Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Is it ethically better if the government sponsors the corruption?

One of the criticisms we have seen over the years with front of the line access programs is you cannot cut in line yourself but if the park allows you to do so, its suddenly ok. On a certain level, that is true. You could look at the college admissions scandal with Loughlin and company and say the problem wasn't paying money to get your kid into a given college but rather not going through the official channels. And on a certain level, that is true as well.

So institutional corruption isn't a problem but rogue corrupt individuals are?

I know that is reality in many of our institutions but that doesn't make it acceptable or ethical. I say that coming from one of the most corrupt states in the union.

Absent a book of objective and absolute right and wrong covering all expects of human endeavors and the universe, someone needs to make rules to have a civilized society. Can be mob rule (might makes right). Step above anarchy in many instances. Can have a king make the rules but that is often a mob of one. For better or worse (mostly better I would say), societies have decided to let elected (appointed sometimes) legislatures make those rules.

That involves making judgments and drawing lines. But different people make different judgments and draw different lines which can be problematic. And that is before you bring in political influences which can skew those judgments/lines (cue the pope, daily chicken and losing the Wonder Bread account joke).

A couple of stories that croseed my feed today:

60% of Ohio nursing home workers electing not to get vaccine

At the current pace, it will take 10 years to vaccinate everyone

The government overpromised and underdelivered. News at 11.

The vaccine makers are quietly saying that they have inventory that isn't moving, which makes you wonder where the supply chain is broken. It's like no one is actually in charge, which I suppose is par for the course the last few years.

I have seen very little information about vaccine distribution. Considering what I do for a living that is pretty disturbing. J

Just read that 1 in 16 Floridians has contracted Covid compared to 1 in 94 worldwide. DeSantis keeps on winning.

That's messed up. Every person in your position should have little question about how your constituents are going to get the vaccine and when.

In Ohio, DeWine is saying that 60% of the eligible nursing home workers are declining their vaccine.

Also saw the story about the hospital worker in Wisconsin that ruined 500 doses of the vaccine. What I found non-understandable was that the hospital discovered this before the 12 hour time window on the vaccine ran out. They said they were able to give out some of the doses but not all of them. How hard is it to give out 500 doses? Do people really not want it? I don't understand how they were not able to find 500 people within about 5 minutes and then line them up and hit them with the shot. What am I missing?

I don’t know why this isn’t a requirement of working in a nursing home. Like, if your kids want to go to school, they have to get vaccines. If you want to teach, there are medical requirements (just got my quadrennial TB test this morning). Why isn’t this required for work in a nursing home?

Jeff said:

The vaccine makers are quietly saying that they have inventory that isn't moving, which makes you wonder where the supply chain is broken. It's like no one is actually in charge, which I suppose is par for the course the last few years.

There is no national health care infrastructure....at all. It's not just a function of current leadership, though that's definitely not helping.

Having no such infrastructure is okay when things are mostly okay. But when you need it, you need it.

I'm surprised by the 60% decline rate, but my health-care spouse is not. Her take is that there will need to be a significant and sustained PR campaign to counter the last decade or two of "vaccines are dangerous" misinformation. Yet another consequence of a national embrace of anti-science, for a whole host of reasons.

Consider that this vaccine was granted highly accelerated approval. It might be that a lot of people are declining it because of unknown long-term effects. I’m glad it got rolled out quickly, but I can understand that people have reservations.

From what I understand, about half the states mandate that healthcare workers get flu shots. And even those have exemptions from the mandate which vary by state.

Unions also often are against mandates.

sirloindude said:

Consider that this vaccine was granted highly accelerated approval.

As I understand it the length and scope of the Phase 3 trials were not at all unusual. Most of the difference is attributable to short development time plus speculative production at scale pre-approval

Brian Noble said:
There is no national health care infrastructure....at all. It's not just a function of current leadership, though that's definitely not helping. Having no such infrastructure is okay when things are mostly okay. But when you need it, you need it.

If only we had a year to plan for this. Wait...

Seriously though, we can deploy people, ships and airplanes by the thousands anywhere in the world in 24 hours. I can have cold beer delivered to my house in the next two hours. Between those two facts, I don't believe that infrastructure is the problem. America invented getting anything anywhere as fast as possible.

