Herd Immunity?

[TeeRick]

Back to Herd Immunity.  A nice piece in the NY Times on the impossible task of getting to COVID ZERO.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/covid-zero-unattainable-acceptable-risk-130449070.html

[cangelmd]

2 hours ago, TeeRick said:

And partial immunity from lifelong exposure to other coronaviruses.

Yes, and although the article was mostly talking about humoral immunity, there is expanding T cell immunity as well, that we can’t even easily measure.

All through my years of practice, we see patients with terrible pneumonias, more common in the winter, but occurring year round, dying from the pneumonia or being left with scarring and lifelong disability and we’ve always called it “a virus”. There’s no specific therapy, only supportive care, so we didn’t routinely test people to identify exactly which virus caused their illnesses. The thought is that they had some defect in their immunity that caused a relatively innocuous virus to make them very sick. I’m talking 3-5 patients a year out of thousands, so it is rare, but happens all the time.

Thats what I think will happen with Covid, except we may well track it better. 

[grandgeezer]

23 hours ago, nocl said:

Unfortunately the county health departments are in charge for how they use their allocation.  They, normally do not do large numbers of vaccinations.  Most these days are given by pharmacies, who do have appointment software.  I think that we would be better off if they reversed the allocations.  Send it to pharmacies first, then any left over above their capacity go to large vaccination events handled by the counties and national guard.  After all most people that get vaccines are used to working with their local pharmacies. 

 

All this could have been set up during the time we were waiting for vaccine approval.

 

As you say it would have been easy to have set up a registration system for people to sign up and have the system sort and prioritize.  Unfortunately in this day and age many would refuse to give the information to the system that it would need.  

 

The local university could not get such a registry system past their legal department.

Totally disagree. We live in the Phoenix area. Last week we got our first shot at the Arizona Cardinals football stadium parking lot. Getting the original appointment took some time but the actual vaccine shot procedure worked great. From the time we pulled into the lot until the time we pulled out was a little over 1/2 hour and that included the 15 minute wait to see if there was any reaction to it. We also got our appointment for the second shot set for 22 days after. They operate 24/7 and the last I heard they do well over 6,000 per day. If the could get the vaccine, they say they could do about 12,000 per day. That's a lot of Walgreens, CVS, and others. 

[TeeRick]

1 hour ago, grandgeezer said:

Totally disagree. We live in the Phoenix area. Last week we got our first shot at the Arizona Cardinals football stadium parking lot. Getting the original appointment took some time but the actual vaccine shot procedure worked great. From the time we pulled into the lot until the time we pulled out was a little over 1/2 hour and that included the 15 minute wait to see if there was any reaction to it. We also got our appointment for the second shot set for 22 days after. They operate 24/7 and the last I heard they do well over 6,000 per day. If the could get the vaccine, they say they could do about 12,000 per day. That's a lot of Walgreens, CVS, and others. 

In most of the US this is the exception rather than the rule unfortunately.  It totally depends on where you live.  In my state it is near impossible to get vaccine appointments.  Kind of like winning the lottery.

[nocl]

1 hour ago, grandgeezer said:

Totally disagree. We live in the Phoenix area. Last week we got our first shot at the Arizona Cardinals football stadium parking lot. Getting the original appointment took some time but the actual vaccine shot procedure worked great. From the time we pulled into the lot until the time we pulled out was a little over 1/2 hour and that included the 15 minute wait to see if there was any reaction to it. We also got our appointment for the second shot set for 22 days after. They operate 24/7 and the last I heard they do well over 6,000 per day. If the could get the vaccine, they say they could do about 12,000 per day. That's a lot of Walgreens, CVS, and others. 

How is Arizona handling their appointment process?

 

The issue is not how well they are handling the shots themselves, the issue is the confusion in actually getting through and getting that initial appointment.  Often a matter of just happening hitting the right time.  Many are literally spending hours on line trying to get appointments.  Where I am at you better be online with the county exactly when they open new appointments each week because the que grows to over an hour almost immediately and if you are not in the first 20 minutes the appointments will be gone.

