come back…that’ll be a great sign.
Then, the state essentially opened the floodgates and said “Everyone who wants one who is at least 16 years old, sign up and get it”. Spousal unit did the legwork and was like “Hey, sign up now, and we can go to a community site not far from us and get the ball rolling”So. Although I was very anxious to have gone, I am approaching two weeks of having had Pfizer #1 in my system, and approximately a week and change before I go back for #2.
I do not intend to return to “The Before Times” just yet, but, I also know – and have always known – we were going to have to vaccinate our way out of this plague. I’ve had vaccines my whole life, and I know they are good science and good medicine. I wonder how many people like me were out there who never showed up in polls, and even if we did, how do you characterize our position? “Wait and See”, sure. But I told people – my parents, and my spouse explicitly – that I was not at all “hesitant” to get the shot. I was simply concerned about, chiefly, my place in line, and also “hey once I get this is it really going to work”.
I am hopeful that President Biden’s “July 4th” date…you know, let’s see what we look like then. Do we look like Israel? Or do we look like Brazil or India or Ontario? Legitimately hopeful we’ll be more like Israel. But watching all the data to see what happens with the world’s petri dishes…
Mallard Filmore
@Seanly:
That is a problem. That Previous Guy, being the great negotiator that he is, signed contracts that require all of the vaccines that we have lined up be used in the USA and territories.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/8/2024962/-Biden-wants-to-send-COVID-19-vaccine-to-the-world-but-there-s-a-problem-and-it-s-Trump
trollhattan
@Baud:
My (CA) county supply has been cut 50% since the J&J suspension. I think once it’s reapproved we will be able to serve all comers but that’s not the case, currently. Varies by county, with others having plenty of walk-in capacity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I think she’s going all in on getting that Appropriations chair if they take back the Senate in ’22– besides being a hyper-partisan fraud, she can’t risk pissing off the Cotton-Cruz wing if Moscow Mitch goes to his reward or Our Willard decides to go play with his grandchildren and she loses a ‘moderate’ ally. So if anyone needs more motivations for the mid-terms: Keeping Collins in the minority will foil the cynical ambition that have been fueling her scam for twenty plus years.
Brachiator
@Baud:
There is no such thing as predicting the future. But we don’t give up trying.
And mainly it is about wishing for good things.
Mart
Daughter’s 33 y.o. friend died after battling long hauler C19 symptoms for nearly a year. Expect these types of tragedies will motivate the hesitant folks to get the shot.
Kent
Brought my 18 year old daughter to a Kaiser clinic this morning for her first Pfizer shot. In was an 8 am appointment which was when they open, but I was surprised to see zero lines at all. She sailed right in with no wait at all and was sitting in the post shot waiting area less than 3 minutes after we walked into the door.
That is in total contrast to when I got the Pfizer first shot in mid-March when there were at least 500 people in line snaking down various corridors to the outside, standing on little tape marks 6 ft. apart and it took me at least 30 min to work my way up to the front of the line.
This isn’t a MAGA vaccine-resistant area, it is suburban Portland. So I was surprised at the lack of people. Maybe we were just lucky to get in before the lines formed or something. I don’t know.
Redshift
@Falling Diphthong:
Exactly. As Mr. David Anderson is always telling us, reducing barriers, whether physical, financial, cognitive, or just effort, matters a lot for whether people access health care.
Which makes me think, has any vaccination polling asked refusers good “why” follow-ups? I know about the ones that show being a Republican is a good predictor, but I haven’t seen any about how many say it’s too hard or they can’t take time off.
Suzanne
So Spawn the Elder was signed up for Friday 4/30 for his second Pfizer. I got a call from the County Health Department saying that they are actually not going to have the site open that day, so his appointment is moved to the following Monday. They’re already dialing back the vaccine clinics. EHHHH.
Kent
Doubt it. Unless it is someone that they PERSONALLY know. It’s like how the same folks are all anti-gay until someone in their own family comes out. It has to touch them personally to sink in.
I have a shitload of these older MAGA relatives who are vaccine skeptics. I’m just waiting to post on Facebook the first time I see a Covid death “Well…on the positive side she didn’t have to suffer from any vaccine side effects”
I’m long past giving a fuck about people who are insistent on making the pandemic worse and making the country worse. Even if they are my own extended family.
dmsilev
I just did a spot check using the California MyTurn website and my home address, and there seem to be a fair number of appointments available in the LA area, even a few for today. A site in Chinatown seems to have the most capacity of the ones I looked at, with appointments open through next week and many slots per day. Availability is definitely going up, but it will be a while before we reach that zero-friction point of ‘walk in to neighborhood pharmacy or clinic with no notice, get a shot’ discussed above.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think there are distributional/administrative problems. Getting COVID vaccination in Massachusetts right now is confusing because there are multiple independent systems–the state has a website that’s been heavily touted, but I think it’s only for getting your shot at the state’s several mass-vaccination sites. Then there are the individual pharmacy systems, and then there are local clinics being run through city and town governments.
I just got my shot at a city clinic in Haverhill, which I easily signed up for on Monday (except that the website wasn’t updated to reflect universal eligibility). A few minutes ago, the mayor announced on Facebook that they had open slots and are doing walk-ins until 2 PM. I don’t know if it’s limited to Haverhill residents–given the operation I saw, I doubt they’re checking.
So there’s no shortage there, but that doesn’t help people trying to get an appointment some other way.
West of the Rockies
@Ken:
Not sure how it is now, but Oregon’s website was super cranky and availability was less than other states. My daughter gets hers at some tiny clinic next to a hospital. I think her roommate was picturing a gigantic event at Autzen Stadium, home of the Ducks.
smith
Unfortunately, the number of people getting their first shots has plummeted in the last week, from an average of about 2M/day to one of 1.6M/day. I’m guessing that the J&J pause has made a lot of people hesitant who weren’t so much before (cancellation of J&J appointments can’t account for this drop, as they currently comprise less than 4% of vaccines given). Hopefully this effect will wear off, and may be offset by the opening up of vaccination to younger people who weren’t eligible in many states until recently.
The good news is that there appears to be a drop in new cases in all the states where they had been surging. In some of these the drop is only a few days old, so could be ephemeral, but the fact that it’s a widespread phenomenon is encouraging.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember when Trump and Modi were best buddies.
Brazil may be even a larger problem, and lacks India’s health infrastructure. Many countries in Africa also need assistance.
All this is a reminder that we are dealing with a global pandemic, and it is going to take a lot of international co-operation to help various nations.
The WHO has been sending out alerts about this for a while now.
Redshift
@Ken:
Same thing for me at our county health department. They had a system set up where you texted from the parking lot when you arrived at your appointment time, and they texted back when they were ready for you. There were five people ahead of me in line and maybe ten in the post-shot waiting room, even though they were doing appointments nonstop.
dmsilev
@Redshift: It’s from late March (and will get updated next week), but this is a good starting point: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-march-2021/
Scroll down about halfway to Figure 12 and the ‘in their own words’ section for reasons for refusal.
