Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Their freedom requires your slavery.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Excellent Reads: More Pandemic Stories

Excellent Reads: More Pandemic Stories

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I find no flaws in this argument, from a Washington Post columnist:

… After a year of protests over racial justice and police brutality, defenders of law enforcement have argued that police writ large are not the problem; only the few “bad apples” within police ranks are. This makes sense, up to a point. Most people go into law enforcement to serve and protect the public. These noble officers want to keep their communities safe, put bad guys away, be role models for kids.

But some are attracted to the work because it lets them brandish a weapon and bully the vulnerable, have swashbuckling shootouts or break traffic laws with impunity. Maybe even flip the occasional pregnant woman’s car, or threaten a Black military officer…

Around the country, local officials have begun requiring that some municipal employees, including police officers, get vaccinated — to protect the employees themselves, their co-workers, co-workers’ children not yet eligible to be vaccinated, and of course the many members of the public they interact with and ultimately serve. But a sizable contingent of police officers is refusing…

It’s not clear whether threats to resign — expressed by individual officers or union leadership — should be taken at face value. After all, many cops would lose seniority and retirement benefits if they quit early. But let’s assume they’re not bluffing.

So what? Let them quit.

We need better ways to screen out the officers who don’t feel the law applies to them; who are inclined to put their own whims ahead of public safety; and who are likely to take unnecessary risks or reject evidence-based policing measures in favor of whatever their gut tells them to do. The response to this eminently reasonable public health requirement, not so different from other health and fitness requirements that have long been imposed upon officers, is probably a decent filtering mechanism.

If some police officers want to defund themselves, by all means let them. Let the bad cops go, and replace them with officers actually committed to the noble mission to protect and serve.

======


Domestic terrorists are using ‘vaccine avoidance’ as a recruiting tool:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a new terrorism warning bulletin, said violent extremists could view the reimposition of COVID-19-related restrictions following the spread of coronavirus variants as a rationale to conduct attacks…

The department said that COVID-19-related stress has “contributed to increased societal strains and tensions, driving several plots by domestic violent extremists, and they may contribute to more violence this year.”…

DHS said it was promoting “authoritative sources of information” in order to “debunk” and if possible “pre-empt” disinformation.

DHS warned that media outlets linked to the Russian, Chinese and Iranian governments had “repeatedly” amplified conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of vaccines.

======

Heartbreaking. I’m so grateful we now have a President who’s not afraid to do the right thing :

… The summer of 2021 is a season of mandates, with rules requiring masks and vaccines reemerging as the pandemic’s latest cultural and political flash point. In many parts of the country — including states hit hardest by a resurgence of the virus — the mandates are pitting blue cities against red governors, sparking protests and placing new burdens on already harried workers.

“There are days that I feel defeated — like today,” said Justin Short, an assistant property manager at a luxury apartment building in downtown Kansas City, Mo. This month, Short helped post fliers announcing that masks were required in the building and thanking the 300 residents “for helping keep the community safe.” An unknown culprit started ripping down the fliers and even shattered one of the plexiglass frames.

“I had this idea that we would work together for the greater good,” Short said, a smile dissolving on his face. “I was wrong.”…

The virus surge has posed new risks to Americans who let down their guard and others who have yet to take steps to protect themselves. About 57 percent of adults say they regularly wear a mask in public, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll released this month, compared with more than 90 percent in early 2021. Meanwhile, more than 90 million Americans who could get a shot haven’t, four months after all U.S. adults became eligible.

And according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, workers are more likely to get vaccinated when employers encourage it. The foundation found in June that 4 in 10 unvaccinated workers said they would get the shots if required — a takeaway that suggests vaccine mandates could sway tens of millions of Americans who have ignored months of appeals.

But vaccine mandates have been the source of significant controversy, prompting lawsuits, walkouts and political grandstanding from critics — even as many vaccinated Americans demand the measures, saying such protections are overdue…

Last month, Biden told millions of federal workers they faced a choice: get vaccinated or undergo regular testing, masking and other restrictions. Administration officials said they believed that helped push private employers to adopt their own shot requirements.

“It gave businesses an umbrella, especially because they did not want to go first,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s strategy. “And then it gave them a road map — that this is one way to do it.”…

At the Kansas City apartment building he helps manage, Short — a 33-year-old who said he still suffers breathing problems and heart palpitations after a week-long bout of coronavirus — said he is empathetic when building residents are frustrated about the return of the local mask mandate…

But “my main concern is the grocery workers,” Short said. “I’m concerned about the people on public transit. The waiters. The bartenders. There isn’t any enforcement of the mandate. So, enforcement is left up to the grocery workers. To the waiters. To the bartenders.”

Short paused, then, with a nod of his head, smiled. “And to the leasing agents.”