 

Many elderly, which are not computer literate, are having problems around the US getting appointments.  On the other hand they are used to working with their local pharmacies.

[phoenix_dream]

On 2/23/2021 at 2:42 PM, Arizona Wildcat said:

And you are surprised at problems in Illinois government?  Really?

Things went a lot smoother when Richard J Dailey ran the State, er Chicago.

No, sadly not surprised at all.  Yep, Mr. Dailey would have had it all under control.🙂

[baldilocks]

16 minutes ago, phoenix_dream said:

No, sadly not surprised at all.  Yep, Mr. Dailey would have had it all under control.🙂

 

I lived near Chicago (Elgin) back when Mayor Dailey was in charge. He was one tough politician. He would hire 'friends and relatives' to head up projects....but you better not let the Mayor and the people down or you are out of there. He did not take poor performance lightly.

[Gracie115]

15 hours ago, nocl said:

 Many elderly, which are not computer literate, are having problems around the US getting appointments.  

 

This is definitely true in Florida.  

[Oville]

On 2/23/2021 at 9:00 AM, phoenix_dream said:

Your state is certainly not alone.  Here in Illinois chaos reigns.  People are frantically signing up for various sites and spending literally hours on the computer trying to snag timeframes.  Just in the group of people I closely associate with, some have finally been able to find shots at three different county health department locations (not mine), a Walgreens (that was me - and I had to drive 2 1/2 hours each way to get it), Osco drug store,  a personal physician, the hospital they worked at, a long term care facility, and a senior living community (not long term care).  Disjointed and chaotic and loaded with stress.

 

Prior to finding my shot appointments on my own through hours on the computer, I've signed up at my local medical group, my local health department, and various other drugstores.  I've not heard one single word from any of them telling me I was allowed to sign up for a timeslot - just the occasional email telling me to be patient.  For the record, I am over 65, so in the second group in my state.

 

I think people understand (even if they don't like it) that not everyone can be vaccinated all at once, and that triage needs to be made.  But to me the awful management of the process and the complete and total lack of any specific communication is what drives people up the wall.  For example, my health department should be able to tell me I am # xyz out of #xyz number of people ahead of me.  I know they can't tell me a specific timeframe due to confusion in the availability, but they definitely could tell me that.  As should my medical group.  I used to manage large IT projects - I know programming that would be a fairly simple process.  Instead I get patronizing emails telling me to be patient, and Facebook posts that actually encourage people to go out and do their best to find appointments on their own because the health department doesn't have enough.  Outrageous!!  A total lack of good leadership at the state and county level.  

We did manage to make appointments on the east coast.  CVS started taking appointments in Florida yesterday in densely populated areas so very few offered in our neck of the woods and what was available sold out in a nano second. So off to the Miami area we will go on Saturday.

I truly feel very sorry from some older individuals who aren’t internet savvy and/or wouldn’t be comfortable doing a 200+ mile round trip drive.  Hopefully vaccines will become more plentiful in the next few weeks but something needs to be done to the current system.

[nocl]

19 hours ago, baldilocks said:

 

I lived near Chicago (Elgin) back when Mayor Dailey was in charge. He was one tough politician. He would hire 'friends and relatives' to head up projects....but you better not let the Mayor and the people down or you are out of there. He did not take poor performance lightly.

Back is his day you could also pay your traffic ticket to the officer that stopped you in cash and not have to worry about it impacting your insurance.  Never had a police strike in those days.

[frankdp]

On 2/24/2021 at 9:30 AM, TeeRick said:

Back to Herd Immunity.  A nice piece in the NY Times on the impossible task of getting to COVID ZERO.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/covid-zero-unattainable-acceptable-risk-130449070.html

Just another nonsense, no fact, BS article about how COVID is unbeatable.  Ridiculous.

