I think we're still at the point where no one is sure if they've been exposed or not, right? Like odds are if you went into the grocery story this week, there's a decent chance that someone with COVID was there

SI

I finally got my 84 year old mother an appointment for next week for Shot #1. She had been on a waitlist for a few weeks now, but the state health department has started offering more appointments at more sites, and snagged one :)

J&J to ship 20M of their vaccines (single shot) by end of March, pending FDA EUA. Glad to see even more vaccine getting out to the public in short order.

Responsible action would be to stay home, but if you have to, wearing a mask should be a sign of "I'm contagious so stay the hell out of my personal space".

Unfortunately the US doesn't have anything that guarantees paid sick leave so it's not always an option.

We're in such good company as: Syria, Liberia, North Korea, Somalia, and Mozambique when it comes to that distinction.

Eaglefan has covid....post things to cheer him up!

We <3 u EF!!!!

Oh no. :( Sorry EF, hope you heal soon. You're probably still a wolf too. ;)

In the U.S. staying home isn't possible for a lot of workers.

Best wishes EF. Hope you get over it quickly.

Especially when you consider most of those jobs involve working with the public. Restaurants, retail, etc...

when I worked in restaurants, if you were sick it was on you to find someone to cover your shift. I can't tell you how many times I served drinks hopped up on Dayquill and bourbon.

Tennessee state investigation uncovers possible vaccine theft in Shelby County, children getting COVID-19 vaccine

I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vaccine mismanagement.

It's been shady in quite a few places in Georgia. One county got caught so far but ... well let's just say that I know about at least one other (and it ain't my own)

I am surprised that this information made it into the public domain tbh.

Alright J&J, make it happen. Don't know why you are 2+ months slower than the others but just start ramping up your manufacturing facilities. Efficacy is not as good as the other two, but proven to significantly reduce serious illness and deaths so good enough for me.

AP is reporting 96M distributed with 73M jabbed or 76%. Back a week ago it was 73M for 58M or 79%. So still approx 7+ days of supplies hanging around not doing anything.

GA is still in Phase 1a. Although we are not eligible for 1a, I still check my county website pretty much everyday to see if we've moved on. The appt app is still turned off. Checking CVS, it shows "fully booked".

My experience is just one data point but do think currently the problem is not supply but the last mile. With a more in-tuned administration 5+ weeks in, the last mile shouldn't be an issue IMO. There is not enough creative minds applied to this problem nor accountability.

FWIW, some stats.

In GA, 980K cases with 16,756 deaths =1.7% fatality
In US, 28.6M cases with 512K deaths = 1.8% fatality
In World, 64.3M cases with 2.53M deaths = 2.2% fatality

COVID has caused us to deal with all kinds of new awkward social scenarios - like everyone's varying tolerance for interacting in light of various sliding scale factors of distance, indoor/outdoor, size of group, masks, etc.

Vaccine deployment is now one too. Is it morally OK to get the vaccine as soon as your state procedure allows, even if you are in one of the categories as part of kind of a a loophole?

My girlfriend is a manager at a grocery store, she's worked full time at her physical job, this entire time. Perhaps one of the more COVID-dangerous jobs there is, because hospitals and clinics have more ability to manage risks and their interactions with people. Grocery stores are always fighting with people to even put a mask on.

Society loved grocery workers those first few weeks, but they've kind of been forgotten as frontline workers. No vaccine for her for at least a few months here. But we have a friend of a friend who works in for pharmacy that is a part of a grocery chain, she has been working from home since March. She's been vaccinated because I guess everyone who works for a pharmacy is considered a front-line medical worker. My girlfriend is annoyed, both at the system, and at the friend of a friend for choosing to get the vaccine so early. My general thought has been that I don't care about the order, I just want to see all the vaccines out as quickly as possible, because vaccines are more about general society defense than saving any individual person. But I also feel her annoyance, especially on behalf of grocery workers generally, who are absolutely essentially but are dropping down both vaccine lists and societal appreciation.

