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JennyD

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I'm guessing the reason for including 16-17 yr olds is to hopefully get everyone on college campuses vaccinated before next fall at the latest. 16 is usually about the youngest allowed to live in campus housing, and most students who do even part time DE fall into that category. I'm assuming that by the time DD is eligible, there will be more data out for that age group, since studies are continuing. 

 

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re prioritization different across states

3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

I believe most--or at least many--states are setting their own order of priority, so it's not possible to make blanket statements as if the whole country will be vaccinated in the same order following CDC recommendations.

This is my understanding as well.

My 80+ mother, who lives in a congregant (not nursing) facility and is other than age in pretty good health, received quasi-official notice yesterday from state public health authorities in MA that her facility has been identified as eligible for vaccine that they hope to be able to provide in early January.

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I think that right now, the question would be 16 and 17 year olds who are in one of the high priority categories.  That would include those working in nursing homes or assisted living (a pretty common high school job where I live), or who have severe health issues and are living in nursing homes, or long term acute care settings themselves. 

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My county just released its initial plan and they are starting with nursing home staff. A good portion of our infections and deaths has come from nursing homes, so this makes sense. They will then move on to ICU/frontline staff before flipping back to nursing home residents. After that, it'll role out other medical staff and to high risk people. 

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7 hours ago, Corraleno said:

I don't know about Alabama, but more than 10,000 elderly nursing home residents in Oregon will be among the first in the state to receive the vaccine next week. That is in line with CDC recommendations that list front-line HCWs and nursing home residents as equal priority in Phase 1a. 

I can't find anything on the CDC website that says 18-30 year olds should get higher priority than 55-64 year olds — do you have a link for that? Given that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines provoked a strong immune response in older people, which is unusual for a vaccine, combined with the fact that the US only ordered enough of those vaccines for less than a third of the population, I hope they don't "spend" those vaccines on 18-30 yr olds while 55-64 year olds, whose risk of death is much higher, end up not only waiting longer but getting a less effective vaccine for their age group.

I went to the NYT vaccine calculator that was published this week.  You put in your state (and Corraleno- I think the states do have different priorities--- in Alabama, the workers at the nursing homes and assisted living will get the vaccines before the residents-- that is because they are the ones who are bringing in the infections).  And I agree with you=  they need to actually divide up the ages more.  Because you are completely right- as it is, many if not most 55-64 year olds will get the vaccine last.

Though I think my dh will get it sooner since there is talk here in Alabama that VA is getting it first and first the staff and then veterans.

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18 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

 

The severe allergies could be easily dealt with by recommending that people with severe allergies pre-dose with Benadryl and also get their shot in a doctor's office, clinic or hospital where there are medical personnel who can deal with any anyphalcoid reaction.

 

I'm glad the Benadryl strategy has worked for you in the past.  I know it wouldn't have been sufficient for my kid with life threatening allergies to medication.  I think it really depends on the type of allergy, and the kinds of reactions the person has had in the past.  

Heck, even my environmental allergy kids, whose allergies are not severe and has never had anaphylaxis, doesn't get 100% relief from Benadryl.  

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2 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

I'm glad the Benadryl strategy has worked for you in the past.  I know it wouldn't have been sufficient for my kid with life threatening allergies to medication.  I think it really depends on the type of allergy, and the kinds of reactions the person has had in the past.  

Heck, even my environmental allergy kids, whose allergies are not severe and has never had anaphylaxis, doesn't get 100% relief from Benadryl.  

I am not sure it was only Benadryl,  It may have been Benadryl and steroids,  I will be talking with my physicians as to what to do.  I mean I need to know if I should stop any medications to help the vaccine or add any to minimize side effects.  And they did medicate me to stop an anyphalactic reaction.  That was over 35 years ago and in a hospital and I can't really remember what they gave.