Matt McIrvin
@smith: I think the pool of people who are really eager to get their first shot is just being depleted, because most of them have already got it by now. There may be many more who are willing to get it but in no particular hurry and will only do it if it’s easy.
Kent
@hrprogressive: There has been a ton of hand-wringing about the equity issue here in OR and WA. My wife who is a primary care physician put it this way:
If the state wanted “equity” then they SERIOUSLY fucked up with their tier system of putting old people and health care workers to the front of the line. Those are among the subpopulations (along with teachers) who are most white. There are very few Latinos in the Pacific Northwest who are either over 70 or working in health care. And frankly, not that many Blacks either.
Here in the Pacific Northwest you can’t with a straight face put the over 70 cohort to the front of the line and then complain that white people are getting a disproportionate share of the vaccine. But that is exactly what happened. Now that the vaccine is open to everyone we have more equity. But the numbers are never going to entirely level out until everyone is vaccinated because white folks got such a head start for the first 2 months of the rollout.
geg6
Super easy to get vaccines around here now and almost everyone in the family except the babies have gotten at least one shot. Governor Wolf tells us that we are #5 in the nation in vaccines administered, so that is a huge improvement over the start of the roll out. What I’m noticing is that the areas around here with the highest current COVID cases and lowest vaccination rates are exactly where I thought they’d be. Westmoreland, Fayette, Armstrong…Trump Country, in other words.
I hope they all die.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin:
My brother and sister-in-law just got appointments. They had both registered for the state’s website, but ended up getting slots through a local hospital system and CVS respectively.
In California, the state’s website covers most of the hospitals as well as the big county sites, but the pharmacy programs are all separate so you have to check them all individually.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: I have little sympathy for the anti-vaxxers and Covid-deniers, I only worry about them and incubators for variants.
dmsilev
WaPo:
Good move. Removes one potential pain point for getting the shot.
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
I think I saw a story that said that in some parts of Los Angeles County, some neighborhood pharmacies have a surplus of vaccine and people are not making appointments.
The first time I tried to make an appointment at a pharmacy, the system crashed. The second time I tried, I figured out that I could ignore some questions that were really irrelevant and lie about some others. I was absolutely honest about key questions about whether I was in an eligible group. Bottom line, no problems setting up an appointment.
But I see that setting up an appointment could be a problem for some people. And I had to jump through a few hoops just to find out which sites I could use to make an appointment.
I don’t know how good current public information and public outreach efforts are.
And as with flu shots, I don’t know if we are reaching the point where what is left are people who are typically resistant to getting vaccinations. On top of people who want shots but have trouble getting them.
Also, I note that the Kaiser Medical operation is heavily promoting the vaccine. But I don’t know if they offer it to non-members.
Almost Retired
@dmsilev: I did the same thing (spot checked appointments in my area of Los Angeles), and there were ample appointments available at nearby hospitals (I’m in the South Bay). I also noted a number of clinics with vaccinations limited to residents of specific lower-income communities in those areas where the South Bay transitions to South Central. Seems like Los Angeles County is doing a pretty good job on availability and equity.
MisterForkbeard
@smedley the uncertain: I would make this prosecutable with assault charges.
If you do this, you are putting lives in danger. If you attend an event/cruise/whatever that requires vaccinations, some people may be around that can’t be vaccinated or attendees could potentially carry the virus home to people who aren’t vaccinated. And you don’t know that you don’t have the virus.
So I’d charge card-fakers with intended assault. You can’t weed out the people who fake the cards because we don’t have a national database of who’s gotten the shot. But you can make it very painful to do when they’re caught.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: I’d always been prepped to get mine through the city’s system because family members were working at these clinics and had told me they seemed underutilized. And it seems like it’s the branch in MA that gets the least attention.
Our mayor put out a robocall when eligibility was extended to all adults, telling us how to get vaccinated… and up top, he emphasized that the best way was to go through the state mass-vaccination sites, which are far away from here. The city events were mentioned third on the list. And now, today, he’s begging people to do walk-ins at the city clinic, and I am not entirely surprised. Nice guy but I think I would have structured the robocall differently.
Kay
My middle son was “late” to his second appointment by hours- he just forgot- and he went down anyway and they were all but empty and took him right in.
There’s just more supply than demand here. I went thru Rite Aid and they had entire afternoon blocks of times open.
MisterForkbeard
@Mallard Filmore: I imagine this is something Biden could probably renegotiate and should. Loudly and publicly.
Hell, sending even a small amount of extra doses to the Philippines would be an enormous coup over there. President Duterte was buddy-buddy with Trump while he was selling out his country to China, and he’s been disastrously mis-managing Covid. Corruption, inefficiencies, lots of preventable death. And simultaneously claiming he can’t push back on China because China is giving (small amounts of) Sinovac.
Donating a few million doses of our much better vaccines would be excellent diplomacy, help a LOT of people in an economically poor country, remove a fair amount of chinese influence on the philippines, and potentially damage Duterte’s presidency. These are all really positive points.
dmsilev
@Brachiator:
Yes, they do.
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: I was at my local Kaiser ~10 days ago for my first shot at 10:45. When I got there, there was a line of 5 people to get signed in, and once signed in there were 3 people ahead of me in line to get the shot. I was in both lines less than 3 minutes each.
There was constant throughput. They’ve got this figured out, have spaced people accordingly and are flipping quick at getting it all done. I was really impressed.
rikyrah
I can’t wait for two things:
Cheryl from Maryland
My godson will be going to college at an international school in Korea this September. COVID vaccination is required. As his parents work for NATO, he lives in Germany but no vaccinations yet on the horizon for any of his family, even through the local NATO base. Maryland is open now to all eligible with no proof of residence, so the backup plan is that he will visit us in the summer to get vaccinated.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Isn’t this really a non-issue now?
And the original thinking was to give priority to those most at risk of getting ill or dying. “Equity” in itself was not the point.
I noted that at least in California, we had some idea where lower income essential workers lived, by zip code and other records. But there was never an effort to get the vaccine to people where they lived, which might have helped.
In the end, making the vaccine available by age bands, though still not necessarily purely “equitable,” was a reasonable way of sorting people, without asking that they bring proof that they were in the proper occupation.
rikyrah
@Mallard Filmore:
that shyt’s gotta go, and 46 needs to be sure to make sure that folks understand WHY it’s gotta go.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
ICAM. We need to ship to Canada and Mexico ASAP.
India and Brazil next.
Wapiti
Anecdotal: Garfield County, WA, has a population of ~2230. It’s WA’s smallest county. It went ~72% for Trump and normally has the best election turnout in the state.
With a population of 2230, they’re at 1508 doses given. That’s some number of Trump voters holding their noses and getting the shots.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Meanwhile, in Arizona….
How dare this colored individual, Black individual, whatever, call me racist!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I’ve noticed a bunch of people within the last few weeks at the grocery store “forgetting” to bring their masks in with them or not remembering to wear them until they get to the checkout.
