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Coronavirus global pandemic

MoodyBlues said:
I know, it's downright shocking! My cousin, who's on staff at UCLA, was telling me about that yesterday. I was just speechless. (She wasn't talking specifically about UCLA, but healthcare workers in general.) WHAT is wrong with these folks? Of all people, you'd expect them to know better. :rolleyes:

One thing my cousin pointed out is that 'healthcare workers' is a BROAD term; in the case of this pandemic, it's referring to everyone from the loftiest physician to the humble cleaning person. They're all on the front line, so they're included. She said she assumes it's the less educated ranks who are refusing it. She doesn't know any doctor or nurse who's refusing it.

When stories like this are told, they really need to quantify who the respondents are.
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ok that makes me feel a little bit better. articles like that need to point it out better. i'm hoping that all nurses and doctors get vaccinated. but anyone working in a hospital should be vaccinated as well.
 
ocnbrze said:
ok that makes me feel a little bit better. articles like that need to point it out better. i'm hoping that all nurses and doctors get vaccinated. but anyone working in a hospital should be vaccinated as well.
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Exactly. I have a ton of medical professionals in my family (and I was supposed to be one of them!), and not a single one is declining the vaccine, nor are any of their coworkers. So, again, I think the 'healthcare workers' refusing it may fall into the lower level/lower education ranks, like housekeeping staff, not physicians and nurses. At least that's what I hope.
 
I almost forgot to say this: "my" hospital, Methodist Hospital of Southern California (in Arcadia), made the news today! :o

Nurses have been holding a silent protest in front of it all day, to shed light on its dire need for...everything. They talked about their exhaustion, their new (due to COVID) requirement of a 1:6 nurse/patient ratio, which doesn't give them adequate time per patient, etc. One nurse said that he was caring for six patients in the ICU when one flat-lined and had to be resuscitated; if they hadn't been stretched so thin, this may have been prevented.

I can't honestly say that I recognized any of the nurses from my six months there, but I was pretty out of it a lot of that time. Plus with masks, the passage of time and everything...well, no one looks familiar. But that cute young nurse can give me a shot in the butt if he wants! :D
 
The Chief Medical Officer of the LA County Public Health Department, Dr Jeff Gunzenhauser, was on the morning news, dispelling myths about the vaccine. I'm glad, since there's so much confusion what with some 'healthcare workers' refusing to take it.

IF I had had any apprehensions about taking it, after watching his very clear, very accurate, very science-based explanations, they'd be gone.

Among other things, he explained that no one has died from the vaccines; compare that to the many who've died from the disease. Also, the side effects we're hearing about: some of them happened even in the test groups receiving placebo. :eek: He also cleared up the misunderstanding about vaccines causing the illness; they can't. What you may feel after receiving it is simply your body's reaction to the naturally occurring ingredients in it, like mRNA, as they enter your system and it figures out what to do with them. You cannot get COVID-19 from its vaccine, just like you can't get polio from its vaccine or tetanus from its, and so on...

Finally, he said that the next group of people to receive vaccines are aged 75 and up, and that people should talk to their doctors about when they'll be able to get it.

Here's a very helpful site: LA County PH coronavirus info
 
According to the PA dept. of Health, Philadelphia, a city of over 1.5 million has only administered a little over 3k vaccines. The entire county where I live has 420k people and we've administered almost as many. At this point, I'd be inclined to say if the vaccines are in the freezers collecting frost, just give them to anyone who wants them. The faster they get out the faster we slow this thing down.

https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Vaccine.aspx
 
lunatic59 said:
At this point, I'd be inclined to say if the vaccines are in the freezers collecting frost, just give them to anyone who wants them
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Absolutely. And it's really appalling to see how few eligible people are taking it. Have they not noticed that the world shut down for the past year?! What do they think caused that? How do they think it's going to stop? :rolleyes:

Last week a woman proudly announced that she'd jumped the line, and gotten vaccinated before she should have. Then, after a big uproar, the backtracking story was that yes, she did jump the line, but that particular hospital had surplus [that for some reason couldn't be given to some other place...? :thinking:], and rather than throw it out, they gave it to those who wanted it. I'm not sure I fully believe that, but I do agree with the concept as @lunatic59 stated.
 
MoodyBlues said:
And it's really appalling to see how few eligible people are taking it.
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It may be a problem of how many eligible people are getting it. The logistics are unfathomable.