And I admit every time I see one of my many, many New England teacher Facebook friends bragging about their vaccines and hashtagging things like #vaccinateeducators, when I know they haven't been teaching in person most of this time, and that transmissions in schools has tended to be very low, I feel the kind of unreasonable annoyance that you wouldn't share with anyone and you feel a little guilty to have.

It's kinda strange that the states that have the teachers working virtually and don't intend to change that anytime soon are vaccinating, but states that are already open or getting ready to open aren't in any rush to vaccinate.

Georgia has finally opened vaccines to teachers starting March 8. Many school systems have been open or are just about to open.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

FWIW wife's GA county has been doing in-person since last Fall. There's been some times when they did remote and kids rotated, but it's been FT with her and kids for a while now. Kids can request remote but majority are in class. Transmissions has been low but wife is wearing mask, face shield, some sort of disposable garb to work, and sanitization process after school.

No good answers but there does need to be a criteria & process. The criteria was recommended by Feds and assume there were intelligent, caring people and ethicists involved. There are some hiccups on the fairness and people cutting lines (see soul cycle trainer) but overall, I think the criteria is good.

The frakking process (aka last mile) is what I'm bitching about (see my above post).

So we ate inside restaurants last night and this AM. That marks the 5th and 6th times we've done that since COVID started. Since South Carolina barely shut down, we've held out far longer than most people we know.

Dinner was definitely too crowded for my liking, but no one else was within at least 12 feet of us and we masked when not eating, so I was only mildly on edge. Literally no one else at breakfast, so not too worried there.

My wife is fully vaxxed, my in-laws will be by mid-March, my parents and their spouses are all good. We're pretty much going to return to normal for us, since most of the adherence was for the grands and my wife's heart condition. While I'm definitely more overweight than I'd prefer, if I get it I get it. At best my shot isn't coming until late Summer, but even an introvert like me is getting tired of living on the couch. I'll mask and distance, but we're pretty much done not going out and about.

For me, it annoys me more the more personal it is. I don't have an issue with most people who have been vaccinated so far. I do have a slight issue with the grocery workers and teachers but I recognized the "appreciation" those frontline groups were getting was less than genuine early on. I have the biggest issue with those people I know are deniers, are very comfortable taking huge risks and tried to shame me for not taking similar risks or are not worried because they are young and the virus only affects old people rushing to the front of the line. Those are the fuckers I have no time for. I get it though. This is not a moral process. Get in where you fit in.

I hear ya. It's been such a lost year. That really weighs on me. Important things we'll never get back. I feel my tolerance for risk increasing by the day. We'll have warm weather in a few weeks, I'll definitely be looking to revitalize my social life with some outdoor stuff at least.

This is me. And the wife I guess. She's a sub teacher, hasn't subbed since Covid happened but now will because she's got the vaccine. Kentucky has opened it up to CDC essential workers which includes attorneys. I'm getting it. If they call me and ask to reschedule because they have a waiting list of elderly or chronic illness people, I'd gladly do it. But I'm taking the fact that I can get an appointment as meaning they have more supply than demand, and I'm taking care of my family first. My parents and my wife's parents are in the their mid-70s and want to visit. I'm going to protect them and my kids if I have the opportunity.

I took my first trip out of state and first time sleeping in a bed outside my home since the shutdown about a year ago. It amazes me that considering how close KY and TN are, how different people are handling it. KY is not exactly liberal and certainly you have your anti-Democrat governor people, but in terms of what I see out and about, people do the right thing about 98% of the time.

I go down to TN, and very few people were wearing masks, and those that were just did the minimal barely over the lips and taking them down at any opportunity. Hotel has signs every 50 feet and people just walk wherever, no masks. I went to get takeout and I've never seen so many people in a restaurant - all distanced, but no masks, and basically as many as you can fit in a Firehouse Subs, for instance.

