Sigh. The headline will be all that people notice. Everything else will be a blur like Larson’s What dogs hear. “Woohoo! International travel, beaches, no masks!”
While Covid is still common in the general population, those people will be raw material for any variant that is resistant to current immunities from vaccines or previous infection. If we get through this with just one cycle of vaccinations, it’ll be a miracle against stupidity.
Depressingly accurate.
I’ve long suspected some folks saying these things are talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Found some interesting hesitancy figures here:
FTA:
According to January survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that researches national health issues, roughly 3 in 10 health care workers express hesitancy about getting a COVID-19 vaccine. That proportion is higher for staff in long-term care facilities, where 6 in 10 health care workers did not get a shot during the first month of vaccine distribution, according to the CDC.
Vaccine hesitancy is lowest among people 65 and older of all races, with only 10% of older White people and 14% of older Black people saying they plan to wait and see whether the shots cause serious side effects before rolling up their sleeves, according to Kaiser.
They say I will be able to sing “Jolene” at karaoke.
You can do that now…not necessarily so that others will enjoy listening, but it is POSSIBLE.
I can’t think of a more comprehensively damning indictment of the US healthcare system than “people just assume the cost of the vaccine treatment for a deadly pandemic will be too expensive to bear, so they don’t even bother looking into getting it”.
It’s even listenable now, if I get the DJ to take it down 3 keys. I had an irrational moment of hope when I heard the punchline, like I’d get my childhood soprano range back.
It still could happen. We’ll see two weeks after tomorrow. 
Pretty mild for me. Sore arm 4 hours later. Moderate fatigue and mild sore arm the next day. But I also made sure I was able to sack out for 9 to 10 hours solid the night after the vaccine and nap the day after.
My mild reaction makes me paranoid it isn’t working. Sigh.
I used this recommendation today. Shot #1 done!
And a sticker? I’m jealous.
An interesting study showing how closely COVID mortality is linked to education:
Best guess is the main reason is that most of the front-line workers in transit, retail, meat packing, etc are lower educated folks without the option to work remotely. It’s kinda late in the game now, but our society really needs to step up to help essential workers stay safer by providing sufficient PPE, better working conditions, and hazard pay. And obviously also provide enough financial support so that the non-essential workers aren’t forced to return to dangerous jobs before the pandemic is brought under control.
It’s like driving along a coastal highway with a maniac who keeps trying to jerk the wheel hard-right “to get a better look at the sea”.
The problem is that the other passengers keep saying that the view of the ocean is worth it. And now you can’t get out of the car anymore.
Today’s Toronto Star Editorial Cartoon sums up the full page of scathing letters on the editorial page. Premier Ford … well … sooner he’s gone the better.
And… schools in my district are closed again by order of the Peel Public Health board. Right decision, but the 6 weeks or so that they were open were not worth the spread of disease.
No one could have predicted that kids spread COVID. Except for all of those people who did and were ignored.
“Please understand, this B.1.1.7 variant is a brand new ball game,” Osterholm said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It infects kids very readily. Unlike previous strains of the virus, we didn’t see children under 8th grade get infected often or they were not frequently very ill, they didn’t transmit to the rest of the community.”
All of the “kids are fine” advice seems predicated on observed minimal spread amongst kids while they were all stuck at home distance-learning. Of course things are going to get worse for them the second you start cramming them together in poorly-ventilated buildings for 7 hours a day 5 days a week.
Once again I feel like I’m taking crazy pills but it’s actually the rest of the world that’s lost its mind.
