Coronavirus - Gray-Area Vaccinations

I think someone in the government is reading my post. After last week's post, I read that 4 new super vaccination sites opened in Los Angeles County. Those were in the pipeline it turns out, but like so much of the coronavirus and coronavirus vaccination news, it is hard to find and hard to separate fact from fiction.

Last week, I said one way Israel is vaccinating so many people so quickly is that they have a standby line so that at the end of the day, if there is any vaccine left they put it in someone's arm rather than let it go to waste. The reason why there can be left over vaccine at the end of the day is because people cancel their appointments or don't show up and any vaccine defrosted has to be used within 6 hours or get dumped.

Two weeks ago, I heard someone had received the vaccine and did not fit in any of the priority categories, but since their company was in the industry and had vaccine left over they started inoculating the rest of their employees. Last week, I heard similar stories about other companies doing the same thing.

And then there was The Los Angeles Times story last week about "unofficial" standby lines where people are waiting outside clinics - sometimes all day - for the hope that there will be left over vaccine at the end of the day. Some people are lucky and actually receiving the vaccine, but most are not and go back and wait again the next day.

The Times' article commented about the wealthy jumping the vaccine priority queues to get the shots, but they are standing in the same "unofficial" lines anyone else could. And the 3 stories I heard had nothing to do with wealth in terms of who is receiving the "unused" vaccines. No one I have heard about has paid for early access to the vaccine. It was a more of who you know and where you worked.

There are moral and perhaps legal issues here, but in the end people are beginning to receive vaccinations at a much quicker rate by plying the gray area of vaccinations which in the end helps society as a whole as more people are vaccinated.

In the last week, new coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County have dropped from 39,000 a day to 23,004. Deaths are still at their unforgivable high levels, but hopefully that is due to the delayed correlation between new cases and the death rate and we will see a decrease in deaths soon.

There is hope.

Take care and be safe.

Posts weekly

Coronavirus - Herd Immunity In Los Angeles

Los Angeles reported that 1 out of every 3 people in the County have been infected with Covid-19. We may be the first population group outside of Sweden to try herd immunity. Herd immunity to a virus is when 60-80% of a population has a virus' antibodies in their system. We are already at 33% infected. At this rate, in another couple of months we could hit 60%.

Los Angeles opened its first vaccination super center this weekend with a trial run for 2,000 people. They hope to inoculate 12,000 people a day when it is fully operational. That would be 120,000 people every ten days. Good numbers. I look forward to those numbers increasing as more centers are opened.

With the coronavirus' exponential spread and vaccinations hopefully increasing exponentially as well, we may have herd immunity even sooner and Los Angeles may go from a hot spot crisis zone to a beacon of hope.

I watched a CNBC report that Israel has enough vaccinations for everyone over 16 by March. It was quite fascinating as LA County's website predicts I will be vaccinated for Covid-19 sometime in May or June. How did Israel do it (Israel/US):

- Population 9 million / Los Angeles County 10 million (US 331 million) - Universal health care / Combination state run, private medical care (US is the only developed nation in the world without universal healthcare by the way) - Large vaccination centers have been running for over a month / LA opened first center Friday - Standby line for anyone if unused vaccine is available at end of day / nothing similar in LA - Reserved enough doses for entire population from 1 supplier / US reservations were spread across suppliers - some still waiting for FDA approval

Hopefully, the US can learn best practices from its fellow countries: universal healthcare, more vaccination centers, standby lines, follow up on research and target the most promising drugs to reserve in advance.

California has floated the idea of a standby line - online standby. A more expensive and time consuming process, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

In conclusion, there is hope. The two waves of coronavirus vaccinations and infections are rushing together. It seems like one way or another Los Angeles will acheive herd immunity much sooner than predicted and lockdowns will be a thing of the past.

Take care and be safe.

Posts weekly

New Year - Final note on Bush (Hopefully)

Hi all,

An email was forwarded to me, blaming all Americans for being complacent and allowing Bush to get away with so much. So I had to respond and have included my email below (ending with a musing on the Israeli Massacre in Gaza):

"Perhaps for most Americans who never had experienced so totally a corrupt President,they didn't know how to respond. Anyone in their 30s has only really known four presidents - Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. Not one of them did anything as contemptible that Bush Jr. has done that we know of. Come on, Lewinsky? And unfortunately our elected officials in Washington, excluding the President, were so concerned about holding onto their posts, they couldn't even think of impeaching, let alone crossing, the president and his henchmen.
The biggest mistake, (and I said this as soon as the 2000 election was over), by Americans politically over the last 8 years was putting one party in charge of every branch of government. That was the real travesty. (Notice I didn't say Republicans specifically.) It took six years for the majority of Americans to finally get it back into there head to restore the balance of power.

And of course now we have the opposite effect and this worries me about the Obama presidency. Again, one party has been given all the power. But this is about Bush, so I won't digress.

How could people vote for Bush, reelect him, be complacent, or even support him.
Comments I've heard from three different people.

America can survive a president. How much damage can he do?
I voted to reelect him so he can clean up his mess.
He's against abortion so I have to vote for him.

And I still see Bush bumper stickers - fewer now, but they are still out there. And that's in California. I can only imagine the Midwest.

Since Bush's policies favored industry, the rich and those with influence, they didn't vocalize dissenting voices while promoting the White House message.

Remember the whole, "if you question the president, you're dividing our country in our time of need," and all that rhetoric that so many people believed. (And still do.) While there is some truth to the if you question it, you make us look weaker and indecisive in front of the enemy and encourage them. Look how easily it quashes dissent, alternative ideas or opposing voices..

Remember the Dixie Chicks being ostracized by the media and declared un-American because they spoke out against the war? Isn't that what being American is? Being able to question our leaders?

I really wonder if all of those people who vote for Bush and voted to reelect Bush and put those bumper stickers on their cars or gave him an insane 80%-90% approval rating when the Iraqi War started feel any remorse whatsoever.

I could go on and on.

Did you see the lame tiny story in the LA Times today that two rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel. Hezbollah denied they did it. Which says something considering they usually own up to it. Some analyst said it could be a small Palestinian group trying to pull Hezbollah into the conflict. The Israeli papers were quick to blame Hezbollah. I wouldn't put it past a group of Israelis on the border of Lebanon launching the mortars themselves at Israel to provoke a fight. If the US can do it with Iraq and Russia with Chechnya, why not Israel with Lebanon. My prediction. If Israel keeps getting pressured from the outside world about their unrestrained killing of civilians in Gaza - which violates the Geneva Convention and goes against the Security Council resolutions - they'll create a new threat to shift attention away from Gaza and show their "precarious situation" in the Middle East.

Watch and see."