======

======

Wonky — it’s Foreign Affairs — but worth reading in full:

It is time to say it out loud: the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic is not going away. SARS-CoV-2 cannot be eradicated, since it is already growing in more than a dozen different animal species. Among humans, global herd immunity, once promoted as a singular solution, is unreachable. Most countries simply don’t have enough vaccines to go around, and even in the lucky few with an ample supply, too many people are refusing to get the shot. As a result, the world will not reach the point where enough people are immune to stop the virus’s spread before the emergence of dangerous variants—ones that are more transmissible, vaccine resistant, and even able to evade current diagnostic tests. Such supervariants could bring the world back to square one. It might be 2020 all over again.

Rather than die out, the virus will likely ping-pong back and forth across the globe for years to come. Some of yesterday’s success stories are now vulnerable to serious outbreaks. Many of these are places that kept the pandemic at bay through tight border controls and excellent testing, tracing, and isolation but have been unable to acquire good vaccines. Witness Taiwan and Vietnam, which experienced impressively few deaths until May 2021, when, owing to a lack of vaccination, they faced a reversal of fortune. But even countries that have vaccinated large proportions of their populations will be vulnerable to outbreaks caused by certain variants. That is what appears to have happened in several hot spots in Chile, Mongolia, the Seychelles, and the United Kingdom. The virus is here to stay. The question is, What do we need to do to ensure that we are, too?

Conquering a pandemic is not only about money and resources; it is also about ideas and strategy. In 1854, at a time when germ theory had yet to take hold, the physician John Snow stopped a cholera epidemic in London by tracing its source to an infected well; after he persuaded community leaders to remove the handle from the well’s pump, the outbreak ended. In the 1970s, smallpox was rampant in Africa and India. The epidemiologist William Foege, working in a hospital in Nigeria, recognized that the small amount of vaccine he had been allocated was not enough to inoculate everyone. So he pioneered a new way of using vaccines, focusing not on volunteers or the well-connected but on the people most at risk of getting the disease next. By the end of the decade, thanks to this strategy—first called “surveillance and containment” and later “ring vaccination”—smallpox had been eradicated. It is a twenty-first-century version of this strategy, along with faster mass vaccination, that could help make COVID-19 history.

For this pandemic, epidemiology also has tools to return the world to a state of relative normalcy, to allow us to live with SARS-CoV-2 as we learned to deal with other diseases, such as influenza and measles. The key lies in treating vaccines as transferable resources that can be rapidly deployed where they are needed most: to hot spots where infection rates are high and vaccine supplies are low. The United States, flush with vaccines, is well positioned to lead this effort, using a modernized version of the strategy employed to control smallpox…

The pandemic is in many ways a story of magical thinking. In the early days of 2020, many leaders denied that what began as a regional outbreak in Wuhan, China, could spread far and wide. As the months went on, governments imagined that the virus could be contained with border controls and that its spread would miraculously slow with warm weather. They believed that temperature checks could identify everyone who harbored the virus, that existing drugs could be repurposed to mitigate the disease, and that natural infection would result in durable immunity—all assumptions that proved wrong. As the body count rose, many leaders remained in a state of denial. Ignoring the scientific community, they failed to encourage mask wearing and social distancing, even as the evidence mounted. Now, governments must come to grips with another inconvenient truth: that what many hoped would be a short-lived crisis will instead be a long, slow fight against a remarkably resilient virus…

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  2. 2.

    CaseyL

    Well, that’s important to know, but not great news.

    We’re supposed to go back to a nearly-normal work schedule next month, but TPTB are already in discussions about whether that’s a good idea. Since I’d be happy to WFH until retirement, I’m all in favor of extending WFH indefinitely! We’ll see how that plays out.

    Also saw a story in NYT about the incidence of Long Haul Covid in post-vaccination breakthrough cases. Not enough data; still mostly anecdotal, but very preliminary estimates are that 19% of breakthrough cases result in Long Haul, for a few months at least. Yippee.

    I’m angsting over the Maine trip I have planned for next month. Maine is awash in Delta, but then so is everywhere else. My real concern is the plane trip from here to there. It’s not a direct flight, either. Once I’m in Maine, I’ll be traveling in a rental car, mostly going to outdoor places. But I am starting to think of pulling the plug on the trip, which is very upsetting. (I have time before I have to decide.)

  3. 3.

    Just Chuck

    the physician John Snow stopped a cholera epidemic in London by tracing its source to an infected well; after he persuaded community leaders to remove the handle from the well’s pump, the outbreak ended

    Gotta keep the Night Watch healthy. The pump don’t work cause the doctors took the handle.

  4. 4.

    Brendan in NC

    @CaseyL:  Recently changed jobs to a total WFH position; so thankful I’m not dealing with all that. However, my group is all based in the UK; and they want to meet me. Luckily, I need to get my passport renewed so I can go. So we’ll see what the situation is like when I get it.

  5. 5.

