Vaccination administrative woes
In my county there's almost no black community to speak of, so I don't know what's going on with the national "Tuskegee all over again" sentiment. We do have a strong minority of vaccine skeptics, but what I'm seeing more of is the other issues Paul Mirengoff notes in this PowerLine piece: the people getting vaccinated the quickest are the ones who are energetically seeking access to vaccination events, including monitoring the availability online and sharing information quickly with a close-knit family or social circle.
I've put a lot of vaccination information up on my local Facebook page. There are people who take advantage of it, including slogging through quirky website registrations and relentlessly calling until they get through on overloaded phone lines, sometimes teaming up in groups of 3-4, with the one who gets through quickest signing up the whole group. Around hear we have to drive an hour to get to a vaccination event. Then there are people who are waiting for the local government or someone else to sign them up and tell them when and where to show up, preferably less than a couple of miles away. They may not get vaccinated until summer. There's nothing more I can say to them, any more than I can really convince a vaccine skeptic. It's up to them now.
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What I'm seeing anecdotally is similar. The rollout is going pretty well for people who are proactive or who are being affirmatively contacted. It appears the VA is doing proactive contacts, and of course it's been done for medical workers and teachers. Beyond that, I've not heard of anyone in this area not in those groups getting the vaccine.
While I'm not going to avoid the vaccine, I'm also not going out of my way to get it. I'm lower on the priority list based on age (59) and overall health (good) which suits me just fine.
I'm getting my first shot this afternoon. When I got a notification from my clinic, I signed onto their app and there were no appointments. A couple weeks later I got a reminder, and I signed in and found a full menu of appointments, out of which I chose one. So there seems to be some uncoordination, but no long waiting lists right now (though I think they said my name was pulled out in a drawing).
My mother is one of those energetic ones, and she is scheduled for her first jab. I hope it goes well, and that she feels safe enough afterwards to resume some part of her normal life.
As for me, I can't care less about it; I'll do my civic duty at the appointed time, but I would be just as happy to have the natural antibodies that come from having fought the disease off. I will gladly wait for others to go first, as many others are at far greater risk than myself anyway. Officially I'm in North Carolina's "group five," i.e., the last group.
@ Grim - what the vaccine produces are natural antibodies. A vaccination stimulates the standard disease-fighting mechanisms in your body. You fight off 3-15 of those every day, nearly always things that would be very slow to develop and not much harm anyway. We create vaccines when the disease has proven to develop too quickly for the body to get ahead of it, and too high a mortality rate.
As for the OP, oh come on, T99. Next you'll be telling me that students who do their homework do better on tests. Everyone knows that you have to wait for the vaccination fairy to call your name.
Yeah, only I read the article about how this thing works. In fact, I’m pretty sure I read it because you linked to it. This thing programs the body to mass manufacture spike proteins like the one the virus uses. That’s not a natural function; it’s art, coding the body to do what it wouldn’t do normally. What follows afterwards may be the production of similar antibodies, but there’s a big step there that’s novel.
Which is hopefully fine, and without unexpected side effects. Maybe it’s safer than learning to fight the virus ‘in the wild.’ On the other hand, the technology is brand new. We’ve only just learned how to do this. And none of us, here, know how to do it. We can’t evaluate the risks.
I am going to run the other way. Maybe after a few years, but a rushed vaccine, using completely new tech, that evaded all the standard safety trials, does not make me warm and fuzzy. Who knows how this is going to pan out with some other coronavirus? Are we going to see a massive auto immune system screwup?
They can't even release a computer operating system without a bunch of glitches, and they want to inject us with a Brand New Idea? There is no way this virus warrants such a massive over reaction. And that bothers the hell out of me because it sets off all sorts of Other Agenda driven questions. A 99.997 survival rate, and we are going willy nilly inject a few billion people with something that bypassed all the time honored research safety checks and studies? Hmm. What could possibly go wrong?
Do we actually trust big pharma, in conjunction with big government?
Really? After what we have seen? They have lied about this consistently since the start.
There are some effective treatments for covid, largely ignored, apparently because the only way to legally make this vaccine without all the safety trials is if it is declared an emergency, and it can't be declared an emergency by law if there are alternative treatments.
The Luddite hath spoken.
Apparently this jab does not stop one from getting the virus, but just ameliorates the symptoms-so one can carry the virus, giving it a chance to mutate- sort of an analogy to taking half your course of antibiotics and helping a resistant strain to emerge. Too many unknowns for such a wide spread effort.
An interesting bit of paranoia- What better way to develop a bio-weapon than to get your enemy to inject themselves with something that could be used as a differentiating marker or target site...maybe something that was guaranteed to amp up an immune system overreaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement
"we don't know, what we don't know."
Without casting about for reasons to be paranoid -- goodness knows there are enough reasons to think they really are out to get you these days -- it is true that this is a novel technology, being aggressively pushed by people who have admittedly lied to us 'for our own good' all along.
Yeah, the problem is everybody waiting for the vaccine fairy...
