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#Also if your country has a lot of stored medical supplies and vaccines
elwingflight · 4 years
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Coronavirus: Information & Guidelines
What you can do now, and what to prepare for
There seems to be a lack of what-to-do suggestions on tumblr beyond handwashing, so I thought I’d put something together. I’ve never actually encouraged people to reblog something of mine before, but this might be the time. To be clear: I am not personally a public health expert of any kind. Both my parents are (epidemiology/global health degrees, worked for CDC) and I’ve run this by them. My information is coming from disease researchers on twitter and official public health guidelines online. Sources at the end of the post. This is mostly directed at people in countries where COVID-19 has been reported (I’m in the U.S.), but is not *yet* widespread in the community. Written Mar. 1st 2020, last updated 3/9 (shorter, helpful twitter thread here, helpful NPR article here)
General Info
Firstly, a lot of politicians are *still* trying to sugarcoat things, but it should be clear by now that the new coronavirus is spreading widely and will continue to do so. Because of the incubation period, and in the U.S. at least the delay in testing, the number of cases is almost certainly going to increase rapidly in the near future no matter what we do now. Official government sources are helpful, but its also good to look at what experts on viral epidemics who aren’t directly government-affiliated are saying. Their agenda is purely informing the public in the most constructive way possible, without politics getting in the way.
Two key points- COVID-19 can have a long incubation period (the time from when you catch the virus to when you start showing symptoms) and most people don’t get severe symptoms. Some are entirely asymptomatic, but most people get typical flu-like symptoms. Specifically, the early symptoms to watch out for are a fever and dry cough (meaning, a stuffy nose is probably just a regular cold). Its possible but unlikely to transmit the virus while asymptomatic, most transmission happens when you have heavier symptoms.
The most vulnerable people are the elderly (~ over 60) and those with preexisting health conditions (i.e. cardiovascular disease, respiratory condition, diabetes), or a simultaneous infection with something else (NOT kids in particular!) So far the mortality rate has been about 1-2% (compared to 0.1% for the general winter flu - yes, this really is worse). However, that might be an overestimate, both because people with mild cases aren’t getting tested (the denominator should be bigger), and because the early situation in Wuhan, where a lot of our numbers come from, was especially bad in regards to availability of healthcare.
This is an emotional, difficult situation. Don’t panic. The world didn’t end in 1918, and its not going to end now. But it is very serious, and we need to be thinking about it rationally, not pretending everything is just going to be okay, or uselessly pointing blame. Take care of your mental health, and check in with each other. Epidemics test our generosity and selflessness. Those qualities are needed right now, but don’t neglect yourself either.
What You Can Do Now
There is stuff everyone can do both to prevent yourself from getting infected, and to prepare if you do. ***The big picture to keep in mind is that the biggest risk of epidemics is that they overwhelm our system, especially our healthcare system. What I mean by this is that our society is built to deal with a certain volume of things happening at once- people buying groceries, getting sick, etc. If we suddenly all rush to do something, we overburden these systems and they won’t be there for the people who need them most. Therefore our goal is to slow down the spread of disease, buying time and lowering the overall burden on these systems. This is called “flattening the curve”. It looks like this, and I cannot stress how important this is.***
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A very helpful thread on preparedness
Staying Healthy
Like similar viruses (think colds and flu), COVID-19 is mostly transmitted from person to person, usually by close contact but sometimes from an infected surface. More here.
Wash your hands. Everyone has heard this one- 20 seconds, soap all over your hands, wash the soap off. If you can’t wash your hands use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer (at least 60% alcohol). But handwashing is absolutely better. Also- cough into your elbow/shoulder, not your hand, and avoid shaking hands- try elbow bumps or maybe a polite nod instead! If you’re handwashing so much that you’re hands are threatening to crack and bleed though, consider washing more strategically or using hand sanitizer instead.
In combination with hand-washing- stop touching your face, especially while out! This takes practice, everyone does it all the time without thinking. A good practice is to avoid touching your face while out, then wash your hands thoroughly as soon as you get home.
Similarly, avoid touching surfaces as much as possible! Particularly bad are door handles, elevator buttons, that kind of thing. The virus can probably (based on studies of related viruses) last a while on these. Regular gloves can help a bit. Use a tissue then throw it away, use your elbow, etc.
Do Not buy face masks! There’s mixed evidence on whether they’re at all helpful when used by the general public to prevent catching a virus, but actual medical professionals who need them are facing shortages (that’s probably part of why so many healthcare workers got sick in Wuhan), so our buying them up is really bad. The only times you should be wearing them is if you yourself are sick (they do help then!) or if you’re looking after a sick person. Seek instruction in that case in how to use them properly. (Thread on why buying those fancy masks is not good).
If COVID-19 is in your community, try to stay 6 feet from people, which basically means going places as little as possible. See below.
Planning Ahead
Its also a good idea to prepare in case you need to self-quarantine. Self-quarantine is necessary if you’ve potentially been exposed to COVID-19, or if you’re sick but not enough to need to go to the hospital. Follow local guidelines- if there’s lots of transmission in your area, nonessential workers will probably be advised to stay home as much as possible.
