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

oh yeah i definitely did that a few months ago, whoops

i'm not trying to make anyone feel bad lol

i've become an advanced scold so i'm gonna stop now

I care zero if someone wants to wear a mask for the rest of their life as long as they're not advocating others be required to do so

what if the others in question are really ugly

xp -- that wasn't about you but the takes floating around

Planning a camping trip with friends, one of whom might not be vaxxed by the time we meet up since he's in his mid-30's and has never had a health problem in his life, and doesn't work in a frontline industry.

I'm stupidly excited to spend a few days in the woods with people I love.

Distant xpost, but does that mean Australia's borders will remain more or less closed at least through the end of the year?

Planning a camping trip with friends, one of whom might not be vaxxed by the time we meet up since he's in his mid-30's and has never had a health problem in his life, and doesn't work in a frontline industry.

I'm stupidly excited to spend a few days in the woods with people I love.

― it's like edging for your mind (the table is the table),

If the rest of you are jabbed, the risk is minimal: your friend infecting y'all and vice versa.

Oh, I know. That's why we're planning it.

Some notable SF vaccination numbers at this point. We're now over 400,000 with at least one shot -- 53% as noted of the eligible population. 1/3 of said population now has completed a shot regimen, while 2/3 of the 65 and over folks in the city have similarly completed theirs. (The 82% of those who have received at least one shot is a number that's barely budged in a while, though, and may indicate what levels of further resistance/unwillingness to get the shot will crop up further down the line.) Meantime, a number of neighborhoods in general have specifically passed over the halfway point for getting at least one shot, including once again both Excelsior and Bayview/Hunter's Point as well as Chinatown, Twin Peaks and elsewhere.

does that mean Australia's borders will remain more or less closed at least through the end of the year?

Morrison held a press conference at 7:30pm to announce that nobody under 50 was getting AZ and they have no idea when the country will have Novamax, and it was stupid to ask the government about it, but the task force would be working overnight, that night.

It's not clear whether this was a task force of doctors, of public servants, of McKinsey consultants being given a free licence to bill overtime, or the $6 million-salaried official National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission set up 54 weeks ago to determine how to guide the governmental recovery from the 'vid, but ask them first imo.

oh wait

Distant xpost, but does that mean Australia's borders will remain more or less closed at least through the end of the year?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 9 April 2021 6:12 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was always the case, even before the latest announcement. The feds have cocked up the vaccine procurement and rollout so royally, putting all the eggs in the AZ basket. It’s been a slow motion car crash since the middle of last year, it wasn’t going well before the latest announcement.

Here is Dr Norman Swan to explain why everything is going wrong.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/slow-vaccine-negotiations-health-with-dr-norman-swan/13294894

It also came out yesterday that the government have been hiding the fact that they have imported 717,000 (over 80% of their supply) AZ shots from the UK, due to a) not bothering to secure an export licence from the EU before announcing they would have 4 million jabs done by the end of March, b) worrying that the vaccine hesitancy Ed mentioned yesterday would be aggravated if ppl knew their shots were coming from the variant-riddled terf island, and c) so that gammons in the mummy country wouldn't get mad.

I'm rooting for Dan to use his belt and road hookup to get Victoria Chinese vaccines (and to own the Libs, which is good not bad down here).

I'm not sure if it is a plus or a minus that an October election is definitely not on the cards.

i was told the wait between shots one and two would feel interminable but i had no idea, what a slog!

got my second jab this afternoon, kinda getting my ass kicked by the side effects again, tho so far it’s less terrible than the first one

just lying in bed feeling achey and watching bad horror movies as god intended

<3 hang in there

Hey, if there are any other Cook County-ites who've waited for eligibility to open on the 12th, there's apparently going to be > 100,000 new appointments at mass vax sites for next week going live at noon today ( https://vaccine.cookcountyil.gov/ ).

Jab one scheduled for Monday morning, just a quick walk from my home. I'm trying to get my body to believe that it's actually happening and maybe unclench just a little for a change. It would help if Walgreens would send me the confirmation email they said they sent me but all pertinent info is printed so just try and deny me. Just try!

fwiw my walgreens confirmation email was sent like 8 hours i scheduled the appointment

Okay, that's good to know.

most of the side effects of the second shot have been survived, but today i have a massive headache that feels like a hole in my head :D

CA opens up to 16+ next week. I have decided to wait until then for pfizer or moderna rather than get J&J, which is already very widely available here without an appointment. thought it might be useful to explain why.

i am personally very unlikely to get seriously ill from covid. with *any* vaccine that probability goes to essentially zero. that's not what i'm worried about. if that's what you're worried about, you should get the first vaccine you're offered.

what i am worried about is the people in my life who cannot get vaccinated and are not working from home in their PJs like me all day (my kids, their friends, their families, couple of old codgers i know, etc.) so it's more important to me that the vaccine i get reduces the risk of me passing covid on to someone else than it reduces the risk of me getting it in the first place.

the only vaccines with any high quality evidence that they do that are pfizer and moderna, which is based on this trial, which did weekly surveys for even asymptomatic infections https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/29/real-world-study-by-cdc-shows-pfizer-and-moderna-vaccines-were-90-effective/.

i'll only have to wait a few days to get pfizer/moderna. if i had to wait a month i'd probably get J&J. if you already got J&J you did not make a mistake, and you will likely have equivalent protection when the boosters become available later this year. public health officials are not lying or commiting malpractice when they encourage *populations* to get any shot asap (including J&J). all vaccines are good.