After a year of this, I have a hard time believing a bunch of people could walk through the whole store and forget to put on a mask until the checkout. I call BS. The last one who did it even remarked sardonically in a quiet voice about how they “could actually breathe” without it on.
Ruckus
@Seanly:
This. This is a worldwide event, and it has no respect for national or state boundaries. Especially if vaccines have a shelf life, they shouldn’t be wasted, they should be in arms. Every arm that’s vaccinated helps.
Cameron
I’m pretty certain that I don’t know any anti-vaxxers IRL (although I’ve got some very right-wing friends), and I don’t intend to engage with any I run across. Had my Pfizers and plan on wearing a mask until the end of summer. If others are disinclined to do the same, that’s their business. I think they’re wrong, but it really isn’t worth my time or effort to mess with them.
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: In certain parts of california, there was a big effort to have vaccination clinics for disadvantaged people. It was actually a problem because a bunch of tech-folk in San Francisco kept hearing about them and figuring out ways around the minimal safeguards put in place, and would take appointments and shots intended for the poor.
I have a couple extended friendships that fell apart due to this, where people took advantage of the program where they shouldn’t and half of their friends basically disowned them on the spot.
rikyrah
@geg6:
Tell me how you really feel.
Soprano2
They need to be easy and convenient for people like my manager, who doesn’t have a bunch of time to spend on the computer chasing down shot appointments. If she’s in WalMart and a shot is available, I’m sure she’d take it. There are lots of people like that, who want it but don’t have the time to chase appointments. Make it easy to walk into any Walgreens or WalMart or CVS or any other place with a pharmacy and get vaccinated, and lots of people will do it I think. Especially once the one shot vaccine becomes available again.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
For me, it was 2 round trips of 86+miles each to get the shots. I’d have done easily twice that much not to die from this.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I know that they are testing the virus before they give it to younger people, which is proper and necessary.
But I ask this as someone who clearly does not understand all the science behind the vaccine. I wonder if for some of the youngest children, the vaccine is really necessary or recommended, particularly since they are at a lower risk of getting seriously ill?
Yeah, they still might transmit the disease, but if older kids and adults have been vaccinated, does this suffice?
Benw
@rikyrah:
THIS. My whole fam can be vaccinated by December once this happens!
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I saw a gradual increase in that kind of behavior at the grocery store last summer, when case rates around here were low, but then it seemed like people got frightened into better compliance in the fall/winter wave and there’s less of that now.
dmsilev
@MisterForkbeard: At least some of the community clinics in LA were deliberately not advertised online, but instead relied on old-school leaflets on streetlights, telephone call trees, etc., exactly to avoid slots being grabbed by wealthy and/or technical people.
Kent
Here in SW Washington they do accommodate non-members in theory, but it is somewhat glitchy as you have to register and get an account on their web site kp.org before you can use the Kaiser system to schedule an appointment online. And apparently there are software glitches with their system being able to accommodate non-Kaiser members registering for kp.org accounts. I have a friend who kept trying to do it and could never get the final confirmation email to complete the kp.org registration.
They don’t have a parallel reservation system for non-Kaiser members. So if you don’t obtain a kp.org account you can’t schedule the vaccine.
MisterForkbeard
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I used to say the best measure of a person’s “goodness” was whether or not they returned the shopping cart to the cart station after going grocery shopping. It’s a simple, easy task that takes 15 seconds, shows basic responsibility for cleaning up after yourself, and makes life easier for literally everyone else around you – other customers don’t deal with your cart clogging up spaces and the employees have an easier time rounding everything up.
These days, it’s mask wearing. It’s a cheap, simple, easy task that literally saves lives and has no downsides. It might make you slightly uncomfortable or make you have to speak slightly louder to be heard. Fucking deal with it.
People who won’t make even that minimal effort are just scum.
Wapiti
@Kay: This. If the conservatives don’t want the shot, send the doses somewhere to help raise herd immunity of the human race.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: If nothing else, the kids could be a reservoir for new variants that could blunt vaccine effectiveness.
Also, school vaccination requirements are just one of the most effective ways to get people vaccinated. I know we don’t know how long immunity from the vaccine lasts, but there are some suggestions that with the mRNA vaccines it could actually last for several years. If so, getting school kids is a golden opportunity to just put down firebreaks in transmission that might not exist at all otherwise.
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
Yeah. Thanks for the reminder about this. A variation of this appointment theft happened in Los Angeles County as well, and they had to temporarily shut down the appointment system in some communities.
As always, some affluent people, and some assholes, found ways to game the system.
But in some communities, the lockdown and other steps taken to deal with the pandemic made things worse. You could not, for example, use DMV offices or libraries as places to administer the vaccine because these places were closed down.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterForkbeard:
What complicates that is that I’ve seen people advocating on labor grounds for the moral superiority of NOT returning the carts–they say that by doing some of the work that would otherwise be done by paid employees, you’re helping to eliminate jobs and drive wages down. So some of the people who leave them sitting in parking spaces might be doing it on principle, however perversely expressed.
Cameron
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been seeing increased numbers of maskless people at the supermarket over the last month. Mid-March, it was probably 90+% mask-wearers; now probably more like 80%. Which I guess isn’t really too bad, assuming a lot of folks have been vaccinated.
ellie
Hubby and I are in Broomfield, CO, and are getting our first shots in 45 minutes at the nearest Costco. I have been checking and checking on availability, and suddenly, there were a bunch of open slots. Yay! We are nervous because we don’t like to be even minorly inconvenienced by any side effects, but the first shot is not supposed to be bad.
Another Scott
@oldster: I don’t think it’s that simple – it depends on how long antibodies, etc., for SARS-CoV-2 last.
IntermountHealthCare (from November):
Everyone (possible) needs to get vaccinated.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin: Fuck ’em.
At my local (busy) groceries, there isn’t a person who does this full time. Or wasn’t until COVID and they had to clean the carts after every use, and even then it’s a rotating task somebody does every so often. Stores don’t hire people just to collect carts, and employees still need to gather them from the cart stations anyway.
These people are advocating for laziness and trying to say they’re virtuous for doing so. That makes them even worse than the people who just don’t do it. At least they’re not gaslighting.
Soprano2
Holy fuck, I just saw that the man in the pistol-brandishing St. Louis couple is considering running for the Senate. Just what we need here in MO, more crazy people running for the Senate as a Republican. At this rate, we’ll have the two worst senators in the nation after 2022.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
I would not have wanted it rolled out differently. IMO the priorities were set correctly.
As far as I know the only excluded populations are those younger than trials have been completed for, the age of which varies between 16 and 18, depending on which vaccine.
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: Nah, if someone leaves a cart in a parking space where it could roll into another car, or blocks someone from parking, they’re just an inconsiderate person with yet another ready excuse for their poor behavior.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@ellie:
Yeah, it’s really only opened up here in the metro area (I’m in downtown Denver) starting maybe a week ago. You spent all your time scouring for a site that had availability. But look at availability on the Western Slopes and it was an entirely different story. Probably because of nobody signing up.
