Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

xpost - Exactly. I mean, might as well wish for world peace while I'm at it, but even an anticipated window based on factors X, Y and Z would go a long way.

arizona joining alaska and missisipi from wednesday

BREAKING: Arizona opening up vaccines to everyone starting Wednesday.

This will be for those 16 and up at the state run sites in Maricopa, Pima, Yuma. pic.twitter.com/RQ9KMA0xU7

— Nicole Grigg (@NicoleSGrigg) March 22, 2021

california aiming for the end of next month (i think it's likely they'll open up sooner than that tbh)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/California-poised-to-make-vaccines-available-to-16039784.php

NEWS: All Chicago residents are eligible to get vaccines at the United Ceter if they live in 60608, 60609, 60619, 60620, 60621, 60623, 60624, 60628, 60629, 60632, 60636, 60639, 60644, 60649, 60651, 60652, 60653. Call 312-746-4835

— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) March 22, 2021

caek, I understand your intentions but "earliest date of eligibility" doesn't mean all that much in terms of when everyone in that group will get their shots.

Phase 1B in Illinois started on January 25th and Chicago is still working on the backlog for that phase, which is why they are not expanding eligibility similarly to the rest of the state. So yeah, there were folks who became eligible two months ago but still haven't had their first dose, which I would say indicates a fairly large window within the eligibility groups.

To assuage some concern, a friend just posted a picture of a new mass vaccination site in a neighboring town, which supposedly "will open later this week and will start administering 1000 vaccines per day, ramping up quickly to 3000 per day."
https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/164370944_10158256578751094_1042401124208855774_o.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=DYBui1QRPTIAX8inpIC&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=15089141a43e90a2256463ab7e4e4213&oe=607E3758

That's something good to see! Let's hope that is up and running at maximum capacity asap.

I guess the Gov was there for a press conference this morning?

1. Crowded House, I have long enjoyed your music but read. the. room. Crowded is exactly the wrong place to be rn.

2. I realized way too late that I was technically eligible for 1A (caregiver to disabled child) but never acted on it, and it hasn't helped even one bit as far as appointments go.

Sorry to hear that YMP. I was hoping there was a way to somehow prioritize people from previous groups that hadn't gotten an appointment yet, for whatever reason. Disappointing that there isn't.

That's why I fear for appointments once the floodgates get thrown open for everyone next month. With Chicago holding back on all the incremental eligibility increases in the rest of the state, demand is going to be absolutely insane.

caek, I understand your intentions but "earliest date of eligibility" doesn't mean all that much in terms of when everyone in that group will get their shots.

1. Crowded House, I have long enjoyed your music but read. the. room. Crowded is exactly the wrong place to be rn.

They postponed the opening dates because that city had a one-week lockdown after three cases of the British variant were found at the border. The entire country has had one (1) death in the last six months. California has five times as many people die each day as they have had in the last 360 days.

Texas, Indiana and Georgia announced Tuesday that residents 16 years and older will be eligible for Covid-19 vaccinations starting Thursday for Georgia residents, Monday for Texans and on March 31 for Indianans...
Utah, for example, will open eligibility to all adults on Wednesday. And Tennessee announced last week that all residents 16 and older would be eligible for vaccinations starting April 5.

(xp) They've been having gigs and rugby matches and what have you in NZ for ages.

just went to a boro park ice cream place and it was like walking into 2019: unmasked kids everywhere and virtually everyone in front of and behind the counter chin strapping or just ignoring wearing a mask entirely. maybe 200 people in there!

Stoked for the fourth wave!!!

Borough Park is kind of not known for taking covid seriously enough

More from last night's wedding in Brooklyn, NY.

Some context:
The groom is the youngest son of the Bobov Rebbe, Bentzion Halberstam (son of my great-uncle, the Bobov Rebbe Reb Shlomo, who replanted the dynasty in the US after the holocaust), one of the largest Hasidic sects. pic.twitter.com/4YvTxla57m

— Abby Stein (@AbbyChavaStein) January 19, 2021

God will protect them.

(xp) They've been having gigs and rugby matches and what have you in NZ for ages.

It's almost as though stopping the spread of the virus is a good thing that would have led to the return of normal life?

Breaking: dancing and singing back everywhere in NSW, masks no longer mandatory anywhere, no caps on weddings on funerals, as many people in your house as you can fit, @GladysB announces

— Hannah Ryan (@HannahD15) March 24, 2021

Can’t fit that many people in canoes in your house though.

don't dream it's over

So is there a German word for "fear that the person you're talking to (or considering getting back in touch with) is actually a covidiot"? We'll be negotiating this minefield for years, I fear.

I harbor no ill will towards anyone who lucks into their vaccine early by pure chance or fortunate circumstances, but hearing two(!) different coworkers admit, publicly(!!), during a work zoom call no less(!!!) that they each "lied" (their choice of word) to jump the line was really testing my ability to maintain a neutral zoom face. It was just how casually they said it, as if it was equal to admitting to speeding now and then.

so why don't you lie too

As impatient as I may appear to be and as eager as I am, I would not feel good about that at all!

I think this is becoming very common -- when some vaccination sites have tons of open slots, and the eligibility criteria is becoming increasingly loose/arbitrary, people are just starting to go for it here.

xpost Yeah, I'm with you. I've had a couple potential opportunities to get a 'liar's vax' but it just doesn't sit right with me. There's no reason for me personally to rush the process, my day will come.

I have no qualms telling people to do it when I know for a fact that several CVSs around me have dumped unclaimed Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at the end of the day.

Vaccination isn't like stealing someone else's paper towels last March. If you're jabbed, I feel safer: you, your Granny, whoever.

ymmv though!

jon, you're obv and legitimately enduring anguish about vaccination because you're in this thread every day, so why don't you get jabbed and don't tell anyone on this board? You have as much right to it as anyone.