If you’re able, get medication now. Don’t go crazy and buy out the drug store, just a reasonable amount. Try to get at least a month’s worth of any prescription medications. This can be hard at least in the U.S. - your doctor may well be able to prescribe more, but insurance companies and drug stores can be terrible. I’ve found trying a different drugstore can sometimes help. Try your best. They may also be reluctant to prescribe more to avoid causing shortages. Idk what the right answer is here.
Don’t go crazy and buy out the store, but start getting a little extra shelf-stable or frozen food. Even some root vegetables that will last a few weeks. You want enough for 2 weeks in case of self-quarantine, but you do NOT want to empty out stores. Panic buying is definitely a stress on the system. Just add a few extra things each time you shop. Don’t forget about pets. You can always eat the food and replenish it over time.
Make a plan with your family/community. If someone gets sick or needs to self-quarantine, is there a corner of the house they can stay in? Who can take care of them? etc. I haven’t focused on plans for schools/religious communities/workplaces etc but those are very important too! This is one place where keeping an eye on local and national news is important. In the U.S., for example, school systems are planning ways to make food available to kids if they’re not going to school.
If COVID-19 is starting to spread in your community, think about how else you can be a good community member. Cancelling nonessential doctor’s appointments, surgeries etc may be very important, for example. If schools are closed, can you help out neighbors with childcare? Do you have a cleaner who may need to be payed in advance if there’s a quarantine?
If You Might Be Sick/Need to Quarantine
See likely symptoms above. Remember, normal colds still exist, and if you go to the doctor for every one of those you will overwhelm the system.
Don’t just go to a hospital! Call ahead to your doctor/clinic/hospital and get instructions on what to do. Getting healthcare workers sick is something we really want to avoid. That said, DO get tested as soon as possible, and act as if you are contagious. The health coverage situation is the U.S. is not yet clear (and ofc its not something the current admin is eager to clarify). Hopefully testing will be covered financially by the government, but I can’t promise that at this time.
In the meantime, stay home and quarantined if you show any symptoms of illness if you possibly, possibly can. This is especially difficult in the U.S. if you don’t have sick leave/childcare, but please. Do your utmost.
Look after yourself. Skype/google hangouts/etc is great for keeping connected. Have some chocolate/chicken broth/other sick foods ready.
The Big Picture
Coronavirus/COVID-19 has not been declared a pandemic yet, but it probably will be before long. This is almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better. We don’t yet know if warmer weather will slow its spread, and a vaccine will probably take about 1-1.5 years to be developed and tested. As I mentioned before, the best thing we can do to keep the world working, minimize mortality, etc is to slow the spread as much as we can, and minimize the strain on the system. Hospitals are going to be overwhelmed. There aren’t infinite unoccupied beds or ventilators, or people to operate them, and supply chains could get disrupted. Thinking about these things is scary, and it will take time to adjust to what’s happening. Start that process now, and help everyone you know reach the point where they’re able to act, not panic. Another reassuring thing- if we slow the spread of COVID-19, in addition to fewer total people getting sick, you will soon have people who are recovered and almost certainly immune. These people will be invaluable as helpers in their communities.
Now that the practical stuff is out of the way, I want to say from a U.S. perspective that yes, our lack of social welfare other countries take for granted is going to hurt us. Lack of access to childcare, no guaranteed paid sick leave, and of course expensive healthcare are massive problems that will make it much harder to limit disease transmission. Help each other in any way you can, and vote for candidates that support implementing these policies! And of course, watch out for propaganda of all kinds, whether its using the virus as an excuse for racism, calls to delay elections, etc. So far my biggest concern is a lack of willingness to admit how serious this is, but we can do this. Lets put extra pressure on politicians to be honest and change policies to actually help people. But, yes, lets also stay united. We need each other now (just, you know, 6 feet apart).
A few sources
In general, the Guardian is a great, free, reliable source of news. In the U.S., NPR (website as well as radio) is another great source. The Washington Post and Seattle Times have made their coronavirus-related coverage open access, not sure about other national newspapers.
twitter thread from World Health Organization (WHO)
U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 homepage (not being updated in some ways it should be, like total # of tests)
A reality check from some non-Governmental experts (basically, what governments don’t want to say yet, which is that this virus is going to spread, and the goal now is to infect as few people as possible, as slowly as possible. Read this.)
Why you should act now, not when things get bad in your area (we’re always operating on outdated information)
If you want the latest technical info, The Lancet (major medical journal group) has all of their content compiled here, open access.
I can do my best to answer questions (i.e. ask my dad) but those or other reliable, readily find-able sources should have you pretty well covered. Do let me know if anything on here is wrong or needs to be updated! Stay safe, stay positive, we can do this.
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go-redgirl · 3 years
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FNC’s Carlson: What Was It About Joe Biden’s Shaky Monotone That Inspired CNN’s Talking Heads?
Friday, FNC’s Tucker Carlson reacted to President Joe Biden’s address to the nation a night earlier, which according to Carlson left much to be desired.