These stories of dysfunction are getting absurd. In a corner of South Carolina, just west of Columbia:
In Saluda, Emmanuel Family Clinic Officer Manager Debra Cleveland said her office has administered one out of 400 doses it has received in the last three weeks.
Cleveland said her first dose is the only dose that’s been administered.
She said VAMS, the federal scheduling program, has crippled her community’s ability to get vaccinated.
“There are a lot of people who do not know how to read, how to write,” she said. “There are people who have other languages, a lot of the people, especially 70 or above, there are people who have no computers, who have never worked on a computer in their life. They have no idea what to do.”
The doses are nearing their expiration of 30 days, so Cleveland and her staff will be instituting a paper-based model on Tuesday, where patients will schedule appointments and fill out questionnaires onsite. Staff will later fill the data into VAMS.
“[It’s] extremely frustrating because of the fact that everybody talks about we’re having such a hard time getting the shots and this stuff, and I’m like, ‘No, that’s not the problem. We have the vaccine. We can’t give the vaccine,” she said. “And they’re like, ‘But you’ve got it? Why not?’ I’m like, ‘That’s the way because that’s the way it’s written up. That’s the way the rules are. You have to go by the rules.’”
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From coast to coast, it is not difficult to find planned vaccination events getting canceled or dramatically scaled back because of limited supplies or supplies not appearing when and where they’re supposed to arrive.
Los Angeles:
With COVID-19 vaccine supplies still scarce, Los Angeles County residents can only make appointments to get their second doses at the large county-operated sites for the rest of the week, officials said. Starting Tuesday, only those with proof of getting the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be inoculated at the Pomona Fairplex, the Forum, Six Flags Magic Mountain, County Office of Education in Downey, Cal State University Northridge, Balboa Sports Complex and El Sereno.
Pennsylvania:
This week both Montgomery County and Delaware County Departments of Health received only 1,000 first-dose vaccines. That’s compared to a typical shipment of 2,500 doses.
Denver, Colo.:
A COVID-19 vaccination event in Denver was overrun Saturday when Jeffco Public Schools alerted 14,000 employees that 200 extra doses of vaccine were available to those who could get to the National Western Complex within an hour. Hundreds of people rushed to the complex on Humboldt Street to try to get the vaccine around 5 p.m. Saturday. Traffic backed up at the exit and into Interstate 70. Drivers wouldn’t let others merge into the line. Some people leapt from their cars and ran the final stretch to the building. One man arrived in a bathrobe; he hadn’t stopped to put on a shirt.
Plano, Texas:
Days after overbooking forced some people to be turned away at one of Collin County’s largest COVID-19 vaccination sites, things appeared to run more smoothly Monday at John Clark Stadium in Plano. Hundreds of people with appointments to receive the vaccine were turned away on Thursday after Collin County Health Care Services said it overbooked appointments because it saw large numbers of no-shows on daily appointment schedules earlier in the week.
Memphis, Tenn.:
More than 80,000 people in Shelby County have had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Now, thousands are on deck to get their second dose and many don’t know when that will be. WMC heard from several people who said they’re set to receive their second dose this week, but there aren’t any appointments left. Only one day and one location is set aside this week for second doses, but appointments are filled, and that’s leaving thousands of people with worries.
Alabama:
On Monday, Alabama makes about 1 million more people eligible to receive the vaccine. That’s people over 65 and teachers and others in 1b, the second wave of the rollout. Yet the state is only getting about 60,000-70,000 first doses per week. At that rate, Alabama would be stuck in this second phase until June.
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Down in El Paso, Texas, when people get their first vaccination, they’re given a card that shows a date for the second dose. But apparently that date is a suggestion, not an appointment:
Over 100 people were turned away from the City of El Paso’s George Perry mass coronavirus vaccination site on Monday morning after confusion over their appointment to receive the second dose. People waited for hours in line thinking they had a second appointment although they didn’t. When they were told to leave, many refused to go. Cops were called in to come and disperse the crowd. A police officer at the scene told ABC-7 that the same thing happened the day before.
The great former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb — now appearing on a special edition of The Editors — recently wrote that “especially with improved delivery, at some point, perhaps in April, supply will start exceeding demand. The challenge won’t be how to ration a scarce resource, but how to reach patients reluctant to get vaccinated.” I hope he’s right. That feels a long way off right now. Oregon has just now moved on to octogenarians.
Meanwhile, California recently declared those in the medicinal-cannabis industry are now eligible to be vaccinated alongside health-care workers.
I hate that governments are ignoring existing channels for "flu" vaccine at dozens of sites-per-community. Pharmacy, grocery, fire station EMT offices, formal clinics and "doc-in-the-box" locations certainly have people and freezers to keep and administer one of the two current shots. So what does the government do? Pull med-techs AWAY from those places to set up card tables and folding chairs in stadiums and convention center parking lots, intending to bring CROWDS together (whether or not all of them actually wear, or get injected with) protection. And why-- apparently so they have and keep count of how many doses issued, used, lost ...