I don't think it necessarily follows that if you get vaccinated you are taking that opportunity away from someone else. You can just as easily reason it as you taking the vaccine from someone that didn't want it. Everyone has to get vaccinated, anyway, so might as well be you, imo.

exactly!

Two of my closest friends got jabbed two Wednesdays ago because the rumor about the dumping of vaccines proved true -- they got to the CVS at 6:30 and they're not in their sixties.

If vaccine supply was so scarce that a black market exists, then I may understand moral writhings. Not now.

i'm with alfred on this; waiting to get the okay because mommy and daddy say its okay now is more offensive to me than presenting with ADHD (a qualifying comorbidity in NYC!) and getting your shot now.

on the other hand
https://gothamist.com/news/cuomo-reportedly-got-vip-covid-tests-relatives-start-pandemic

I mean, thing is that in our immediate area, it is still pretty scarce! There are a lot of stories about senior citizens and much more vulnerable people than I who are still having trouble securing a spot, which is why I wouldn't feel great just yet.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about people who are right place, right time or like, "hey I dropped off my mom and they offered me a shot too", or Josh's example about the dumping vaccines - those are all totally fine, imo - I'm talking about flat out lying at the intake about occupation (in these specific cases).

I absolutely appreciate what y'all are saying, but personally I just wouldn't feel good about lying like that.

imo if there are open slots a few days away in high-traffic/high wealth neighborhoods (last week most of the pharmacies in chelsea and the greater 14th St area in manhattan had availability for saturday when I checked on tuesday) i think ur OK 'jumping the line.' what didn't sit right with me was the idea of white ppl going to primarily POC neighborhoods and getting the shot there.

Yeah I think it's definitely contextual, I would feel ok doing it in some places/situations and not others.

I'm living life in the exact same quarantine bubble I have for the past year and will continue doing so until I'm jabbed. Vaccines open up to all adults in IL next month. Leave me to my socially-distanced moral hand-wringing, it's all I have left.

My wife and I have each had our 1st doses (Pfizer) — just got mine today — and hoping to get our 16yo done this weekend. Our county is now open to anyone 16 and up, but our shots actually came through a Walgreens "waste list" we had signed up for a few weeks ago.

I am of two minds about this -- obviously I don't like lying, but on the other hand: I am eligible and got vaccinated because of essentially arbitrary decisions my state made about occupations; I'm healthy and work from home and I don't think there's any public-health sense in which I "should" be in line ahead of other people. And yet there is no part of me that thinks I should have eschewed the shot I was legally eligible to get, even though just like the NYC liar I took a spot at Walgreen's and thus might have prevented an older / less healthy / more exposed person from getting a shot that day.

FTR, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with anyone cutting the line here. The quicker more people are vaccinated the better. This is all about me being anal.

Yeah, I mean it's all a bit fuzzy and everyone has different comfort levels. But I 100% don't think being made eligible through the arbitrary decisions of your state/county is worth feeling guilty about at all!

WaPo had an article about this today

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/03/25/vaccine-line-jump-lie-coronavirus/

I'm going to continue being honest about my medical status, which is probably dumb, but seems like the right thing to do. Every day that appointments get released here, there are more than enough people to get them 100% booked, so I have to assume that most, if not all, of those people qualify. OTOH, "game thoery" suggests that I'll be the last person to get vaccinated as everyone else magically discovers medical conditions to get them bumped ahead.

This is all about me being anal having personal standards of conduct I feel uncomfortable discarding in this case.

fixed

I'm sure supply-demand issues vary a lot from place to place, but when I went to get my leftover shot at Walgreens, they were saying that they had one more left that they were struggling to dispense — none of the other people on the waste list answered I guess — until someone just called out of the blue to ask if they had any left.

So basically, it's a messy system and I think anyone should get vaccinated however they can work it. I know people who got vaxxed just because they had a friend who worked at a hospital. Whatever, it's about as many people getting the shots as possible.

Heh, "just knowing a friend that works in a hospital" is the crux of the current Loretto Hospital scandal in Chicago, where the administrator in charge actually did redirect vaccines earmarked for low income communities toward his friends.

I am eligible and got vaccinated because of essentially arbitrary decisions my state made about occupations; I'm healthy and work from home and I don't think there's any public-health sense in which I "should" be in line ahead of other people.

This is another reason I've seen reported for why there is sometimes unclaimed or surplus vaccine, folks eligible but feeling guilty for being put ahead of folks they deem more worthy who then skip their turn.

Also, I've got to assume shots are distributed in part based on some estimate of how many people fall in each of the categories, but if the (say) county knows there are 1000 (for example) hospital employees eligible yet only 600 take the vaccine, I don't think those shots automatically go to the next group in line. It probably just shows up as 400 people in that category still not vaccinated, which no doubt affects orders and distribution of vaccine the next time around.

ha, well my friend who knew somebody at a hospital was in a rural county where they literally couldn't give the stuff away. so he drove over there to get one of the surplus shots they always had left.

I just want to raise the point that there are plenty of people with pre-existing conditions who don't show it, and which they might not feel comfortable sharing-- being immunocompromised isn't necessarily something people bring up around the water cooler, even if it's a Zoom water cooler or slack channel or whatever.

I mean, I rode my bicycle the 4.4 miles each way to get both of my shots. But I also am immunocompromised and shit in a bag, so...there are a lot more people like me than one would think.

I should say then, too, that I got my second shot. My arm hurts a wee bit and I feel like I'm recovering from a night of heavy drinking and carousing, but otherwise, I'm okay and feeling pretty joyous.