I think I didn't get the confirmation email from Walgreens until the day after I scheduled mine, but I checked my online account about a thousand times while I waited, just to make sure.

with *any* vaccine that probability goes to essentially zero.

I think that's true, but isn't the J&J significantly less effective full-stop against Covid and particularly its newer variants? That is, all three vaccines approved in the US will likely keep you from going to the hospital and/or dying, but two of them are close to 100% effective at totally protecting you and one is closer to 65%-75% effective. Do I understand that right? Which means recipients of the J&J could still potentially be a more likely future vector after vaccination than those that got Pfizer or Moderna, right?

J&J is 85% effective against *severe* covid, which is almost the same as pfizer/moderna. and very close to 100% for my purposes.

J&J seems to be less effective against moderate cases, and we assume but don't know (because it wasn't tracked in the trial) that it's less effective still against mild and asymptompatic cases.

Which means recipients of the J&J could still potentially be a more likely future vector after vaccination than those that got Pfizer or Moderna, right?

caek did address this bit three sentences later tbf

i asked a covid immunologist friend with kids to bless my plan and he said he'd do the same thing (but i think he's already vaxxed via the novavax trial). he also told me:

J&J would likely be comparable to pfizer/moderna if they gave two doses, but they only trialed one dose to finish the trial quicker/save lives which, fair enough.

J&J are now trialing a booster with variants in mind, rather than a simple second dose.

J&J recipients will also probably benefit from the moderna booster trial (happening now, going well, US EUA expected in the fall).

and this was his POO, which seems worth posting in full:

Top tier: mRNA (and novavax which is similar in efficacy for B.1.1.7 but more variable antibody levels and somewhat less robust to variants)
---
Second tier: maybe 2 dose adenovirus vaccines? AZ is sloppy and Sputnik is opaque, so hard to recommend either.
---
Third tier: 1 dose JnJ. Way more transparent than sputnik, better safety than AZ, and remarkably good 1 dose efficacy against B.1.351
---
Fourth tier: all the inactivated and Ad5 vaccines that barely work.

immunoligists/vaccine people are really angry with AZ btw.

pfizer just officially applied to the FDA to allow use in 12-15 year olds. apparently this will be quick (i.e. days not weeks?).

Good news in terms of speed - I believe they can just amend the EUA and that should happen quickly https://t.co/ei60JDWB1U

— Ed MD (@notdred) April 9, 2021

Pretty handy. That would immediately expand the eligible population in the best of ways.

most of the side effects of the second shot have been survived, but today i have a massive headache that feels like a hole in my head :D

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, April 9, 2021 9:37 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh and chills!

was not expecting to get hit with the side effects stick both times, what a journey. looking forward to the end

Feel better, Brad.

The chills were crazy, I just stood in a hot shower for an hour. It passes quick!

So is J&J going to turn out to be as risky as AZ in terms of clotting? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/eu-agency-examines-reports-of-blood-clots-with-jj-covid-vaccine

woke up feelin fine today, and have continued to feel fine

Well now. My 13-year-old son tested positive this morning. He almost certainly got it at school, though he's not aware of being around anyone who was positive. I took him because he started running a fever last night. He's OK so far, temp is just around 100 today, we'll see how it goes. My wife and our 16-yr-old and I have all had our first vaccine dose, so hopefully that will help protect us. We all went to get tested this afternoon, though we went for the lab test rather than the rapid test because none of us have symptoms, so we won't have those result til Monday.

Working out the logistics of isolation and quarantine. The sick boy is upstairs, the rest of us are staying downstairs. We'll see how it goes!

Ha, I said we'll see how it goes twice. What else is there to say, really?

wishing you and your family the best of possible outcomes

Many thanks. None of us are too worried, because the data says we shouldn't be. Here's hoping the data is right!

yikes! sorry to hear that tipsy mothra. at least he has that entire awesome upstairs area to hang out in! is your drum set still up there?

that room is second only to my friend's childhood attic in which i discovered 1) many bands i liked and 2) an old dish that had been under her bed for...months? lol i had a childhood attic room too but mine wasn't redone; when i moved up there i just shoved all the stuff to the other side and lived in the clean half.

Ha, yep, the drums are up there along with his banjolele. Plus, and more importantly from his point of view, his gaming laptop and a bunch of books and comics.

Good luck tipsy

Yeah, good luck. Hasn't happened to us yet, but I'm braced for the possibility.

We've just started to hit several bad news anniversaries in this pandemic, which has been ... surreal. For example, my old friend's daughters (triplets!) were supposed to have their collective bat mitzvah a year ago, but it was of course cancelled, delayed and moved multiple times, in hopes that they could have it a year later. Yet ... no dice, still a Zoom mitzvah. And then one of our best friends, her wonderful mother died a year ago today, of cancer, but they were unable to have a service then, let alone a memorial. Similarly, they hoped they could do it on the one year anniversary, but instead we had a (beautiful) Zoom memorial today. Even us, my daughter had a pared down in-person version bat mitzvah in September, and we're still hoping to celebrate a year later with a party at the end of this summer, but who knows, right? And my sister, by the time we ever get to see her again she'll have had two children that I've never met before. When this is all done it's going to be so strange having literally years of missed occasions to finally make up.

tipsy, best to your family. Hope it's mild and no one else gets it!

4.6m doses today in the US. A 24 hour record.

You get so used to the idea that the US government can't do anything and doesn't really want to do anything.