The Politics of Covid 19, mask wearing and the vaccination process

[malchior]

Just received my notification I should register to vaccinate, via the state's notification system! I verify my credentials and it then gives me 4 locations in a different county that are only open to county residents and a final site that is 85 miles away.

A friend of my wife *yelling through my hands* WHO JUST RECOVERED FROM COVID got an appointment in Sewell. Sewell. She lives near Patterson. For non-NJ people that is a nearly 4 hour round-trip drive.

[Kraken]

My sister and I have been trying to get an appointment for our mother on the MA website (vaxfinder.mass.gov). Last Thursday they released a bunch of appointments but the website crashed and we weren't able to get through. The appointments largely disappeared by the end of the day, and there hasn't been much indication of openings since then (though at least the website is now operating smoothly!).

So...not sure when we'll get an appointment. TBD!

And that still leaves myself and my siblings. And I mean, it'd be great if my kids' teachers could get vaccinated. Maybe they are, who knows.

I've stopped paying attention. I'll start shopping when they do the cattle call in late spring/early summer.

[Lorini]

Aren't these 'laws' unenforceable? SCOTUS has already said states have wide latitude to deal with public safety issues. Reminds of the GOP in TENN who want to punish players who kneel. Clearly unenforceable but Republicans don't seem to care about the Constitution much.

[noxiousdog]

Just received my notification I should register to vaccinate, via the state's notification system! I verify my credentials and it then gives me 4 locations in a different county that are only open to county residents and a final site that is 85 miles away.

85 miles away is tough to do in NJ.

[Smoove_B]

85 miles away is tough to do in NJ.

Like malchior's friend, it would be a 2 hour drive one way, without traffic. I would like to get vaccinated, but that's absurd.

[Unagi]

I live in a northern suburb of Chicago, my mother lives in a neighboring suburb... We secured her vaccine shots (finally!) via a Walgreens in Rockford Illinois. 80 miles from here (an hour and a half drive). There was absolutely NO QUESTION this was geographically 'close enough' and we jumped at the chance/appointment.

I completely understand the frustration and agree that this should not be... but I can't for a minute picture 80 miles being 'too far' to go, in order to get the vaccine.

[Smoove_B]

My parents were able to get their shot at a location 20 minutes away. They're in their 70s and I probably would have driven them 2+ hours away to get a shot if that was the only way. But for me? I'm not in a high risk category (maybe elevated) so driving 4+ hours round trip (twice) doesn't make much sense. I will continue to run the leaderboards of the 2020-2021 socially distant championships and remain at home.

But generally speaking it's gross (to me) that the best option the State can come up with is me driving 85 miles to a vaccination site. I have the ability; not everyone does and I would be willing to bet that someone desperately needs that shot more than I do and *can't* drive 85 miles to get it. That's a failure.

[LordMortis]

I live in a northern suburb of Chicago, my mother lives in a neighboring suburb... We secured her vaccine shots (finally!) via a Walgreens in Rockford Illinois. 80 miles from here (an hour and a half drive). There was absolutely NO QUESTION this was geographically 'close enough' and we jumped at the chance/appointment.

I completely understand the frustration and agree that this should not be... but I can't for a minute picture 80 miles being 'too far' to go, in order to get the vaccine.

We're supposed to work with our counties, so the worst case scenario for most people should be... A2+B2=C2...1296+1296=2592... around 51 miles. If you lived were the exact opposite corner of the county and that was the only place you could get the vaccine. OTOH, if you play games because your county/health care system/and now select pharmacies aren't doing the job but you have an in, I guess you roll with the punches.

I'd not be excited about an 80 mile drive but it one fell in my lap from outside the way things are supposed to work, I'd probably find a way.

[stessier]

We're supposed to work with our counties, so the worst case scenario for most people should be... A2+B2=C2...1296+1296=2592... around 51 miles. If you lived were the exact opposite corner of the county and that was the only place you could get the vaccine.

MI counties are all uniform? Here on the east coast, not so much.

[The Meal]

85 miles away is tough to do in NJ.

Like malchior's friend, it would be a 2 hour drive one way, without traffic. I would like to get vaccinated, but that's absurd.

You just know that there's someone who lives where that appointment is located, who's having to drive into your neighborhood just to get their vaccination.

[LordMortis]

We're supposed to work with our counties, so the worst case scenario for most people should be... A2+B2=C2...1296+1296=2592... around 51 miles. If you lived were the exact opposite corner of the county and that was the only place you could get the vaccine.

MI counties are all uniform? Here on the east coast, not so much.

