Thanks for that information. I would have not thought it so. I've learned something today.Originally Posted by grant hutchison
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Thanks for that information. I would have not thought it so. I've learned something today.
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Regarding the J&J vaccine, although the stated efficacy is less than the previous two, I've been seeing that it's still better than many vaccines, including the seasonal flu ones. Everything is relative. I'll get it as soon as it's available for me! Or one of the others, of course.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Perhaps they are, and with the proper system in place (to properly compensate the other companies for their efforts without harming the leading company), it might be possible. One other issue, which may be slightly cynical, is that pharmaceutical companies are not always perfectly straight about their trial data, so it is possible that one of the vaccines that was initially thought to be less effective actually turns out to be more effective in the field.
As above, so below
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I think what most people are interested in is avoiding ending up sick in hospital or dead, and public health authorities would also really like people not to end up in hospital or dead. In Phase III trials, the J&J vaccine gave 85% protection against that at Day 28, and 100% at Day 49. Of course, nothing is 100% once you vaccinate a billion people, which is what J&J claim to be able to scale to this year, but that can't be interpreted as anything other than a good outcome. And it was consistent across age, race and virus variants, in particular the South African variant.
Single dose, storable in regular fridges and transportable in cool boxes, not-for-profit distribution and a billion by the end of the year. Even if we take the last figure with a pinch of salt, this has the potential to make a major contribution to getting this pandemic under control.
Grant Hutchison
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Also, my understanding is that they have only tested it so far with a single injection, but are planning on testing a double injection regimen. It has a big advantage in easier transportation, too.
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Now, you see several Lindh liquid nitrogen trucks about—has anyone thought about modifying them for certain vaccines?
If someone took different types of vaccines, could there be an interaction? Nothing to turn Barclay from a TNG episode into a spider of course...
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My wife’s cousin just passed away from COVID. She went downhill quickly. My wife is taking it hard.
In other news, I have been notified that I’m a category 1C essential worker. According to my state, I’m eligible for a vaccination, but most places distributing it are so far behind, they aren’t even accepting questionnaires from 1C folks.
It looks like I’ll be spending my evenings scouring the Internet for signups for a while.
I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. - Jimmy Hoffa
Established Member
My commiserations to your wife on the loss of her cousin. I hope that you can get access to the vaccine soon.
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My condolences, Extravoice. Hope you have good fortune in your search.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
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Thanks for the condolences, folks.
Hopefully, we can all stay safe until this pandemic ends.
On the topic of accessing a vaccination, various entities are distributing them around here. These include County health departments, hospital systems, and pharmacies. Even grocery stores with pharmacies have joined the fray.
Our state health department runs a web page with links (hopefully) to each. It is a clumsy system as each entity has its own user interface and screening process. Most say “go away and try later”. Some say fill out this form an we’ll contact you later.
I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. - Jimmy Hoffa
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The USA distribution system is, in general, a mess. Our elderly county hasn't received any vaccine in about three weeks. It's really frustrating when 65+ appear to be getting it nearby.
I've been tracking USA data from Worldometer since -- holy cow, last March! -- and 7-day averages suggest to me the Christmas case count surge is over. Deaths from it, not so much, still averaging over 3000 per day.
So sorry about your wife's cousin, EV. I suspect there aren't many people it hasn't touched by now.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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One advantage of a National Health Service, in these parts (albeit also helped by the British Army for some of the mass vaccination logistics).
We're just sitting back waiting for the fabled blue envelopes to drop through our letterboxes, bearing news of our vaccine appointments.
Tricky bit, of course, is negotiating to get vaccinated if your envelope doesn't arrive. But in general they know who we all are, where we live, and how old we are. And the categorization of at-risk individuals has already been gone through months ago. So it's just a matter of working through an ordered spreadsheet the size of Britain.
(I'll be sitting back for a while yet, I fear. Although the Boon Companion is only a few months older than I am, the JCVI priority list inserts about a million "clinically vulnerable" younger Scots between the tranche of people with her birthdate and the tranche with my birthdate.)
