the market didn't like these news... https://abc7news.com/moderna-vaccine-side-effects-covid-19-fda-dr-shirley-chi/9083838/ Moderna COVID-19 vaccine causes swelling and inflammation in patients who have cosmetic facial fillers
Walgreens, CVS begin vaccinations at nursing home https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/walgreens-cvs-begin-vaccinations-at-nursing-homes/19447546/ Coronavirus vaccinations began Monday at long-term care facilities across North Carolina. Health officials say North Carolina care facilities have seen 23,000 coronavirus infections during the pandemic, and about 2,400 residents and staffers have died from the virus. Last week, Moderna shipped more than 175,000 doses of its vaccine to North Carolina. About 96,000 of them will go to 899 long-term care facilities, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. CVS and Walgreen's have contracted with the federal government to handle vaccinating residents and staff of long-term care facilities nationwide. Workers will travel to the nursing home and set up makeshift clinics. CVS officials said teams will start on Monday by administering the first dose of the vaccine. Over the next 12 weeks, both Walgreens and CVS say they expect to vaccinate 7 million people at 75,000 long-term care facilities across the country. Sandra Rawlings, who lives in the Courtyards at Berne Village in New Bern, said she is already scheduled to get her first dose of the vaccine on Jan. 18. "Having a life it what it would amount to," said Rawlings, who is 80. "Being able to ... visit with friends, visit with family. Even though precautions will still have to be taken, at least minimizing the opportunity to contract the virus will allow a little more of that." Rawlings said she would encourage other seniors to get vaccinated when they have the opportunity. "A sore arm is a very excellent trade-off to not getting COVID and having yourself in a very, very bad, perhaps fatal, situation," she said. CVS officials say their goal is to vaccinate nearly 128,000 people in the next 12 weeks at some 40,000 long-term care facilities nationwide. It will likely be months before vaccines are available to the general public. But when they are, CVS officials said vaccines will be available by appointment.
Or did not like the announcement that Novavax has entered late stage trials and is writing contracts with countries.
This demonstrates that we as a society are incapable of making the tough decisions. Why are nursing home patients being vaccinated first? Isolate them and begin to vaccinate the general population would be the right move, but we wouldn't feel good about ourselves and lord knows in this day and age feeling good about ourselves is of upmost importance. So, to put it bluntly, we are going to vaccinate those who most likely will be dead in a year anyway while hundreds of thousands of businesses crash and burn, while the virus spreads coast to coast, while tens of millions of lives are turned upside down, but we can all have that feel good moment. Somebody got to bitch slap you with reality, guess that's me. Let the hate fest begin.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to isolate nursing home patients. With the staff, medical assistance, maintenance, food deliveries, etc. that are involved in the care.... COVID will always find a way into the facility if the local community spread of COVID is high (which it is nearly everywhere). The residents of these homes are most vulnerable in terms of probability of death when they catch COVID therefore it makes sense they are near the top of the list.
It works in both directions too. Not to forget that this whole covid shiite-show first took root in the U.S. and got out of control when it spread from nursing homes in Washington State/parts of Oregon. While simultaneously New York was working on its own nursing home nightmare that involved not only turning nursing homes into death camps but seeding the rest of the state as part of that. Full disclosure: I am more of a "hot-spot" control as a priority type of guy than age group or nursing home status type of guy. Sometimes that includes the people in those categories, sometimes it doesn't. I am not for example in favor of giving automatic priority to inmates, but - as a practical matter- some states- Alaska being an example- are dealing with their prison outbreaks as their major hotspots. You have elderly and minorities and white people of all ages there so there is lots of overlap. Same thing with fish packing plants in Oregon or meatpacking plants in South Dakota. Those are major hotspots disabling the people in them and the economic status of the entire community. Put those fucking fires out. If the nursing homes are your hotspot, that could be your priority. Maybe it is not the next country over. I take Capt Obvious point that we do not want to overly concentrate on people who are outside the loop of keeping society functioning because that is important. But I also do not want to piss away a lot of vaccine on people just because they have a darker skin color or are older but healthy. Not in the first couple rounds anyway. Putting out repetitive brushfires in the hotspots not only helps the workers and the load on the medical system but helps to stop spreading which also benefits people who have not been vaccinated. I am somewhat of a moderate on the issue. Follow the CDC guidelines for priority but the guidelines allow for states to deviate based on special circumstances. Just do that. And don't abuse it.
I would make the point that COVID did not appear in Washington and Oregon because some nursing home resident returned from a tour of China. COVID was highly prevalent in the local communities (but misdiagnosed or undetected at the time) and the COVID issue became obvious when the vulnerable residents of nursing homes started dying off as at a rapid rate. It was not a situation where the nursing homes caused wide spread of COVID to the local population -- COVID was already present in the local community prior the nursing homes enduring COVID. It's not like the residents of nursing home wandered out and went to clubs/concerts/bars/restaurants freely spreading COVID across Washington and Oregon.
