Coronavirus

hotseatgames wrote: According to this: www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

yesterday was the highest yet death toll here in the USA: 4489. And motherfuckers still won't wear masks.

The UK death toll was 1500 odd yesterday and you have five times the population of us ... sucks being here. Our town went from being pretty good in early December (under 100 cases per 100,000) to pretty bad this week, 550 per 100,000, and our hospital is so full with COVID patients that operating theatres are being used for wards - and we are no where the worst in the country.

We just got the UK variant in our county, first confirmed case is someone "who recently traveled to multiple continents." So once again showing that a few bad actors can destroy the best precautions of the remaining 99.8%.

My buddy just sent me photos from Vegas, so I guess people are thinking it's ok to travel again.

I appreciate there's a lot of people with cabin fever and seasonal disorder, but I can't help but think there are more reasonable alternatives.

Sagrilarus wrote: We just got the UK variant in our county, first confirmed case is someone "who recently traveled to multiple continents." So once again showing that a few bad actors can destroy the best precautions of the remaining 99.8%.

My buddy just sent me photos from Vegas, so I guess people are thinking it's ok to travel again.

I appreciate there's a lot of people with cabin fever and seasonal disorder, but I can't help but think there are more reasonable alternatives.

Cabin fever - kerrist nearly ready to burn the cabin down over here. We've been locked in for over two months with probably another six weeks (if we're lucky) to go, and that's after nearly four months back in Spring.
Plus this pandemic is slowly sending us into recession for quite a few quarters coming up and the debt, shit the govt has been paying people whose businesses they shut down since April and it will go on to the end of this April, is bloody massive - we will be seeing a bit of a tax increase once it is all over.

I'm not an extrovert or an introvert, but I am fine with being alone for extended periods of time. I could definitely do another year of social distancing if necessary, and at the current rate of vaccination, that might be the reality for 2021.

Nobody seems to be talking about this yet, but inflation is likely on the way. I am seeing price hikes from quite a few of our vendors at work, and it stands to reason that businesses will try to recover from pandemic business losses by raising prices.

Well, fwiw, there's no clear indication in any CPI statistics that inflation is on the way, current US interest rates continue to hover near 0 and have for a long time. If inflation does start, that will be an indication that the federal reserve will have to slow down the injection money into the economic system, which would be quite problematic for a recovery.

We already have a real estate bubble - so that meltdown is coming on two fronts - Housing, bouyed by record rates is nuts right now - I think a lot of markets are overheated and are going to cool off....But the real crash is in commercial real estate - We are going to be talking about CMBS ( Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities) pretty soon after we are done talking about the insurrectionist in chief, I think.

Well the latest news has the virus getting a minor high-five over humankind - apparently there are signs that the UK variant is a bit deadlier (as well as being much more contagious) but the vaccines are OK for it, but some signs that the South African and Brazilian variants may not be as susceptible to the current vaccines (but they can be tweaked).

I'm getting the Moderna vaccine first dose Wednesday. Just in time for my first class Thursday.

Gary Sax wrote: I'm getting the Moderna vaccine first dose Wednesday. Just in time for my first class Thursday.

Awesome--so pleased for you! Our governor announced a new push for educators and school support staff to get priority access to vaccination. Accordingly, my wife got an email last night from the superintendent that 123 slots have been allocated to the district and they are choosing to prioritize preschool and early primary grades. If she gets a slot she'll get another email this week, apparently.

JoelCFC25 wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: I'm getting the Moderna vaccine first dose Wednesday. Just in time for my first class Thursday.

Awesome--so pleased for you! Our governor announced a new push for educators and school support staff to get priority access to vaccination. Accordingly, my wife got an email last night from the superintendent that 123 slots have been allocated to the district and they are choosing to prioritize preschool and early primary grades. If she gets a slot she'll get another email this week, apparently.

I'm pretty sure he wasn't painting it as good news.