ETA: Those are not scare quotes on "clinically vulnerable", by the way--it's just my compacted version of the rather long descriptive phrase used in the vaccine schedule.
Grant Hutchison
Last edited by grant hutchison; 2021-Feb-04 at 12:05 AM.
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Ohio has the same problem. Its a hodge-podge.
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In Indy the distribution has not yet reached the pharmacies or anyone under 75, despite promises to have both done by the end of January.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
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Despite our state’s official stance, our county health department is still serving healthcare workers and those above 75. So, regardless of my “essential worker” status, I don’t expect a vaccination in the near term.
Which worries me because starting next week I’ll have to spend the majority of my time in a lab environment in relatively close proximity to other workers.
At least my order of KN95 masks have arrived.
I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. - Jimmy Hoffa
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Despite a year to prepare, the US has 50* different, largely on-the-fly systems that barely talk to each other, let alone coordinate. And we can't even talk here about the main problems.
*Plus assorted territories, etc.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Established Member
In Australia the plan is that the "Pfizer vaccine will be prioritised for higher-risk populations such as frontline workers and those residing or working in aged and disability care facilities. These will be distributed in Pfizer-specific facilities." - apparently at the major Public Hospitals. We are buying 20 Million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and the first doses are due to arrive and be administered late this month. Then we will both buy and self produce just under 54 Million doses of the AstraZenica vaccine, which can be distributed easily via pharmacies and doctors surgeries. This part of the vaccination scheme will begin in March.
An order has also been placed for 51 Million doses of the Novavax vaccine. Plus we have agreed to pay for 25.5 million doses under the international Covax programme. Australia has a population of just under 26 Million and much of the 'excess' doses are intended to be supplied to some of our neighbours in the Pacific and South East Asia regions.
It is planned that the vaccination programme will be completed by October.
Last edited by ozduck; 2021-Feb-04 at 07:16 AM.
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Well in Canada we had to start making vaccines in country because there were delays from Pfizer. At the head of national level distribution we have a former general. The provinces are in charge of getting to the people, the another problem is that how the population is spread out outside of the cities.
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Mostly HarmlessMy employer is bring on staff at a good clip. One department has 20-25 people coming in every six weeks. Ironically, they are also sifting through employees who have any risk factors and asking them to work from home. I am way down on the prior list for a vaccine, but way up on the priority to work from home. I jumped to this company to avoid working from home, so we'll see how that works out. So far, they have been taking my, "no thanks, I'm good" response pretty well.
Solfe
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I was reading the local weekly yesterday. Folks are upset because the counties in the most populous area of the state, King, Pierce, and Snohomish, have been allowed to move to Phase 2 (able to eat at restaurants) while we, with lower infection rates, are not. Apparently we're lumped in with another county which isn't doing as well.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Kitsap or Clallam?
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Kitsap, as far as I can tell.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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The limitations are likely due to the potential risk of spreading the infection. Although, in some districts, the local government simply does not want to have additional problems due to the increase in the number of cases. Most likely, local authorities are waiting for a vaccine to immediately prevent infection of a large number of the population in one fell swoop.
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The governor's explanation for the regional, rather than county-by-county, approach is that often developed areas are spread across county lines. That makes some sense, but doesn't apply to my county which has no significant population centers anywhere near a border. The nearest towns to me outside the county are Sequim, 38 miles by road; Poulsbo, 34 miles by road and separated by water; and Kingston, also 34 miles and across Hood Canal.
Meanwhile, according to my log of Worldometer data, yesterday was the first day since November with fewer than 100,000 new cases reported in the USA. It was a Sunday, of course, and reporting is always down but it still seems like an improvement.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Ohio isn't doing a regional evaluation, but doing it county-by-county. But they are applying the same sort of rules; as counties change their alert status (Ohio is doing color-codes), the rules on such things as eating indoors change.