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1 minute ago, TravelingChris said:

I am not sure it was only Benadryl,  It may have been Benadryl and steroids,  I will be talking with my physicians as to what to do.  I mean I need to know if I should stop any medications to help the vaccine or add any to minimize side effects.  And they did medicate me to stop an anyphalactic reaction.  That was over 35 years ago and in a hospital and I can't really remember what they gave.

I think it's complicated.  Even if steroids prevented a reaction, I don't know whether pretreating with steroids would stop the body from mounting an immune response to the vaccine, for example.  I know that when my kid was younger and his first parents were making decisions about routine vaccinations, in addition to not giving live vaccines, they delayed other vaccines until he was off steroids, so that they would work better.  

I also don't know how the anaphylaxis/anaphylactoid distinction makes a difference in treatment here.  Anaphylactoid reactions, as I understand it, involve the innate immune system, while anaphylaxis involve the adaptive immune system, but the endpoint is pretty much the same.  I don't know whether that means the treatment is the same or not.  

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On Coronacast they mentioned that is maybe the polyethylene glycol or macrogol that is causing the reactions.  It’s known to cause anaphylactic reactions in some people.  It’s also used in some other vaccines.  I guess if the specific ingredient is identified there may be a better chance of knowing which people are likely to have a reaction.  

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There's a podcast called More or Less, which is about the statistics of news.  They asked an actuary to talk about the UK vaccination cohorts - the originally-decided ones that can't necessarily be achieved because of the cold storage problem.

The first one, care home residents and staff, is around 1% of the population but has represented  36% of the deaths. The second, other over eighties and front line health care staff, is 7% of the population but has represented 30% of the deaths (almost all of  them in the elderly). I had a general idea of the numbers but hearing this was really stark. By vaccinating 8% (the calculations were deliberately broad brush, so assumed 100% effectiveness and duplicate infection patterns) you could potentially prevent  2/3rds of deaths.

Of course, this calculation doesn't include preventing Long Covid, which often affects younger people. But no one knows for sure yet if the vaccines prevent that.

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6 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

There's a podcast called More or Less, which is about the statistics of news.  They asked an actuary to talk about the UK vaccination cohorts - the originally-decided ones that can't necessarily be achieved because of the cold storage problem.

The first one, care home residents and staff, is around 1% of the population but has represented  36% of the deaths. The second, other over eighties and front line health care staff, is 7% of the population but has represented 30% of the deaths (almost all of  them in the elderly). I had a general idea of the numbers but hearing this was really stark. By vaccinating 8% (the calculations were deliberately broad brush, so assumed 100% effectiveness and duplicate infection patterns) you could potentially prevent  2/3rds of deaths.

Of course, this calculation doesn't include preventing Long Covid, which often affects younger people. But no one knows for sure yet if the vaccines prevent that.

That sounds very promising if it works like that.  

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How the US, UK and Canada Will Roll Out the Covid Vaccine https://nyti.ms/345KP0i

Much as one would expect, more or less centralised. 

The US has pre-ordered much less Pfizer vaccine as a percentage of population than have the other two - Canada 100%, UK 30%, US 15%. All the countries have ordered from many makers.

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10 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKBN28M0KZ?__twitter_impression=true
 

Sinopharm vaccine trial in Peru has been halted over an adverse event.  I think this is one of the more traditional type vaccines.

There was similar bad news about adverse effects from the Australian vaccine and it was scrapped yesterday.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-australia-scrap-750m-project-false-hiv-test-results-2020-12

 

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11 minutes ago, mathnerd said:

There was similar bad news about adverse effects from the Australian vaccine and it was scrapped yesterday.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-australia-scrap-750m-project-false-hiv-test-results-2020-12

 

Yep the University of Queensland one was causing false positives for HIV.  Disappointing because otherwise it was looking quite good.

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On 12/11/2020 at 12:40 PM, Ausmumof3 said:

How many GPs would have the required freezer storage facilities?  Or would that be less important provided they got stocks daily?  But yes staffing will be a problem.  I believe we have some training going on to try to deal with that.  Will see what I can find tomorrow.