Not to get too political (if it's possible at this point) Operation Warp Speed was just another smoke screen. As I understand it, the vaccines were purchased by the federal govt. and then distributed to the states with little to no direction or resources. So state governments then passed responsibility down the line to county and local governments. Without guidance, you've got the people in charge of street lights and municipal garbage making procedural decisions.

I thought about an analogy and for me it's equivalent of saying that the FHA will provide a house for every citizen, and then simply dropping off a pile of bricks, lumber and cement in each state and saying they are responsible to find and pay for the land and labor.
 
is anybody really surprised on how the vaccines are being distributed? not me.....i knew there were going to be huge hurtles and i don't really have faith in our government(i know....i know) that is all i will say on that.

this makes it harder for people who are already hesitant on taking the vaccine. my question is after the frontline workers and the vulnerable are taking care of, how will the rest of us will get the vaccine? do we go to our family doctor? or head straight to the pharmacy or some where else to get it?
 
ocnbrze said:
is anybody really surprised on how the vaccines are being distributed? not me.....i knew there were going to be huge hurtles and i don't really have faith in our government(i know....i know) that is all i will say on that.

this makes it harder for people who are already hesitant on taking the vaccine. my question is after the frontline workers and the vulnerable are taking care of, how will the rest of us will get the vaccine? do we go to our family doctor? or head straight to the pharmacy or some where else to get it?
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I would guess (hope?) at first it would be at hospitals and pharmacies before getting to a private physicians' office simply based on the problems with transporting and handling. Honestly I would handling it like boarding an aircraft .... priority members first (frontline and at-risk) then first class (like first responders, teachers, essential workers) followed by business class and then general boarding. Nothing will be perfect for something of this scale, but having a little chaos at vaccination sites would be better than people not getting vaccinated at all, either because they are afraid iof it or the logistics don't make it conveniently available.

Sadly I believe that if getting the vaccine requires even minor inconvenience a lot of people won't get it simply because they don't want to be bothered.
 
I know this varies from state to state, but up here there are protocols for everything including remaining doses. So for example, you have to defrost doses in quantities of 20. Lets say a pharmacy preps 60 doses for a nursing home clinic but only have 55 people to give them to. There is a protocol to make sure those remaining 5 doses don't get wasted and if possible go to a higher or priority person. It's this case that allowed my wife to get one. She's a pharmacist, so near the top, but otherwise would not have gotten one this early. She was notified the evening of New Year's eve and had to get to the site on New Years morning because the dose would either expire of be given to the next person in line. It's a gap I hadn't thought of but I'm glad someone did.
 
lunatic59 said:
Sadly I believe that if getting the vaccine requires even minor inconvenience a lot of people won't get it simply because they don't want to be bothered.
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I think that depends a lot on where you live. Here in SoCal, the car-culture center of the universe!, we've been doing massive testing using a drive-up model. Dodger Stadium is the world's largest testing site. I just saw on the news that they've reconfigured the waiting lines, as people living in the area were complaining about the onslaught of traffic, which clogged up their streets. They showed an aerial view of cars waiting, numerous lanes deep, and it went on forever. I'm guessing that once the vaccine is available for all, it will be offered using a similar drive-up model.

UPDATE: they just showed it again, so here's a glimpse of Dodger Stadium's testing site:

DodgerStadium_010421.png


@ocnbrze, according to the doctor I saw on the news yesterday(?), we should contact our doctors once we're in the eligible group. I think people who don't have their own doctors will be able to get it through public health venues, but I really don't know for sure.
 
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A doctor in the UK today reported that some of his priority patients are refusing the vaccine when they learn that it's the Pfizer-Biontech one because they "want to wait for the British one"...

Not only putting themselves at risk because of the delay in getting vaccinated, but the one they want to wait for is less effective. Yet more proof that nationalistic bullshit (of the sort we've had too much of from brexit fanatics) rots the brain.

(BTW when I say "less effective", please don't ask me how effective it is because the data are muddy at best as they include an unrepresentative subsample who deviated from the regime in 2 respects and which some people are desperately trying to reinterpret post hoc. Drug companies are frequently untrustworthy with testing, but there are people involved in this who should know better. Though to be fair on the most pessimistic reading it's still effective enough to be useful, and at a fraction of the price of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and much easier to store and distribute it's likely to be more important than those ones globally).
 
