News & Experiences continued

[PRlady]

I got my first shot today. Moderna. In a really remote area of the Bx where there's no public transport so there were no lines and it was pretty quiet.

So far my arm kind of burns, and I feel a bit tired. That's it.

That’s about what we felt although the 2nd night arm pain was bad enough to disrupt sleep. Better by third day. Congrats!

 

[once_upon]

Yeah lots of places have digital immunization records but they don’t talk to each other or interoperate much. They are mainly stand alone clinic based systems.

Provinces have tried to implement province wide systems with varying degrees of success and they don’t necessarily interoperate with systems from other provinces. (Most times they don’t.)

Then there are all the data sharing pieces and agreements with clinics/communities/provinces/indigenous groups to do if you want to import the data from existing systems or consent pieces if you are trying to get the data straight from the patient.

And it all has to be done right now.

Fun times.

There's also the issue of age groups. Any records of Immunizations i might have had as a child are long gone. All the family doctors i was taken to were dead long before electronic record systems were implemented in the 80's.
(Even my kids' pediatrician had paper records, no EMR until probably the mid 90's when their practice was subsumed by a hospital system. All those pediatricians have been dead since early 00's.)

Any Hepatitis vaccines would have been in my employee health records, not in any medical health records. and since I haven't worked at that employer for 12 years, I'm fairly certain they are destroyed by now.

i dont know if my pharmacy is connected to my doctor's EMR's or not.

I would not know where to begin to find any documentation of vaccines.

 

[Louis]

If the "evidence" of vaccination is a letter from a doctor or medical practice, it will be non-standard, easily faked, and hard to verify. I know a number of people who have successfully faked ********* tests in order to fly. In one instance, two people flew together, and the one with the real test was questioned while the one with the fake test flew through. If you've had one test, you can easily create convincing letters just by changing the date. You don't even need Photoshop or sophisticated software. Is this going to be "good enough" for airlines, border officials, etc.? I suspect not uniformly.

If not, then it raises all kinds of questions like:

• What national agency will have authority to issue physical or digital certificates of vaccination? Will those certificates be standardized in a way that's easy to verify? Will they contain any security features, like a passport or driver's license?
• How will airlines or border officials be trained to recognize a legitimate certificate?
• If digital, will the information be stored in a database that border officials can query?
• How will the various national agencies work together -- e.g., a U.S. border official verifying an Indian vaccination?
• Will the type of vaccination matter? E.g., will the U.S. accept the Russian vaccination or another type if it's determined the efficacy is lower
• How do we tie all the information together, ideally so that it's linked to a passport or national ID number? (What information is being collected at the point of vaccination, especially if not at a doctor's office, that allows people to join the data later on?)

In a perfect world, a machine readable ID that you already have -- e.g., passport -- would call a vaccination database that returns "vaccinated" or "not vaccinated" at the point you enter it into Advance Passenger Information systems or scan it at an airport / border. Getting to that point will be extremely complicated.

 

[kwanfan1818]

When I first traveled to India for work in 2006, I went to the Virginia Mason travel clinic, and left with over $1200 of immunizations, some first doses, and an "immunization passport" filled in by hand. The only thing missing from it after several follow-up doses was a third, maybe for Hep B?, childhood smallpox and polio*, and yearly flu shots. It saved my butt when I moved back to the US from Canada, where my new doctor had an almost full record.

ETA*: the only shots/vaccines I hadn't gotten again since then.

 

[allezfred]

I know a number of people who have successfully faked ********* tests in order to fly.

You really know an inordinate amount of really awful people. Perhaps people I know are doing this too, but they certainly aren’t telling me or advertising it on their social media.

 

[Reuven]

And out of the 90 million cases, how many people died?

One too many, dumba***.

 

[quartz]

News this morning in my neck of the woods is that vaccination is currently being halted for doctors and nurses, and focus is on getting all the LTC residents done first. I will try to get ahold of my daughter later (LTC nurse) and check on her as she was supposed to be getting the vaccine and then administer it to her residents, and personally I think it makes more sense to get the health care workers done first.


As for my work, I am here at the college, in Ontario, where we are on an extended lockdown. I am working the screening/welcome kiosk, the security guard is here, 11 PSW students and 2 instructors to do labs, a project manager and 2 contractors, our IT person, a technician, the health and safety guy, a support office staff, the document shredder collection guy has been and gone, the dean just walked in, and it’s like a flippin’ party in the main foyer with all the chatting. I’ve been here for an hour!



eta...have had 12 more people at the campus for various reasons. No staying at home for some of us.
Update from daughter is that they are getting ready to vaccinate the residents, it will be the Moderna. They have been working on getting consent, and of the 160 residents, only 3 have declined.