Still, I know people as recently as a week and a half ago having to drive down to Canyon City for their first shot.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
They seem nice. :-(
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@randy khan:
Sure we do. We know the die hard refusers will end up being about 27%.
Matt McIrvin
From the beginning it seems like there’s been this struggle between keeping smarty-pants low-risk people from grabbing vaccine when it was scarce, and making it easy enough for people who do want it to get it. I know that in MA there was a long initial period when vaccination was limited to health-care workers in workplace clinics, and then they discovered that a lot of these people would turn down the vaccine and they ended up with a “surplus” after all. And it seems like that same tension has applied to every gradual relaxation of the standards.
Now we’ve got a situation where all adults are eligible, but to actually get the shots, they’re wrestling with administrative barriers that are still left over from the period of scarcity. I hope this resolves itself soon; with any luck it will.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
My nephew has been a hanging on by his fingernails tenant farmer in the wilds of Northern California for ~10 years, but last fall his tiny farm was completely burned out in the forest fires that swept the area. His truck wasn’t running at the time, so he lost that too. So now he’s bouncing around among friends, with no vehicle, no home, looking for a new place to farm in a quasi-legal industry in a rural, inhospitable area. Not surprisingly, he has not been able to find the wherewithal to schedule and get a shot. He wants one, but the state his life is in right now, it’s not at the top of his priority list.
I suspect a lot of the folks who are left unvaccinated who don’t fit into the “hesitant” category are in a similar situation. He doesn’t consider himself homeless (although technically he is), but he’s certainly home-insecure, job-insecure, food-insecure, just damned precarious.
smith
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Seems to me the numbers for the 65+ age group suggest that when your life is in danger, the crazification subsides somewhat. More than 80% of the Olds have had at least one shot nationwide, and in some very red Midwestern states the number is 85% or more. Even in FL it’s 82% (if you can believe FL’s numbers)
It’s much worse in parts of the South, but it’s hard to say how much of that is vaccine resistance and how much poor health infrastructure.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@smith: Maybe. Threat of death reduces the crazification factor in the older populations, but among the young, we will see the number inflated as the borderline crazies continue to resist. When averaged across age ranges and other demographics, I still think it will be about 27%.
randy khan
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
There isn’t much of a counterargument to that. (Although a good number of them will get vaccinated when their employers demand it.)
Brachiator
@Kent:
I can understand the “logic” behind this, but damn it is stupid.
You have to make getting the vaccine as easy as possible.
Years ago I worked for a small company that asked how many people needed a flu shot and then brought in a nurse to give the shots.
They also offered vouchers that people could use at a local pharmacy.
Make it easy and simple and provide easy options.
Jay C
@Soprano2:
“…crazy people running for the Senate as Republicans” isn’t really the issue.
It’s their relatively easy chances for election that’s the problem…
SiubhanDuinne
Joe’s talking about this right now. And he made an inadvertent funny: said “saloon” instead of “salon.” Then he laughed at himself, corrected himself, made a mild little joke, and carried on. I love our POTUS ❤️❤️❤️.
TheflipPsyD
@hrprogressive: I also was in the wait and see category. Have been blessed to work from home, see no interruption in income the past year and have been able to maintain social distancing and limit exposure. I am by no means an anti-vaxxer, but I felt that there were lots of people who should get the vaccine long before me — specifically those individuals who have jobs with public contact and cannot work from home. Just got my first shot of moderna yesterday at the local walgreens. I’m in Delaware and there were plenty of appointments on the website, so I didn’t feel like I would be taking it away from someone else who truly needed the vaccine. My husband is scheduled for his first moderna shot on 5/4.
Jeffro
Well, it is what the GQP considers “qualifications” for running for office, among so many other unsavory/disgusting/illegal/horrifying things. See also, Greitens, Gaetz, Jordan, trumpov, etc
Ken
@Matt McIrvin: The true test of their beliefs would be if you were to scrape their car with a shopping cart and say “oops, well, I guess we’re creating work for the body and paint shop, good that we’re doing our bit for the economy.”
Jeffro
Btw it looks like the Tucker Carlson yearbook story finally broke. ‘The Dan White Club’. Ugh.
Martin
Gather ’round pfeasants and bear witness pfor I have gotten Pfizer #2, the vaccine of kings, the banquet vaccine, it’s Pfizer time.
They’ve tweaked the process where I went each time (local hospital – so lots of other business going on there). Ms Martin went 2 weeks ahead of me. From her first shot to my first they moved the staging area to help traffic flow. My first was therefore faster with fewer people stumbling around. Her 2nd saw some changes to how they flowed people through. This visit improved that further. Basically they built a set of 12 patients, moved them from the staging to the shot area, double-checked paperwork, butts in seats and immediately a shot. Effectively they eliminated the idling after confirming your appointment and put it all into the line waiting to confirm your appointment and start the process. There was a good 100-200 people in line when I arrived and left, but they were doing a solid 50 people every 15 minutes. I asked the nurses and they said yeah, they’re a lot more efficient – as soon as someone leaves, someone new sits down and they’re ready to give the shot.
Shot #1 took a few hours for my arm to be sore. It was sore by the time I got back to my car this time. I think today is gonna be unpleasant.
Searcher
Hell, if you announce that we’re going to give any vaccines we don’t have demand for locally to Canada, Mexico, etc, you might get some right-wingers to spitefully get vaccinated two or three times just to make sure a brown person somewhere doesn’t benefit.
Feathers
@schrodingers_cat: There is a Twitter feed @vaccinetime that scrapes all the Massachusetts pharmacies listing and tweets links to places that have open appointments. I was able to grab a slot for this Friday at the Walgreens a few blocks from my house the morning after I started following. I’d had no luck before and was about to sign up for the Hynes mass center in Boston.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Don’t know what this is, but if it is bad for Carlson, then I am all for it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
And the “Jesse Helms Foundation.” Double ugh.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
I’d like to think that Bitcoin is a CIA PSYOP to infiltrate the worldwide criminal underworld. It’s a shame that it’s destroying the planet in the process… :-/
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Searcher
Honestly that will probably put us in the mid-to-high 80’s for vaccinated + already infected, which might be good enough for ending the crisis, but not for eradicating the disease.
JoyceH
I used to be a shopping cart leaver. Before I swallowed my pride and started driving the little motorized cart (this was before online ordering with curbside pickup), by the time I got through checkout and got the cart out to the car and the groceries loaded, I had no more steps to give. I’d look over at the cart return place and… I just couldn’t. I would position the cart by the stanchion and ensure it wouldn’t roll away, but that was the best I could do.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Ha! Congratulations on getting the shot.
