The CDC recently updated the underlying medical conditions that place people at risk for severe COVID-19 illness. How recently? I have no idea since I only found out about it when someone texted me about it yesterday asking if I’d seen it. When I spoke to my own physician three or four weeks ago about my pre-existing conditions and he pulled up the CDC site it still had the original list that was prepared and published under the Trump administration in December 2020. So the change to the guidance has been within the past month give or take a day or so despite the website saying the revision went up in December 2020, which is not true. Since I’d not seen any reporting on this, I figured I’d make sure to bring it to everyone’s attention. While I figured that the Anderson on insurance guy knew and didn’t need me to tell him, I just checked and he DID NOT!!! I think we can all agree that Richard Mayhew would never have missed this type of thing… But I still want to make sure all of you readers and commenters and other front pagers know.
More seriously, the real reason I want to make sure you all see this is that while some of you live in states and municipalities that are handling the vaccination roll out well, including West By G-d Virginee!, which is why Cole got his first shot a couple of week’s ago if I’m recalling correctly, a lot of us are unfortunately living in places governed by the likes of Ron DeStupid, Charlie Baker, Greg Abbott, etc, etc, etc. Here in Florida, Governor DeStupid has decided to pick fights with both teachers, law enforcement, and emergency service personnel by refusing to lower the vaccination age requirement below 50 for people in those professions. This boiled over a bit when Walgreens, CVS, and Wal-Mart, which are all part of the Federal pharmacy COVID vaccination program told him to go piss up a rope, because they got their doses directly from the Federal government, and they’d follow the just revised Federal guidance on these classes of professionals not his guidance. I know from recent reporting that Charlie Baker in Massachusetts has decided to join the DeStupid is as DeStupid does vaccination regime and is picking fights over vaccine access with teachers and asthmatics. From the reporting we also know that as Greg Abbott was lifting the mask, social distancing, and occupancy mandates and forbidding municipalities from putting their own in place, Texas was almost at the bottom of states for percentage of the population vaccinated.
Before you start your inner ethical monologues about whether this is somehow cheating to use the form documenting your underlying medical conditions to get vaccinated now, it is important to remember that in places where a lot of the population are also all in on the DeStupid is as DeStupid does program, vaccines are just sitting waiting for someone to inject them into people that both want and need them. This happened in Florida last week where at the end of the weekend, the primary FEMA non-mobile vaccination site in Tampa for the greater Tampa Bay region had 3,000 doses left over that went unused. The site is set up to dispense 3,000 doses per day, so they basically had an entire day’s worth of doses left over. The reporting says this isn’t typical, so hopefully it’s a unique and not to be frequently repeated occurrence.
Here’s the link to the CDC’s medical conditions list. Though it isn’t 100% the original list as they appear to have now separated out Type 1 and 2 diabetes into the separate lists.
Here’s the original list of underlying conditions, which are still at the top of the list:
Adults of any age with certain underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19. Severe illness from COVID-19 is defined as hospitalization, admission to the ICU, intubation or mechanical ventilation, or death.
Adults of any age with the following conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19:
- Cancer
- Chronic kidney disease
- COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
- Down Syndrome
- Heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies
- Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant
- Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30 kg/m2 or higher but < 40 kg/m2)
- Severe Obesity (BMI ≥ 40 kg/m2)
- Pregnancy
- Sickle cell disease
- Smoking
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus
And here’s the recently updated and expanded revisions:
COVID-19 is a new disease. Currently there are limited data and information about the impact of many underlying medical conditions on the risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Based on what we know at this time, adults of any age with the following conditions might be at an increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19:
- Asthma (moderate-to-severe)
- Cerebrovascular disease (affects blood vessels and blood supply to the brain)
- Cystic fibrosis
- Hypertension or high blood pressure
- Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from blood or bone marrow transplant, immune deficiencies, HIV, use of corticosteroids, or use of other immune weakening medicines
- Neurologic conditions, such as dementia
- Liver disease
- Overweight (BMI > 25 kg/m2, but < 30 kg/m2)
- Pulmonary fibrosis (having damaged or scarred lung tissues)
- Thalassemia (a type of blood disorder)
- Type 1 diabetes mellitus
So if you live in a state that is being run according to the DeStupid House Rules and you have one or more of the underlying conditions on the original or revised lists, contact your primary care physician or nurse practitioner and see what you need to do to get them to certify you to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
Open thread!