After comparing Biden’s address to former Soviet Union dictator Leonid Brezhnev, the Fox News host questioned the fawning approval from CNN hosts and talking heads.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Tons going on, as always. So, there are a lot of stories we could have opened with tonight and we talked about it. But in the end, we couldn’t get our minds off of Joe Biden’s COVID speech.
Did you see that last night? The one where he seems so sad about the lockdowns that have crushed businesses and kept kids out of school, an entire generation, he said, had driven so many to suicide, yet never once mentioned or even hinted that he and his party were the very forces behind those lockdowns.
I’m really sorry about your black eye, he says, as he punches you in the face.
It was bizarre. The whole speech was like that. It had a hallucinogenic quality like it wasn’t quite real.
But then Joe Biden himself isn’t quite real. Maybe that’s the reason he talks that way. Biden has been living in utter seclusion for more than a year. He hasn’t spoken to anyone but his own lackeys.
He hasn’t driven a car or sat on the grass and looked up at the sky or been anywhere or done anything except in the most controlled possible environment. What an incredibly weird life that is.
Joe Biden must imagine that everyone in America is as terrified of corona as he is and is living in the same kind of bunker. Joe Biden is totally cut off.
Alex Berenson described last night speech as late Soviet. The more we thought about it, the more perfect that seemed.
Here’s a clip of Russia’s own Joe Biden, the late Leonid Brezhnev. Like Biden, Brezhnev was very clearly fading in his later years after a series of health problems. Also, like Biden despite his frailty and confusion, Brezhnev never lost his enthusiasm for pointless wars.
He is the one who ordered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In late December of that year, Brezhnev addressed the Soviet youth in a televised speech. As you watch this, see if you can spot the similarities to what you saw last night, and keep in mind when this was shot, Brezhnev was a full five years younger than Joe Biden is today.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
CARLSON: Now, they are trying to tell him how the teleprompter works. He harrumphs a bit and looks vacant, he doesn’t quite get it.
Brezhnev didn’t actually lead Russia by this point, and you can see why. He remained the country’s figurehead, but it was the ideologues behind the scenes who ran the show.
Brezhnev had his own Susan Rice and Barack Obama to make the real decisions. The similarities, as we said, are pretty amazing.
Over at CNN, however, they didn’t see it, or maybe they did see it and they didn’t care. CNN always did love Brezhnev.
In any case, the usual chorus of toadies strained for a high note last night. Watch them tell you how wonderful the speech was, as if you didn’t have a TV and didn’t see it for yourself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: How refreshing. How human. How compassionate. How American.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Biden tried to lift our spirits with a medicinal message about recovering our sense of collective cause. Certainly, it was healing.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He didn’t say, you need me. He said, I need you. I need you. I mean, my God that is — isn’t that it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People always talk about the feeling of the relief hey have hearing Biden, but what he’s doing now soars above that.
LEMON: What the President is saying his help is on the way. We’re all in this together. I need your help. We’re all Americans. Whoo. Hallelujah.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Hallelujah, says Don Lemon. Can I get an amen? Clear the aisles. It’s time for an altar call. Brother Biden is preaching the word. Preach, Brother Biden, preach. Speak. What are these people talking about?
What was it about Joe Biden’s shaky monotone last night that inspired them exactly? Most people found it depressing. Maybe we’re being too literal here.
It probably doesn’t matter what Joe Biden actually said. He could have called for the bombing of Toronto and CNN’s panel of trained seals would still enthusiastically applaud it. It’s their job to enthusiastically applaud what Joe Biden says.
Our job is to try and figure out what Biden’s speech meant for the country. So let’s look at it for a minute.
The lockdowns have been tough, Biden conceded at the outset, God knows how we got them, but we did. Those restrictions will be lifted as soon as we can lift them, and we will return to some version of the country now only dimly remember, we’d really love to do that. We mean it, we’d love it.
But in order to go forward and take the boot off your neck, we’re going to need every American to listen very carefully and to obey our orders. Do what we tell you to do.
Now, that won’t be easy. But if you do it, there is a payoff for good behavior. If you’re obedient, there’s a chance not a guarantee, of course, but a distinct possibility, God-willing, that you may be able to see some of the people you love around July 4th, that could actually happen, ladies and gentlemen. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: If we do our part, if we do this together, by July the Fourth, there’s a good chance you, your families and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout and a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day.
That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people together, but it does mean small groups will be able to get together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Did you hear that America, there is a good chance, again, not a sure thing. But what is a sure thing these days? But a good chance that you might be allowed to have a modest cookout four months from now. That is as long as you obey regulations weather permitting, and assuming that current Federal projections unfold according to plan. That’s your prize.
This offer by the way does not apply to full-time employees, the radio station or their families.
But with luck, this could be your reward after a year and a half of lockdowns, a Fourth of July cookout in your very own backyard assuming you have one.
Don’t ever tell us that Joe Biden isn’t a compassionate generous man. Here he is offering you with some medically necessary caveats outlined by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the right to cook your own hotdogs. With the provision, obviously, that you do it in a small masked group seated far apart at a prescribed distance from one another.
