Vaccine/Antibody updates

[MU82]

Sounds like quite a free-for-all shyte-show being run by DeSantis down in Florida:

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to get a lifesaving COVID-19 vaccination that the 69-year-old piano teacher stood in line overnight in a parking lot with hundreds of other senior citizens.

She wouldn't do it again.

Hadler said that she waited 14 hours and that a brawl nearly erupted before dawn on Tuesday when people cut in line outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where officials were offering shots on a first-come, first-served basis to those 65 or older.

"I'm afraid that the event was a super-spreader," she said. "I was petrified."

The race to vaccinate millions of Americans is off to a slower, messier start than public health officials and leaders of the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed had expected.

Overworked, underfunded state public health departments are scrambling to patch together plans for administering vaccines. Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, leading to long lines, confusion, frustration and jammed phone lines. A multitude of logistical concerns have complicated the process of trying to beat back the scourge that has killed over 340,000 Americans.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking for patience, noting the vaccine supply is limited.

"It may not be today for everyone, may not be next week. But over the next many weeks, as long as we continue getting the supply, you're going to have the opportunity to get this," he said Wednesday.

Come one, come all, get your shots! First come, first served! Stand in a super-spreader line for more than half a day! You finally got near the front of the line after 12, 13, 14 hours? Sorry ... we're out of the vaccine ... but come back next week, y'all! Standing in line for 12 hours in the sun is no problem for septuagenarians, anyhoo ... you ain't got nuthin' better to do!"

[Warriors4ever]

Maybe at least what's happening in Florida with the roll-out will help other states come up with a better plan.

[The Sultan]

Maybe at least what's happening in Florida with the roll-out will help other states come up with a better plan.

Had the same thought.

That being said, I think the vaccine program will be fine once the logistics are sorted out. Just like the testing. It took too long to ramp up, but once it did, things have largely been fine.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

So far going very smoothly here.  The state has the highest level of utilization of allocated doses.  I haven't looked into why it's going well, but I know the local govt and health systems are working together and taking it seriously. 

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/whos-next-plans-for-second-round-of-covid-19-vaccines-expected-in-conn-next-week/2394129/

[tower912]

Well, everything happened so fast that there wasn't really time to come up with a plan.

[🏀]

The Grafton pharmacist should be put in stocks in front of the village hall for everyone to throw curds and cabbage at for a week before going to prison.

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

My old neighbors where I grew up in Connecticut live in Bonita Springs now. 

[tower912]

The Grafton pharmacist should be put in stocks in front of the village hall for everyone to throw curds and cabbage at for a week before going to prison.

I am good with that.    I might add hospital bed sheets from COVID patients as his toga.   

[warriorchick]

I am good with that.    I might add hospital bed sheets from COVID patients as his toga.

Covid patients should be allowed to cough in his face.

[tower912]

Or he should have to go work the AFC homes for unleash Diener.   

[GooooMarquette]

So far going very smoothly here.  The state has the highest level of utilization of allocated doses.  I haven't looked into why it's going well, but I know the local govt and health systems are working together and taking it seriously. 

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/whos-next-plans-for-second-round-of-covid-19-vaccines-expected-in-conn-next-week/2394129/

I think the underlined is a good part of the reason things are going smoothly there. I don't know how well the local government and health systems are working together in FL, but DeSantis has shown a history of stepping in and overruling local actions by mayors and health departments, so I can imagine they're unclear about who is in charge and reluctant to get overruled (again).

[forgetful]

The COVID-19 vaccination process is already pretty much a disaster. Romney was right today in saying that we have failed, with the easiest part of the process (frontline workers and long-term care).

You have many entities blatantly violating the priority lists. You have each state doing their own thing for political reasons, you have people camping outside hoping and praying to get a vaccine, and all this is in the easiest part of the vaccination roll out.

What happens when more become available, and there is still no orderly plan. Someone is going to end up being shot camping out in lines fighting over who gets a vaccine.

Not to mention that we have only vaccinated around 20% of the goal amount to this point. All that with ample supply sitting in warehouses.

Not a surprise that this is a failure so far, but the magnitude of the ineptitude so far is blinding.

[MU82]

Well said, forget

[GooooMarquette]

Not a surprise that this is a failure so far, but the magnitude of the ineptitude so far is blinding.