 

[missing]

The three Congresspeople infected while sheltering from the mob indicate that a single dose of the vaccine isn't enough to protect you.

WASHINGTON – Three members of Congress contracted the novel ******** after sheltering in a crowded room as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, testing positive shortly after getting a first dose of the ******** vaccine.

Those positive tests do not mean the vaccines were faulty, experts said, noting that immune protection takes more than a week to kick in. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that are available to Americans require two doses for full protection; a single dose is not as effective as two.

“Early protection against *********-19 may occur from about 12 days after dose one,” said Naor Bar-Zeev, an infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. People “should not really consider themselves protected really until after a week or two following Dose 2.”

 

[antmanb]

The government here did this against the advice of its expert committee and now the government here is trying to gaslight us that it was all down to the new variant.

Ah they're doing the Boris Johnson method.

 

[once_upon]

When I first traveled to India for work in 2006, I went to the Virginia Mason travel clinic, and left with over $1200 of immunizations, some first doses, and an "immunization passport" filled in by hand. The only thing missing from it after several follow-up doses was a third, maybe for Hep B?, childhood smallpox and polio, and yearly flu shots. It saved my butt when I moved back to the US from Canada, where my new doctor had an almost full record.

I'm pretty sure that I had to provide a long list of immunuzations when I started nursing school - they might have been the closest I could have gotten any childhood records but they closed the school in 2000 or 2001. They told us we could get transcripts up to a certain time after they no longer existed, im fairly certain they wouldn't have kept any medical records.

I remember having to get several immunizations - including Typhoid. I had the most reaction to that one.

 

[Jenny]

If the "evidence" of vaccination is a letter from a doctor or medical practice, it will be non-standard, easily faked, and hard to verify.

This concerns me too. Sounds like a number of FSUers have been vaccinated now, or know people who have, so what "evidence" have you been provided that you can show at borders or workplaces or places where people may gather in future?

You really know an inordinate amount of really awful people. Perhaps people I know are doing this too, but they certainly aren’t telling me or advertising it on their social media.

It's because Louis is part of a network of obsessive compulsive travellers.

 

[acraven]

The UK has completed a large study (not yet peer-reviewed) of health professionals that indicates infection with *********-19 reduces the risk of catching the ***** again for at least five months by 83% but doesn't completely eliminate it. It also showed some people with *********-19 antibodies can still harbor enough ***** to spread the disease.

*********-19 infection grants immunity for five months, UK study suggests - CNN

 

[Louis]

You really know an inordinate amount of really awful people. Perhaps people I know are doing this too, but they certainly aren’t telling me or advertising it on their social media.

People tell me everything, and always have . I learned about this when I was asking for advice to try to comply with impossible testing requirements introduced at the last minute - must have a test within 48 hours, but no testing available anywhere in the country I was in. In the end, I got around the requirement another, legal way.

The person who ran the fake letter scheme recovered from c*vid and thought he was safe. He then ended up getting it a second time.

 

[FGRSK8]

You really know an inordinate amount of really awful people. Perhaps people I know are doing this too, but they certainly aren’t telling me or advertising it on their social media.

I mean really, who would be dumb enough to admit to that.....

 

[canbelto]

Ok so day after the shot: arm hurts, and there's a burn and itch. Much more than a flu shot would. Feel sluggish, not sleepy but not very motivated to do much. Otherwise I feel normal.

 

[kwanfan1818]

I mean really, who would be dumb enough to admit to that.....

Some people would argue "expectation of privacy" when admitting to felonies, while other happily brag about it on social media.

 

[PRlady]

My stepbrother and his then-partner developed some of the first medical-record software back in the '80s after graduating from MIT. In a garage, in true start-up fashion. Over time he sold to a company that got sold to a company that got sold....but he has told me that getting medical records to truly talk to each other and to providers is a huge IT challenge for a number of reasons and it hasn't gotten easier.

 

[Lemonade20]

I mean really, who would be dumb enough to admit to that.....

You would be surprised!

 

[MacMadame]

My stepbrother and his then-partner developed some of the first medical-record software back in the '80s after graduating from MIT. In a garage, in true start-up fashion. Over time he sold to a company that got sold to a company that got sold....but he has told me that getting medical records to truly talk to each other and to providers is a huge IT challenge for a number of reasons and it hasn't gotten easier.