To be fair, even the least effective of the vaccines do show an great reduction in mortality if administered. Personally, I'll take whichever vaccine becomes available to me first. Unfortunately, all the political drama here is slowing the process even more. Operation "Warped Mind" takes precedence over Warp Speed. :rolleyes:
 
As predicted, SoCal is gearing up for drive-thru vaccination centers. Dodger Stadium--the world's largest testing center--will now become the world's largest vaccination center. The picture I posted earlier is representative of how it will look in terms of incoming patients. They're shutting down the testing, converting it for vaccinations, and I believe they're going to re-open later this week.

Also, a sobering stat: here in LA county, ~500 people die each day from COVID-19. For those who still insist this [doesn't exist] [is a hoax] [has been overblown] [isn't deadly] etc., what do YOU think those 500 are actually dying from? :thinking:
 
The 'happiest place on Earth' is about to become another super-vaccination center. Disneyland announced that it's preparing to provide drive-thru vaccinations, much like Dodger Stadium. Nice!

I'm happy that the Disney folks have decided to do this. Disneyland has always been, hands-down, my favorite [of a lot of favorites] place, and I never imagined it would be closed due to a pandemic, or anything else. I mean, growing up here, with the ever-present chance of earthquakes, of course I'd thought about it closing for a day or two, following a major earthquake, to make sure everything was safe, but THIS? :o
 
MoodyBlues said:
The 'happiest place on Earth' is about to become another super-vaccination center. Disneyland announced that it's preparing to provide drive-thru vaccinations, much like Dodger Stadium. Nice!

I'm happy that the Disney folks have decided to do this. Disneyland has always been, hands-down, my favorite [of a lot of favorites] place, and I never imagined it would be closed due to a pandemic, or anything else. I mean, growing up here, with the ever-present chance of earthquakes, of course I'd thought about it closing for a day or two, following a major earthquake, to make sure everything was safe, but THIS? :eek:
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Could I get vaccinated by Cinderella? That would be fun!
 
There's so much conflicting information these days about the vaccines, my head is spinning! :o

One day I hear that I'm now eligible for it...then, no, sorry, you're not after all.

I called my primary doc's office the other day; I assumed they'd have the vaccine. Nope. They said that due to storage issues, they wouldn't be stocking the vaccine, and to get it from one of the public places. Really? Me? I don't mean that like a snob--I mean that like I'm severely immunosuppressed and can't risk being exposed to COVID. Now I need to call my insurance provider to see if they can send a nurse here to give it to me. They've done that for other issues recently.

My live-in helper went back to work full-time at her old job last year (since, thankfully, I don't need care 24/7 any more)--for my veterinarian. I assumed they were considered front-line workers. Nope. They were notified about two or three weeks ago that they could get them, and then something happened and that fell through, and now they're being told the same thing as me: sorry, no.

WTF?!

I was contacted recently by Waste Management, who handles Arcadia's trash/recycling pickups; they said that due to COVID, they're experiencing a staffing shortage. They explained what they're doing and how my service will be affected. It's been a little bit of a pain, but nothing compared to what their employees with COVID-19 are dealing with, so I'm fine with it.

Anyone else having issues/problems/whatever? :thinking:
 
I've had two friends get the first shot of the Moderna vaccine -- both are in the medical professions. As far as I can tell, only frontline medical workers and people over 75 can get it here (PA) right now. But, my 89 year-old mother-in-law recently fell and broke her wrist. While she was in the hospital they told her she could not give her the vaccine even though she was eligible. Not sure the exact reason, or even if that was accurate. She has a tendency to remember things the way she wants them to be rather than what is actually said.
 
How's your MIL doing now, @lunatic59? Did her wrist need surgery?

I can totally relate to how she remembers things. Brings back exasperating fond memories of my mom. :rolleyes:

Here, today, we're told 65+ can get the vaccine. But they said that last week, too, and then it fell through. I still don't know when/where I can get mine.
 
She's fine. She's a tough old bird. It was a spiral fracture so they had to put in a plate, but she says there's no pain. There's very little bruising and the stitches are barely visible. That's after about 8 days. It's really the knees that are the long-term problem and the reason why she fell in the first place. :(

Anyone 65 or older is the second phase of the rollout for PA, but we have no idea when that might be.
 
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