When possible they are in a nice box.... when possible... Most of the time.

http://www.cohp.org/mi/michigan_S_1.html

[Isgrimnur]

We're supposed to work with our counties, so the worst case scenario for most people should be... A2+B2=C2...1296+1296=2592... around 51 miles. If you lived were the exact opposite corner of the county and that was the only place you could get the vaccine.

MI counties are all uniform? Here on the east coast, not so much.

[Daveman]

Hey! That location in Sewell is very nice

My wife (teacher) finally got her official invite from NJ to vaccinate a few weeks ago as opposed to her earlier "while you wait here's a massive list of sites you can try to call/register at and maybe get something by June" email and got her first shot at the Sewell site last week. Things seemed well run and she was there for about an hour. Line was long but moved quickly. This was a 4pm appointment on a Tuesday. They had several golf carts running the elderly with canes and such which was a nice touch.

I was spoiled by my NJ invite a few weeks earlier that still offered spots at a local hospital. I was in and out in 20 minutes both times. The only reaction I had (besides a sore arm) was a few hours after my 2nd shot. One moment I was fine and then had a really strong woozy kind of feeling in my head. After a couple hours of that off and on I was fine.

Saddest thing I saw while waiting for my wife at the Sewell site was 20-30 people corralled in one area just outside the main building. I asked a staff member there and he said they were people waiting for a standby spot. If any people don't show up, they offer their shots to them, first come basis, but only at the end of the day. Guy said some days it's 200 shots, some days 2.

[YellowKing]

They opened vaccinations for teachers here and if you responded to their survey that you wanted to be vaccinated, they reserved a dose and scheduled the appointment for you. So far (knock on wood) NC seems to be doing a really good job with distribution.

[Smoove_B]

You just know that there's someone who lives where that appointment is located, who's having to drive into your neighborhood just to get their vaccination.

They were up until a few weeks ago. Now all of the northern county locations in the state restrict them to county residents only. That's why it's telling me to drive 85+ miles to south jersey - low population, low demand.

When the detailed postmortem of the NJ vaccination process is written, I'd hope they detail how this mess came to exist.

[malchior]

When the detailed postmortem of the NJ vaccination process is written, I'd hope they detail how this mess came to exist.

We wish. NJ government and accountability are mutually exclusive. The best we'd get is it'll be some form of finger pointing - 'the vendor messed up.'

FWIW the Meadowlands megasite isn't enforcing any county restrictions. It however requires midnight camping and many F5 key presses to get a slot.

[Daehawk]

FDA approves Pfizer to keep their vaccine in normal freezers.

[Daehawk]

[Smoove_B]

F those guys. In better news for NJ:

NEW: We have been notified that we should expect an initial shipment of roughly 70,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to be delivered to us next week – if the @US_FDA approves Emergency Use Authorization. This would be a game-changer.

[Defiant]

[Smoove_B]

Six different studies suggesting people with prior infection only need a single shot:

The federal government has not changed its recommendation for a second dose, but studies that look at the immune response show that while a first shot gives people who've recovered from COVID-19 a huge boost, the second shot makes little difference.

"I think that makes perfect sense," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

For someone who had COVID-19, the first shot is like a COVID-19-naive person getting a booster – they even have the side effects of someone getting a second vaccine dose, he said.

"You could argue reasonably that people who can prove they were infected – i.e., have antibodies to the virus – could reasonably just get one dose," Offit said.

Dr. Offit is a trusted voice. If he's speaking on this, you can believe it.

But what if you've had COVID and get that second shot?

There's no danger in getting a second shot, for someone who's had COVID-19, said Florian Krammer, who led one of the recent studies. But it may not provide any benefit for the time and stress it takes to make a reservation, get to and from a vaccination site and watch the needle go in.

I agree that making use of this information might be difficult as you'd want test-based confirmation that someone had an infection - not people ruled as "probable" based on association and symptoms. Still, if it can address current vaccine shortages and ease demand, it might be worth exploring.

[Isgrimnur]

And who’s volunteering to pay for these antibody tests?

[gilraen]

And who’s volunteering to pay for these antibody tests?

Go donate blood, and they'll probably test you for free...

[Smoove_B]

Hey Tennessee, how's it going?

The health director in Tennessee's largest county resigned Friday after the state health department found that 2,500 Covid-19 vaccine were either wasted or expired and two children were "inappropriately vaccinated" at a county vaccination site.
A total of 2,500 doses were either expired or wasted in Shelby County over a 20-day period from February 3 to February 23, according to a timeline of findings released by the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) as part of an investigation.
Additionally, two children were "inappropriately vaccinated" for Covid-19 at a Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) vaccination site on February 3 with no report made to state or federal partners, according to TDH's timeline.
The same day, a volunteer was suspected of stealing multiple doses of vaccine at a different vaccination site without a report being made, according to the TDH timeline.