The government sets things up for the convenience of clerks in offices.
I have 2 friends in New Jersey; each is about 80 years old. One friend has been vaccinated: her doctor’s office got some of the vaccine and gave it to his patients. One friend has not been vaccinated. She has signed up everywhere she can; she has checked every avenue she knows about; she has called local stores that are rumored to be giving out vaccine - nothing. She has found nearby locations that are reported to be doing vaccines but she cannot sign up with them because she is in a different county.
A local hospital here scheduled a no-appointment, drive-thru vaccine event last Saturday, to run from 9am to 3pm. By 7am so many people were waiting in line that the nearby roads were impassable. The event ended at noon because there was no more vaccine. There is no estimate of how many people were still waiting.
A local hospital system started offering vaccines last week, sign up for an appointment via phone. By Friday, they had no more vaccine and they do not know when they will get more.
My dental tech told me yesterday that a doctor’s office was offering appointments for a vaccine. I checked their website and was told no appointments were available. I emailed to be sure I wasn’t missing something. The office replied and told me that they had no more vaccine and were waiting for the state to tell them when they would be allocated more.
My State health department emailed me to tell me that people 65 and over are now qualified to receive the vaccine. They ended their notification with:
Please note that sites have a limited supply of vaccine, as demand continues to greatly exceed the supply provided by the federal government.
I don’t know anyone who wants to be vaccinated who is sitting around waiting to be told what to do.
We drove 70 minutes for the first jab 3 weeks ago and were in and out in 30 minutes flat. That one gave us a one-hour window, which may have been why it all went so quick.
I was amazed and pleased to receive a phone call last night inviting us to come back for the second jab, our choice of today (technically one day early) or tomorrow, no appointment, just drive up. This time it took an hour.
It does not have to be as crazy as it is in many places. Actually, it was pretty loosey-goosey: no one even made us show i.d. They more or less took our word for it that we had an appointment. When it came time for the actual shot, we did have to show our card from the first shot, but that was it. We filled out a consent form, they gave us a shot, we waited 15 minutes to be sure no one had an allergic reaction, and we were done. Texas has done over 3MM doses now.
Grim, you're young and healthy and I hope can do just fine vaccine or no vaccine, but here's a thought about whether it's really necessary to have concern about the vaccine's being unnatural. It's like putting out a BOLO mugshot to a police department. The mugshot itself isn't hazardous; it's a product of paper-and-printing technology rather than of natural in-person sighting of the armed bad guy. It puts people on alert to a particular face so they can react that much faster if they see the bad guy in person, so maybe they can shoot him before he shoots them.
Waiting to develop immunities by contracting the disease would be like refusing to look at the mugshot and cruising the back alleys in hopes of running into him, not being all that sure what he looks like, but trusting in your ability to draw first when he does something threatening.
Traditional vaccines used virus fragments (we hope killed-virus fragments!) to give your immune system a mugshot warning about the real virus. This one causes your body to create fragments that are identical to a little piece of the outside of the virus. Instead of taking our chances with a random bit of ground up virus, we use a specially manufactured piece with exactly the shape we want the immune system to focus on. Is it unnatural? Sure, but no more so than antibiotics manufactured in the lab rather than harvested from bread mold on the kitchen counter.
So, I'm not trying to set up a dichotomy in which nature and the natural are good, and art and the artistic are evil. I'm just pointing out that there is a huge kind of novel art involved in this, and we don't really know a lot about how it's going to play out. As such, given the relatively low risks of the virus to most people, there's a kind of sense to not being super eager to be the very first one to take the shot.
Since there aren't enough shots to go around anyway, and others want them early much more than I do, I think we're all going to be happiest if I agree to go later. They'll get what they want sooner; it inconveniences no one for me to go later, since someone has to go later anyway.
My mother got her shot today, though. Her second round is 10 March. Hopefully it'll go well for her.
As for the BOLO analogy, of course there is a risk associated with issuing a BOLO to police: one risk is that they'll shoot the wrong guy. A relatively vague BOLO carries a higher risk than a more specific one; one that identifies him as 'armed and dangerous' is more risky to those who look like him than otherwise. These risks have to be balanced against the other risks (e.g., that the actual offender might surprise police who haven't been warned; that they might not understand that he was armed; that he might victimize others).
Another risk is that the police have limited attention, so a BOLO to look for that guy might end up distracting them from something more dangerous or worse going on in the same area. It's possible that an analogical situation could happen here, in which the immune system becomes oversensitive to one kind of attack and thus effectively 'ignores' others by focusing all its work on spike proteins. There may be similar analogous risks as well; but I'm not well placed to evaluate them.
With what i know, there is no reason for it.
https://phibetaiota.net/2021/02/mongoose-video-dr-sherri-tenpenny-on-depopulation-vaccine/
People should not be alarmed. Divine fate has already been decided. Free will is respected. Most of the jabs are placebos. There are also technologies neutralizing the more harmful components.
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