Our county is still "red" (second highest, purple is the highest), but even at that level they allow indoor eating in restaurants at a lower capacity (I think it is 33%, but I'm not sure).
The part I don't understand is that people are actually eating in restaurants, no matter what the state says. Our cases per 100,000 population is still 5 times higher than the worst level in the spring of 2020, our positive test rate is about the same as the worst level in the spring, our ICUs are still at 80% capacity, and less than 9% of the population in our county has had even the first shot.
Yet when I go pick up my take-out order from local restaurants, there are tables of people sitting and eating. There is not a sufficient quantity of money you could pay me to take off my mask and sit and eat in a restaurant now; it feels like these people are either stupid or have a death wish, no matter what the government may say.
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Restaurants in my town have set up outdoor dining areas. Basically tents with tables six feet apart.
I noticed last week a restaurant that's been there for decades and appears to have folded. It's not the first.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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One thing that has become evident to me is that people have a poor understanding of the difference between public health and personal health in the setting of a pandemic.
What the public health authorities consider "possible to allow without overload healthcare" is confused with "entirely safe for me to do". This isn't helped by the fact that various spokespeople (in the UK, at least) keep using the word "safe" when they mean "actually, not at all safe at an individual level but we can probably get away with it at a population level".
My wife has a number of very smart but non-medical friends who dutifully track whatever is permitted under the current restrictions, and then just do that, pretty much immediately. "Up to six people from three households in my home? Right, I've got that organized for tomorrow." "Indoor dining is okay again? I've two reservations for next week." "Non-essential foreign travel permitted? I've booked a cruise." Two from this group have had Covid, one with a hospital stay, but the others still don't seem to have got the message.
Grant Hutchison
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But surely the personal calculation is “Am I likely to die.”. Given , people are hopeless at assessing rare but fatal possibilities, this unfortunately means the factor of being responsible for others’ safety is low in the decision process. Cynically, a young person might want to save granny but cares little about strangers’ grannies. So once the message is out that youth is a blessing in this case, public health messages are hard to enforce in what we call free societies. That is what seems to have happened. This is “blood is thicker than water” playing out.
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When we realize that patterns don't exist in the universe, they are a template that we hold to the universe to make sense of it, it all makes a lot more sense.
Originally Posted by Ken G
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Not taking death seriously is not a death wish, but it is stupid. Unfortunately human biases ensure that in general, we do stupid things all the time.Ohio isn't doing a regional evaluation, but doing it county-by-county. But they are applying the same sort of rules; as counties change their alert status (Ohio is doing color-codes), the rules on such things as eating indoors change.
Our county is still "red" (second highest, purple is the highest), but even at that level they allow indoor eating in restaurants at a lower capacity (I think it is 33%, but I'm not sure).
The part I don't understand is that people are actually eating in restaurants, no matter what the state says. Our cases per 100,000 population is still 5 times higher than the worst level in the spring of 2020, our positive test rate is about the same as the worst level in the spring, our ICUs are still at 80% capacity, and less than 9% of the population in our county has had even the first shot.
Yet when I go pick up my take-out order from local restaurants, there are tables of people sitting and eating. There is not a sufficient quantity of money you could pay me to take off my mask and sit and eat in a restaurant now; it feels like these people are either stupid or have a death wish, no matter what the government may say.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
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Perhaps "Am I likely to die if I catch Covid?" is significant. But people (my wife's friends, for example) can acknowledge that they do have a significant chance of dying if they catch the disease, while believing that so long as they stay within the official guidelines they will be protected from catching the disease. So there's no problem, as far as they perceive personal risk.
My colleagues in hospital are in despair over how often they hear, "But I always wore my mask!" from people who have developed severe Covid. There's a really widespread belief that world is cleanly divided into "safe behaviours" and "unsafe behaviours", and that masks in particular are some sort of miraculous "get out of Covid free" card.
Grant Hutchison
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