Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[LFC]

On the news this AM gov't officials put a few things into perspective. We can expect to experience daily death tolls due to COVID that are higher than 9/11 for the next 60-90 days. An American dies from COVID every 30 seconds. And they STILL have to tell people to wear masks, stay distanced, and not have large gatherings. Meanwhile I see people screeching about how stupid Gov. Wolf is for instituting shutdowns in PA as cases skyrocket and hospitals fill. It's insane.

[Bact PhD]

Dec 11, 2020 14:33:09 GMT LFC said:

On the news this AM gov't officials put a few things into perspective. We can expect to experience daily death tolls due to COVID that are higher than 9/11 for the next 60-90 days. An American dies from COVID every 30 seconds. And they STILL have to tell people to wear masks, stay distanced, and not have large gatherings. Meanwhile I see people screeching about how stupid Gov. Wolf is for instituting shutdowns in PA as cases skyrocket and hospitals fill. It's insane.

At least YOUR governor has the balls to RESPOND to the crisis and endure the aforementioned screeching. Flori-DUH has Trump Mini-Me doing his best impression of Animal House's Chip Diller at the parade:

[Rue Bella]

Locally we had twice as many more new cases today than the previous high. Wow. Must be the TG turkey coming home to roost.

[Bact PhD]

In Flori-DUH, the death count is inching up, not to the daily counts of 150-ish we saw in midsummer...yet.
In my county, daily new case numbers are holding fairly steady (80-ish in a population of ~268K). Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but not through the roof...yet.

[LFC]

The Trump administration is salting the earth with wildly exaggerated claims about vaccine availability which they will then dump in the Biden administration's lap. I think on Day 1 the Biden people need to get out front and lead off with "Despite what you may have heard..."

The Trump administration is setting some pretty lofty expectations for when Americans can actually expect to see widespread distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. During an interview on the “Today Show” Health and Human Services Secretary Alexander Azar used the platform to suggest that the average American can expect to start seeing widespread distribution of the vaccine — meaning they can get vaccinated at their local pharmacy — by late February or early March.

“Late February in the March time period, I think you’ll start seeing more like a flu vaccination campaign, people going into their Kroger, their CVS, their Walgreens,” he said. In the next week or so, health care workers, and those in vulnerable groups, like nursing home residents, will begin receiving the vaccine.

The problem, as TPM and others have reported, is that there are seemingly few federal dollars being sent out to help with distribution of the vaccine, and Congress so far has not come to the rescue. There’s also not much of a plan for how to get it to the vast majority of Americans.

The White House’s effort to paint a rosy timeline of a seamless rollout ignores that the details and funding for how to do this are still very much up in the air. It’s a problem that, at the moment, looks poised to fall in the lap of the Biden administration.

[LFC]

More salting of the earth. They'll murder thousands or even tens of thousands just out of spite.

Today we’re watching truly exciting, genuinely joyous images of people receiving the first non-trial study COVID vaccine injections in the United States. President Trump is predictably crowing about it as though he produced it in his study in the living quarters of the White House. Operation Warp Speed – the plan that involved federal financial support to vaccine research and development – is reasonably seen as standard federal government blocking and tackling during a global epidemic. But it is at least fair to say that providing financial back up that allowed vaccine makers to go big on vaccine development is the one area of COVID response Trump didn’t clearly screw up or sabotage.

But lost in the mix is that through a mix of malice and indolence President Trump has organized things so that the funding to actually get the country vaccinated peters out within days of his leaving the White House. That’s a potential disaster in the making for public health, needlessly delaying an end to the pandemic in the United States. But it also seems like a political time bomb, left as a Trumpian house-warming gift for President Biden during his first weeks and months in office.

First, our Josh Kovensky has been on this story since back into early October. You can see pieces on it here and here. Kovensky and Kate Riga returned to the subject last week with this article on the total breakdown in any national plan or budget to get the country vaccinated.

Here are some basic outlines of what’s happening. As we learned last week the Trump White House skimped on actually buying enough doses of vaccine from Pfizer. But the federal government will cover the actual purchase of vaccines. The White House says the military is in charge of and has a plan to actual get the supplies to the states. And though we don’t know all the details let’s assume they have that covered. But that only appears to be getting the crates of supplies to a central staging point in each state. That’s not a negligible job. But it’s only a relatively small part of actually getting the country vaccinated. You need public health campaigns. You need staging areas and distribution from wherever the military drops it off to actual health centers and vaccination centers around each state. And finally you need a small army of medical professionals to actually administer the doses. It’s a big job and the Trump administration hasn’t funded any of that or devised any national plan.