Don’t get crazy and hug or celebrate or talk too loud or anything like that. Moderation is the key here. But still a socially distanced barbecue. What other wonders does President Biden have in store for us?
Well, you’re going to have to get vaccinated to find out. Sorry, that’s the other requirement. I should have mentioned it. Everybody needs the shot. Period. That’s what Biden said. And that’s a lot of shots.
The good news: now that we’re on what Joe Biden describes as a, quote, “war footing” with this virus, vaccinating people against it is a counterterrorism operation.
What we did to ISIS, we’re going to do to COVID. Biden didn’t mention drones, but we will need soldiers and that’s why Joe Biden is building a Vaccination Corps that will include active-duty members of the military, an army of vaccinators. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Two months ago, the country — this country didn’t have nearly enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all or ever near all of the American public. But soon we will.
Now because of all the work we’ve done, we’ll have enough vaccine supply for all adults in America by the end of May. That’s months ahead of schedule. And we’re mobilizing thousands of vaccinators to put the vaccine in one’s arm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Thousands of vaccinators to vaccinate everyone. That sounds amazing, but it does raise at least one vexing question: what if you don’t want to get vaccinated? Not everyone does. Some people have religious objections, other have concerns about this specific medicines. Others simply don’t want it.
Do you need a reason to turn down the vaccine? And what happens if you do turn it down? Will we be allowed to fly on airplanes? Or go to work? Or enter the front doors of Madison Square Garden?
Joe Biden didn’t specify, but it’s pretty hard to believe he would support any kind of vaccine coercion as he has told you so often over so many years, if it’s your body, it’s your choice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I support a woman’s right to choose under that constitutional guarantee provision. And quite frankly, I always will.
Folks, you know, and I am going to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own personal decisions when it gets to your healthcare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Quite frankly, you’ve got the absolute right to make your own personal decisions about your own personal healthcare. Period. That’s in the Constitution. Joe Biden would never violate that, right. He’s been defending that right since before you were born.
It’s your body. It’s your choice. Period.
Of course, as with everything, there are caveats. If you don’t take the shot that Joe Biden wants you to take, if you persist in making your own personal healthcare, then Joe Biden is going to have to shut the country down again, no socially distanced barbecues for you, buddy. You’re going to have to eat your hotdogs alone inside.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: If we don’t stay vigilant, and the conditions change, and we may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: To which CNN might say, “Hallelujah,” but we’re not CNN. Instead, we’re left wondering, could there be any civil liberties implications to any of this? We don’t know the answer.
READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:
Clips Media Politics CNN Fox News Channel Joe  Biden Tucker Carlson Tucker Carlson
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sicohuxi · 3 years
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Denmark Visa Waiver - How Much Time Does It Take to Get a Visa?
https://fr.ivisa.com/denmark-etias
Denmark Etias is a up and coming tattoo parlor, but it's quickly gaining popularity.  The artist with stencils in a variety of patterns creates all kinds of different layouts, and he even has a couple of fashions of his own, that are available at the store. When you see these pictures of his job, you will immediately recognize what you're looking at as being really distinctive and modern. A lot of individuals have come to enjoy its nice design, as well as the fact that it appears very natural. You don't see many tattoo Parlors using stencils, which is precisely why this artist makes such good artwork.
Denmark Etias requires a bit of time to make each layout, and you might need to purchase some more than 1 piece. Because of the demand for these distinctive designs, they've opted to offer a rush service for those who want them straight away. The excellent thing about these Denmark Etias pieces is they are created for everyone, from infants to teens to adults. You're not limited to only one Denmark Etias image; they will make you feel as though you're sporting a number of art works at precisely the same time. Should you want more than one bit, then this is the way to go.
When searching for a Denmark visitor card or a permanent resident card, most countries need proof of citizenship in order to obtain them. This is usually done by producing a copy of your birth certificate plus the translated original of your passport, and a copy of your overseas national passport, even in case you've got one.  This shows that, in order to visit the country, you must have a valid passport. Here is the security section on the application form you will have to read carefully in order to generate a certified copy of your passport, and it has to be original and not a photocopy.
When choosing what kind of Denmark global travel advice to take with you when visiting the nation, it's very important to pick the best details. This can include your flight program, your hotel reservation, or any other significant info. Some documents you will need while visiting the nation comprise your vaccination records, medical and health documents, and your Schengen visa. To be able to show your identity when traveling within the Schengen area, you should also present your original driver's license from the country you're traveling to, in addition to a copy of your passport. To be able to acquire a Denmark international travel information form which you could use to prove citizenship, then you must pay a visit to the Danish embassy for your country or city.
For citizens of the European Union, Denmark has one of the most lenient visa waiver procedures on the planet. There's no residency requirement, no age limit, no long-term residence required, without any boundary crossing requirements. In order to acquire a Denmark visa waiver, then your application has to be filed together with the Danish authorities, and then processed through the administrative system. You'll have to supply all proper evidence to the Danish authorities in order to accelerate the procedure. The Danish embassy in Washington DC can help you with filling out the application.
