In my department there have been a couple of people opt out. Their take is they are young and fit and believe the danger of possible horrors from an untested vaccine are worse than what they’d face with Covid.
I suggested that they might want to think about their parents, grandparents, people at the store, etc., and they just brushed it off.
My feeling is, the moment the big two vaccines get FDA approval they should and will be mandatory like the flu shot, at least at my hospital. You can opt out for religious reasons, but you need a letter or something. So getting the optimal percentage of the population vaccinated is probably on the FDA’s side of the court, sadly.
Within the next week or so, my office staff will be completely vaccinated (well, dose #1, anyway.) I think (with some justification) that part of that is because the docs were verbally outraged at being put in the back of the line to receive vaccines, and only got ours because Moderna doses were released, then absolutely jumped at the chance to get ours. Don’t know how well that translates, but I strongly suspect that if we had been wishy-washy or hesitant, it would not have been as well accepted. IMHO, that is the way to get it done. Lead from the front, not the back.
I’ve been taking about 2000 IUs a day since back in March, and I believe it has helped my health overall. I work 3rds, so my sunlight intake is right around vampire level.
I don’t believe it’s any kind of magic pill for Covid, but I do think it can’t hurt to make sure we have better-than-deficient levels
It is staggering that while all this election shit is going on, Covid is worse than it has ever been here. Our nation’s insane crush on an orange shitrag is killing a jumbo-jet crash number of people every 4 hours or so, and people are more interested in conspiracy theories.
… and now that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has seen the numbers get far worse than they had “expected”, in quotes because experts have been yelling at him for months … (and the media, and citizens)…
Schools locked out until Feb 10th, making just shy of a full year of no normal education. Borders to the U.S. remain closed for “at least” 6 more weeks.
Given my age, location and profession I’m at least 7 months away from vaccination.
Good thing our economy is… oh…well, at least there hasn’t been a coup attempt here…
This is a significant shift in recommendations to states, which ditches nuanced prioritization schemes laid out by expert public health panels, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The change is also likely to generate criticism, given the large size of these groups and the breakdown of prioritization. But Secretary Azar seemed to justify the shift, citing the slow rollout so far—which he entirely blamed on states.
According to Azar, the government is giving states two-week’s notice before the new allotment strategy would come into effect. However, with the Biden administration coming into office next week, it’s unclear if this change will come into effect at all.
I wonder what it’s like to spend your whole life living in your own asshole. They seem distressingly happy. If I didn’t know better* I’d wonder if they aren’t just trying to create as much confusion as possible before they’re pried out of the gears of government.
I did the maths on that earlier and we will reach that number, proportionally, before it goes down again. We may even go above it. Infections peaked here (Ireland) a few days ago.
And I may be optimistic about the deaths as the healthcare system could pretty much collapse.
ETA
That all time graph shows the difference between locking down, a little bit later, and a full week after you did it the time before. That’s the point of hitting it early.
This is the wildcard. If this happens, the deaths attributable to Covid as well as all cause deaths go through the roof. This is what must not happen. And yet our all-knowing leadership does not even acknowledge it as a possibility.
Absolutely. And the failure here to lock down properly before Christmas will be the direct cause of very many deaths. That and allowing 55,000 people (think 3.6 million in US money, largely from heavily infected areas) to waltz in over the Christmas period. These people were not quarantined. In fact they were probably contributing to overcrowding in their houses as the family got together and, let’s be honest, they met their mates too. Whether they were home for Christmas or they just hadn’t seen them since last Christmas.
I have real sympathy for people working abroad who hadn’t seen their partner or children in a year, bit most people should have stayed the fuck where they were.
Given the way these people work, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were mostly pious pro-maskers, all using the masks with release valves and working their connections to jump line for the vaccine.
Premier Doug Ford 
well, at least there hasn’t been a coup attempt here…