    Raoul Paste

    The Russians know that their lies about vaccines are an economic weapon against the west. And frankly, I think that’s the Republican play as well

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Doctor who has long since run out of fucks to give for the idiots who end up in her ward (and rightfully so):

    As a doctor in a COVID unit, I’m out of compassion for unvaccinated people. Get the shot

    My patient sat at the edge of his bed gasping for air while he tried to tell me his story, pausing to catch his breath after each word. The plastic tubes delivering oxygen through his nose hardly seemed adequate to stop his chest from heaving. He looked exhausted.

    He had tested positive for the coronavirus 10 days ago. He was under 50, mildly hypertensive but otherwise in good health. Eight days earlier he started coughing and having severe fatigue. His doctor started him on antibiotics. It did not work.

    Fearing his symptoms were worsening, he started taking some hydroxychloroquine he had found on the internet. It did not work.

    He was now experiencing shortness of breath while doing routine daily activities such as walking from his bedroom to the bathroom or putting on his shoes. He was a shell of his former self. He eventually made his way to a facility where he could receive monoclonal antibodies, a lab-produced transfusion that substitutes for the body’s own antibodies. It did not work.

    Shouting through my N95 mask and the noise of the HEPA filter, I introduced myself. I calmly asked him why he decided not to get vaccinated.

    “Well, I’m not an anti-vaxxer or anything. I was just waiting for the FDA to approve the vaccine first. I didn’t want to take anything experimental. I didn’t want to be the government’s guinea pig, and I don’t trust that it’s safe,” he said.

    “Well,” I said, “I can pretty much guarantee we would have never met had you gotten vaccinated because you would have never been hospitalized. All of our COVID units are full and every single patient in them is unvaccinated. Numbers don’t lie. The vaccines work.”

    “Not nearly as many doses of remdesivir have been given or studied in people and its long-term side effects are still unknown,” I said. “Do you still want me to give it to you?”

    “Yes” he responded, “Whatever it takes to save my life.”

    It did not work.

    My patient died nine days later from a fatal stroke. We, the care team, reconciled this loss by telling ourselves: He made a personal choice not to get vaccinated, not to protect himself or his family. We did everything we could with what we had to save him. This year, this tragedy, this unnecessary, entirely preventable loss, was on him.

    If you believe I’ll just let everyone else get vaccinated around me so I don’t have to, there are 93 million eligible, unvaccinated people in the “herd” who think the same way you do and are getting in the way of ending this pandemic.

  7. 7.

    emmyelle

    At the risk of sounding like a sexist sow (? female sexist pig?), I’m not surprised that those dudes are involuntarily celibate.

  9. 9.

    Major Major Major Major

    NYC’s vaccine mandate starts today. Very excited.

    Where will I need to show proof of vaccination?

    You’ll have to show proof of vaccination for indoor dining, not just at restaurants, but also in coffee shops, bars, cafes, fast food joints, catering halls and hotel banquet rooms.

    A wide range of indoor entertainment establishments will also have to check patrons’ vaccine status, including night clubs, concert venues, pool halls, movie theaters, stadiums, museums and galleries.

    If you want to work out at the gym, take an indoor fitness class or go to a dance studio, be prepared to show proof of vaccination as well.

    All of these rules apply to staff at these establishments. And unvaccinated people can still get a table at a bar or restaurant–as long as it is outdoors.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    A similar thought had occurred to me about the vax mandate weeding out the nutcases on police forces and even other branches of public service where people are at the mercy of agents of the state. The Venn diagram of “but mah freedom” anti-vaxxers and public servant bullies won’t be a perfect circle, but it may be literally close enough for government work, as a wag on Twitter noted.

  13. 13.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev: Thanks for that.

    :-(

    I honestly don’t think that most of the people who haven’t gotten vaccinated have really made an “informed” decision about not doing so.  They just haven’t, for the same reason why people don’t floss their teeth – it’s a hassle and there are no immediate consequences for not doing so.  And it’s become a tribal thing for too many.

    JHU’s Covid dashboard says 4,744,166,488 doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide thus far.  It’s insanely safe.

    We need mandates, and we need to make it hard for people to say No to getting a shot.  Meet them where they are; pay them; give them time off; make sure employers cannot retaliate (and/or pay employers for fully vaccinated employees).  This problem is a human motivation problem and we know how to solve it – make it easy, give rewards, make it hard to say No.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  14. 14.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Raoul Paste:The Russians know that their lies about vaccines are an economic weapon against the west. And frankly, I think that’s the Republican play as well

    Well going by Russia’s numbers it’s MAD II, first time with nuclear weapons a tragedy, second time with a vaccine as a farce.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    @Major Major Major Major: LA County likewise seems to have peaked or at least plateau’d. Case counts are steady or down slightly, even as test volume has increased due in part to increased surveillance testing (For instance, LA schools are testing everyone on their campuses weekly starting yesterday, irregardless of vaccination status). Data modeling has R_t right at 1.0 and dropping.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    @Betty Cracker: It was a truly righteous rant. And the thing is LA isn’t doing all that badly on vaccinations by national standards (the author is a UCLA physician). I can’t imagine what doctors in your neck of the woods must be going through.