Martin
@Brachiator: Actually, it’s a good system because they contact you. So if you are hesitant to make an appointment, Kaiser takes away that excuse. It wasn’t a ‘we have appointments available’ it was a more assertive ‘it’s time for your shot’, implying they’re going to hound you until you get it. They can also actively reschedule if they have openings because they have all that member information. To everyone else, this is invisible – they don’t advertise it, but it’s clearly more efficient than the usual public options and takes demand off those options.
My employer also offered to do what you describe – they contacted us and had local (to the campus) shot options. This too isn’t public. But while the shot isn’t mandatory at work, they were also assertive in asking if you turned down the shot when you got it elsewhere.
Feathers
@Jeffro: People have caught on that our horrible dark money election laws means running for office can be a hell of a grift. You basically get to keep whatever cash you raise. You can hire your kids for bullshit jobs. You get to throw fancy parties for free and feel terribly important. Reporters have a delusion they must take everything you say seriously, and not “censor” your speech.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ruckus: Good for you. But there are a LOT of people who aren’t at high risk and a day trip for a vaccination is over the top.
Martin
@Brachiator: Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
I can get a shot. I can promote the general Welfare. It’s the tiniest of patriotic acts that apparently a lot of Republicans can’t be bothered with.
JoyceH
@Feathers: Speaking of dark money, has anyone else seen that ‘public advocacy’ ad running about Biden’s judicial nominations? Has the sinister-voiced narrator talking about how Biden was paying back ‘all that darrrrrk money’ donations by appointing ‘politicians in robes’, and call your senator etc.
Thing is, dark money is OUR issue! Republicans are all for unlimited anonymous corporate money reaching them via their PACs.
Seems to me by making a big deal about Dark Money, they’re accepting opposition framing and playing right into our hands. It would be as if the pro-choice folks started calling the anti-abortion crowd ‘pro-life’. They’re telling their own people that anonymous donations are a bad thing. Which makes campaign finance reform easier.
So… huh. Proceed, governor.
Jeffro
Truth.
Why, you can “hire for comms, not legislation” and somehow that is ok…
You can wrap bacon around the barrel of an automatic weapon, and still be considered a deep intellect in your party.
You can display an entire Al-Qaeda cell’s worth of automatic weapons on the bookshelves behind you, unsafely (of course), and be considered a patriot
You can wave around a milk carton with the Vice President’s picture on it, or wear a gas mask on the House floor.
And on and on with the nonsense from these people.
And that’s the the performative piece. The corruption is a whole ‘nother deal.
Barbara
@Kent: This is what happened at my local medical center when I tried to sign up for my husband. I signed up no problem because I am known to the EHR, but even though I tried multiple browsers, I could never complete the registration for my husband. So he and my daughter have appointments at a pharmacy near where he grew up and we own property, while I have an appointment locally. We go down there all the time, so we don’t consider it a hardship, but I just really want everyone to be on board to get it done.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruckus: Suit yourself, phellow auld phart. The first vaxx appointment I found was at CVS – in Ocean City MD, a 290-mile round trip (+ Bay Bridge toll). I decided I was more likely to be (as the Scots put it) kilt on that drive than to die of COVID, so I passed. Fortunately I got a walk-in
PaleolithicaAntiquaModerna jab 2 days later at the Giant Food pharmacy 5 minutes’ drive from home. YMMV (“you might miss vaccination”)Brachiator
@Martin:
In Southern California, Kaiser seemed to be late in getting the vaccine, which I thought was a bit odd.
But yeah, now they are in the thick of things, which is good.
WhatsMyNym
@Soprano2:
Aren’t they well known grifters? Probably wanting to just live off the donor cash.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: I don’t think anyone will care. Dems and lefties already know who Tucker is and what he’s been pushing. His own fans (and republicans) won’t care if he joined a fan club about killing gay people and/or democrats.
The media has more important things to talk about, and in all honesty it’s something he did 20-30 years ago and I have a difficult time caring. It’s not like Tucker doesn’t nightly host White Power primal screams.
Dopey-o
After weeks and weeks of registering at multiple sites in the largest metro area in our state and getting no results, a rural friend phoned me with a tip.
Spouse and i made 2 400-mile round trips to a small town in the Ozarks. Governor Parson’s very red hometown. 25 minutes between getting in line and driving home. They took all comers.
So don’t tell me that protecting your family is inconvenient.
MisterForkbeard
@JoyceH: I’m sorry to hear that. Of course this test would only apply to people who are medically able. :(
West of the Rockies
@Matt McIrvin:
Funny how their “virtue” and concern for someone’s job just happen to make life easier for those who leave their carts wherever they wish.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
Unfortunately, that group appears to includes majorities of both houses of the Texas Legislature, which is likely to at least consider forbidding employers from requiring vaccination as a condition of employment.
MisterForkbeard
@Dopey-o: This was a real thing in California, too. Butte county (Chico + Oroville) and other red counties had very low vaccination rates for a long time because Trumpers didn’t want to show up. They had a ton of vaccine available, relatively.
I could have gotten my 1st shot about 2 weeks earlier if I’d been willing to make a long drive to a red county.
smith
@JoyceH: The problem is, it will be child’s play for them to convince their voters that only Democrats accept dark money.
Soprano2
Oh, that ship sailed a long time ago, when we let Covid run wild in the U.S. and other countries. The best we can hope for is to control it with vaccines; Covid is going to be with us for a long time. Plus, I saw someone up thread estimate that 10% of the population has had Covid. I think that’s an underestimate partly because of the asymptomatic nature of many infections. I personally know 3 people who almost certainly had Covid last year but never bothered to get tested. I’m sure that’s not unusual at all, especially as it was hard to get a test for quite a while. If I had to guess, I’d put the percentage who’s had Covid at more like 20%.
West of the Rockies
@Soprano2:
Cruz and Graham on line two…
WhatsMyNym
@Kent: @Brachiator: My smallish county hospital/medical center managed to have a separate system up and running on day one. They use MyChart for their main patient system. They even had a phone number for those that needed it.
West of the Rockies
@Martin:
Tomorrow may be worse. That was my experience. But 36 hours after the shot, I was back to Abby Normal.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: The reasoning does remind me of Teamster’s Union work rules and such, that any work whatsoever (such as moving a box) that theoretically could be done by an employee, but is done by a non-employee, is taking something away from paid labor on behalf of management.
I do return my carts to the corral, and it annoys me when other people don’t. But I’m a consumer here rather than a worker, and I do sometimes wonder whether there’s a fundamental difference between expecting shoppers to do this, and, say, putting in automated checkout lines.
Chris Sherbak
More anecdote: I’m in the Chicago burbs and became vax eligible on the 12th but no appts were available till yesterday at my local Meijer (!). Very efficient and they had a very impressive setup in the store: blocking aisles for the queue and the “seasonal offerings” area (a big space with blow up santas and holloween knick knacks) setup for 20ish jabbers. The “post jab waiting” was another larger “big items” area. Seems like a big commitment by them to lose all that sales space. Kudos! Best news: when I was almost done they went over the store announcement asking for people to come get jabbed – no appt needed. If this is standard across their stores, I have to think numbers will be going up. I think they said they’d had this arrangement for a week or two. ps. Team Pfizer. Also, have to think when J&J comes online there’ll be a lot of late pickup esp. if we switch to one on one with a PCP or family doctor (i.e. trusted medical professional.) One can hope.