[Preacherman46]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:44 PM, cruisemom42 said:

 

Just one recent "big stink" about it in my state:

 

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/cobb-county-school-board-under-fire-after-3-teacher-deaths/85-8a585a86-90e1-4228-985e-ae0834866c5d

 

Three classroom instructors died of COVID within a couple of weeks after schools reopened in January in this school district.  The kicker?  Three of the members of the county school board where the teachers were protesting in the article linked above REFUSED to wear masks at the board meeting where this was discussed despite it being a requirement and despite being the request of one of the teachers who died (as was reminded during the meeting).

 

Please forgive Cruisemom42, I am posting on one of yours again because I don't know how to find us and I accidentally exited that tab 😞 I also don't know how to start a thread anymore. Away from CC to long.

 

We are wondering if you know about travel insurance for Italy. We always get travel ins. for our cruises but have never checked into this.

[phoenix_dream]

21 hours ago, baldilocks said:

 

I lived near Chicago (Elgin) back when Mayor Dailey was in charge. He was one tough politician. He would hire 'friends and relatives' to head up projects....but you better not let the Mayor and the people down or you are out of there. He did not take poor performance lightly.

He certainly would never pass muster these days, that's for sure.  But he darn sure would have somehow; someway had most of Chicago vaccinated by now - or else.😲

[TeeRick]

18 hours ago, frankdp said:

Just another nonsense, no fact, BS article about how COVID is unbeatable.  Ridiculous.

What do you think is ridiculous?  No, that is not what the article is saying at all.  The vaccines and herd immunity will eventually make COVID like other respiratory viruses that we deal with.  Mostly beatable in your terminology.  But not down to zero cases worldwide for many years if ever.  Only smallpox and polio were eradicated after decades of vaccination campaigns.  Most medical experts and scientists have stated that we will need to deal with COVID eventually like we deal with influenza.  Maybe get yearly vaccines and boosters. Maybe we will have effective antiviral drugs.  Lots of them being developed and tested now. We will be managing the virus, the disease, and we will be back to normalcy.  

[jagoffee]

TeeRick, I believe you are probably correct.  Bringing the Covid to a level of the regular flu would be the best that we could expect, especially related to hospitalizations and deaths.

[TeeRick]

1 minute ago, jagoffee said:

TeeRick, I believe you are probably correct.  Bringing the Covid to a level of the regular flu would be the best that we could expect, especially related to hospitalizations and deaths.

It depends on the vaccines and rates of vaccination.  Or public resistance to vaccination. If more people get the COVID vaccine than the Flu vaccine, then IMO the COVID will be more manageable and even less deadly than seasonable Flu.   The question TBD is how much the COVID coronavirus changes over time as compared to the influenza viruses which change every year.  It is  certainly possible to make mRNA COVID vaccines on a yearly basis if necessary.  This should all be very manageable going forward by our healthcare systems and pharmacies..

[jagoffee]

5 minutes ago, TeeRick said:

It depends on the vaccines and rates of vaccination.  Or public resistance to vaccination. If more people get the COVID vaccine than the Flu vaccine, then IMO the COVID will be more manageable and even less deadly than seasonable Flu.   The question TBD is how much the COVID coronavirus changes over time as compared to the influenza viruses which change every year.  It is  certainly possible to make mRNA COVID vaccines on a yearly basis if necessary.  This should all be very manageable going forward by our healthcare systems and pharmacies..

Yes.

We get our flu shot every year.  I am going to be terribly disappointed if that number of people receiving the Covid vaccine is not significantly greater than those that normally receive the flu shot. (Less than 50% of adults in 2018-2019 season according to Dr. Google)

[4774Papa]

On 2/23/2021 at 12:13 PM, cruisemom42 said:

 

This is incorrect. In Georgia, teachers were not prioritized. As recently as four days ago Gov. Kemp said the state is "considering" adding teachers as they work in the next two weeks to develop prioritization for the next phase of rollout:

 

https://www.wabe.org/georgia-may-add-teachers-to-vaccine-priority-list/

 

 

Our Governor announced that starting in a few days that teachers and school staff would be open for vaccines, along with those already eligible.