  20. 20.

    JPL

    The good news about getting vaccinated early is that I’ll be able to receive a booster as soon as it is recommended.

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    @Kayla Rudbek: Every thread (except TaMara’s “muddy this thread and I will cut you”) is eventually an open thread.  ;-)

    Feel better.  I hope you get the correct meds soon.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: I wonder if there will be similar conversations at Florida’s new monoclonal antibody treatment facility.  There will certainly have to be triage, since the facility can handle about 300 cases a day and Florida is reporting more like 8,000 new cases a day.

  24. 24.

    Chris

    Most people go into law enforcement to serve and protect the public. These noble officers want to keep their communities safe, put bad guys away, be role models for kids.

    You’ve got to be shitting me.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ken: Speaking of this sunny COVID hot spot, shitty FL gov RegeneRon DeSantis’s Twitter feed looks like a commercial account dedicated to drumming up business for monoclonal antibody treatment drugs. I read somewhere that one of his big donors is a pharma fat cat who is profiting from government purchases of that medication. That would not surprise me at all. But basically, DeSantis doesn’t say shit about getting vaccinated, even though something like 10 million are unvaccinated. His Twitter feed is all “here’s a new site where you can get treated!”

  26. 26.

    Benw

    @CaseyL: we pulled the plug on a trip to CA to visit my family. Our flight from NYC would’ve left today, but my daughter is too young to be vaxxed, so no x country flight for us. Fuckity

    ETA: also, let the asshole cops quit and DON’T replace em, spend that $ somewhere useful, like CRT teachers in every school

  28. 28.

    wvng

    @dmsilev:A WV doctor friend just posted this: “Warning: I just had a shit week taking care of dead and dying unvaccinated COVID-19 patients including a death of one of my very favorite patients. 90% plus of all the serious cases are unvaccinated. If you peddle anti-vax, anti-mask garbage prepare to be on blast. I am done with it. Do the bare minimum and take care of yourselves and your family. If you are vaccine hesitant be cautious in public. If you develop any symptoms go get checked. We are in the deep weeds again and it was avoidable.”  He also posted that he is loosing critical care staff who just can’t do it anymore.

  29. 29.

    billcinsd

    @Major Major Major Major: Maybe, but every weekend since July 4 would have shown a similar downward trend that goes away with the work week. So it really depends on how many days are in that downward trend, which is very hard to tell from the graph

  30. 30.

    billcinsd

    @Chris: Many may go into it for that reason, but how many maintain that after training and the first couple of years on the job?

  31. 31.

    Major Major Major Major

    @billcinsd: this is why the tweet includes a link to the data :)

    To answer your question, the trend line is a seven day rolling average that currently shows five days of decrease, not including the last three days because the information is released on a delay.

  34. 34.

    JimV

    Years ago I was riding with a fellow worker who had grown up in the town where we worked. (Schenectady, NY.) As we passed a parked police car he noticed its driver and swore, followed by, “That’s it! Every punk and bully I knew in high school is now on the Schenectady Police Force!”

    That said, the police where I am now (a much smaller town) that I have interacted with seem to be good people. But I can see that a bully would love to carry a gun and a badge.

  37. 37.

    SpaceUnit

    A woman today at a local rally against masking in schools stood before the microphone and shouted that parents know what best for their kids.  Seems to me that all evidence is to the contrary.

     

    Where’s that friggin’ meteor?  They promised us a meteor.

  38. 38.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @billcinsd: That’s why some police forces are horrible, like the LAPD and Seattle PD. they suck, no one wants to work for them, so they are always hiring, so the rockies get their first job and then get better jobs in the suburbs once they prove themselves. Meanwhile, the these PDs end up staffed with the losers who weren’t bad enough to get fired.

  39. 39.

    leeleeFL

     

     

    @Betty Cracker: From your lips to FSM’S ears.  I am so tired of these people.

    Anything to save my life, but not vaccination that would do that AND protect others.  EF  Goldman was right, ” Fuck’em! “. Selfish assholes

  41. 41.

    Kent

    @Brendan in NC:@Major Major Major Major: I’d love to see that here in NC. The problem is that too many mayors and, more importantly, law enforcement officials will refuse to enforce the mandates.

    Mask mandates  are difficult to enforce.  Mandatory vaccine requirements are not.  My school district now has one here in WA.  I have to upload proof of vaccination through a web link to an HR portal.  Sure I could probably fake it but if I ever got caught that would be grounds for immediate dismissal just like lying about anything else on my resume.  And I promise you, if some teacher falsified proof of vaccination, and then turned out to have spread the virus in a school they would be instantly terminated with extreme prejudice for fraud and I don’t know what all else.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    Very good WH press conference underway now.