There are 3rd party systems that are used. My medical group is part of one of the largest medical groups in CA and all our records are on a system that is used by other medical groups outside of ours.

So I do think things are improving.

 

[hanca]

You really know an inordinate amount of really awful people. Perhaps people I know are doing this too, but they certainly aren’t telling me or advertising it on their social media.

It may be because @Louis is a bit of a shady character and his friends are of the same type, so in their free time they are exchanging tips on how to ‘beat the system’. If I wanted to travel without having the certificate, now I know to whom to turn for advice. Not to you, because you are useless, but Louis will have the perfect solution on how to falsify the test results including the contact details of people who will do it for me!

 

[hanca]

Must be, as I have no idea what dumba*** means. I would say it means dumbass, but there's an extra asterisk in there.

Oh, wait, did you mean to add some sort of footnote? Like, dumbass*.

Unless moebius is British. We spell the word ‘ass’ as ‘ar*e’.

 

[kwanfan1818]

After Washington State created a thoughtful plan that was, if I understand correctly, more inclusive than original 75+ guidelines, the Federal government has changed its tune and is advising 65+ plus anyone with an underlying condition that makes them vulnerable. The state is trying to regroup days after announcing Phase 1.

The states don't have to follow Federal guidelines, but according to this article in The Seattle Times,

Azar said ... the federal government would allocate shots, in part, based on which states were most successful at administering them.

Washington state caught by surprise as U.S. makes abrupt shift on coronavirus vaccines

The Trump Administration abruptly shifted its policy on who should get vaccinated, which would make about a third of Americans eligible to get a ******** vaccine. Washington officials said they were given no information about the shift.

tinyurl.com

So the incentive is to get as much vaccine in as the system can administer.

There was a Crosscut follow-up poll about interest in the vaccine, with only 55% of people ready to take it now:

Only 55% of WA voters say they want to be vaccinated, poll says

A new Crosscut/Elway poll found vaccination interest in the state is much lower than needed for herd immunity under federal guidelines.

crosscut.com

Not surprisingly, the more female and urban a person is, the more likely they want to be vaccinated.

If I were following the incentives and wanted to get the biggest concentration of people, I would put aside enough to deliver to people who are interested, vulnerable, and can't travel to the site, and, after health care workers and first responders, stick it in every arm that is held out, where the person is willing to line up in a socially distanced way and wear a mask properly. The incentive is to not to waste time with people who are on the fence or opposed in the first go-rounds.

 

[skategal]

My stepbrother and his then-partner developed some of the first medical-record software back in the '80s after graduating from MIT. In a garage, in true start-up fashion. Over time he sold to a company that got sold to a company that got sold....but he has told me that getting medical records to truly talk to each other and to providers is a huge IT challenge for a number of reasons and it hasn't gotten easier.

Yes and now we have organizations building and implementing even more stand alone systems just for management of crud vaccine.

I know why they are doing it (speed, cost) but it’s not going to be that helpful in the long-run.

ETA. The upside is I’ll have a job for the rest of my life.

 

[Susan1]

Ohio 1/14/21

Fortunately, only an hour. Only one protest question since he had the thing this morning.

His twitter -
"As of today, 361,603 vaccines have been given in Ohio. We don't have enough vaccines in Ohio right now, but we hope our allotment will increase in the future - but as of right now we must deal with this scarcity. Our goal is to eventually vaccinate anyone in Ohio who wants a vaccination. We must take this one week at a time. We want to save lives, get our kids back to school (schools are still approximately 1/3 in class, 1/3 remote and 1/3 hybrid), and protect our frontline medical responders. These goals drive every decision we make.

This coming week we will start vaccinating those in the public who are 80+. We have 750 provider locations across the state and approx. 100,000 vaccines. Beginning Tues, Wed, and Thurs, (depending on delivery date) these vaccines will be available. Yesterday and today local health departments and emergency management agencies have held press conferences or sent notifications to media to begin to notify residents about where to sign up to get vaccinated. All local health departments should also have this information on their website by tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we'll also launch on the c.v. website where Ohioans can select their county or their ZIP code and see a list of providers that received vaccine. As Ohio begins to receive bigger allotments of vaccines, we will move to have larger vaccination sites in addition to individual vaccination sites. Ohio is also in the process of working on a state scheduling system."