In the absence of any federal plan or budget the CDC and HHS have cannibalized existing budgets to get some money to states for planning. But the sums are by most estimates an order of magnitude less than the amount needed.

State governments would be hard pressed to fund an operation like that during the best of times. But states and local governments around the country are already pushing massive cuts because of the dislocations caused by the pandemic. Through much of the latter part of 2020 the assumption was that this would be dealt with in a follow-up stimulus plan. But of course that never happened.

What the White House has arranged funding for is a critical but relatively small part of the vaccination effort: vaccinations for people in assisted living facilities and health care workers. Those are the two most critical populations. They should go first, and the plan is to get those people vaccinated in December and January. But that leaves the great bulk of the population unvaccinated. The plan is for that phase to end around Feb 1. Meanwhile CARES Act funding, which states can use for various purposes, has to be spent by Dec. 31.

That’s all that’s funded. It’s like a trap door set up for Biden to fall through. So as you can see, today’s excitement and anticipation over the vaccine is cued up to turn sharply to disappointment in February when people start asking where their shots are and blame the train wreck on President Biden. No plan. And no funding to implement a plan. Of course that is potentially catastrophic in human terms. But a lag in vaccination means not only more suffering and death but more delay in allowing the economy to get back on its feet, since people aren’t going to go to restaurants and participate in public life until case numbers drop dramatically.

As I said, this is both a waiting public health calamity for the country. But it’s also an epic dirty trick the defeated President and his allies on Capitol Hill have waiting for the new President.

[goldenvalley]

We are so screwed.  Those of us with co-morbid conditions might be higher on the priority list, but if states have no way to pay for distribution, it won't matter.  I doubt the bulk of Americans will have even the first dose by June.  In the meantime, herd immunity acquired the old fashioned way will continue to cut down the population and permanently damage those that survive.  At which time some new virus will emerge...

[LFC]

This is just sad.

A video posted to Reddit this Tuesday shows a waitress at a Denny’s restaurant quitting on the spot after being confronted by a pair of men refusing to wear masks inside the building.

“We have a religious exemption,” the man filming the video says to the woman. “We just don’t want to wear a mask.”

The woman politely tells the man he’s required to wear a mask, prompting him to claim that he’s covered by the “Civil Rights Act.”

“You know what? I quit!” the woman says, slamming down the menus in frustration. “I f*cking quit! What is wrong with you people?”

“I’m not working for this sh*t anymore!” she says, halfway out the door. “These guys won’t put their masks on, I’m sick of feeling like this!”

[Bact PhD]

These jackoffs have their lines memorized, don't they? They wanted a scene, and they got one.
What if HER religious beliefs said she doesn't have to serve fucking ASSHOLES? Of course, maybe they also have a problem with the "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" rule?

[Bact PhD]

Dec 15, 2020 19:23:17 GMT goldenvalley said:

We are so screwed.  Those of us with co-morbid conditions might be higher on the priority list, but if states have no way to pay for distribution, it won't matter.  I doubt the bulk of Americans will have even the first dose by June.  In the meantime, herd immunity acquired the old fashioned way will continue to cut down the population and permanently damage those that survive.  At which time some new virus will emerge...

I doubt it myself at the rate things are going. The numbers are NOT in our favor here in FLori-DUH.
And Dear Son's school is making plans to be back to in-person across the board by August.

[Rue Bella]

“We have a religious exemption,” the man filming the video says to the woman. “We just don’t want to wear a mask.”

As Bact said - they wanted a scene. Why else would they be filming in a Denny's?

[Rue Bella]

We are so screwed. Those of us with co-morbid conditions might be higher on the priority list, but if states have no way to pay for distribution, it won't matter. I doubt the bulk of Americans will have even the first dose by June. In the meantime, herd immunity acquired the old fashioned way will continue to cut down the population and permanently damage those that survive. At which time some new virus will emerge...

Even if there were funds to pay for it, the doses of vaccine just might not be there. In addition to the Trump admin passing on ordering more after the initial order, there is also issues with raw materials. Apparently things needed for testing are also needed for manufacture of the vaccine (don't remember which one) and they are in short supply. Sorry, no link.

[LFC]

OMG! This poor White House employee lost their leg and has to start a GoFundMe campaign for medical bills!

Crede Bailey, who heads the White House security office, lost part of his lower right leg, including his foot, and a toe of his left foot during a months-long battle with COVID-19, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Bailey, whose office handles White House credentials and works with the Secret Service, contracted the coronavirus in September. He's been hospitalized for three months but is said to be recovering from the illness.

Friends of Bailey's have raised more than $35,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for his rehabilitation and healthcare.

"Crede beat COVID-19 but it came at a significant cost: his big toe on his left foot as well as his right foot and lower leg had to be amputated," Dawn McCrobie, who organized the fundraiser, wrote in an update last week.