In Aus we have a lot of immunisation clinics.  One is next to our local library.  I wonder how common that approach to immunisation is in other countries.  (It’s within a couple of minutes of a major hospital).

The plan in the UK is for practices to get the vaccine from their hub hospital (which already has the necessary type of freezer) regularly enough that they can use their standard fridge system on site.

The key issue in the UK is that the 15-minute rule means a vaccine is a triple appointment (standard appointments are 10 minutes, and it is unlikely a doctor would feel safe about accounting for the time taken to queue safely, explain the protocol and do the actual injection in under 5 minutes). That means it would only be possible to do 2 vaccinations per room, per hour, and that room cannot be used for other tasks the general practices are expected to provide.

Even on the proposed contract of 12-hour days (itself a problem because practices are being told to have as many staff as possible work from home due to the pandemic - telemedicine has really taken off this year), assuming staffing can be found for breaks (not a given due to this alredy being 2 hours more of opening than the standard practice contract), that's still only 24 vaccinations per room, per day. When the alternative is to see 48 people for other matters (standard contract, assuming people get 1 hour of break and have 1 hour worth of no-shows in a day), and there's a minimum-staffing rule in place, it's easy to ask the hospitals to make other arrangements (even before this, stadiums and large conference halls were being organised to allow mass socially-distanced vaccination to go ahead).

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1 hour ago, ieta_cassiopeia said:

The plan in the UK is for practices to get the vaccine from their hub hospital (which already has the necessary type of freezer) regularly enough that they can use their standard fridge system on site.

The key issue in the UK is that the 15-minute rule means a vaccine is a triple appointment (standard appointments are 10 minutes, and it is unlikely a doctor would feel safe about accounting for the time taken to queue safely, explain the protocol and do the actual injection in under 5 minutes). That means it would only be possible to do 2 vaccinations per room, per hour, and that room cannot be used for other tasks the general practices are expected to provide.

Even on the proposed contract of 12-hour days (itself a problem because practices are being told to have as many staff as possible work from home due to the pandemic - telemedicine has really taken off this year), assuming staffing can be found for breaks (not a given due to this alredy being 2 hours more of opening than the standard practice contract), that's still only 24 vaccinations per room, per day. When the alternative is to see 48 people for other matters (standard contract, assuming people get 1 hour of break and have 1 hour worth of no-shows in a day), and there's a minimum-staffing rule in place, it's easy to ask the hospitals to make other arrangements (even before this, stadiums and large conference halls were being organised to allow mass socially-distanced vaccination to go ahead).

Thanks for explaining that.

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3 hours ago, ieta_cassiopeia said:

The plan in the UK is for practices to get the vaccine from their hub hospital (which already has the necessary type of freezer) regularly enough that they can use their standard fridge system on site.

The key issue in the UK is that the 15-minute rule means a vaccine is a triple appointment (standard appointments are 10 minutes, and it is unlikely a doctor would feel safe about accounting for the time taken to queue safely, explain the protocol and do the actual injection in under 5 minutes). That means it would only be possible to do 2 vaccinations per room, per hour, and that room cannot be used for other tasks the general practices are expected to provide.

Even on the proposed contract of 12-hour days (itself a problem because practices are being told to have as many staff as possible work from home due to the pandemic - telemedicine has really taken off this year), assuming staffing can be found for breaks (not a given due to this alredy being 2 hours more of opening than the standard practice contract), that's still only 24 vaccinations per room, per day. When the alternative is to see 48 people for other matters (standard contract, assuming people get 1 hour of break and have 1 hour worth of no-shows in a day), and there's a minimum-staffing rule in place, it's easy to ask the hospitals to make other arrangements (even before this, stadiums and large conference halls were being organised to allow mass socially-distanced vaccination to go ahead).

In NYC they are talking about drive-through vaccination (Dr. Daniel Griffin - TWIV updated #40).

Emily

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56 minutes ago, EmilyGF said:

In NYC they are talking about drive-through vaccination (Dr. Daniel Griffin - TWIV updated #40).