TDH also found that the county had 51,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses in its inventory, which amounts to an excess of about 30,000 doses, according to a statement from the agency.
The statement also said that Shelby County lacked "standard operating procedures for storage and handling of the vaccine," had insufficient record keeping and had "no formal process for management of soon-to-expire vaccine doses."

That is...one of the worst things I've read in a long, long time.

[Alefroth]

That's not going to help Daehawk's confidence.

[Smoove_B]

NJ officially expanding access to teachers, child care and transportation workers starting on 3/15.

“We’re phasing it in over a couple of weeks because we already have a supply-demand imbalance,” the governor said, adding that other essential workers are expected to be added to the eligibility list by the end of March.

“At the head of that list will be educators and folks in day care,” Murphy said. “We’ve got a whole game plan.”

The expanded group includes “pre-K to 12 educators & support staff,” according to Murphy’s Tweet.

I do wonder how many teachers are left as I know the "secret links" to the vaccination appointments in northern NJ were being passed around by school staff.

[malchior]

I do wonder how many teachers are left as I know the "secret links" to the vaccination appointments in northern NJ were being passed around by school staff.

From what I heard through my MIL the unions were really yelling at Murphy because teachers were getting beat out by...all the high risk and the infamous smokers. FWIW I really appreciated the SNL skit this weekend pointing out how ludicrous and confusing regimes in each state. Further I enjoyed them highlighting that NJ prioritized smokers because I still don't get that at all if opening schools was a priority. My MIL is in the Woodbridge system and they've opened and closed due to clusters ... I don't know nearly a half dozen times before Christmas. But then again, maybe they surveyed teachers and many smoke or something?

[Smoove_B]

From a policy standpoint, I completely understand why and how they prioritized smokers. However, from a practical standpoint by letting smokers jump the line, they effectively boxed out so many others. Teachers, front-line/essential workers, police, fire, etc... 65+ would have likely been a better opening target, imho.

In a perfect world they could have somehow made smokers more narrow by creating additional tiers - age of smoker, additional chronic health conditions + smoking, etc... but then I think the system would get bogged down with how to verify all that.

We crossed 2 million vaccinations this weekend in NJ, but I'd love to see a demographic breakdown of that data. I do think the teacher's unions were right to push back. However, part of their problem (again) is the home rule / patchwork nature of school districts in this state. If each county was a district (instead of each county having at least 37 districts of their own), I think their message early on would have been more unified.

EDIT: More eligibility starting 3/29

essential workers in the restaurant, food, and distribution industries
grocery workers
warehouse workers
remaining eldercare workers
hospitality workers
elections workers
clergy
postal and other shipping workers
judicial system employees

[Jaymann]

Uh, couldn't you just decide to take up smoking?

[Smoove_B]

Uh, couldn't you just decide to take up smoking?

Right, so this is where things get slippery. Without making judgements against smokers or any evaluation of the why or how they're smoking, the fact remains that it represents a significant risk. That risk then translates into smokers clogging up our healthcare systems so it's collectively in our best interest to stop them from doing that as we want to make sure the hospitals aren't being overwhelmed with COVID cases and generally available to help anyone (non-COVID related) that needs treatments for other diseases. It's a weird equation to work through, but moralizing the vaccination process would end up causing more problems here.

And through the magic on the internet, I just registered to get my first shot later this week at my county facility. Already March is looking better than February.

[The Meal]

Colorado got around the smokers advance thing, by naming COPD in an earlier group than other chronic lung disease.

[malchior]

From a policy standpoint, I completely understand why and how they prioritized smokers. However, from a practical standpoint by letting smokers jump the line, they effectively boxed out so many others. Teachers, front-line/essential workers, police, fire, etc... 65+ would have likely been a better opening target, imho.

Where I don't get the policy is that they knew they were going to get supply that was much, much less than demand. They needed to be tight on comms here. Then they threw the gates wide open with this high risk pool which introduced tons of problems with access. And a lot of people and I mean a lot honed in on the smoking thing since it appears highly absurd. This gets into that persistent public health messaging issue. Maybe it was 'sound policy' but that wasn't how it was received by the public, showing that bureaucrats are still managing to be tone deaf in their messaging.

[Smoove_B]

Unless I am misremembering the timeline, the state of NJ opened eligibility to smokers on a Monday or Tuesday with the announcement that the federal government wasn't going to hold on to the vaccine reserve and instead start shipping it out to states in need. That Friday former HHS Secretary Azar announced that the strategic stockpile was not in fact a "stockpile" but had already distributed, i.e. it didn't exist. I don't want to give the State of NJ too much credit, but my impression was that they opened things up (maybe too wide) in anticipation of being told they were getting more doses. When it turned out 3+ days later that wasn't the case it was too late as the system was already flooded. Opening it to people with COPD would have been a perfect example of how to do it, yeah.