    Might have to back this one up to the beginning, once concluded.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    @Kent:  +1

    GovExec from August 6:

    Federal employees who misrepresent their COVID-19 vaccination status to their agencies face firings and potential criminal prosecution, the Biden administration warned on Friday.

    The Safer Federal Workforce Task Force—a group President Biden created by executive order that is led by the White House, General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget—confirmed in new guidance agencies would not initially ask for proof of vaccination, but they could follow up for documentation if they receive “a good faith allegation that strongly suggests” an employee lied on their attestation form. Those “certification of vaccination” forms will soon go out via email to all federal employees, with an Office of Management and Budget official saying that process will begin next week.

    […]

    Once holdouts realize that there are real consequences coming for not getting vaccinated, vaccinations rates will rise. And the $400 vaccine card scammers will move on to something else…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @CaseyL: I assume you’re vaccinated. If I were you I would go and be careful. You could get Delta covid anywhere at this point, so why not take the trip you’ve been looking forward to?

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    OT, but Something Fabulous is raising funds for the pet rescue she is involved with.

    It’s their annual Race for the Rescues event, in case anyone is inclined to support that.

    And speaking of charities, if anyone has collected a list of links for worthwhile giving to Haiti, if you reply to this, I can put a list together and make it easy to access on BJ.

  48. 48.

    SpaceUnit

    The FBI just arrested a pharmacist in Chicago for pilfering vaccination cards and selling them online.  He sold 125 cards for $10 each.  Comes to $1250, and now he’s facing 12 counts of theft of government property with a max sentence of 10 years per count.  What a chump.  Meteor, please.

  49. 49.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Major Major Major Major: ​
    There is an old saying in Statistics: “Don’t torture the data until it confesses.”

    The UK’s third wave of COVID-19 infections peaked at about 60,000 new cases a day about a month ago. Yay! It fell to below 28,000 cases ten days later. Double Yay! It’s been increasing slowly since then, Boo! It’s now at about 30,000 cases a day and still on the way up, if the increasing test positivity rate is any indication.

    Studying the curves and trying to predict the future from their shape is like watching the roulette wheel spin while you clutch the notes on your sure-win betting system. You’d be better off haruspexing a chicken.

    The mathematical epidemiologists (who have not been very wrong in the past eighteen months) are predicting a fourth wave for the UK in the early winter, driven by the colder drier weather with the additional bonus of an expected Influenza Season From Hell. Did you know you can catch COVID-19 and influenza at the same time? Cough cough cough.

    Me, I’ll be under the bed wrapped in clingfilm. See you.

  50. 50.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Robert Sneddon: ​

    *literally just looks at the data*
    “don’t torture the data!”

    c’mon man

    if you want to hide under your bed wrapped in plastic, go ahead, but i will be taking data indicating decreased cases for now to indicate decreased cases for now.

  52. 52.

    JaneE

    Any first responder or medical professional who refuses vaccination should be fired.  Your job is to protect people, not put them in more danger by being willing to harbor a potentially lethal virus.

    It was always most likely that Covid-19 would wind up being just one more of the dangerous diseases out there forever, held at bay by vaccinations.  How long did it take from the first vaccinations until smallpox was declared eradicated?  We keep coming close on polio, but we haven’t wiped it out yet.

    Measles went from every single year romping through schools when I was a kid, and killing a few and nearly killing others, of whom I was one, to virtually unknown, now back to occasional outbreaks thanks to the anti-vax movement.  Same for a lot of things that people were afraid of when I was young.  We are going backward, folks.

  53. 53.

    germy

    @SpaceUnit:  The FBI just arrested a pharmacist in Chicago for pilfering vaccination cards and selling them online.

    Here’s how paranoid I’ve become:

    Both my pfizer shots were from a national pharmacy chain (begins with a “W”) and the first administrator was a very professional woman.  The second administrator was a guy who seemed to be a trainee.  Since I had no side effects after the second shot, I began to worry that either 1) he didn’t follow the proper storage protocols or 2) he was one of these anti-vax pharmacists.

    Since the pharmacy chain’s signup process was a clusterfuck, I began to suspect their actual vaccinations would be a clusterfuck, too.

    Over the past year and a half I’ve lost what little faith in humanity I had.

  55. 55.

    JPL

    The company that my son works for is requiring vaccines, and the DIL works for a company that requires masks of all employees.   Grand imp is two, and his toddler class now has to wear masks.    The older classes required masks when they reopened a year ago.  Oh and the Falcons are the only NFL team fully vaccinated.   Our governor might ignore science, but fortunately not everyone is following his lead.

  56. 56.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    @Chris: It’s the constant lying to yourselves that seems to make up a huge portion of public discourse in America that has led you to the parlous condition of your country today. It’s time for the left and the sane among you to take on “fuck your feelings” as a necessary part of public discourse. Let ’em rage, so long as they fear, you could say.

  58. 58.

    catclub

    @germy: 

    Over the past year and a half I’ve lost what little faith in humanity I had.