He said - 87% of deaths in Ohio are over 65+ and 54% of deaths are in nursing homes. Ohio has 930 nursing homes. CVS has been to 97% of the 478 assigned to them, Pharmscript has been to 61 of 63 of theirs, Walgreen's has been to 97% of their 398 assigned facilities, Absolute is done with 100% of theirs. This is just the first shots. Walgreen's has vaccinated more people in Ohio than any other state they have done.

Each location does their own scheduling. One of the questions later was what if I register my 81 year old father at multiple locations. (I wrote - after you get an appointment, stop calling other places. You'll knock someone off the schedule somewhere else. Then I was thinking what if the first place you register does not get enough vaccine by the time you are supposed to be there and everything else is full. What a mess.) DeWine said we would see how it goes. Everybody will be frustrated, but it will be better when there are more retail locations and more vaccine (which is not going to match up - more of both?).

He said as they are geographically distributing the vaccine, they are trying to keep racial and economic equity in the number of sites (neighborhoods, clinics, etc.) before they add centralized places, but there will be more choices in large urban areas, which will be more frustrating. (More choices - less vaccine at each.) Learning and adjusting. He said the central scheduling systems they were looking at had some problems, and they have to get it right first.

24 hour - 7,654 cases, 340 hospitalizations, 37 ICU, 109 deaths.

"This week, we are noting some small changes in Ohio Advisory System alert map. We’re not necessarily seeing a dramatic surge after Christmas and the New Year, but there is a bit of an upswing in our cases. Reflecting this, Hamilton County (Cincinnati, again) is moving to purple this week. There are also two counties that are moving up to the Watch List b/c of increases in healthcare utilization: Lorain Clermont."

He didn't mention there are 4 Orange counties.

6 states over 10x highest occurrence. The lowest, Holmes county, is 3-1/2x.

Maps - "The new cases per capita at the statewide level has increased since last week - this is not good. We were already at a very elevated level at 657 cases per capita last week, and now we’re close to 740. On the other hand, the portion of ICU patients with ********* has gone down slightly. ICU use is a lagging indicator, so this is still coming down from our pre-holiday peak. However, it does look as though our cases are starting to increase again."

Husted - "This morning I joined Miami County Public Health & Miami County EMA to provide information on the *********-19 vaccine rollout in Miami County. I want to thank all the counties in the state who are working to organize this."

He said they started registration at 9 a.m. and by 2 p.m. all slots were filled.

(Someone on the noon news said that Warren county is only getting 100 doses next week.)

Husted - I wrote down key things, but here are the complete sentences in his twitter anyway - "In September, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a recommendation by @OhioDevelopment to terminate the Job Creation and Retention Tax Credit agreements with General Motors following the company’s decision to close its Lordstown assembly facility. As part of the action, General Motors is required to invest $12 million in the Mahoning Valley by the end of 2022 and refund $28 million in tax credits. GM has committed $5 million to Youngstown State University for workforce development in partnership with Eastern Gateway Community College, and funding for the YSU Energy Storage Innovation and Training Center. The Village of Lordstown will receive $3 million for the design and construction of a new water tower. Eastgate Regional Council of Governments will receive $2.5 million for local infrastructure improvements. And the Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition will receive $1.5 million to support community workforce development. This agreement protects taxpayer dollars and invests in the growth of the electric vehicle industry in Ohio." (He didn't mention trump.)

DeWine - this will be "a year of recovery in Ohio". (and for the whole country, thanks to a new President) Thanked mayors and city commissioners for the vaccine response. They will tell us what is and isn't working.

Q&A -
New vaccine? When? Dr. Vanderhoff - Johnson and Johnson - nobody can say when yet. (I saw a thing on the news yesterday that they could have 1 million doses approved for emergency use by the FDA by the end of the month.)

Transparency? Accountability? Waste? (Again) that happened at one nursing home that overestimated how many people they were going to have. They talk to them every day to make sure they ask for what they need. Husted got out his paper again and read part of the instructions for contingencies. (I said the problem is going to be not having enough, not having too much. Later DeWine said the same thing.)

The CDC said we got 960K doses but only half of that has been administered. As of Sunday, 72% had been allocated, but not delivered. DeWine wants it to be over 85%. (Why not 100?) The second dose was banked. Those will be released. They haven't been yet. Someone asked AGAIN what happens if the second dose is not available within the time frame of getting it. Dr. Vanderhoff said the medical community is asking the same thing. And AGAIN said they have been assured that there will be enough. (When President Biden's team takes over, I believe that.)