Oh that is not disputed. How long and where it has been festering in the community before the outbreak at Kirkland varies from "expert" to expert. As I said in my post though, I am sort of past that and focused on hotspots that are clearly generating repeating pantloads of cases and snuffing those out without regard to what the ethnic/age/incarceration characteristics of the population are. Maybe wayyy back the virus arrived directly from a family member returning from china and visiting someone else. Or may the virus has been living under a rock in Pocatello, Idaho for the last three years. Don't know. We are where we are. As an aside, in lot of states the inmates in all those prisons and jails are moved to ICU beds in the community so they have a major impact on resources. Some people think they are sort of just off in their own little world and we will deal with them later. Nope. Does not work that way.
The Trump administration manages to screw up COVID vaccine distribution... Seeing their track record of "success" did anyone expect this? Operation Warp Speed Set To Miss Initial COVID Vaccine Distribution Goal https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...-miss-initial-covid-vaccine-distribution-goal Operation Warp Speed is set to miss the first distribution goal it laid out, Trump administration officials said last week, saying that getting the vaccines to people has been “slower than we thought it would be.” Trump administration officials had promised to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020, meaning that 40 million doses would be distributed by Jan. 1. But Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate vaccine development, said that the government would only have allocated 20 million doses by Jan 1. — far fewer than promised. “We have allocated 15.5 million doses of vaccine and we are on track to allocate another 4.5 to 5 million next week, which will bring us to 20 million doses of vaccine allocated to America before the end of the year,” Perna said in a Dec. 23 briefing with reporters. “We’ll finish those deliveries in the first week of January.” Perna’s remarks suggest that the Trump administration will not complete delivery of half of its projected estimate of vaccine until the first week of January. State and local governments will then oversee the vaccine’s distribution. Michael Pratt, chief communications officer for Operation Warp Speed, told TPM in a statement that distribution falls to the states and that the effort will “allocate 20 million doses for first vaccinations by the end of December 2020, with distribution of the first 20 million doses spanning into the first week of January as states place orders for them.” “These doses are being distributed at states’ direction to the American people as quickly as they are available and releasable, and the rapid availability and distribution of so many doses – with 20 million doses expected to be allocated for distribution just 18 days after the first vaccine was granted emergency use authorization – is a testament to the success of Operation Warp Speed,” the statement reads. It’s a retrenchment in ambition and scale for the effort, which has achieved unprecedented success in accelerating vaccine development but is running into delays in getting the shots into people’s arms. And it comes as Trump administration officials have boasted of mass vaccine availability on a timeframe that medical supply chain experts say is unrealistic. In November, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that 40 million doses of the vaccine would be available by the end of December — “enough to vaccinate about 20 million of our most vulnerable Americans.” Since then, Azar and other top Trump administration officials have reiterated that estimate while also hyping an unrealistic timeline for widespread availability of the vaccine. Azar has said that the vaccine could be as widely available as the flu shot by February, while HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir has said that the majority of the population could be vaccinated by late spring. These promises set up expectations that are impossible for the incoming Biden administration to meet. Lower-level Operation Warp Speed officials have contradicted the rosy timeline put forward by top officials. Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, made similar remarks to Perna at the Dec. 23 briefing, defining down the Trump administration’s initial commitment On Dec. 2, Slaoui said that he was “confident” the government would be able to vaccinate 20 million Americans by Dec. 31 — a task requiring 40 million doses. “And end of February, we will have potentially immunized a 100 million people, which is really more or less the size of the significant at-risk population, the elderly, the health-care workers, the first line workers, people with comorbidity,” he added. But on Dec. 23 — less than three weeks later — Slaoui said that “the commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available.” He added that “that commitment is met,” but that getting “shots in arms” had been “slower than we thought it would be.” “That objective is not met,” Slaoui said. Cracks have shown both in Operation Warp Speed’s ability to deliver the weekly cadence of vaccine that the Trump administration has promised to the states and in the capability of overstretched state and local public health departments to quickly inject the shots. The first week of distribution saw states complain that their allocations had been cut and Pfizer, the manufacturer of one of the two vaccines currently available, claim that it had millions of doses sitting in its warehouse waiting for distribution orders. Separately, state health officials have said that absent additional funding, they will lack the capacity to quickly distribute the shot itself — particularly when it comes to mass vaccinations scheduled for the spring and summer. President Trump signed relief legislation on Sunday that allocated at least $4.5 billion to state and local public health departments to distribute the vaccine. That will help states meet vaccine demand, though some experts say the lack of funding until this week — combined with the time it will take to distribute the money allocated by Congress — has already caused delays. Perna, the Operation Warp Speed general, said that some issues had been due to quality control checks on the vaccine shipments. “We have had to adjust our timelines,” Perna said.
The whole “Covid-pass” you’ve got to have your vaccination to travel, sports events, etc. is bullcrap. The vaccination only helps keep you from getting seriously sick from the virus. It does not stop you from carrying and infecting others. WHO Chief Scientist Warns "No Evidence COVID Vaccine Prevents Viral Transmission" Once again, the WHO has stepped in to offer some confusing comments about the coronavirus vaccine, warning that there is "no evidence to be confident shots prevent transmission" and that people who receive the vaccine should continue wearing masks and following all social distancing and travel guidelines. The comments were made by WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan during what appears to have been a virtual press conference held Monday. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/...nce-covid-vaccine-prevents-viral-transmission