Brachiator
@WhatsMyNym:
That is good to hear.
I hope that more places get efficient in making the vaccine available. This alone will encourage some reluctant people to get it.
Martin
@Brachiator: No, you really want everyone vaccinated. Vaccines aren’t to protect you. They actually kind of suck at that. I mean, if you still have a 20% chance of catching it if exposed, that’s 60 million people in the US. That’s a LOT.
Vaccines are compound interest for society. If you have a R0 of 5.7 for Covid, and you universally mask and distance with 80% effectiveness you can get that down to about 1.14. Still spreading, but slower. You’re paying 14% interest vs paying 470%. Sub a vaccine for the masking with 85% efficacy and 80% distribution, and your R0 is 1.8. Paying 80% interest. Toss masking/distancing on top and you improve that to 0.36 – now you’re making money instead of paying it. Now it can’t spread. It dies out rapidly.
Increase the vaccination rate (plus natural immunity) and add in boosters that will up the efficacy of the vaccine, and eventually you can get R0 below 1 even without the masks.
But given an average R0 of 5.7, which is pretty high, you need a pretty high uptake rate or you need to keep other measures going that reduce spread – masking, distancing, etc.
Also understand that R0 is a local value. It’s going to be lower in CA (mandatory masking) than in TX (no mandatory masking). That’s why closing the universities was so important. High density lecture halls were bombs waiting to go off. You’d have a natural R0 of 10-20 there. You’d infect the entire campus in about 2 weeks and there wasn’t enough masking that could be done to change that. But a school with a thousand unvaccinated kids and a hundred vaccinated adults would still have a pretty high R0. The upside to K-12, and particularly K-6 is you can assert a LOT more authority over behavior compared to a university or public space where there is little authority over people’s movement or behavior.
West of the Rockies
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh, I do shun self-checkout 99% of the time. SCO does cost jobs.
smith
It’s beginning to look like some elite athletes could have their careers cut short by long covid. I wonder if this could help convince the invincible young to get vaxxed.
burnspbesq
@Mallard Filmore:
I seem to recall from my long-ago Contracts class that contracts can be modified if both parties agree.
Brachiator
A little tidbit from BBC News
A little international co-operation is a good thing.
Martin
@West of the Rockies: Yeah, first shot was interesting. It seemed like I was cycling through every side effect – headache for an hour, hot for an hour, cold for an hour, fever for an hour. It was like a pu pu platter of annoyance. Arm hurt badly for about 2 days and then was much better.
Ms Martin (who to my shock was undeserving of the vaccine of kings and was given Moderna) had migraines for 2 days after shot 2, but no other symptoms (migraines were plenty).
I don’t care, mind you. A few hours or days of annoyance are worth it. It’s temporary and I’m patient.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
They could be reopened to administer the vaccine, I’m pretty sure the community center Madame got her jab wasn’t open except for vaccinations.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: I also remember how it worked in northern Virginia when I was a kid–at the supermarkets we went to, they didn’t let you take your shopping carts out into the parking lot at all. There were barriers with openings too narrow to get a cart through. You were expected to leave your cart at the curb, go out to your car, and pull over curbside, at which point a store employee would help you load your groceries into the car.
There are, of course, many, many problems with this, not least that the barriers would be forbidden under the ADA today. But I assume it was mostly intended as a means of keeping people from stealing the shopping carts.
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: Regarding shopping carts – I used to live near Palo Alto and I’d shop at the military commissary at Moffett Field. This was in the 2000s, but the military does things a little behind the times.
At the commissary, they used baggers, and baggers worked for tips only. They weren’t commissary employees. If you wanted to bag your own groceries, knock yourself out, but almost no one with a cart does. The bagger takes the groceries out to the car and brings the cart back inside. I’ve no idea if civilian grocers used to use that model.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
That isn’t really true. They’ve been trying to get the vaccines to people precisely where they live. They have specifically rolled out state run clinics in poor neighborhoods, and they’ve made equity a key metric for things like reopening. There’s still some inequity in the system, but it’s not for lack of trying.
Matt McIrvin
@Wapiti:
Wow, that’s… bad.
Martin
@Brachiator: I don’t think so. I mean, maybe in the sense that they weren’t part of the administration of the vaccine in nursing homes, etc. which is where the first vaccines went, but they were giving vaccines to 1A cohorts (first responders) pretty much from the outset. I understand that they didn’t vaccinate anyone outside of Kaiser health staff until Kaiser health staff were vaccinated, which is the right way to go. So there might have been some perception they were late based on how they prioritized things, but I think they were there early on.
Understand too that Kaiser has a LOT of 1A/1B eligible folks. They are the most popular plan for UC employees. I think CSU as well. My wife and I are both 1B.
Brachiator
@Martin:
The vaccine itself is not without risk, even though that risk is low.
Dr Jim Keaney, who heads the ER at an Orange County hospital, indirectly raised the point that in some countries, the risk of getting the vaccine might outweigh the benefits with respect for some younger people.
This might become a consideration for infants and younger children. It might not be as simple as “vaccinate everyone” even though this may seem to be counter-intuitive.
Similarly, there are some early questions, which may amount to nothing, about Covid vaccines and impact on some women’s periods.
Small things and nothing that should feed the ignorance of anti-vaxxers. Still, we may find that we may want to vary how we apply the vaccine for some people, including young children.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: I’m assuming the availability of town clinics here in Haverhill, MA is related to the fact that the place has been something of a COVID disaster zone, with lots of low-income essential workers (though not as badly off as Lawrence or Methuen).
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, seriously behind the times. I remember sky-caps working for tips. Back in the 1980s.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Yeah, it didn’t start great, but they’ve continually iterated and gotten it better.
There’s an inherent bias at the outset because those eligible at the outset tend to be doctors and nurses and other health professionals that are virtually all in the top quartile. Also the mass vaccination sites are also biased that way – places with large infrastructure tend to have better health outcomes and starting with drive-through sites favored people that could afford a car.
Brachiator
@Martin:
No. In Southern California, other hospitals and agencies were offering the vaccine to the public long before Kaiser.
I am a Kaiser member and kept seeing emails that essentially said “get on the list and we will tell you about vaccine appointments in the future.”
Meanwhile, I could have gone to Dodger Stadium or to a relatively nearby non-Kaiser hospital. I ultimately signed up to get my vaccine at a local Rite Aid pharmacy. And I got it weeks before I was finally offered even an appointment from Kaiser.
I think that in Los Angeles County in general, when it was opened up to all people age 65 and older, Kaiser was still not ready to offer more vaccines.
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
I wonder how many people will live the lie that they were vaccinated for a while, get infected, and then feel obliged to continue lying and become part of the “vaccinated but still got infected” group.