Citizens of the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Germany are all able to Utilize the Denmark visa exemption system. In order to apply for a Denmark visa, you'll need to use online. In case you've applied before, or plan on applying for Denmarkvisa, you will still need to go to the Danish embassy. To get a full list of all Denmarkvisa eligibility requirements, you'll have to contact the Danish Immigration office for your nation.
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sciencespies · 3 years
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Why the Most Promising Covid-19 Vaccines Require Super Cold Storage
https://sciencespies.com/news/why-the-most-promising-covid-19-vaccines-require-super-cold-storage/
Why the Most Promising Covid-19 Vaccines Require Super Cold Storage
The last week has brought encouraging news about vaccines being produced by biotechnology companies Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. Both vaccines make use of a relatively new technology, synthetic messenger RNA or mRNA, so both face the same hurdle: they need to be stored at very cold temperatures.
Moderna’s vaccine can be stored long-term only at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, while Pfizer/BioNTech’s needs long-term storage at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, reports Umair Irfan for Vox. Messenger RNA is constantly under threat of being destroyed by other molecules in the environment. To prevent any damage, vaccine producers not only make chemical changes to the synthetic mRNA and wrap it in a protective layer, but also store it at low temperatures to trap chemical reactions in slow-motion.
“Everything happens more slowly as you lower the temperature,” says Margaret Liu, a vaccine researcher and the chair of the board of the International Society for Vaccines, to NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin. “So your chemical reactions — the enzymes that break down RNA — are going to happen more slowly.”
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines use a short snippet of mRNA with the same code as RNA from SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. This mRNA is sort of like a blueprint: human cells can use the code to create a small piece of the virus, almost like a viral Lego brick. The “brick” isn’t enough to cause harm like a whole virus would, but it is enough for the immune system to learn how to recognize that brick and mount an immune response to fight off future infections.
Early results from Phase III trials show that both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccine candidates are about 95 percent effective in adults, though none of their trial data have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Both of the vaccine candidates require people to get two shots, three weeks apart. That means that pharmacies, hospitals and other possible vaccination sites would need to store a lot of vaccine at their facilities.
“It does mean double the capacity requirements, so yes, there is an additional complication,” says UNICEF’s immunization supply chain specialist Michelle Seidel to Vox. To both ship so much vaccine around the country and store it safely at warehouses and in hospitals, cold storage is of paramount importance.
“They lose effectiveness and their potency if they’re exposed to temperatures outside of the range that they’re supposed to be kept in,” Seidel adds to Vox.
The biotechnology companies have made some modifications to the mRNA’s molecular structure to make it more stable. Then, they used nanoparticles of fatty molecules called lipids to wrap up the mRNA, sort of like bubble wrap around a fragile item in the mail. Enzymes called ribonucleases destroy mRNA, and they “are everywhere, even in the controlled environment of the lab,” says Infectious Disease Research Institute vaccine development specialist Alana Gerhardt to Science magazine’s Jocelyn Kaiser. Ribnucleases can be found in a lab workers’ breath and on their skin, for example.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine candidate is stable at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which is colder than an Antarctic winter. Maintaining such a cold temperature requires special equipment, which is more often available at urban hospitals than at smaller, rural hospitals, Olivia Goldhill reports for STAT News. Pfizer/BioNTech may update their temperature guidelines as they stress-test their vaccine, but only after real-time testing.
“If a vaccine has a two-year shelf life at refrigerator temperatures, then the manufacturer actually needs to put the vaccine at that refrigerated temperature for two years and see if at the end the product is still effective,” says Debra Kristensen to NPR.
Moderna says its vaccine candidate is stable at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, which can be achieved using most common freezers. The company says the vaccine candidate can be stored in a refrigerator for 30 days and remain useful.
That doesn’t mean that one vaccine candidate is better or worse than another one, though. The two vaccine candidates, with different strengths and storage requirements, may complement each other if they are both approved for use by the FDA.
“There might be a situation in which a Pfizer vaccine is a better fit for some places and the Moderna one is better for others, and we’ve got other vaccines coming down the pike,” says City University health policy and management expert Bruce Y. Lee tells National Geographic’s Sarah Elizabeth Richards.
Vermont’s immunization manager Christine Finley tells NPR that the state is considering Pfizer’s vaccine candidate for large population centers, for example, because a city with a university may have both the specialized equipment for storage and enough people to make the large minimum orders worthwhile.
Meanwhile, other vaccine candidates that are effective with only one dose may be more efficient for use in populations without easy access to medical facilities. Vaccine candidates that don’t require cold storage would be more useful to the 3 billion people around the world who aren’t served by a cold supply chain.
In the end, “it may be that the second one or the 50th one is actually a better vaccine,” says Liu to NPR. “This really isn’t a race. Just by sheer numbers, we probably need multiple, multiple vaccines.”