Vaccinations here (Maryland) have been really unpredictable. In theory there are two groups prioritized at the moment, but word is out that odd people are getting vaccinations just by asking. There's some graft -- spouses and children of firefighters somehow got vaccinations (and of course immediately crowed about it on Facebook, starting an argument) but it's been more uneven than that.

Some people have driven the West Virginia who seems to have its act together and has vaccine because they're giving it to out-of-staters.

And people in Montgomery County (a big county, largely upper-middle class) are traveling to Prince George's County (a big county, largely working poor) to get their vaccinations in spite of PG County have much less vaccine available, like, one third as much in spite of having a similar sized population.

My wife was alerted by friends that in spite of not being in a risk group they had gotten shots at a local hospital. They called, were told to come in.

So at the moment it seems like a bit of a mess, and there's the appearance of haves and have-nots all over the place. My daughter is a health care worker and got hers, my father-in-law is 85 and got his. The rest of us are in the non-prioritized bracket (which is fine) and have signed up to be notified. But my best guess is that we'll never be notified, will call one day when we think it's appropriate and will get it.

But it's a little disheartening to hear Mindy down the street got her first shot in spite of being 25 and healthy because she happens to know a firefighter and she could pretend to be his daughter.

I think the biggest hurdle is the complete lack of dependable information. I have become so accustomed to not trusting any information coming out of the Executive Branch that I don't have faith that there is the necessary material in the pipeline to deliver at the new 1.5 million per day goal. As it stands now if someone from the future said I'd still be working from my couch a year from now it wouldn't surprise me.

And there's this. I'm the guy people call when they want to know details on everyone in the state. That's the data I work with. No call. So, where is the state getting their details to work from?

Any complicated method of determining who should get priority for vaccination is going to be debatable and difficult to enforce. While not necessarily fair or ideal, I think that the most efficient way to do it would have involved two steps:

1. Doctors, nurses, other hospital workers, and first responders (police, paramedics, etc).
2. Everybody else, starting with the oldest first.

Ideally, priority should also be given to front-line workers, teachers, and daycare workers, but sorting that out seems to be beyond our current organizational abilities. And normal medical triage theory wouldn't prioritize vaccination of say, a 90 year-old over a child, but this particular pandemic poses a serious threat to the old and minimal threat to kids.

I was hoping to get vaccinated in the spring, but my revised expectation is more like mid-summer. And I am willing to wait longer in order to get the proper shot and subsequent booster shot, and not settle for some half-assed dose or dosing schedule.

Mixed feelings about getting it myself, but will be very happy when it happens. I do have to go into rooms with other people and talk loudly (with a mask) for my job so it makes some sense.

I'm torn on rollout age vs. more targeted. As we're seeing, our states are so hollowed out they can't really do a profession by profession rollout effectively, but on the other hand it would *really* help to target our vaccine to people who are serving as network lynchpins like teachers with the way this virus spreads.

My parents (70s) finally got on the Idaho waiting list. I hope to god they got theirs soon, these quick spreading variants are scaring me for them.

I don't think Oregon could be fucking this up any harder. The county COVID info hotline's current policy for answering questions about the vaccine is that they don't, because they don't have any information.

My wife got her first shot yesterday at Kaiser and was immediately told that Kaiser would no longer be administering shots effective soon, so you'll need to schedule your second shot somewhere else. With Kaiser backing out, there are currently only two locations in the entire state doing vaccinations.

An interesting article today in the Baltimore Sun regarding vaccine rollout in Maryland. The state is staging mass vaccination centers, places to administer drive-through and the like, but cannot turn them on because there is no vaccine available. Governor Hogan held a press conference today where he said the 16% increase they were just promised by Biden is welcome, but it is still far short of the state’s capability to administer.

So as it stands the issue isn’t organization in the state.

Johnson & Johnson may get theirs approved in the next week or two, and will be manufactured outside of Baltimore. Here’s hoping a case or two falls off the truck near my house.