Just after I checked in, I left my room with mask on, hit the elevator button, and 2 women (probably 40 and 55) are in there, no masks, and as I am coming onto the elevator, one of them loudly and awkwardly whispers "he's wearing a mask!" like she was the guy who couldn't help but point out the dude with blue hair in the progressive commercials. Just so bizarre.

A friend of mine just drove from here in Jersey, where there is almost 100% compliance from my experience, to Key West. She said driving through Florida was totally bazaar. You wouldn't even know there was a pandemic happening. She said the further south she went the worse it got starting in NC.

That was our experience in TN back in April. I am a little surprised that it's not changed at all, but not terribly. Just imagine how KY would be right now if Bevin was still running things.

Welcome to Texas!

SI

Wife's school district sent out an email saying they would start vaccinating teachers in next couple weeks at Falcons football stadium. 2nd shots are also scheduled. Glad that's one less to worry about.

Greg Abbott. Ugh.

Just wait for goodness sake. We finally have a vaccine rolling out.

He panicked, realized he was running out of time to be the first republican governor to prematurely open his state.

It seemed inevitable that we'd all be a couple months too early on opening everything.

As someone who really wants things open for the Fall, I just hope that these premature openers don't ruin it for the rest of us.

He’s going to be the first to have to close back up.

F’n moron. We’ve played this cycle out how many times now and science is undefeated.

South Padre here I come!

The way they ignore science is mind boggling. Do they really not grasp that the reason cases are going down is because of the measures or do they just not care?

It's sad. It's not like I can't do practically anything I want to do in Texas, whether I should be able to or not. Businesses have been open all along, ever since about last May. There's some minor capacity restrictions (75% currently, I believe) but they aren't really enforced. But let's remove those last pretend steps and signal that you don't need a mask anymore, never mind how important it is that people wear them. Or that our numbers are gradually going down but look like they fell off a cliff because of the ice storm and slow reporting of data (or lack of testing availability when, you know, no one could go anywhere or have power). The real frustration is that it flips the default from "mask" to "no mask" for the people who don't really want to wear them but follow the rules or social norms.

Gotta distract from his utter failure with the ice storm, I guess.

SI

The mask is the giveaway.

There are risk/reward reasons to open businesses. Reasonable people can disagree about that.

But the removal of the mask mandate is pure MAGA pandering. An absurdly low burden on people for a huge gain in preventing transmission.

Abbott isn’t Rick Perry, he knows full well what the science says to do and why. He also knows that he will never be able to convince his voters that it’s not just egg-headed liberals telling them what to do. This is the political equivalent of a manufacturer identifying a deadly flaw in their product and running the numbers only to find that retooling would cost more than the lawsuits. Grab the money/headlines now and let the lawyers/public deal with the fall out later.

Can private businesses still mandate masks?

I'm sure they can, not sure if they will fight cities that try to.

Floodgates opening, this country is so fucked.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has announced the state is lifting its county mask mandates and allowing businesses to operate at full capacity starting tomorrow https://t.co/iHiUi13Bxj

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 2, 2021

Both, but generally they think the measures are worse than whatever rise in cases that results.

Why do people not believe that maybe the goal is to get more cases?

Texas reopening is just in time for the spring break tourist money.

Texas was just behind NY in new cases yesterday and still averages 5 times the number of cases when restrictions went into place. I am sure this will end well with spring break coming up.

Better be careful guys, Edward is going to come in and yell at us for being too political.

One can conjecture anything they darn well please, but I'm of the mindset that when people tell you who they are, believe them. I don't run into a lot of people saying 'I want the virus to run amok so that group XYZ is hurt' or whatever. I do run into a lot of them who think the restrictions are an absurd overreaction, that the vaccine is pointless and useless, and so forth. That's also the response you generally get with wider studies. Occam's Razor.

Masks are so easy that when they are no longer required, we should still encourage people t wear them when they feel ill.

They are telling you who they are by doing everything in their power to increase cases.

There are many reasons why people would advocate for those actions though. You'd be right if there was only one possible such reason, but that just isn't so.

Nah he'll just make another thread for it.