#News
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llama-of-pangea · 4 years
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Staying healthy & helping others in this weird time we live in
(updated March 31, 2020 for more up-to-date links and information)
I’m not normally one for serious posts, but I did want to make a post about the present situation (mostly in the US, but elsewhere too!) -- because it’s important to stay informed about COVID-19/novel coronavirus, especially when there’s so much misinformation out there:
Wash your hands. I know everyone keeps saying this, but it really is one of the most effective things you can do for reducing the spread of disease. Wash your hands with soap, often, for at least 20 seconds. Soap breaks up oil, destroys the cells of many viruses and bacteria, and gloms on to other particles on your hands, helping to get them really clean. It’s worth doing. Social distancing, not touching your face, staying home as much as possible, changing and washing clothes right away when you do come home, and disinfecting commonly-used spaces and surfaces in your home as often as possible are other things you can and should do. [source: CDC guidelines]
Be mindful of others. Many of us on tumblr here are young and so are less likely to suffer a serious case of COVID-19. But just because you’re not experiencing symptoms, or have mild symptoms, does not mean you should not be thinking of others’ wellbeing. Grandparents, older parents, the immune-comprimised (such as those with cancer or other immune-deficiencies), and those with certain health conditions are at risk more than the rest of us. So protect them as much as you can. Practice those good health tips always, but especially in spaces you may share with those who may be at greater risk. And also, be considerate of those with jobs that don’t allow them to isolate, like grocery store employees and bus drivers; this is extra hard for them, so do what you can to be kind, courteous, and considerate to them for all they’re doing for the rest of us [source: CDC at-risk statement].
Be responsible when shopping. If you can, have some food and necessities at home -- ideally enough to get through a week or two. Don’t panic-buy, and don’t hoard. A package of disinfectant wipes or spray, and some soap, will get you through; if you’re unable to find these items, you can often find soaps for refillable bottles at natural stores or online. Don’t fill your cart with toilet paper or sanitizer, which just denies others these items and stops them from protecting the community. And practice good health practices while in the store (remember, this is a common area! be considerate of hardworking employees, and other shoppers).
Help as much as you can. The elderly and people with weakened immune systems may be scared right now. You might be scared. Your parents or siblings or friends or coworkers might be scared. Stay in touch with people -- find ways to connect remotely so you and those you care about don’t feel isolated. Be supportive of those who are struggling to handle this. Donate blood through the Red Cross, or supplies like masks and gloves to hospitals, if you’re able to. And if you can, help those who need it; do a grocery run for someone who’s at risk, help them disinfect, or just call someone who may need cheering up. And don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.
Don’t panic. But also, don’t ignore the situation. Try to stay up to date with things, and be aware of your local situation. There’s so much misinformation out there, so be critical of what you see. Avoid falling into pitfalls of prejudice. And take care, and be kind! Everything’s going to be okay if we all look after ourselves and one another.
Check under the cut for links to helpful health & safety advice, news, and discussions about COVID-19:
Where to find updates and well-sourced information:
updates from the CDC and WHO
for those in the US and Canada, this website has done an incredible job of monitoring cases, news, school closings, and other information in real-time
Helpful discussions with reliable information:
reporting by Last Week Tonight -- part 1 || part 2 || part 3
the Sawbones podcast (hosted by Dr. Sydney McElroy & Justin McElroy) has 3 really good episodes discussing the origin of the virus, the role of quarantine in containing the spread of illnesses, and the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic as of March 22nd
tips for talking to your kids about COVID-19
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How to determine if something is bullshit (a short guide): ask the following questions: 
(1) Are there sources included with the statement? (2) Are the sources credible (namely, are they from a primary source, such as a research group, recognized health agency, or other medical institution)? (3) Can I find more than one account of the information? (4) Is the statement objective (meaning ‘based on fact’, rather than subjective or ‘based on emotion or feeling’, which creates a bias)?
If the answer to any of those 4 questions is “no”, there’s a chance the information could be bullshit, OR, at the very least, it may be incomplete.
In health news, be skeptical of things involving very small test groups (a test on 12 people does not speak for the general public!) or made by for-profit laboratories. Big pharma can make great things, but it can also be unethical. Read the literature from sources that are not invested in the product (again, the CDC, WHO, and FDA are good places to start) to get a better sense of how reliable, safe, or effective a thing is.
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Speaking of misinformation...:
There is not yet a vaccine or official treatment for COVID-19, though work is in progress around the world.
No, you can’t protect yourself with a detox treatment (and shame on the influencers pushing this).
No, you cannot “self-test” for COVID-19 by holding your breath. The claim that you can self-test by attempting to hold your breath for 10 seconds is a social media hoax which gained some traction when it was perpetuated on Fox News. It has been completely debunked.
Be skeptical of home tests. Produced primarily by Everlywell, they are expensive, and the chance for a false negative is very high (they require swabbing VERY far up your own nose, which is painful and difficult to do on yourself if you’re not a medical professional or someone with experience doing so). If you’re worried that you may be sick, call your doctor; there are also lots of drive-in testing locations around the country.
Hand sanitizers made with only essential oils do not work -- essential oils do not disinfect. Beware of DIY hand sanitizer, as it is easy to make an ineffective one. Soap and water are the most effective means of disinfecting your hands.