[malchior]

Even if that timeline was right - I seem to recall they published a timeline at the end of December. Then they dumped half the state into the pool on the 15th of January or so out of nowhere. The rationale being they had too much supply for the demand. But unfortunately massively miscalculated . Even if they relied on Azar statement, the demand was going to far outstrip supply with 50% of the state suddenly in the pool. I recall that we had a discussion that it'd be chaos because they opened the eligibility far too wide.

Anyway, in the end then I hear Murphy on CNBC at some point defending it without talking about any of the risk factors well explained. He basically dumbed it down to don't compare 'Job A to Job B' people when teachers were brought up. Instead it was some variant of you have to look at risks which while true was basically just trying to paper over another of his mistakes. It made especially little sense considering they definitely prioritized people based on jobs in the framework. The guy is just frustrating because I keep seeing him make decisions that he says are fact based or strategic without any clear rationale. But to be fair that's not abnormal.

[LordMortis]

We have theoretically opened up to front line food industry workers today.

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/coro ... 6344_7.pdf

By March 1, 2021, all areas of the state may, as vaccine supplies are available, also implement vaccination of people who are frontline essential workers in the food processing and agricultural industries

Of course this is contingent on availability and there are still host of earlier 1B groups that are having a hard time getting in line.

Smokers will get in line with me for May as 18-64 with risk factors/pre-existing conditions.


Anecdotally, it's finally getting better. They went from no timeline to NOW NOW NOW


My father (79 with many conditions) got his first vaccination this weekend. I am sad that they had vaccine for my mother (77 with no known conditions) and she chose not to work toward immunization and turned down the jab. Here's to hoping her health stays good and she part of the masses with minor or no symptoms when the day comes that she gets ill.

And that means I'll be wearing a mask around her long after I'm immunized as well.

[malchior]

FWIW the supply situation really appears to have turned around. I can't help but think that competent Federal coordination on the supply side made a huge difference here.

[LordMortis]

The rate of shots in arms is not increasing here (except for slight increase beginning 2/25 which is just a single data point at this date) but what is happening is that the logistics chain of pharmacies is providing order which can finally set expectations and put plans in motion.

Even without increase that's almost 3 million jabs or 1.5 million half immunizations that get together to make 850k total immunizations (which is more than total contraction, so...). The state estimates we are 17% immunization with 10% fully immunized. I am dismayed or perhaps angry at the amount of doses to make it to Detroit but not be administered.

https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0, ... --,00.html

It's a long way Tipperary

[LawBeefaroni]

Hey Tennessee, how's it going?

The health director in Tennessee's largest county resigned Friday after the state health department found that 2,500 Covid-19 vaccine were either wasted or expired and two children were "inappropriately vaccinated" at a county vaccination site.
A total of 2,500 doses were either expired or wasted in Shelby County over a 20-day period from February 3 to February 23, according to a timeline of findings released by the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) as part of an investigation.
Additionally, two children were "inappropriately vaccinated" for Covid-19 at a Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) vaccination site on February 3 with no report made to state or federal partners, according to TDH's timeline.
The same day, a volunteer was suspected of stealing multiple doses of vaccine at a different vaccination site without a report being made, according to the TDH timeline.

TDH also found that the county had 51,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses in its inventory, which amounts to an excess of about 30,000 doses, according to a statement from the agency.
The statement also said that Shelby County lacked "standard operating procedures for storage and handling of the vaccine," had insufficient record keeping and had "no formal process for management of soon-to-expire vaccine doses."

That is...one of the worst things I've read in a long, long time.

They have low demand. My parents got their second shot almost a month ago in TN.

[Smoove_B]

FWIW the supply situation really appears to have turned around. I can't help but think that competent Federal coordination on the supply side made a huge difference here.

And competent federal coordination *started* on 1/21/21. Imagine if it had been similarly organized and coordinated in the Fall of 2020 instead.

Prison is too good for Trump and the members of his administration.

[malchior]

FWIW the supply situation really appears to have turned around. I can't help but think that competent Federal coordination on the supply side made a huge difference here.

And competent federal coordination *started* on 1/21/21. Imagine if it had been similarly organized and coordinated in the Fall of 2020 instead.

Prison is too good for Trump and the members of his administration.

I agree. Even though they probably were having discussions with parties ahead of 1/21, that still was what I was getting at.

They have low demand. My parents got their second shot almost a month ago in TN.

I also pin part of this on Trump. That he and Melania got the vaccine quietly before departing the White House...WTF.