[Bact PhD]

Dec 15, 2020 22:50:32 GMT Rue Bella said:

We are so screwed. Those of us with co-morbid conditions might be higher on the priority list, but if states have no way to pay for distribution, it won't matter. I doubt the bulk of Americans will have even the first dose by June. In the meantime, herd immunity acquired the old fashioned way will continue to cut down the population and permanently damage those that survive. At which time some new virus will emerge...

Even if there were funds to pay for it, the doses of vaccine just might not be there. In addition to the Trump admin passing on ordering more after the initial order, there is also issues with raw materials. Apparently things needed for testing are also needed for manufacture of the vaccine (don't remember which one) and they are in short supply. Sorry, no link.

I believe it, even without a link. Even though making synthetic nucleic acids is far, far less troublesome and expensive than it was in my grad student days in the early '90s, there is the matter of facilities that have the capacity to manufacture the stuff to pharmaceutical standards (I won't bore you with the alphabet soup that's involved). Don't even get me started on the state of pharmaceutical manufacturing in this country (tl;dr version: It isn't pretty).

[LFC]

Our nation is doomed to fail in a haze of stupidity. Welcome to Texass.

A critical care doctor in Houston has said that more than half of the nurses in his unit won’t get the coronavirus vaccine for political reasons, even as medical facilities bend under the pressure of record-high hospitalizations as coronavirus cases surge across the country.

Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of the United Memorial Medical Center’s critical care unit, learned that staff at his hospital would be among the first in line to be offered Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, which received emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration last week, but many won’t be stepping up to get it.

“I had a friendly argument with more than 50 percent of my nurses in my unit telling me that they would not get the vaccine,” Varon told NPR in an interview published Wednesday.

He said that while some staff were elated about news of early access to the vaccine, he has concerns about colleagues who have said they have no plans to get vaccinated even though they are among the groups most at risk for contracting the virus as they treat COVID-19 patients.

“At the end of the day, like I have said before, coronavirus has become a political toy,” Varon told NPR. “Most of the reasons why most of my people don’t want to get the vaccine are politically motivated.”

[LFC]

More Republican stupidity and insanity.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the Trump administration’s COVID-19 testing czar, did not take Rep.-elect Bob Good’s (R-VA) remarks downplaying the severity of surging cases of COVID-19 nationwide as a “phony pandemic” lightly during an interview on CNN Wednesday.

During a Trump rally Saturday in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., Good ranted against coronavirus-related restrictions and dismissed the COVID-19 pandemic as “phony” amid record-breaking COVID-19 infection rates and fatalities across the country.

“This looks like a group of people that gets that this is a phony pandemic,” Good told thousands of pro-Trump demonstrators on Saturday. “It’s a serious virus, but it’s a virus. It’s not a pandemic.”

Good doubled down on his grievances over COVID-19-related restrictions by dismissing the pandemic as a “hoax” and brushing off the more than 300,000 COVID-19 fatalities in the country by saying the deaths constitute less than 1 percent of the population in a series of tweets posted the day after.

[Rue Bella]

“Most of the reasons why most of my people don’t want to get the vaccine are politically motivated.”

What does that even mean? If it's safe, it's safe. They are nurses and know this is real. They don;'t want Biden to succeed? But if Trump is claiming credit for the vaccine, why would they not want to take it? (I'm assuming they are GOP leaning.)(and stupid).

I don't understand these people.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 17, 2020 20:36:38 GMT Rue Bella said:

“Most of the reasons why most of my people don’t want to get the vaccine are politically motivated.”

What does that even mean? If it's safe, it's safe. They are nurses and know this is real. They don;'t want Biden to succeed? But if Trump is claiming credit for the vaccine, why would they not want to take it? (I'm assuming they are GOP leaning.)(and stupid).

I don't understand these people.

I know some nurses around here who say the coronavirus related death number is inflated because the hospitals get more money if the death rate is higher.  None of them work in ICU or ER and certainly none of them know anything about the billing standards and reimbursement rates; they've never worked in that end of health care.  These are some of the same people who are insisting their kids should be taking dance class in the studio instead of at home on Zoom.

Nope, don't understand them either.  Not going to ask about vaccination, I'm afraid of the answers.

[Rue Bella]

Perhaps not enough people remember polio and pictures of kids in iron lungs lined up in hospitals, and then the vaccines that saved us from that. I had a girl scout leader whose daughter had had polio. The daughter fully recovered, but the mother who nursed her also caught it and ended up having to use crutches for the rest of her life. She had braces on both legs and barely could walk even with the crutches. As a kid, these things give the impression that vaccines are good things.