Emily

We did drive through flu shots this year but with this being a new vaccine you would hope that they would take a few minutes to observe the patient for adverse reactions before releasing them to the highway. 

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39 minutes ago, sassenach said:

We did drive through flu shots this year but with this being a new vaccine you would hope that they would take a few minutes to observe the patient for adverse reactions before releasing them to the highway. 

I saw a thing on the news about the proposed drive thru clinics, although I don't remember what state it was. The way it was planned was to have a line for the vaccine and then an area where people would park for awhile (15 minutes? or maybe it was 30--unfortunately I don't remember). A paramedic would be there to monitor and deal with any reactions.

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10 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

Let's hope. Is there any Long Covid from apparently  asymptomatic cases? People who had no symptoms at the time but damage was revealed later?

Yes. I was just looking into this yesterday, actually, because my son's wind symphony is moving from outside to inside rehearsals (which he will not be attending). Plenty of long term lung damage in asymptomatic people. I found multiple studies that found the same thing (so maybe not a good idea to expose a bunch of serious young musicians who play wind instruments to it, but what do I know? 🙄https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200811/asymptomatic-covid-silent-but-maybe-not-harmless

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During the season I am most likely to have bad allergic reactions because my allergens tend to be in the air and food cross contamination is more likely, I take zyrtec 2x/day, an H2 blocker (used to be ranitidine, now famotidine 2X day) and a traditional antihistamine at night (Hydroxine or Benedryl). The idea is to give me, hopefully, enough extra support to avoid my going into an epipen needed reaction spontaneously just by walking into a shopping mall, airport, or grocery store. It won't let me actually choose to eat something I'm allergic to without reacting, but it means that if I accidentally get a small quantity because they ran a batch of Pumpkin Spice oreos on the line right before they ran the regular ones, I might have a few days of being miserable vs needing to go to the ER. I don't think that it would be a good idea to trust premedication for anyone who has a known allergy to vaccine components, or has had bad reactions to vaccines in the past, but it might be enough for those of us who have completely unrelated allergies and tend to have overactive immune systems under the best of times. 

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1 hour ago, kokotg said:

Yes. I was just looking into this yesterday, actually, because my son's wind symphony is moving from outside to inside rehearsals (which he will not be attending). Plenty of long term lung damage in asymptomatic people. I found multiple studies that found the same thing (so maybe not a good idea to expose a bunch of serious young musicians who play wind instruments to it, but what do I know? 🙄https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200811/asymptomatic-covid-silent-but-maybe-not-harmless

Those don’t seem to be long-term outcomes. Just a scan during the infection?

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34 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Those don’t seem to be long-term outcomes. Just a scan during the infection?

The part on heart damage talks about "recently recovered" patients, including asymptomatic, but doesn't how how recently. But, yeah, it doesn't say when the Diamond Princess study was done--I mean, presumably not actually ON the cruise ship. One I was looking at yesterday was showing  lung damage in 75% of patients after 60 days, I believe, and still more than 50% after 90 days (I may have the number of days wrong; I'd have to find it again), but I don't think it distinguished between symptomatic and asymptomatic (and, of course, studies on asymptomatic people are tough because most of them don't ever know they're positive. Which is why the Diamond Princess population is a great one to look at....I'll dig around a little to see if anyone's still following them and looking at long term effects). 

ETA: the large study on long term lung effects I found is actually following up on hospitalized cases, so definitely not asymptomatic. So ignore me, except the part where I'm mad about indoor wind symphony rehearsals! 

 

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23 minutes ago, kokotg said:

The part on heart damage talks about "recently recovered" patients, including asymptomatic, but doesn't how how recently. But, yeah, it doesn't say when the Diamond Princess study was done--I mean, presumably not actually ON the cruise ship. One I was looking at yesterday was showing  lung damage in 75% of patients after 60 days, I believe, and still more than 50% after 90 days (I may have the number of days wrong; I'd have to find it again), but I don't think it distinguished between symptomatic and asymptomatic (and, of course, studies on asymptomatic people are tough because most of them don't ever know they're positive. Which is why the Diamond Princess population is a great one to look at....I'll dig around a little to see if anyone's still following them and looking at long term effects). 

