Covid-19 discussion

It was through Austin Coming Together. They didn’t vaccinate volunteers during my shift (probably cracking down now that Rush is in charge following the Loretto drama), but we were able to help 500 mostly elderly Black residents get theirs, so a good day!!!

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Oof, cases in Chicago are up 60 percent. Mostly in the “party neighborhoods” this time. :worried:

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Awesome! I saw that My Block My Hood My City was seeking donations to help south and west side seniors get to their vaccine appointments so I tossed some $ their way since I am not personally comfy with that much covid exposure on CTA. I am hearing that the buses and els are no longer adhering to capacity limits, though I never did see how they were going to enforce the, what, 20 ppl per el car limit.

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I booked a vaccine appointment for next Monday! :tada:

Point of information: I never would’ve gotten it if I had waited for the Oregon vaccine system to email me, I only found it after I searched walmart’s website.

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I’m glad you looked and found it! A lot of people in my circle had been waiting to be contacted by any number of places they registered through, not realizing there were places they could directly book an appointment with. A coworker was complaining today that eligibility is expanding yet he hasn’t been contacted yet. The area he lives in has tons of availability, he just didn’t know he should be looking.

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Now we are stalking appointments for soon to be son-in-law. It’s not any less aggravating this week, btw.

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I will say that seems to be largely the fault of Oregon in our case, they’ve been pushed their “get vaccinated” tool on the state website everywhere - provider voicemails, it’s all you see anywhere. They fail to mention there are a lot of providers that aren’t listed on there.

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Good job Michigan!

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@anomalily now that you have a vaccine appointment (YAYYYYYYY) I will vent about why the eff you haven’t been able to find an appointment earlier when all my other pdx friends with conditions like post-chemo or on immunosuppressants all got theirs in February! I’ve been so pissy about this! My brother still doesn’t have an appointment yet but he’s not high risk for complications like you likely are!

@bucketsofrain I am NOT an immunologist but my gut feeling says it has to do with how enthusiastic an immune response people have. So for example older people like my parents in their 80s are having almost no side effects because their immune systems have seen lots of various coronaviruses over time and are all “oh hey another one of these, cool, we got it” where younger people have immune systems saying “holy CRAP what is THIS we better throw everything at this right freaking now!!”

And then why we are seeing people who have had Covid react strongly to the first vaccine where people who haven’t react more strongly to the second vaccine, like their immune systems are all “oh hell NO we know exactly what this is now, bitches!”

That’s a vast oversimplification/overgeneralization of course and I would definitely reality check with someone who works in science

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@katscratch it seems like it was all about who you knew in the past few months here, unfortunately. Friends in a bike shop just got some extras back in Feb because they knew someone whose aunt was a nurse and there were leftovers.

Anyway, just happy to have gotten the appt. :crossed_fingers:t4:

Grateful to live in the US- the rollout and supply is so much worse almost every country except US,UK,Israel and UAE, Seychelles, and Chile. Maybe a few smaller countries I am missing.

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They had it done through their primary doctors so it wasn’t a friend of friend happenstance thing, but it definitely seemed like their doctors (one rheumy one oncologist) were advocating for doses for their clinics in a different way. Not organized in a big picture sense at all and it’s been really frustrating to me to see, since 99% of my family and friends are in OR/WA.

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Progress towards getting younger kids vaccinated! Pfizer has found its vaccine to be safe and effective so far in kids 12-15.

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Absolutely not, I choose to take your version as 100% gospel.

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Same. I have now re-used this explanation.

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Actually @katscratch can you explain in “i-didn’t-take-human-biology” terms why people on certain immunosuppressants (enbrel, humira) would be better at forming immune responses than we originally thought? The nurse line at the rheumatologist said that certain TNF inhibitors were actually “helping some people through”

I’m trying to figure out if that just means lower side effects (which we expected) or that they would actually be getting an assist from the TNF inhibitor to make antibodies?

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Oh no this is not a question about brain surgery :laughing:

The only thing I’ve seen recently was a paper last week or so that focused on transplant patients, showing immune response is significantly lower while patients are on immunosuppressants. They have a sister study for autoimmune conditions but don’t have conclusions yet.

I’m going to look this up!

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It does not affect Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide. All those doses were produced in the Netherlands, where operations have been fully approved by federal regulators. But all further shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — projected to total tens of millions of doses in the next month — were supposed to come from the massive Baltimore plant.

Federal officials still expect to have enough doses to meet President Biden’s commitment to provide enough vaccine by the end of May to immunize every adult. The two other federally authorized manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are continuing to deliver as expected.

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Ohhhhhhh no. I can’t even imagine being the person who made that mistake, or one of the many people who didn’t catch it. There are so many checks and double checks in pharmaceutical manufacturing, this probably went through so many people’s hands.

There are a lot of people that are probably getting fired for this.

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5:27AM on the first day CVS has appointments available for Monday in Florida when 16+ up are all eligible and all the appointments seem to be gone already.

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This happened to me too, when I got up at midnight to book mine. But then I just kept refreshing (for an hour) and suddenly there were a bunch. This past Tuesday morning at 8:30am I was scrolling on my phone while waiting for a doctor’s appointment and there were tons of open appointments near me. An hour later…nothing. I think CVS releases them at odd times and you just have to be ready. Fingers crossed for you Meer!

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