The more people that decline COVID vaccination means those of us who are not on the front lines might be able to get it sooner. From what I've seen, it seems safe for most of us (unless you carry an epipen for acute allergy).

[Bact PhD]

Dec 17, 2020 21:45:42 GMT Rue Bella said:

Perhaps not enough people remember polio and pictures of kids in iron lungs lined up in hospitals, and then the vaccines that saved us from that. I had a girl scout leader whose daughter had had polio. The daughter fully recovered, but the mother who nursed her also caught it and ended up having to use crutches for the rest of her life. She had braces on both legs and barely could walk even with the crutches. As a kid, these things give the impression that vaccines are good things.

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!
This. SO much this. Those of us much younger than about 60 have little to no memory of polio sufferers, just maybe a squib about FDR in (ancient) history class -- nothing to do with people today, right?

The more people that decline COVID vaccination means those of us who are not on the front lines might be able to get it sooner. From what I've seen, it seems safe for most of us (unless you carry an epipen for acute allergy).

Suits me...

[Bact PhD]

Dec 17, 2020 21:08:11 GMT goldenvalley said:

Dec 17, 2020 20:36:38 GMT Rue Bella said:

What does that even mean? If it's safe, it's safe. They are nurses and know this is real. They don;'t want Biden to succeed? But if Trump is claiming credit for the vaccine, why would they not want to take it? (I'm assuming they are GOP leaning.)(and stupid).

I don't understand these people.

I know some nurses around here who say the coronavirus related death number is inflated because the hospitals get more money if the death rate is higher.  None of them work in ICU or ER and certainly none of them know anything about the billing standards and reimbursement rates; they've never worked in that end of health care.  These are some of the same people who are insisting their kids should be taking dance class in the studio instead of at home on Zoom.

Nope, don't understand them either.  Not going to ask about vaccination, I'm afraid of the answers.

Scary. Unfortunately, I'm seeing it here. Dear Daughter's ex-BF's mother, a freaking respiratory therapist for crying out loud, is snarking about the vaccine and drawing absurd parallels with mail-in voting in FB posts. Yes, it IS political: the virus is a hoax, remember? As GV pointed out, the snarkers and refuseniks have little to no overlap with the ICU and ER front-line workers.

[Bact PhD]

DeMinimis still wants his victory lap as, ever so sloooowly, he opens up vaccination eligibility.

www.floridatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/12/desantis-rolls-out-j-j-vaccine-barefoot-bay-claps-back-biden/4659102001/

[Bact PhD]

Dec 15, 2020 19:23:17 GMT goldenvalley said:

We are so screwed.  Those of us with co-morbid conditions might be higher on the priority list, but if states have no way to pay for distribution, it won't matter.  I doubt the bulk of Americans will have even the first dose by June.  In the meantime, herd immunity acquired the old fashioned way will continue to cut down the population and permanently damage those that survive.  At which time some new virus will emerge...

(Quoted post from 12-15-20) What a difference a competent administration makes! Biden is talking about sufficient supply by, what, late spring? The turnaround in less than 8 weeks is phenomenal. Private and public entities have stepped up to the plate to get doses into arms. In my county, the number of fully vaccinated almost double the number of cases to date.

[Bact PhD]

I was trying to get a handle on the temporal ups and downs of the 1918-19 pandemic, attempting to draw an possible parallels to the current situation, when I came across this piece from the CDC.

It's a bit long and a bit tedious to even excerpt the "highlights", but it's a worthwhile read.

[Bact PhD]

Vaccine acceptance among health care workers is still lagging somewhat:


www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/19/health-workers-covid-vaccine/?tid=a_classic-iphone&no_nav=true

However, at least in some areas, now that eligibility had opened to more of the general public—and those who have received the vaccine seem to be A-OK, supply may be becoming an issue:

www.gainesville.com/story/news/coronavirus/2021/03/18/uf-health-workers-struggle-find-waning-covid-vaccine-supply/4740993001/

(article paywalled, excerpt)

Front-line health care workers were among the first in Florida to be eligible for vaccines, along with staff and residents at long-term care facilities. UF Health nurses received Gainesville’s first vaccinations when doses arrived to Shands the morning of Dec. 16.  

Dr. Fred Southwick, a Gainesville physician and infectious disease expert, said many of his colleagues were uncertain about taking the vaccine at first because they did not know what type of side effects they might experience.  

“They watched to see what happened to their colleagues and saw that they had felt great,” Southwick said.

Now, while some may still have hesitation, he said a majority of health care workers he’s spoken with are in favor of vaccines. Southwick was able to receive a vaccine through UF Health, in a process he said couldn’t have been more efficient and effective.