It’s unclear if ibuprofen can worsen cases of COVID-19 -- this information was circulated by the French Health Minister, but there is no scientific data to support their claim. Ibuprofen is probably still safe to take. If you have any doubts, then you can take Tylenol, paracetamol, naproxen sodium, or aspirin instead.
COVID-19 has nothing to do with beer or eating meat.
Beware of conspiracy theories in general.
Beware of phishing scams pretending to be official press releases. Many appear from fake CDC emails.
Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are struggling to stop misinformation campaigns. Don’t consider these sites a reliable source of information -- look for the primary source to confirm what you see online, and do what you can to report or remove false information.
Beware articles or sources that use the current situation to excuse discrimination or prejudice. It is wrong to blame Asians and Asian culture for COVID-19 -- that’s just racism. Similarly, stories blaming migrants are just as wrongly biased.
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*** Note: I’m not a doctor or any other type of medical professional. I am a geologist who knows a lot about source evaluation and is worried about people being misinformed
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petspacare · 2 years
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Find a Low Cost Pet Clinic Near You
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Petvetrelief Pet owners are looking for lower-cost alternatives to their pet's veterinary care, as the average vet visit costs more than $150. Low cost pet clinics are a popular option for affordable veterinary care. These mobile clinics are becoming more popular across the country because they can help pet owners save big on veterinary preventive care and minor diseases.
Remember that a mobile low-cost pet clinic is not the exact same thing as a mobile vet clinic. This usually refers to a housecall practice. House calls to a veterinarian can be expensive. You're paying for convenience (and travel). Low cost pet clinics can be very affordable because their overhead is low. They establish their clinics in the parking lots of pet shops or in the back rooms of feed stores. They will usually stay for only a few days before moving on.
Low cost clinics typically specialize in one or two of the following: vaccinations, prevention, spay/neuter, and/or minor veterinary medical care. Be aware that not all clinics offer the same services. Many do not offer outpatient care and limit their services to parasite control and vaccines. It is important that you ask questions before the time.
It can be difficult to find one of these clinics near you. They are always on the move. These are some tips to help you find one.
1. Grab a local newspaper for free and look through the advertisements for any upcoming clinics. Craiglist is another great place to find low-cost pet clinics in your area.
2. Ask pet supply retailers and feed stores in your area if they have a low-cost clinic. They may be able to help you locate a clinic if they don't.
3. Ask your local shelter if they have any information about a clinic near you. They may also hold one in some cases.
4. Google "low-cost veterinary" or "low-cost pet", then enter the name of your town or city. Mobile Pet Care Clinic of Texas is an example of a Texas-based company that has its own website. It includes the location, date, and time of every clinic it runs.
5. Ask your local State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners or the equivalent agency in your state if they are aware of a low-cost pet clinic in your area. Each veterinary practice must report to the regulatory bodies all locations, dates, times and locations of mobile clinics.
It may take some digging to find a low-cost clinic close to you. It will be well worth the effort, as you could save significant money. Your regular vet should still be your primary care provider. A low-cost pet clinic shouldn't replace it. It can be a useful and affordable addition to your best friend's overall care.
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stone-man-warrior · 3 years
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March 24, 2021: 5:43 pm:
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I am past six weeks after having been attacked by a terror soldier who injected me with some kind of poison in my lower leg. There are no doctors who treat US Citizens, so I am left without medical care, have to deal with all of the injuries I get all on my own having learned the hard way about the terror takeover of the hospitals, urgent care offices, and all of the physicians offices in Oregon.
There is no where to get medical treatment, so, I have been documenting the healing, or lack thereof, as time progresses.
Oddly, no one has offered any help online either.
The foot is staying blue, is cold, I have to keep a heater of some kind on my foot all of the time, otherwise the intense cold feeling is more than I can bear. My hands are also cold much of the time, as if ice is inside my blood vessels.
The poison was injected on top of, and in addition to, a different condition, of different symptoms, of long term exposure to poisons I have been subject to from Monroe terror cell, who flaunt the “A-1 Exterminators Pest Control” van that is usually parked in their driveway on weekends and in the evenings. That van is the source of the original poison symptoms. The attack with a syringe killed the other symptoms, and these symptoms I have been showing, replaced the other symptoms, which mostly was overwhelming desire to scratch the itchy places on my right leg. Those symptoms are gone, and these other, super painful conditions that prevent me from walking very far at all, or even standing, took over.
That sore above my heal there started out as a tiny red dot.
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All of these big sores all started out as tiny red dots.
Over time, they began to grow deeper, wider, more painful, and are finally healing slowly. That redness, I suspect, is the poison that was injected is still there saturated into the leg tissue.
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My main complaint over all others is that my toes hurt so bad, so does the bottom of my foot, is all extreme pain. The toes and bottom of my foot are numb, but painful, and ice cold. Even when my foot is by the heater, and feels warm to touch it with my hand, the icy feeling within remains persistent.
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There is a small red spot there on the left side of my shin, above the letter l. That small sore started yesterday. I suspect that one will increase in size and depth as the others did. What is different about that one, is that spot did not start as a puncture as all of the others did. We’ll see what happens to that one as the days progress.
