Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Re: Gonch
I say the exact same thing about seat belts and flu shots all the time, but I don’t even care whether the ICU is full. Obviously, this is totally impossible to implement and probably immoral, but the idea is sound.

Re: Shades
If I could, I would also make the flu vaccine mandatory (disclaimer, I probably get it about 75% of years because I just forget the other 25% of the time). But Covid is obviously more dangerous, both directly ("I breathe in the air that you breathe out") and indirectly ("You end up taking an ICU bed") to the point that we've shut down large segments of our economy for it, so it doesn't seem inconsistent to have stricter mandates for vaccination.

Or if you mean "how" as in logistically, you can gate a lot of jobs (teachers, nurses, assisted living workers, librarians, anyone who works for the city, county, state, or fed, maybe even all "essential workers") with a vaccination requirement. We already do that for a lot of vaccines for teachers and kids in schools. "Restaurants want to open? Every staff person needs proof of vaccine. Hair salon wants to open? Same thing. Retail? All front line workers must have proof of vaccine. etc. etc." Then again, I live in the Bay Area where we need permits to sneeze, so this might be a little more amenable here than elsewhere.

If you refused a vaccine, you can get bumped from the ICU if capacity becomes an issue. Vaccinated folks have priority regardless of reason for being admitted.

You could say the same thing about insurance. If you have the ability to buy insurance (can afford it as well) but you choose not to do so and otherwise do not have the ability to pay, no treatment. Its contrary to how people in heathcare are trained. But you also run the risk of being wrong. System didn't show you had insurance or the vaccine (and you lost your vaccine card -- I kept my dads for now because he will lose it as sure as anything and they said we needed to bring it for the second dose) so we denied treatment/ICU. But then we figured out you had coverage/vaccine. Oops. But I agree with each in theory.

If someone does not want the vaccine, simply bumping them to the end of the line is not going to have any impact on them whatsoever. In their mind there is no line. It only helps people who do want the vaccine as there are not doses being held back for no reason.

Thats the reason they are bumping people to the end of the line. Frees up vaccines that they otherwise are holding for people in priority groups still on the sideline. Every day you see reports of numbers of vaccines distributed and administered. You want that gap to be as small as possible. You also want to make sure those most at risk (those in group 1a) have a chance to get vaccinated. Have to balance that against unused supply as well. And giving the "get a shot or go to back of line" may well bring some people off the sideline who were hesitant. And if so, great. But if not, we are moving on.

Then again, I live in the Bay Area where we need permits to sneeze, so this might be a little more amenable here than elsewhere.

I posted a link recently to an article that noted states that allow exemptions for medical reasons only, medical and religious and medical, religious and personal. Not surprisingly California was in the "medical only" camp. Though its a "if it can be regulated, we will regulated" kinda place so no surprise there. I also understand that they got burned by people opting out of vaccines and thus tightened up its exemptions. Taking everything full circle places that get burned by something oftentimes take steps to avoid that happening again and can be better prepared when it does.

ApolloAndy said:
...Then again, I live in the Bay Area where we need permits to sneeze, so this might be a little more amenable here than elsewhere.

Presumably you have to have your COVID vaccine in order to be eligible for a public sneezing permit...

On a related note, I was in a bog-box store last week and a recorded message requested that I keep my distance from other customers, and cough into my elbow. I opted to ignore the request. I mean, I have no problem staying away from everyone else, but I saw no reason to cough, into my elbow or elsewhere...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Did the recorded message say anything about turning your head before you coughed?

Lord Gonchar said:

If you refused a vaccine, you can get bumped from the ICU if capacity becomes an issue. Vaccinated folks have priority regardless of reason for being admitted.

I would be totally onboard with this. Unfortunately, it runs counter to the Hippocratic Oath.

Some timeline info via Fauci yesterday.

First, the US actually hit one million shots in a single day yesterday. If we start doing 1 million a day now, it will take until the end of 2021 to hit a 75% vaccination mark, so the pace [can and] needs to be more aggressive. The good news is that this pace is based on the 2-shot vaccines; hopefully J & J's one shot vaccine is available soon, which could really speed things up.

That's all.

Jeff said:

Lord Gonchar said:

If you refused a vaccine, you can get bumped from the ICU if capacity becomes an issue. Vaccinated folks have priority regardless of reason for being admitted.

I would be totally onboard with this. Unfortunately, it runs counter to the Hippocratic Oath.

Hypothetical:

Unvaccinated Patient 1 shows up at the ER today with severe COVID symptoms and there's one ICU bed available. Patient 1 goes on a ventilator and gets that open bed because there's not a vaccinated patient waiting for it.

Vaccinated Patient 2 shows up at the ER tomorrow having a heart attack and needs bypass surgery that is scheduled for Monday. In the meantime, Patient 2 needs to be monitored in the ICU, but there's no beds open.

Have we accomplished our mission of properly punishing the unvaccinated patient?

bigboy said:

Have we accomplished our mission of properly punishing the unvaccinated patient?

Depends on if we just stick them in a broom closet or push them out the door allowing their gurney and ventilator to slowly roll across the parking lot until it hits the curb on the far side and the patient pops up off the bed with a comic little "bump."