You could say that about almost any part of our COVID response so far. Messaging, PPE acquisition, testing, contact tracing, coordination of lockdowns. The only real success has been vaccine development...so of course we have to screw up the distribution. Ugh...

[MU82]

You could say that about almost any part of our COVID response so far. Messaging, PPE acquisition, testing, contact tracing, coordination of lockdowns. The only real success has been vaccine development...so of course we have to screw up the distribution. Ugh...

Thanks a lot, Obama!

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Not a surprise that this is a failure so far, but the magnitude of the ineptitude so far is blinding.

The magnitude is not really surprising since Trump had always been incompetent.  6 bankruptcies and 7 if you count what he did to the USA.
He's always been the gardener from Being There .  Purple thought he was more than he really was.

[Jockey]

The magnitude is not really surprising since Trump had always been incompetent.  6 bankruptcies and 7 if you count what he did to the USA.
He's always been the gardener from Being There .  Purple thought he was more than he really was.

Finally!!

The perfect analogy.

[GooooMarquette]

Finally!!

The perfect analogy.

It is a great analogy in terms of how others view him - something dramatically greater/smarter than he really is.

But in terms of how he views himself, it's totally wrong if I recall the movie correctly. Didn't the gardener always know he knew was 'just' a gardener, so that he was unaffected (and rather perplexed) by others putting him on a pedestal?

If my recollection is right - spot on in terms of public image, but 180-degree opposite in terms of self-image.

[Jockey]

It is a great analogy in terms of how others view him - something dramatically greater/smarter than he really is.

But in terms of how he views himself, it's totally wrong if I recall the movie correctly. Didn't the gardener always know he knew was 'just' a gardener, so that he was unaffected (and rather perplexed) by others putting him on a pedestal?

If my recollection is right - spot on in terms of public image, but 180-degree opposite in terms of self-image.

You are correct, Goo.

[warriorchick]

My dad forwarded this to me. I thought it was spot on:


A message to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues, patients and friends, from Dr. Jeffrey R. Balser, President & CEO

A Holiday Gift

Against the noisy background of masking debates, surges, flattening curves, warp speed initiatives, conflicting messages, misinformation and political controversies -- not to mention a revolutionary mRNA technology -- millions of people are deciding whether to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

This, however, is clear: In the U.S., more than 325,000 people have died from COVID-19, with over 3,000 people dying each day. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, like other hospitals and health systems across the nation, is experiencing what promises to be a long and very dark winter.

As much as we all might wish, the ills of 2020 will not vanish at the stroke of midnight as we welcome 2021. The next year will be ushered in with record numbers of people still becoming ill and requiring hospitalization — and the death toll will keep rising.

Today we are vaccinating those at greatest risk: the people working at our nation's hospitals and medical centers. But soon there will be sufficient vaccine supplies to begin the much-anticipated process of vaccinating the millions of people living and working throughout our country.

Yet finding that light at the end of the tunnel requires much more than giving two doses to everyone who wants to be vaccinated. As if the most ambitious vaccination effort in human history isn't enough of a challenge, conquering COVID-19 means we need to build a cocoon of safety for those we can't effectively immunize -- our young children and our loved ones with conditions that suppress their immune systems. People who cannot be safeguarded by taking the vaccine themselves, because it isn't yet available to them, or because their immune systems won't respond even if they do take it.

This is why we so desperately need to achieve so-called "herd immunity." An often-discussed term, it's when a sufficient number of us are immune to COVID-19 that indirect protection is provided to those who are not actually immune to the disease. Essentially, it's when so many people are immune that the virus can't spread through the population. Achieving herd immunity for COVID-19 is a huge challenge. Unlike the flu, where many of us have some level of immunity from years of exposure to similar flu strains, this is a new virus for all of us so the projections show we need 70-90% of the population to be vaccinated, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Given the COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective, it is understandable that many people will take the vaccine to protect themselves. But we also know that many people — up to half of all Americans in some surveys — are considering not taking it. The reasons range from concerns about the newness of the vaccine and its safety, to general mistrust of research stemming from historical abuses such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, to skepticism about whether COVID-19 is even a serious problem.

So, if the only rationale to take the vaccine is "I will be protected," then how do we convince those already reluctant to get vaccinated, especially when their personal risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 may be small?

