Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

I’ve heard that site is down. Like, don’t rely on it right now.
Gonch- our neighbors got appointments with Equitas Dayton when central Ohio failed them. She’s had lupus since she was a teen, now they’re in their mid-3/4 40’s. The disease affected her lungs, so you’d think that she would’ve been in some kind of priority group. Oh, except we don’t have that here. Anyway, they are so excited and relieved to be on the way to immunity- they’ve spent a year worried, pretty much in isolation. Like many of us.
I’ve heard people describe it as a light at the end of a really long tunnel.

State's site isn't very helpful in that it just gives you a list of places near you who are giving vaccinations. Not necessarily ones that have appointments available. I was expecting you would put in your zip code and it would give you a list of places near you with available appointments (noting dates and times) so you could pick what worked.

Drug Mart was the only one I saw doing it right: you could register on their site and they will let you know (text/call/email) when they have an appointment available. Everywhere else told you nothing was available, check back later.

Once again, Gonch is ahead of his time (so to speak):

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2021/03/with-eligibility-abou...alify.html

"I'm not saying he should have done it....but I understand."

So is it Lord Gonchar or Vaccine Queen Gonchar?

It's kind of inconsistent. I think traditionally in Ohio the idea has been you can't register until eligible, but there isn't much stopping you from registering ahead. I am not eligible now. I will be on the day I made my appointment for. Seems like common sense. Let's fill these available slots. Again, a stickler for efficiency.

The Ohio statewide site still uses 50 as an age gatekeeper, but locally for my area, for example, Public Health Dayton Montgomery County appears to already be accepting the 40+ group.

I think with just a three day lead time, it's not going to matter much. Seems like previous announcements for additional group eligibility came much sooner.

EDIT - Just saw on our local news at 5pm, that PHDMC did open up to 40+ this afternoon because in the next couple of days they had hundreds of available times not being used. They are now filled for the rest of this week.

While short term that is good news, long term it is troubling. Beyond the initial surge when the next age group opens up, people simply are not getting the shots. I wouldn’t be surprised if in two weeks your area has hundreds of open slots again.

Lord Gonchar said:

Let's fill these available slots. Again, a stickler for efficiency.

That seems to be how it's being handled in SE MI. We know several people who are eligible for reasons that would require verification, but anecdotally no one is verifying said eligibility. Even the scheduling process implies lax oversight, since one category - "essential worker" - often lists a wide variety of possible jobs. Even the MDHHS official guidelines are helpfully vague, defining "essential worker" as, among other things, "critical manufacturing worker," which, with the auto industry so prevalent here, makes a lot of people "eligible."

It feels like the underlying strategy is to prioritize the people who need it most, but to not waste too much time and energy doing so.

And that makes total sense to me. If you've got a syringe full of the Good Stuff, scan the room, so to speak, and if no one looks like they're in dire need, stab the nearest warm body and move on to the next. Because while we should make sure the most at-risk are getting vaccinated when we can, the most important thing is to simply get as many humans inoculated as fast as possible, period.

How Is The COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Going In Your State?

Those on the right may underestimate COVID-19 risks, but do some on the left overestimate the risk?

It's a slow day at work today. Figured I'd drop this one here to see what everyone thinks.

As someone who tends to be on the cautious side of things, I have to say "absolutely." Obviously it's impossible to know, "the truth is somewhere in the middle" is kind of a vacuous statement because the middle is a really big place, and there's an important risk/reward calculation. But I think there's good evidence that kids following mask and distancing protocols are at extremely low risk, but we still see lots of pushback against opening schools. There's also basically zero evidence that outdoor sports (during competition itself, not in the overhead of getting to and from) contributes to transmission. Same with outdoor, masked, distanced amusement parks.

I think we've beat to death the fact that most transmission is happening in small, indoor gatherings in houses.

Also, my wife won't let us go to Disneyland because "we don't know what it will do to our kids' lungs, long term."

I guess my frustration, along with thousands (millions?) of others, is the seemingly constant stream of contradictory information. You have Dr. Osterholm saying "we are in the eye of the hurricane" and "the next 6-14 weeks will be the worst we have ever seen" (said 6 weeks ago, BTW). Then you have Dr. Gottlieb saying " cases may tick up slightly, but the worst is behind us". Then "Variants may be resistant to the vaccine", and "The vaccines are effective against the UK and Brazil variants". Wear a mask, unless you are with other vaccinated people. Keep your mask on, even when you are vaccinated. Stay 6 feet apart, unless you are in school, then 3 feet is OK. What, or Who is anyone supposed to believe anymore.