Would be interesting to spot check some subset of those cases to see if the paperwork (I don’t recall if there was a signature (NYState). Anyone?) can be found.
Bill Arnold
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
My response would be some individually-tailored variation on:
“You’ve been hitting up google scholar, and closely reading the scientific literature? I’m impressed!”
Martin
@Brachiator: It remains to be seen for kids. But that’s possible. Trials for kids are hard to do.
I mean, that’s the rationale behind pausing J&J – figure out where the risk equation is bad and choose differently for those patients. But even so, if not now, at some point there will be a safe vaccine for kids and we’ll give it to them. Because covid transmits between humans and animals, wiping it out is not a trivial task, so you really need to go for broke. Not only can animals keep it in circulation, but it’s that jump between species where a lot of the cool mutations come from.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: I noted that at least in California, we had some idea where lower income essential workers lived, by zip code and other records. But there was never an effort to get the vaccine to people where they lived, which might have helped.
Things have got better. The initial attempts to reach out to lower income and non-English speaking communities in Los Angeles County was pretty weak. But I also note that LA County is huge, contains many cities and there was a lot of variation in response. Long Beach seemed to do things right from the beginning.
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold:
I’m thinking the receipt from the pharmacy where they got their vaccination. It has a cost of $0.00, but I still got a receipt and the prescription printout thingy with my name on it. (In addition to the CDC card.)
Matt McIrvin
@Martin:
Well, the story on this is fluid, really. We hope that vaccines can reduce the reproduction rate, but all we initially knew about the COVID vaccines was that they provided some protection against symptomatic COVID and a lot against severe COVID. There wasn’t any data on whether they prevented asymptomatic transmission (there is some now). So the original pitch was that they were individual protection, and they were better at this than a lot of vaccines are.
StringOnAStick
When we got shot #2 last Wednesday they were handing out copies of “please volunteer” information, which I think I will do at my two week mark.
I saw the planned “greater Idaho” map that some OR wing nut proposed to fellow elected wing nuts in ID, and I was pleased to see that our new home was carved out and excluded. The vaccination clinic is at the fairgrounds between Bend and Redmond, with the latter showing as part of the proposal for greater ID. It’s been busy there, so I guess I have to assume it’s mostly people from Bend? An antique store in Redmond got outed for selling Nazi memorabilia a few months ago and the town has a definite R flavor.
JoyceH
@smith: But lookit- they’re framing dark money as bad, so when legislation outlawing dark money comes up, they’ll either have to vote for it or have their vote used against them when they run for re-election – because they’re agreeing that dark money is bad!
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “arraigned”? Impugned, maybe?
Fair Economist
@randy khan:
Yes and no. The shifts are mostly coming from “soft resistors” – people whose attitudes were “wait and see” or “not sure”. “Hard resistor” numbers – antivaxxers, COVID denialists, and conspiracy theorist – haven’t changed much. IIRC, the sum of those groups is in the neighborhood of the famous 27%. So I do think we’re going to hit limits at around 70% vaccinated. Some will yield, of course, as vaccination becomes required for various activities.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: The fraction of seniors who have currently gotten a shot is actually higher than that–and, historically, they are famously conservative!
But just being old probably softens them up in this particular instance–they’re already used to interacting with the health-care system, and of course COVID already turned them against Trump in 2020 to a greater degree than younger conservatives. I think people who insist they never need conventional medical care tend to be under 65.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
This is some serious bullshit rationalizing. Anyone who says that is not just a lazy son of a bitch but also the same kind of liar who claims the reason they want to do away with welfare is because it will teach poor people to support themselves.
Cameron
@Bill Arnold: I think in this context “I’ve done the research” means “I found something on social media that agrees with my preconceptions.”
Brachiator
O/T. I have been getting a lot of Chinese language spam phone calls over the past few days. Very annoying.
Kent
@burnspbesq: Texas is a 100% right to work state where employers can fire anyone for any reason at any time as long as it doesn’t directly violate Federal law. Are they really going to interfere with that old and glorious history for this?
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree the resistance will be more among the young. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, death concentrates the mind wonderfully.
In addition, conspiracy theories and outfall like antivax seem at least as common in the young as the old. My son and all his friends, all around 20, fall for the nuttiest conspiracy theories and they’re all refusing the vaccine. They make my elderly mom’s friends ranting about soshulism seem sane.
Uncle Cosmo
O RLY? The Save-A-Lot I frequent in uptown Bawlmer has had those barriers in place ever since I first went to it ~15 years ago (half a block from my last place of employment). And yes, they are primarily there to keep the carts (parked within the barriers just outside the store) from disappearing.
I haven’t made a study of it but I’d guess there’s at least one gate that can be unlocked by store employees for wheelchair/motorized cart/other handicap access.
Fair Economist
@SiubhanDuinne:
Not really a mistake, because “saloon” was initially an anglicization of the French “salon”. Just archaic usage.
Ruckus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Thing is, at least when I was in the military, a person did not have to accept medical treatment. If you were unable to consent they could save your life. Vaccines were part of that. Only problem was that non medical people always seemed to forget to mention that.
Sure Lurkalot
@Brachiator: Re Kaiser, I signed up as a non-member in early February along with other health systems in my area. I was suppose to get a follow up email with an account number…never came. I was astonished when I phoned their help desk and got a real human who after a few questions, told both me and my spouse our account numbers. We signed into our accounts and were in the queue.
It was over 2 months before I was emailed to make an appointment or de-list. I was already fully vaxxed by then. 2 other of the systems I signed up at just sent emails in the past 2 weeks. Got nothing from 3 others.
I think things have gotten better since then but signing up with the big hospital systems in my state was pretty much a waste of time.
Kent
@Brachiator: The point is, that at least here in the Pacific Northwest, they gave white folks such a giant head start in the vaccine queue by vaccinating only old people and health care staff during the first 2 months, that no matter how “equitable” they try to make the subsequent rollout now, they will never be able to catch up mathematically until the entire population is vaccinated. Especially with the Latino population which trends the most young and especially under age 18.
So for the duration of the pandemic we will continue to be dogged with news stories about how vaccination rates are lagging for people of color. That was entirely predictable and unavoidable when you gave white folks a 2-month head start.
JaneE
I was talking to a nurse Monday. She says about a third of the county (Inyo) is fully vaccinated, with more only on their first shots. She said we are vaccinating about 500 people a week. There is a big clinic scheduled this weekend, and they are expecting a thousand people. Even though we are an (R) county, we haven’t run out of people who want the vaccine. And we only opened up to all ages this week.
Kaiser sent out another email about vaccine availability after the J&J pause. It said they have the capacity to vaccinate 720,000 people a week in California, but are only getting about 500,000 doses, so you may not get an appointment as quickly as you want. I expect that depends on exactly where you are, high desert seemed to have plenty of openings.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Rubella vaccines are a precedent. The disease’s main adverse effects are on fetuses, and keeping the disease eliminated or close to zero in the general population means that pregnant women (who might not be immune, for a few reasons) are much less likely to become infected.