    You haven’t lost it. It has just changed to faith that humans will fuck up on purpose.

  59. 59.

    Suzanne

    O/T, but it appears that the Buttigieges (?????) have adopted a child and I needed this bit of happy.

  62. 62.

    zhena gogolia

    @germy:

    I got my shot from a clinic, and I had no reaction to either shot (Pfizer)

    ETA: A little fatigue and a sore arm, that’s all.

  72. 72.

    leeleeFL

    @germy: May be the reason it’s more effective against Delta  I hope so since it’s the one I got!  November 12 for my booster

  73. 73.

    zhena gogolia

    @germy:

    Yes. I know a lot of people who had nothing with Pfizer. I’m pretty sure you’re fine.

    As for the antibody test, I thought someone here at BJ said that wouldn’t be conclusive one way or the other. All my friends in Russia get them, but I haven’t had it recommended by any doctors here.

  74. 74.

    Kent

    @germy: Get the booster from someplace else then

    FYI, I got both doses of Pfizer through a Kaiser Permanente clinic.  They were utterly professional and I have no doubt that I got the real thing.  I didn’t encounter the slightest side effect either time.

  75. 75.

    Another Scott

    @germy: I think it’s all anecdata.  My 75 year old step mom in MS got the Moderna vaccine early on and had no side effects at all.

    My J thought she had a side effect from the first Pfizer.  She went to Walgreens and they had no place to sit and told her to walk around the store.  She did and felt faint after a few minutes and was worried that something bad was happening.  I went with her to a county site for her second and they had her lying down in a recliner for the 15+ minutes, gave her a box of juice, etc.  She was fine.  (They said that walking around was bad, and not having anything to eat was bad, and being a nervous person didn’t help.  ;-)

    FWIW.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Kent

    @Suzanne:O/T, but it appears that the Buttigieges (?????) have adopted a child and I needed this bit of happy.

    That poor child is going to have to learn about wonky things like market urbanism and transit policy when he/she/they are 4.  “The wheels on the bus go round and round and what does that tell us about efficient multi-modal transit? options”  Have some pity!

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @germy: Mine was in a parking lot with a lot of nice National Guards, but it was administered by a health clinic, so I felt good about it.

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott: Whoops – bad summary.  Union workers in Mexico GM plant voting on throwing out ineffective union…

     

    The vote marks the first major test of labor rules under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a regional trade deal that replaced NAFTA and aims to foster stronger unions and boost wages in Mexico, in part to reduce incentives for U.S. companies to move jobs south of the border.

    GM’s plant in Silao, Guanajuato, is a linchpin of its North American truck strategy. It produced over 339,000 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-sized pickups in 2019, more than a third of the company’s total of 906,000.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    Among humans, global herd immunity, once promoted as a singular solution, is unreachable.

    What drives me nuts is that from the beginning lay people, including bloggers, kept talking about herd immunity as though it was a slam dunk, even though public health officials generally made more cautious assessments. Especially when trying to gauge the impact of the Delta variant.

    And now of course, the persistent fringe of vaccine resistance complicates things further.

    Most countries simply don’t have enough vaccines to go around.

    The wild card here is that many of the countries that shut down the virus early now find themselves unable to capitalize on that early advantage by getting all their people vaccinated.

    Worse, the developed countries are delivering a furious FU to less developed countries by talking about third shot boosters while most of these other countries struggle to get initial vaccine doses done.

    So, what next? Permanent travel bans imposed on weaker nations? Meanwhile, domestic vaccine resistance and the lack of vaccine deployment in developing countries only encourages the unleashing of newer variants.

    Which brings us back to Square One and the question, how do we get out of this mess?

  85. 85.

    Roger Moore

    @Raoul Paste: 

    The Russians know that their lies about vaccines are an economic weapon against the west. And frankly, I think that’s the Republican play as well

    I don’t think it’s going to work out as well for the Republicans as for their Russian paymasters. Masks seem to be pretty broadly acceptable, to the point that something like 2/3 of people polled approve of mask mandates, and even more think it’s a bad idea for state governments to override local ones that want to impose mask mandates. Not everyone is going to connect COVID resurgence to relaxing restrictions, especially masks, but enough that it’s likely to hurt the Republicans in the next election.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Major Major Major Major: Things look to be peaking in Massachusetts as well but I expect it to be only a temporary dip before the big crisis caused by the schools opening.

    I think school districts are just kind of hoping things will be like the situation they managed to adjust to last spring–but they aren’t figuring on Delta. They’re debating mask mandates but I suspect there will be a giant spike in the elementary schools and they’ll be back to hard lockdown and remote education within days. I don’t get the sense they’re prepared for that.

  87. 87.