I keep hearing about the percentage we need to vaccinate in order to reach heard immunity, but I'm assuming that is a percentage of the entire population. Is reaching heard immunity as critical if we make sure to prioritize vaccinating the elderly? I mean, ultimately yes we want to eradicate this disease or tamp it down enough so that we can control it, but in the near term if the goal is to reduce severe illness and death and help to ease the burden on our health care system, then we should focus less on the total population percentage and more on the elderly population percentage. Just looking at our dashboard for Indiana, those 70 and older account for 78% of all COVID deaths in the state, whereas it's only 2.5% for everyone under 50.

Lord Gonchar said:

Depends on if we just stick them in a broom closet or push them out the door allowing their gurney and ventilator to slowly roll across the parking lot until it hits the curb on the far side and the patient pops up off the bed with a comic little "bump."

CVS says they will be able to give 30 vaccine shots a month. Walgreens can give 25 milion per month. Those 2 chains alone can almost double the 1 million/day mark.

Pfizer has agreed to deliver 200 doses by the end of July. Moderna says they will deliver 100 million doses by end of March and another 100 million by the end of June. Those 2 combined (without Johnson vaccine or any other vaccine which may be approved soon) would be able to vaccinate 200 million (just under the 210 million adults in the US -- neither vaccine is approved for 16/18 year olds).

Capacity should be there to reach some level of herd immunity by summer. Just a matter of herding cats to get that all to work. And there need to be sufficient willing arms.

COVID-19 will likely be with us forever. Here's how we'll live with it.

This immunity can be achieved in one of two ways: large-scale vaccination, or recovery from natural infections. But achieving widespread immunity through uncontrolled spread comes at a terrible cost: hundreds of thousands more deaths and hospitalizations around the world. “If we don’t want to push forward vaccines and champion vaccines, we have to decide collectively how many old people we want to die—and I don’t want to be the one making that decision,” says Paul Duprex, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research

1. Sliders

2. We're finally readily acknowledging that age is a huge part of this.

Seriously though, it's an interesting article.

In a nutshell, this is just what happens. A new virus comes along and knocks off the weak. The strong survive and those that follow build immunity. One generation's deadly virus is another's annoying cold.

Heard an interesting idea of tying your stimulus check to getting a vaccine. Obviously, there's some issues with allergies, religious exemptions, etc., but that's another way to mandate vaccination. Of course, there's bound to be a lot of fraud as well.

I like the idea, but not getting your check until you get the vaccine is going to piss off the part of the population who is way down on the list to get the shot. I want the money now, not in July when it finally is my turn.

I'm a little concerned about these mutations that are showing up all over the world. The problem with the volume of the spread is that every generation of infection is another chance for a mutation, and there's a whole lot of infection going on right now. If we randomly get something that's resistant to the vaccine, it could reset the whole process.

In software, we call this a race condition... where some state changes before it is consumed by some later code, causing a bug and unexpected results. It's a category of bug that is often difficult to solve.

How about free pot if you get a shot?

https://www.complex.com/life/2021/01/joints-for-jabs-free-weed-for-...19-vaccine

The variants are troubling. Just in the last month we have discovered four variants (UK, South Africa, Brazil / Japan, and California). Either the virus is mutating more frequently, likely due to an increased opportunity to do so, or we are better at testing for variants. Or it's a bit of both.

The UK is now saying that their variant my be 30% more lethal than others. Obviously the hope is that the vaccines currently in production offer some level of protection against these variants even if it is reduced. From what I gather Moderna says that they wouldn't need to start from scratch if the vaccine isn't effective against these variants. It would be a matter of changing the "instructions" and wouldn't require them to go through the whole process of clinical trials again.

I began following the Harvard Global Health Institute map/info a while back. It's an easy daily click that doesn't drown you COVID crap. A screenshot of how things are going in terms of new cases to peek at every day and I move on.

It's funny because at one point the entire country was orange and yellow with red and green speckeled in at places. Then after Sturgis, everything started truning red in ND/SD. The red moved straight down the map and then curved across to both sides in an almost anchor-like shape. (I wish I had done daily screenshots because it would be a terrific animation)

Then the entire country was just solid red for months and months.

But recently orange and yellow counties started appearing again. And then more. And now still more over the past two or three weeks.

The three states I have an interest in (OH, FL, PA) have "cases per 100k" numbers that have been on a steady decline for a similar amount of time.

I dunno. Just sharing. Seems far too early to attribute a reduction in cases on vaccinations. Could be lower testing rates? But new case counts are declining.

Strictly opinion, but my thought is case rates are declining mostly because we are getting further and further away from the Holidays. New Years Day was a little over 3 weeks ago, and the end of the travel period was around January 3rd.

The case rates seemed to dip slightly in mid-December, 3 weeks after Thanksgiving, only to start up again around Christmas. Now the cases that arise from late December travel are working through the system. Hopefully they will continue to decline. If everything follows according to form, the fatalities should start to decrease in 10-14 days.

I know that in CA, there were a lot more restrictions imposed. Not as much as March and some “voluntary” but there has been a clear emphasis since early December that we’re back in the sh!t and need to be vigilant again. I stopped playing pickup ultimate frisbee since December and dearly miss it but I’m commited to staying at home as much as possible during the official “stay-at-home” period.