Avian influenza has been ripping across the globe in both domesticated and wild bird populations.
There’s also been a cluster of some unknown disease in New Brunswick that’s been compared to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and has been alarming the crap out of some people.
So, yeah. Pretty decent chance Covid isn’t the last pandemic we see in our lifetimes.
within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero
52 posts were merged into an existing topic: A person can be smart, people are dumb: A Cactus containment thread
During oral arguments over a vaccinations mandate for private employers, the liberal justice Sonya Sotomayor said on Friday the US had “over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators”.
trying to get a booster scheduled for my 15-year-old, it’s been a fucking nightmare.
I start with the pharmacy we usually use (Kroger). Go to the website, it says this location has zero available appointments for the next 12 days (that’s as far ahead as it will look). Call the pharmacist to see if we can just do a walk-in, she says only between 8-9 M-F (which obviously isn’t great for a kid who is in high school).
try another location. same deal, zero open appointments (this seems pretty suspect to me).
try walgreens. Nothing over the weekend, only daytime slots during the week.
try CVS. ah, one not too far has one for later in the afternoon (this was yesterday when I started this quest). Fill out the form on the website, get everything submitted, get an email confirmation. Awesome.
four minutes later, junior’s phone gets a text. appointment CANCELLED with no explanation. Nothing else avaiable at that location. Find another location a bit further, with an opening, fill out all the forms (again), submit, yes, you’re confirmed. get email confimration. About this time, the first pharmacy calls and says they cancelled because they don’t have the proper dose for 15-year-olds yet (this also sounds suspect, he was getting pfizer, it’s the same dose for 15-year-olds as adults, isn’t it?)
right after that, I get the CANCELLED text/email from the 2nd pharmacy.
Wife tells me that two of her friends got their kids the booster at the CVS inside a nearby target (this location doesn’t even show up on the CVS website as a possibility). She says they both just walked in and got it.
Pack up junior and head to target. Wait in line behind a boomer who is trying to refinance his mortgage, dude literally takes 14 hours to pick up one prescription, I will never understand what these motherfuckers are doing.
Anyway, finally talk to the pharmacist, she looks at me like I’ve got three heads when I ask about a walk-in, “we have NEVER done walk-in shots here” and she can’t access the schedule at all and she just gave the last shot of the day and she’s not going to open another vial today. Ok great.
get back home, find an appointment at another target for Sunday. Get forms filled out, etc, get the email confirmation, expecting to get the CANCELLED text but it never comes. All seems well.
fast forward to today.
Appointment for today is at 3:30. Around noon, the Target pharmacist calls and says she’s OUT OF VACCINE. No worries, though, she is sending us to another CVS on the other side of town. Pack up junior and get in the car. By the time we get there, it’s about 1:15. There’s a big sign that says “WE ARE CLOSED FROM 1:30 to 2:00 EVERY DAY” and the pharmacist tells us to come back at 2:00, but he got the fucking shot, finally.
USA healthcare #1
Why didn’t you just have him walk in at the first place between 8-9? Sure he is in school but misses like 1 class.
Just curious, maybe I misunderstood.
Am I misunderstanding this, or does it look extremely horrible? This shows hardly any decoupling at all between infections and deaths.
Honestly I think booster mandates are going to be pretty unnecessary after Omicron has ripped through like 60% of the population, like I don’t think it’s justified to tell someone who had COVID a month ago that they have to go get another shot. I have no clue about the science on this but I know that in Israel some experts were raising concerns that too many shots too often could be counterproductive
But some scientists warned that the plan could backfire, because too many shots might cause a sort of immune system fatigue, compromising the body’s ability to fight the coronavirus. A few members of the government’s advisory panel raised that concern with respect to the elderly, according to a written summary of the discussion obtained by The New York Times.
It’s clear that a booster after two shots is helpful in protecting against severe disease, but I don’t think we have any clue if a booster helps after two vax shots and then an infection, so I don’t think it would be right to mandate that.
As far as mask mandates go, they should clearly stay in place at least until the current surge has levelled out, then we’ll see. I think after the surge ends, COVID will be endemic and restrictions become hard to justify. Maybe you can make a case that mask mandates should stay until 0-5 year olds can be vaxxed and there’s better availability of Paxlovid, but if caseloads are stable I would also be perfectly happy to get rid of restrictions entirely. We’ll need to wait and see what endemicity actually looks like in practice.
I’m not gonna lie. I get a kick out of getting my own containment threads. But I’m also posing what I think is a question on a lot of people’s minds. You’re a doctor, right? Don’t you think it’s just a matter of time before most people contract some form of covid? Are people who need to work and engage in life full time going to be able to avoid it forever? If not, what’s the sense with all these continued restrictions?
I agree 100% that people who are likely to get seriously ill should be vaccinated and wear masks. Otherwise, how far we can or should take such an altruistic approach to a virus?
Only hope is that the higher reproduction number means the deaths curve will be shifted sooner than in previous waves. Which, that’s very plausible actually.
Wow, did everyone see this? jman thinks it’s morally justified to shoot people who aren’t wearing masks!
First, you need to understand that your “unnecessary boosters” comment was uninformed and very wrong.
Until then, no one should take your questions seriously.
I never said boosters are useless. I’m saying there’s a point where it becomes unrealistic to force the entire population of earth to get vaccinated every 6 months so your grandmother or 5yo doesn’t get sick. There’s a point where this thing just has to play out
Anyway, this is just my (admittedly) uninformed opinions and what I’ve been thinking about lately. And I’m someone who was talked into conforming changing my ways in the beginning. It should give you an idea of what you’re up against with those who were never willing to budge and to this day will not even ask what they might be wrong about
Best of luck!
MORE GUNS LESS NEEDLES WHO’S WITH ME!
Too soon to say for sure, but looks like new cases in New York may be plateauing.
The yellow bars below are the number of daily new cases, and the height of the entire bar is the number of tests. The gold line is the 7-day moving average of cases per 100k.
Even though there was an uptick in new cases yesterday, the positivity rate has been pretty steady since Dec. 29, which suggests the leveling off of the case count isn’t driven by testing capacity constraints. Also keep in mind that tests can take several days to process, so this chart tracks actual case growth with a lag.
source: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/positive-tests-over-time-region-and-county