    J R in WV

    @Raoul Paste: 

    The Russians know that their lies about vaccines are an economic weapon against the west. And frankly, I think that’s the Republican play as well

    Frankly, the Republican party, from Newt G to TFG, are Russian fascist agents. They are working to destroy America so they can be in charge of the rubble on behalf of their Russian Mobster bosses. This includes the NRA, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and life long Republicans.

    No wonder so many of those guys are Incels — no woman will let them near them. Pigs inside and out.

  88. 88.

    cain

    My company is giving me $300 bucks for having taken the vaccine and is giving everyone $150 per shot or $300 for J&J as an incentive to keep everyone safe. It’s a generous amount. I mean for that I can buy some fall fashion stuff!

  89. 89.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major:@Kent: So you’re saying that the child will be raised to consider what’s best for communities, but also be annoying about it on twitter

    Actually the child will probably rebel and drive an F250 just to annoy their wonkish parents.  That is how these things often turn out.

  93. 93.

    J R in WV

    @SpaceUnit:

    @germy: I hear ya.  I had no such worries though . . . my second shot of Moderna cleaned my ever-loving clock.

    Me too. Both shots administered at the county Clinic, the only health care facility in the county besides a couple of pharmacies. First Moderna shot no big deal, not even pain in the arm.

    Second shot in mid-March I slept hard the first two nights, woke up the third day after the shot, every muscle group, every tendon, ached and pained me. I hurt all over for several weeks, family Doc said that was a common after effect. Still have different muscles hurting than I had before the vaccination. I’ve been prone to muscle spasms for years now.

    Will get a booster asap, tho. Flu shots too!! Shingrex for shingles too, depending upon schedules etc. Wearing a mask too. Have a regularly scheduled DR appointment for quarterly check tomorrow, Dentist appt the next day.

    Over the past couple of years, I have been grinding my teeth, with some damage to crowns, so I asked the Dentist about a guard, not cheap either. Thursday is a one week follow up… I don’t think it’s going to work well, I’ve found it in the bed or on the floor twice. It’s very rigid and irritates the soft tissue in my mouth. I expected a soft device, nope. Sad. Dunno what to do now…

  94. 94.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major: ​
     
    It looks like the wave has probably crested here in LA county. I have to give major props to our county health department. One of our biggest problems with the pandemic, both here and more generally, has been waiting for absolute numbers to get bad before doing anything. This time, our health department didn’t wait; they clamped down as soon as the numbers were clearly rising. The net result is that it looks as if things are back under control without a dramatic crisis. Now if only everyone would do the same thing…

  95. 95.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major:@Kent: those will be electric by the time the kiddo can afford a $35,000 truck

    Yes but the “vintage” gas or diesel ones will likely be $100k collectors items and require a source of “bootleg” fuel.  So even more of a status symbol.

  96. 96.

    catclub

    @Kent: ​
     

    That poor child is going to have to learn about wonky things like market urbanism and transit policy when he/she/they are 4.

    In contrast to learning about tribal politics in the middle east 2800
    years ago. aka Bible school.

  97. 97.

    Robert Sneddon

    @VeniceRiley: FYI UK just approved Moderna for 12-17 year olds.

    The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced that the Moderna vaccine has been shown to be safe for 12-17 year olds. That’s not QUITE approval or an explicit go-ahead for it to be dispensed to that age group. It’s very likely to happen and soon, but not today. The UK government takes advice on who to vaccinate for COVID-19 and with what formulations from the JCVI.
    Dr June Raine, MHRA Chief Executive said:

    I am pleased to confirm that that the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna has now been authorised in 12-17 year olds. The vaccine is safe and effective in this age group.

    We have in place a comprehensive safety surveillance strategy for monitoring the safety of all UK-approved COVID-19 vaccines and this surveillance will include the 12- to 17-year age group.

    It is for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to advise on whether this age group should be vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna as part of the deployment programme.

  98. 98.

    catclub

    @Roger Moore: ​
     

    It looks like the wave has probably crested here in LA county.

    That LA is not Louisiana. It is far worse here than previous three cycles
    (April 2020, July 2020, jan feb 2021) and is not predicted to peak before mid september.

  99. 99.

    J R in WV

    @Elizabelle:

    @J R in WV:   With apologies to actual pigs, who can be some charming little characters.

    Piglets are cute, but once they’re 6 or 8 months old they become scary predators. Hogs can kill and eat their farmer if one isn’t really careful. I’ve raised hogs in the distant past  — nothing cute about them when grown up, like Republicans are.

  100. 100.

    SpaceUnit

    @J R in WV: In no particular order:  incapacitating fatigue, muscle aches, headache, joint pain, nausea and vomiting, chills and profuse sweating, body tremors and a rotten feeling all through my core that felt as though my internal organs were putrefying.

     

    It was almost entertaining.  Fortunately it only lasted about 10 hours or so.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: I got Moderna and had only very mild side effects both times. Shingrix was far worse, had me zonked out and napping for about half of the next day.

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    @cain:

    My company is giving me $300 bucks for having taken the vaccine and is giving everyone $150 per shot or $300 for J&J as an incentive to keep everyone safe.