It is no wonder some people are starting to throw their hands up and say "I give up". I am just glad I only have 4 more weeks to go to be "Fully Vaccinated". Unless something changes.

Kind of going sideways here, but this is the most interesting chart in the whole article to me:

Mostly because I jumped on age very early on as probably the biggest factor and that never really seemed to make it's way into the narrative (beyond nursing home talk) until it came time to vaccinate and suddenly we all accepted age was the most important decider.

That chart shows, I think, just how misguided the narrative really was. I don't think people really understood how low the risk was for the younger part of our population. Couple that with the logical fallacies that Andy is mentioning and you have a pretty misguided approach from the average Joe Sixpack - in either direction.

The thing is, I think this whole pandemic is just going to reinforce whatever beliefs you had coming into - and during - it. If you were more cautious, you're going to be ready to don a mask again at the sign of any viral outbreak. If you weren't as worried, I think you're going to be emboldened by how this played out.

I think (for the millionth time in the thread) it would be interesting and important to look at "transmission traced to <age group>" as well.

Lord Gonchar said:

It's kind of inconsistent. I think traditionally in Ohio the idea has been you can't register until eligible, but there isn't much stopping you from registering ahead. I am not eligible now. I will be on the day I made my appointment for. Seems like common sense. Let's fill these available slots. Again, a stickler for efficiency.

The Ohio statewide site still uses 50 as an age gatekeeper, but locally for my area, for example, Public Health Dayton Montgomery County appears to already be accepting the 40+ group.

I think with just a three day lead time, it's not going to matter much. Seems like previous announcements for additional group eligibility came much sooner.

EDIT - Just saw on our local news at 5pm, that PHDMC did open up to 40+ this afternoon because in the next couple of days they had hundreds of available times not being used. They are now filled for the rest of this week.

Circling back to this, not only can you get the vaccine for 40+ in Ohio, but they don't even care if you live in Ohio. There were plenty of appointments available this morning, and I got one for next Wednesday evening at a Rite Aid that is literally only a few hundred feet over the state line.

Yeah, I don't know what's with Ohio. Our vaccination rates are middle of the pack - very average for the country, but there seems to be SO much availability. I can literally get a shot this afternoon from the county health department or one in the next 48 hours from the local health network running vaccination sites all over the area. There's appointments at third party locations (Kroger, Walgreens) available next week.

It's crazy. There's no excuse to not get vaccinated in my area right now. Curious to see how hammered the system gets in two weeks once it's open to all.

Curious to see how hammered I'M going to get in a month when I go back to the bar.

I've been eyeing the death rates and in spite of the completion of lots of vaccines in the older populations, I haven't seen a huge dent in the death rate beyond what would be expected from the falling case rates. Of course, maybe the falling case rates are because of the vaccinations as well, but I'd expect to see the death rate plummet to basically zero if we're already vaccinating 40 year olds.

About 75 million people have had at least one dose. About 40 million people are fully vaccinated.

DeWine was dropping the age groups in 5 year increments. Then he went from 60 to 50 and this week to 40. In two weeks he is dropping it to 16. I wouldn't expect that he is thinking doing that will result in the system being hammered. If he thought that he would have gone down to 30 or even 25. As we have discussed, I expect its a combo of more supply and running out of willing arms. You would expect many younger people to be less interested (as a group--not talking specific individuals) because their risk (perceived or otherwise) is less.

Certainly the age is important, but I agree with Andy that understanding which ages were big parts of the transmission is important too. By now, I imagine we've all collected enough anecdotes to appreciate that cold unfeeling stats aren't a replacement for people we cared about dying. We're friends with a family here in the neighborhood where both parents and both children had Covid, but were completely asymptomatic, and the only reason that they knew at all was because the father is in the military and was being regularly tested for whatever his role is. They have no idea where they may have been exposed. They're not the first story I've heard like that, and it's probably the reason it got so bad here.

Funny thing is, I wrote on Facebook a year ago today: "All of the science and Asian experience demonstrates that testing is the way out." I think I was right, but we didn't do it, so our way out is closing in on 600k dead, vaccines and a longer duration to this.