Yeah, it'd be interesting to have long-term studies. I haven't seen anything like that on asymptomatic patients. 

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On 12/13/2020 at 2:29 PM, sassenach said:

We did drive through flu shots this year but with this being a new vaccine you would hope that they would take a few minutes to observe the patient for adverse reactions before releasing them to the highway. 

If there was somewhere for people who received the vaccine to park for the "waiting" time, then a drive-through practise could work well... ...as long as there's a plan to reunite cars with any driver who needs transport to hospital.

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21 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

The vaccine rolled out today in the United States.  On the news this morning they said by late Feb or March people could just go to their Walgreens and get the vaccine.  

I'd certainly be delighted if that turns out to be the case; but given all I understand about currently available supplies and constraints on both vaccine inputs and distribution logistics, I expect a substantially more drawn out process.

If my 80+ year old mother and FIL get vaccinated by February, my asthmatic husband by May, and the rest of us by summer...

Dayenu.

I will be very grateful. Back in August that would have been beyond my most optimistic hopes.

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Following up on the discussion of its being inevitable that some old people will die shortly after receiving the vaccine, I heard an actuary talking about the figures: in the UK, 365,000 people over 80 die each year, with a larger proportion in winter.  So more than 1,000 people in that group will die each day over the next three months.

Edited by Laura Corin
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It just occurred to me last night to start worrying about how my husband's immunosuppressant that he takes for psoriasis will affect things with the vaccine (he's a teacher so should be able to get it on the early side). Googling tells me he can take it but, if it's like other vaccines, it will be less effective for him because of his meds. Well, crap. Now we have to try to figure out if it makes sense for him to stop taking it for a couple of months before and/or after getting the vaccine or not. 

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47 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

Following up on the discussion of it being inevitable that some old people will die shortly after receiving the vaccine, I heard an actuary talking about the figures: in the UK, 365,000 people over 80 die each year, with a larger proportion in winter.  So more than 1,000 people in that group will die each day over the next three months.

@ieta_cassiopeia you might be interested in the show - Radio 4 or podcast - called How to Vaccinate the World.

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1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

I'd certainly be delighted if that turns out to be the case; but given all I understand about currently available supplies and constraints on both vaccine inputs and distribution logistics, I expect a substantially more drawn out process.

If my 80+ year old mother and FIL get vaccinated by February, my asthmatic husband by May, and the rest of us by summer...

Dayenu.

I will be very grateful. Back in August that would have been beyond my most optimistic hopes.

Found the  clip

It was on the Today show today.  It was HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who said that you would be able to walk into any CVS or Walgreens and get the vaccine. 

HHS secretary Alex Azar to Americans: ‘Please get the vaccine’ (today.com)

 

As the first shipments of coronavirus vaccine roll out across the country, Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, tells TODAY, “We are sending out 2.9 million doses of vaccine … we hope we’ll see as much of that used as humanly possible this week.” He says he anticipates that “by late February, going into March” the distribution will be “like a flu vaccination program.” He adds: “It’s such a historic day as we hopefully see the light at the end of the tunnel,” and assures skeptics that the vaccine is safe.  Dec. 14, 2020

 

Edited by mommyoffive
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55 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

Following up on the discussion of its being inevitable that some old people will die shortly after receiving the vaccine, I heard an actuary talking about the figures: in the UK, 365,000 people over 80 die each year, with a larger proportion in winter.  So more than 1,000 people in that group will die each day over the next three months.

Right. This is what statistics is for 🙂. Otherwise, it's very hard to tell "random events" from "vaccine effects" on average. 

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re speed of deployment

7 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

Food the clip

It was on the Today show today.  It was HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who said that you would be able to walk into any CVS or Walgreens and get the vaccine. 