    Wait. $300 even though you already got the vaccine? Good deal.

    Do you know if this program has been effective with recalcitrant individuals?

    After the carrot, is your company going to bring out the stick and hit the unvaxxed?

  104. 104.

    Dave

    @Matt McIrvin: Moderna’s second shot did kick my ass for approximately 36 hours then I had about five minutes of cold sweat and felt 110% afterwards.

    The first shot did leave me with an unusually sore arm and I’ve had a lot of vaccines thanks to the military (the smallpox was definitely worse).

     

    Regardless it still wasn’t that bad and completely worth it.

  105. 105.

    MoCaAce

    Just once I want a doctor to stand up and tell these idiot parents that no, they in fact do not know what is best for their kids. If Jr. starts having seizures, breaks out in a horrible rash, or starts passing out for no reason do they know what’s best for him? No. They bring him to the hospital and let those who do figure it out. Fucking idiots.

  106. 106.

    mrmoshpotato

    Domestic terrorists are using ‘vaccine avoidance’ as a recruiting tool:

    Beat them all with their own bones! Fucking Trump humping fascist shitstain plague rats.

  107. 107.

    JML

    They’re talking about a vaccine incentive program here at my uni and now I have members of my union (who are vaxx’d) complaining about why they should be rewarding people for being assholes and not having already gotten vaxx’d. (It does sound like they’re gonna drop everyone who shows they’ve been vaxx’d into the pool for a reward, if they can get their shit together), but this is what I get to deal with.

    I also have to resist on the daily the urge to throw something at my office mate who still hasn’t gotten the shot because “they just don’t know what it might do”.

  109. 109.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @germy: Moderna is also looking like it provides more robust protection according to some preliminary studies. I think it’s a larger dose of vaccine than Pfizer, which is why it may produce a stronger immune response and hence more durable protection.

  111. 111.

    SpaceUnit

    @Ksmiami:  It was absolutely worth it.  I’d read somewhere that a strong reaction to the vaccine indicated a robust immune system.  I don’t know if that’s gospel, medically speaking, but you take encouragement wherever you can find it these days.

  112. 112.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Josie: 

    Governor Abbott tested positive today after speaking to a maskless crowd last night.

    Has Crayola made an Unsurprised crayon yet?

  113. 113.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I gotta say…I know it’s not really the fault of anyone in particular but I’m really disappointed the vaccines gave me, like, 2.5 months of relative normalcy. I waited my turn, somewhat impatiently, here in Maryland which means I wasn’t fully vaccinated until mid-May (two weeks after my second shot of Pfizer). Then I behaved relatively normally for the rest of May, June and most of July. We went to Vermont the third week of July and everything there was completely normal seeming. The week we got back to the DC area the delta variant started exploding and has been downhill ever since.

    Back when these vaccines were approved I remember reading articles about how it would likely take a year or so at minimum before some variant emerged that would require boosters…I know that was just an educated guess but, cripes, it’s just depressing that that forecast wasn’t even close and life barely made it back to normal for a matter of weeks before the shit hit the fan again. It’s where we are so there’s no real point in bitching and moaning but I have to bitch and moan at least a little. I mean, I’m not cowering in fear or anything. If I get delta it will be a mild case almost certainly. My wife (front line health care) will be getting a booster next month. It’s just…normalcy was right there within reach and then it wasn’t.

  114. 114.

    SpaceUnit

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:  I agree.  A few weeks after my second dose I actually went to the mall to buy a pair of shoes.  I got an actual haircut.  It felt so normal.

    Before that I hadn’t been anywhere but the local Safeway for a year and a half.  Okay, I went to Ace Hardware once on account of an emergency and to the liquor store a few times because goddamn.

    But now these tools are gonna force us back to our caves.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: The predictions weren’t that far off, though–they were imagining some tricky variant that cut through vaccine-induced immunity like a hot knife through butter so that we’d be back at square one, and Delta doesn’t actually do that. It just reproduces really fast and produces infections in some vaccinated people by brute force.

    In my case, I was fully vaccinated in May but held off doing a lot of family stuff until my daughter was fully vaccinated, which was in late June. We had one short, effectively post-COVID vacation then, a nice time by the beach in Newburyport with my parents.

    And then we had another one in Northampton in August, but by then, Delta was already starting to spread so it was kind of fraught. But we managed to have some fun anyway.

  118. 118.

    Chris Johnson

    @J R in WV: DAMN straight, JR.

    I don’t always make a noise about it and it doesn’t go over well when I get worked up about russkies trolling our forums, but MAN. There’s a lot of it about, and you know ’em by what they do.

  120. 120.

    buggrit

    @J R in WV: Coming to a long dead thread to suggest you check into some of the over the counter mouth guards (check sporting goods). My husband used them for years before he got the one from the dentist, and it seems to me that they were less rigid.

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