Lately I’ve been sitting in utter disbelief and shock, really, that the administration of this vaccine is so f’d up. My heart broke to see Florida seniors lined up outside for days hoping to get their turn for the shot. And why anyone should be in a scramble at the sound of a bell is beyond me, anyway. A good friend lives in a poor county in rural Florida north of Tampa with her 96 yo dad and they were told all appointments for the vaccine were taken. No word as to when that would open back up yet.
And here I am, a 66 yo, overweight, diabetic man who sits in some mysteriously named Group 2. My health is nothing to be bragging about but I understand that’s how one gets to group 2. I don’t know what that means, or whether I’ll be called up eventually or if I’m gonna have to go looking for it myself. My guess is that our primary care locations won’t be stocking the vaccines- I don’t remember seeing a super deep freezer in the office to store it.

In the early 60’s when I was a boy in Fairview Park, Ohio we participated in Sabin Sundays. Over three consecutive spring Sundays millions of families lined up at their school to receive a sugar cube with a drop of the new, live polio vaccine in it. Somehow we all knew when to go, we all went happily, it was administered easily, and no one dropped dead from it.
Ok- Not quite the same as this I suppose, but I happen to know that mass inoculation is possible.
The clown who would “only hire the best people” put his know-nothing VP in charge of this virus. You know, as opposed to someone who might actually know what to do and take action to prepare us for this.
It makes me want to throttle someone when I think that we have to rely on the Gaga’s and Dolly Partons of the world to quietly step up and do what’s required to get a vaccine available.

GoBucks89 said:

The TRUMP government overpromised and underdelivered. News at 11.

Fixed it for you.

Brian Noble said:

As I understand it the length and scope of the Phase 3 trials were not at all unusual. Most of the difference is attributable to short development time plus speculative production at scale pre-approval.

One of the main reasons the phase 3 trials went so quickly is because there was so much prevalence of the virus in the community. They got all the data they needed.

Regarding the botched rollout. I get email alerts from Allegheny County. This was one of them...

Health Department Seeking Information From Organizations with Individuals Eligible for Phase 1A Vaccinations
The Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) is seeking information from healthcare organizations to assist in planning and allocating the limited amount of the COVID-19 vaccine being received. At this time, organizations which fall into the Phase 1A category for vaccinations are being asked to provide basic contact information and detail on its operations, as well as an estimate of eligible personnel working in Allegheny County.

Maybe they were waiting for the feds to provided a plan? Why didn't they have this information ready?

Frustration aside. All of my friends and family who work in healthcare have already had their first dose.

Ohio's vaccine rollout is...what's the word? A cluster$#%@.

The "dashboard" on the government website it essentially useless, and so is the hotline.

At our dentist a couple days ago, he mentioned that he got an email letting him know where he can go to get it, and that he is up "soon" (Ohio is supposedly in Phase 1A, and he is in Phase 1B.). This coordination, though, is happening by his regional association of dentists, not the government or anyone in healthcare. In other words, they are taking care of themselves.

I've been wondering if my wife and I can get it in 1B; we both teach (college) and we are therapists (healthcare)...so I called the hotline and asked. They couldn't tell me 1) if we would be included, or 2) where we could get it if we were. In Phase 1B in Ohio, for instance, the language says "all adults who work in schools"...but they don't define school. Is this K-12? College? Both? The hotline guy put me on hold for 5 minutes and eventually came back and said "no one here knows how we are defining the word school", and literally told me to keep watching Dewine's addresses for updated information. So I contacted Mount Union's (my employer) HR dept., who then contacted Aultman Hospital (the go to in Stark County), and still no one had any answers.

Summit County above us now has an online registry where you can sign up, and then you will get notified when/where when you are eligible. But Stark County where I live has no such registry. Why not?

All Dewine is doing now is "encouraging people" to get it. That's awesome, but there is no coordinated leadership at the ground level...just a patchwork system that works about as efficiently as a baby giraffe trying to walk for the first time.

Which, by the way, looks like this:

I would just echo Brian's words. Having no such infrastructure is okay when things are mostly okay. But when you need it, you need it.