HHS secretary Alex Azar to Americans: ‘Please get the vaccine’ (today.com)

 

As the first shipments of coronavirus vaccine roll out across the country, Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, tells TODAY, “We are sending out 2.9 million doses of vaccine … we hope we’ll see as much of that used as humanly possible this week.” He says he anticipates that “by late February, going into March” the distribution will be “like a flu vaccination program.” He adds: “It’s such a historic day as we hopefully see the light at the end of the tunnel,” and assures skeptics that the vaccine is safe.  Dec. 14, 2020

 

As I said, I very much hope for a speedy widescale deployment.

2.9 million vaccine doses is sufficient (with a 2-dose protocol) to vaccinate 1.5 million people. There are 330 million Americans, so currently available supply is not quite sufficient to vaccinate one half of one percent of us.

There will be more coming!  of course.  And I cannot overstate how elated I am that we're in a position to vaccinate even one half of one percent of us in 2020 -- as I said, the timeline has accelerated beyond my wildest hopes.  As Azar says, it *is* such a historic day.  There *is* a light at the end of the tunnel.

But global demand is huge; the vaccine effort that happened to play out earliest is not one of the ones that the US placed a big early bet on (the US contract with Pfizer is for a total of only 100M doses/ 50M people; and other nations have since leapt to snap up remaining supplies); the US is therefore not first in global line for this one; there are input supply constraints so capacity cannot simply be expanded now that its use is approved; the vaccine that happened to play out earliest has considerable delivery logistics as well. 

We'll get there. I hope we get there within a few months. I'll be grateful if we get there within a year.  Dayenu.

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1 hour ago, mommyoffive said:

The vaccine rolled out today in the United States.  On the news this morning they said by late Feb or March people could just go to their Walgreens and get the vaccine.  

Azar said that the distribution system would be "like the flu shot" (available through Walgreens or whatever) by the end of March, not that everyone who wants one can get one that that point. He said they hope to have "100 million people vaccinated by the end of March," which is less than 1/3 of the population. If they stick with the current priority list, that's HCWs and nursing homes first, then essential workers, then over 65s and those with comorbidities. So if Azar is correct on those numbers, even the high risk folks may not be able to get it by the end of March. (FWIW, I disagree with prioritizing young healthy workers with no comorbidities over people who are much more likely to die.)

The US has only ordered enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for 150 million people anyway, and some of that will not be available until the second quarter. The Astra Zeneca results aren't looking that great, Johnson & Johnson are still recruiting for phase 3 studies, and Novavax is just starting their phase 3 trials, so it's likely to be summer before anyone who wants the vaccine can just walk into a Walgreens and get it

 

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57 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

It's an interesting bet. The question is whether the vaccine prevents spreading enough for this to actually be more effective. 

I think there is also an assumption that prioritizing "essential workers" will benefit the economy more than keeping a bunch of elderly and/or unhealthy people alive. Vaccinating the 1.4 million  nursing home residents in the first group should cause a significant drop in the death rate, which will encourage people to feel like the pandemic is almost over and go back to life as usual. So the next priority is protecting the supply chain by vaccinating meat processors and delivery drivers and grocery workers, etc., while the 50 million people 65 and older just isolate at home and wait their turn. That's my somewhat cynical take on it anyway.

ETA: Since we have no data at this point on whether the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines even stop transmission, it seems like the economy is the main reason for choosing workers over those who are more likely to die. And if it turns out that the vaccines don't stop transmission, that decision is going to be a total disaster.

Edited by Corraleno
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8 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I think there is also an assumption that prioritizing "essential workers" will benefit the economy more than keeping a bunch of elderly and/or unhealthy people alive. Vaccinating the 1.4 million  nursing home residents in the first group should cause a significant drop in the death rate, which will encourage people to feel like the pandemic is almost over and go back to life as usual. So the next priority is protecting the supply chain by vaccinating meat processors and delivery drivers and grocery workers, etc., while the 50 million people 65 and older just isolate at home and wait their turn. That's my somewhat cynical take on it anyway.