Bloomberg and NYT said Ohio is behind surrounding states (especially West Virginia). DeWine said he doesn't believe that, that we are 7th in population and 7th in vaccine distribution. Will have full data Tuesday. WV is not in the pharmacy program for nursing homes. They don't have as many nursing homes either.

Why aren't people with pre-existing conditions in Phase 1B? Geez. Dr. Vanderhoff again - not enough supply, Phases 1A and 1B have ~3M people and age is the highest risk of mortality. (Don't hit me, but wouldn't that have been true before the c.v.? Just sayin'.)

DeWine has had "very, very good conversations" with the Biden administration. They will offer direct help setting up the large vaccination sites.

Me - The only protest question was from Andy Chow, and DeWine looked up at the sky. Well, it's not like everybody watching this update watched his news conference this morning. I'm sure the reporters were all there and reported already, so they didn't have to all ask again, but still. But, then, the question was stupid - will it be safe to go to the Capitol building this weekend. Why, why, why would you want to go if you are not there to cause trouble? DeWine did his first amendment spiel again. Can't tell people not to go. If you need to protest, go somewhere else. Uh, and take the National Guard with you? He said "anarchists and domestic terrorists infiltrated the crowd" last Wednesday. Infiltrated? You mean made up the largest part of the crowd that was there for that very reason. Trump is history. Grow a pair. Hee hee hee.

 

[ballettmaus]

I just learned that people over 70 with diabetis can't get vaccinated in Berlin yet. They aren't considered high risk. What?
And due to the lack of vaccinations, they changed the age limit of who can get vaccinated at the moment to 85 and older. My granddad made an appointment yesterday for tomorrow, they made the changes today, so he might still get vaccinated. We'll see.

 

[Susan1]

Montgomery county update if anyone is interested -

January 20???????

Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Time: 8:00 am – 4 pm
Location: Dayton Convention Center, 22 E. 5th St, Dayton, OH 45402
Parking is available at the Dayton Transportation Center.

• Clinic is limited to individuals, age 80 and older who live or work in Montgomery County.
• Registration for the Wednesday, January 20, 2021 clinic will be available online or by phone, beginning at 8:30 am on Friday, January 15, 2021. To register, visit www.phdmc.org or call (937) 225-6217, M – F, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Due to vaccine supply, registration is limited to the first 600 participants. Registration for future clinics is not be available at this time.
• Participants must show proof of age (examples include: driver’s license or photo ID, birth certificate, physician statement (including shot records), census records, U.S. Passport, etc.)
• Participants can be accompanied by persons under 80, but those individuals will not be able to receive a vaccination during this clinic.
• Participants will be seated and socially distanced during the vaccination and recovery process.
• Public Health staff will be available to direct participants to the clinic area.
• Vaccination will be provided free of charge.
• For updates about future vaccination clinics, visit www.phdmc.org or call the *********-19 Public Health Hotline at (937) 225-6217, M – F, 8 am – 4:30 pm.

And -
Kettering Health Network is opening clinics to provide *********-19 vaccinations in Montgomery, Greene, Miami and Butler counties.

Appointments will be required at these clinics. Ohioans 80 and older can schedule an appointment at ketteringhealth.org/********

The health network's clinic in Montgomery County will be at 2040 E. Dorothy Lane (in the former Elder Beerman store at Kettering Town Center). It will be open:

• Tuesday, January 19 and Wednesday, January 20: 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
• Thursday, January 21 and Friday, January 22: 7:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

There will be 1,575 doses available at this clinic.

 

[Debbie S]

MD is moving to phase 1B on Monday. So 75+, teachers and child care workers, and residents of group homes. 1C - 65-74, some essential workers - will begin on Jan 25.

I'm currently sitting in my car on the parking lot of the state fairgrounds, waiting for my mom to get her first vaccine dose (Pfizer). Lot is mostly full, it's crowded!

 

[PrincessLeppard]

My county, Douglas County, is the largest county in Nebraska and it's getting the fewest vaccines. And now the governor won't reveal how many doses were sent to us.

Hmmm. Our electoral college vote went to Biden and the governor is a Trump toady. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but human pettiness never ceases to amaze me.

 

[VALuvsMKwan]

Unless moebius is British. We spell the word ‘ass’ as ‘ar*e’.

Shades of Jennifer Coolidge's faux-British character in "Friends".

 

[once_upon]

My aunt and uncle in North Carolina got vaccines today - Pfizer.