Even for young kids, there are potential long term effects with COVID-19, that are not well characterized yet since the disease is young. We’re in new territory, where the disease is not much older than the first vaccine designs and vaccine rollout started about a year after the first cases were detected.
Dan B
@Brachiator: In WA infection, hospitalization, and mortality were highest in ciunties with large Latine populations and vaccines were slow to arrive. I don’t know the figures on age but it was awful for minorities early on and may be currently. Pierce County just south of Seattle has been increasing. It’s got a higher minority population than Seattle.
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
I seem to recall that contracts with illegal clauses — like racism — are illegal on their face, and not binding. Same as real estate requirements that a buyer be not black, not binding since civil rights reform long ago.
Sounds like all of Trump’s contracts are illegal because of their racist restrictions on Mexico, Brazil, etc, etc.
We voted Trump out, his bullshit is no longer operative~!!~
Dan B
@Brachiator: New variants are infecting and seriously sickening 20 somethings and younger who have been making half of all patients in some areas. I didn’t recall where but I seem to remember it was outside the US as well.
JaneE
@Brachiator: That was not my experience with Kaiser. We didn’t get on any list, our doctor had said they would contact use when we were eligible. We got emails every week at first saying they were vaccinating the 1A group(health care). In Feb we got an automated phone call saying that my husband was eligible (he was 87) and how to go on-line or call for an appointment. Went on-line and did the special covid appointment thing, got an appointment on the day I wanted. Getting the first shot was chaotic and took an hour, but still not that bad. When I could sign up, went on-line and got an appointment the same day as my husbands 2nd dose. Much smoother and shorter to get the shot. Earlier this week they sent out an email re J&J that indicated they could vaccinate 720,000 people a week, but were only getting 500,000 doses.
When vaccinations first started the email they sent out indicated that the Southern California region had 1.5 million members over 65. They were getting 20,000 doses a week, and not always getting those. Things changed greatly after they got with the state and had their allocation of vaccines more proportional to the number of people they needed to vaccinate. That was true of other major providers too, small providers got the same number of doses as the big ones at first.
Matt McIrvin
@Dan B: I recall first hearing about young people filling up hospitals in Europe a year ago. It spurred a lot of baffled speculation about whether there was some new COVID variant that hit young people harder… but if you looked into the numbers, it wasn’t mysterious at all–it was just that if you have a WHOLE LOT of young people getting infected, of course enough will get seriously ill that they fill up the ICUs. And because they didn’t die so quickly, they weren’t freeing up the beds that way.
terry chay
@Origuy:
I mean redder county. How red?
First of all, every coastal county in the state but the northernmost one voted for Biden over Trump.
But compare the vote shares in my county and the ones that abut it.
San Francisco: Biden 85.3
Marin (north): 82.5
Alameda (West): 80.2
San Mateo (south): 77.9
Now go further one county adjoining those:
Santa Cruz (south coastal): 78.9
Sonoma (north coastal): 74.5
Santa Clara (south): 72.5
contra costa (north west): 71.6
Napa (north): 69.1
The only county in a 100 mile radius of SF that is redder than Napa is Solono (64 percent for Biden) but that’s actually harder for me to reach than Napa (If have to drive THROUGH Napa to get to Solano).
BTW there were openings in the next reddest county within driving distance of me outside of Napa (Contra Costa County) but the sites would only serve residents. They also opened to all 18+ a week before.
No matter how you cut it, the redder the county the more the availability is. This isn’t anecdotal and this isn’t a Bay Area thiNg. It is national and a statistical fact.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
It will be interesting to see how future analyses shake out. Early on there were reports that some of the variants were more easily transmissible, but not that the nature of infections were changing. Younger people initially did not get as seriously sick as older people. So even if you adjust for more younger people getting the virus, you would not necessarily expect significantly more of them to require hospitalization or to be admitted to ICUs.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: In the early days of the pandemic, before there really were COVID variants that showed significantly different behavior, there was already a lot of writing about “different strains” because the mutations that did exist were being used to track the spread of the virus. I recall a really strong tendency for laypeople to attribute any difference they perceived between the experience of the pandemic in one place or another to these “different strains”. “Oh, you must have gotten the European strain, that’s way worse,” etc.
It ended up making me really suspicious of any talk about the effects of COVID variants. Even now, it seems like there’s a tendency for authorities to attribute new COVID waves to the greater virulence of the variants instead of admitting their policies failed.
Cermet
Some months ago a research MD published a peer reviewed paper where they checked (imaged) the lungs of 30 or so people who where asymptomatic and between the ages of 18 and 30. Every single one had lung damage; they speculated that liver and other organs had damage too but no easy way to check.
Any young person that thinks their group is relatively safe because they have no secondary risk factors are fools. This virus damages organs in most all age groups – even those that get no symptoms at all (meaning their immune systems handled the virus.) This is one bad virus and this data was well before the new variants occurred.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:We can be pretty sure there’s *some* effect from the newer strains because they replace the older ones. More sophisticated attempts to pin down the exact effect get variable results, but the consensus is that at least some of the newer strains are 10%-50% more infectious.
You are absolutely correct, though, that there was a lot of scaremongering about “strains” early on when there was little reason to think them meaningfully different, and in general they turned out not to be except for D614G.
@Cermet: My exercise tolerance is way down from before COVID even though my blood oxygen has almost recovered and I don’t feel meaningfully worse.
Brachiator
@Dan B:
For a while I tried to follow the data made available for Los Angeles County authorities. I started to see more people age 40 to 60 being noted among hospitalizations, but not younger groups.
But apart from this, as I have noted, I will be interested to see further analyses of this.
Some news stories keep reporting on grand totals and are bad at following the course of the disease over time.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Yeah, the way you could tell was that in the early days they weren’t replacing one another. The mutations were pretty much neutral; then, in the way of such things, some eventually arose that weren’t.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I understand. And I didn’t mention that I take this trip for every trip I take to the VA, other than labs, for which there is a closer clinic, which saves about 20 miles. I know that not everyone will/can comfortably drive that far. My car is 5yrs old and has less than 13,000 miles on it.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I think the Red/Purple Line Extension will run to the VA in Westwood, CA. If this is the case, it should be good for a lot of people
Cermet
@Fair Economist: The good news – if it was lung damage, that can heal given time.
sab
@Cermet: Both stepsons’ fiancees got long-haul Covid. They weren’t vaccine deniers. They were vaccine no access. Anecdotal only, but they feel much better after vaccine.
workworkwork
@Brachiator: I know this is a dead thread, but I can kind of see Kaiser’s logic here.
I registered my wife (a non-Kaiser member) to get into the vaccine queue. As others have noted, it went very smoothly.
However, now there’s an online record of her vaccination on kp.org available whenever she might need it. We can pull it up on a smartphone if we want. So in a way, it’d kind of like a vaccine passport.