Just as Lincoln opined in his first inaugural address, this is a time for us to express "the better angels of our nature." Beyond protecting ourselves directly, taking the vaccine to help achieve herd immunity isn't an abstraction of epidemiology and science — it is a work of compassion. For those healthy and young, it's a selfless act: "I'm doing this for you, even more than for me." It's an expression of concern for someone requiring immunosuppressants after an organ transplant whom we don't even know. It's an expression of care for someone who has been unemployed since the pandemic began, now struggling with food insecurity and homelessness.

It is this compassion for all in the face of uncertainty that we are asking everyone in our country to embrace. During World War II many of our citizens sent their family members overseas to fight in a war that threatened our way of life. Of the 16 million Americans who served in our military forces during the war, over 400,000 died, so the chances of dying were in retrospect about 3%. That's not much different than the average risk of dying, across all ages and conditions, when someone has been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the U.S. Wouldn't we agree the pandemic threatens our way of life today, causing the most unemployment since the Great Depression and more than 325,000 deaths so far?

Compassion flows from understanding, and we need to build that understanding with our neighbors, friends and family. And we need to listen.

Many people have fears about taking this vaccine. It is comforting that it has been tested exhaustively in many thousands of people, with clinical trials that are even larger and more diverse than those we have used for vaccines in the past. But it is still the case that the technology is new and we completed the work in record time — and for some, that's unsettling. And there is always an element of faith when people take a new treatment, including a vaccine.

However, what feels to many of us like the "sudden" appearance of two remarkably effective RNA-based vaccines isn't very surprising at all. It's the result of decades of public investment in government-funded research, alongside investments by industry and foundations, coupled with painstaking work by thousands of researchers over decades. This is no different than landing on the moon or sequencing the genome. Much to celebrate, but also based on our history of swift scientific innovation in this country, practically inevitable.

We also need to engage our communities by singing, not shouting. Most people are not looking for a lecture. Instead, people want us to listen and to hear what they're not saying: is it the nitty-gritty science they want, or is it validation that it's OK to be apprehensive? Are they looking for someone who empathizes and understands they're afraid — a fear that may be more agonizing to them than COVID-19?

This is one of those communication challenges where we need to harmonize like a chorus. The beauty of a chorus is that while everyone is singing from the same musical composition, the notes are not the same for each member. The full range of tones, with varied pitches, intensities and timbres, all create the resonating mixture of sound that attracts us to listen and holds our attention. Our diversity as a nation provides that complex range of singing voices, with varied communication styles and personal experiences — all influenced by our races, ages, gender preferences, and social and political backgrounds. Our chorus of perspectives is essential to making the case for immunization.

And finally — what better message at the holiday season? Before we can all remove our masks and be confident that we are truly caring for our neighbor, we need to give everyone a gift — including many people we don't even know. The gift of vaccinating ourselves.

For more information, please visit vumc.org/coronavirus.



Sincerely,

Jeff Balser Signature

Jeff Balser, MD, PhD
President and CEO, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

[GooooMarquette]

That is awesome. Thanks for sharing, chick!

[pbiflyer]

You can't tell me what to do with my body! This guy is a commie. I'm not a sheeple. Freedom!

Obviously I'm being sarcastic, but sadly a huge chunk of the country actually feels that way. Add the incompetent distribution and it will be a long year. And for someone like me that falls into the category of needing the herd immunity, it makes me angry.

Thanks for posting this chick!

[injuryBug]

You can't tell me what to do with my body! This guy is a commie. I'm not a sheeple. Freedom!

Obviously I'm being sarcastic, but sadly a huge chunk of the country actually feels that way. Add the incompetent distribution and it will be a long year. And for someone like me that falls into the category of needing the herd immunity, it makes me angry.

Thanks for posting this chick!

Seriously it is such an easy decision. amazing how ignorrant people can be.

[Jockey]

Seriously it is such an easy decision. amazing how ignorrant people can be.

It is amazing. It is absolutely not surprising.

[Lennys Tap]

Called the Vaccine Appointment number in Lee County Florida today. Minutes of busy signals/call can't go through but I eventually got into the queue. They took my information (birthdate, phone #) via tape, said they would call me back. 5 hours later a real person called me back. I have a 9am appointment for Wednesday (day after tomorrow).