I think you are probably right.

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34 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I think there is also an assumption that prioritizing "essential workers" will benefit the economy more than keeping a bunch of elderly and/or unhealthy people alive. Vaccinating the 1.4 million  nursing home residents in the first group should cause a significant drop in the death rate, which will encourage people to feel like the pandemic is almost over and go back to life as usual. So the next priority is protecting the supply chain by vaccinating meat processors and delivery drivers and grocery workers, etc., while the 50 million people 65 and older just isolate at home and wait their turn. That's my somewhat cynical take on it anyway.

ETA: Since we have no data at this point on whether the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines even stop transmission, it seems like the economy is the main reason for choosing workers over those who are more likely to die. And if it turns out that the vaccines don't stop transmission, that decision is going to be a total disaster.

You may be right about that. I'm really hoping that vaccinating the essential workers really does decrease spread and drives rates down, though. 

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It will be interesting to see how they define "essential worker" and where they draw the line between essential and nonessential industries, and then essential and nonessential workers within those industries. I would be 100% in favor of prioritizing teachers right after HCWs and nursing home residents, but if it means the CEO of a delivery company who's working remotely from his ski cabin gets the vaccine before my 85 yr old parents who haven't seen their children or grandchildren since March, then I'll be seriously pissed. 

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re logic of how "They" are prioritizing who gets the vaccine when

1 hour ago, Corraleno said:

I think there is also an assumption that prioritizing "essential workers" will benefit the economy more than keeping a bunch of elderly and/or unhealthy people alive. Vaccinating the 1.4 million  nursing home residents in the first group should cause a significant drop in the death rate, which will encourage people to feel like the pandemic is almost over and go back to life as usual. So the next priority is protecting the supply chain by vaccinating meat processors and delivery drivers and grocery workers, etc., while the 50 million people 65 and older just isolate at home and wait their turn. That's my somewhat cynical take on it anyway.

ETA: Since we have no data at this point on whether the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines even stop transmission, it seems like the economy is the main reason for choosing workers over those who are more likely to die. And if it turns out that the vaccines don't stop transmission, that decision is going to be a total disaster.

I think I'm about equally cynical, but it seems to me that those essential meatpackers and produce pickers and grocery workers are ALREADY being coerced into their jobs WITHOUT meaningful protections of any kind, so arguably this is better.

Also that  the "They" doing the prioritization seems to be state level decisionmakers, for whatever that's worth.

 

43 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

It will be interesting to see how they define "essential worker" and where they draw the line between essential and nonessential industries, and then essential and nonessential workers within those industries. I would be 100% in favor of prioritizing teachers right after HCWs and nursing home residents, but if it means the CEO of a delivery company who's working remotely from his ski cabin gets the vaccine before my 85 yr old parents who haven't seen their children or grandchildren since March, then I'll be seriously pissed. 

Agreed.

 

 

[As a total apropos-of-nothing-in-this-thread aside, I don't think of the COVID risk of delivery drivers as anything within shouting distance of meatpackers, food processing plant workers, indoor grocery workers, and other employees of "essential" supply chain, retail and food establishments. Delivery drivers spend the bulk of their time alone on the truck; and largely leave their deliveries on the stoop or right inside the foyer of congregant apartment buildings. As IRL jobs go, it's on the safer end of the COVID risk spectrum.

Similarly the WalMart employee quickly running curbside carts out to people's vehicles has substantially less exposure risk than the one inside all day running the IRL cash register. We really do *help employees* to minimize exposure risk by availing of delivery and curbside services; it's nothing to feel indulgent or guilty about.)

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I believe my state put teachers, meat packing employees, and utility operators in phase 1c of their vaccine roll out plans. The latter two stayed working in person, in general, during the whole pandemic but the governor really wants all kids doing in person learning so teachers are near the front of the line here. (I'm in a non-shut down state. No statewide mask mandate. In my rural town, we do have a mask mandate right now, and all PreK-12 students are in person full time right now.)

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