I want to emphasis that there was no visible healing happening until I discontinued using Equate brand Antibiotic and Pain Reliever Ointment, the Walmart generic version of neo-sporin. It’s notable that when I went to the Walmart to get some neo-sporin ointment, there was none available on the shelf, but there was ample supplies of the Equate generic brand.
Often, at the Walmart, they remove from the shelves the things I need. There was a time when there was no Hydrogen Peroxide available, but there was plenty of rubbing alcohol on the shelf. The Walmart removes the products intentionally, not just the pharmacy items, but the food items and electronics are purged from the shelf. There is a camera on display at Walmart, a Canon brand, it’s been on display for about five years, every once in a while I go see if I can buy the camera, they only have about six or eight to choose from these days, and I want the one that does not have Blu-tooth built in, but, for five years, that camera is never there, and they won‘t sell me the display model. Instead, the salesperson directs me to a similar Canon Camera, one that has Blu-tooth built in, and there are plenty of those available.
Blu-tooth is bad news. You should avoid Blu-tooth products as if your life depends on it.
There are no US national security, no one is watching the baby, and the baby is on fire.
I  used to have family that was a doctor.
now, my family is all dead, or are held in captivity, so are all of the friends I had. Everyone was killed by the terror army or taken captive as slaves.
Please send medical services to Josephine county Oregon.
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8:49 pm:
Observation: As I have been posting the effects of the poison attack, the different kinds of symptoms I am having, I am seeing that there are news stories presented on Twitter that are mimicking the symptoms I am telling about. What I am seeing, is that when I say I have numbness and pain, that somehow entices the SAG terror Twitter news media to claim something like:
“COVID Long Haulers are experiencing long lasting symptoms far beyond having been cured of the debilitating disease with complaints that range from numbness of the extremities, to feelings of coldness, and persistent limb pain”
I have seen that happen a number of times within an hour or two of my explanation of poison attack symptoms over the past ten days of so.
What we are witnessing is a “make it up as you go” COVID world in the media. There is no virus, so, since there is no real disease, the ailments have to be invented somehow, or, the symptoms need to stay unreported as it was for the first year. During the entire first year, and especially up to about summer time of 2020, the only ailment that was reported was death, and a lot of it. We were barraged with endless fear about this horrible disease that was killing so many people that all of the whole world had to stop turning, all we were told is: “There is not enough ventilators” and “We are having emergency shortages of respirators” and “People are dropping dead by the thousands because of the Corona Virus”.
Absolutely no reports of the symptoms were told by news media, but today, you can find stories about “COVID Long Haulers are having long lasting symptoms far after recovery”.
Before, we were seeing work crews digging long trenches with coffins lined up ready to be buried.
We were shown people on special guernies, completely hermetically sealed inside of plastic bubbles being wheeled onto airplanes by so called medical professionals all dressed in full blown HASMAT Chemical Warfare Protective Gear to transport them to a hospital.
now, we are seeing a situation where there is a “Vaccine”, many different kinds of so called vaccines. They all seem to have a limited shelf life and expire after a short time, so, we are told that passers by on the freeway were provided with the life saving COVID Vaccine because there was a traffic jam and the vaccines were going to expire, so, rather than let them go to waste, people on the freeway were graciously vaccinated with the life saving drug before it went bad.
You have to keep in mind that it’s not lawful for a restaurant to give away food that will expire, or has past expiration date, Fast food restaurants don‘t give the extra food away at the end of the day. Grocery stores can not hand out the produce when it is a little bruised, and won’t sell.
But hey, that vaccine, a controlled substance, is a hand out on a Oregon back country road in a snow blizzard because it might go bad, and expire, so, they go ahead and inoculate strangers in the forest while they wait for the fucking snow plow to clear the road. They film the event, put it on the news as “Heart warming saga” and the asshole terror murderers in the news media professions all become heroes somehow, because the people are too fucking gullible and are being exterminated as part of the six o’clock news.
“Just come on down to the vaccination event we are having at the stadium, we are planning on killing somewhere around 25.000 citizens today, so, don’t miss out on your chance to be murdered today, But don‘t worry, we will be at the stadium all week starting at ten am, so, there is no rush.
“And in other news: We are looking for some emergency volunteers who have chipper/shredders and Yard Maintenance skills that they can use to help clear debris from the Bear Creek Causeway, next to the stadium this week”.
“COVID Long Haulers are reporting symptoms ranging from numbness and pain of the extremities, to poor circulation“ or close to that, is a real story today,
Our governments were hijacked by treasonous murderers, globally, over the past fifty years, and no one has noticed.
Every day we are shown that some Hollywood asshole “was diagnosed with COVID and is going to self isolate for two weeks”, so, later, it’s always a healthy looking person, with a smile, saying “Yeah, it was one of the hardest things I ever done, it was horrible, but my family helped me through it” as the persons are always looking like they gained fifty pounds, a tan, and a new puppy.
Look at Boris Johnson, the son of bitch gained weight while sick with an ailment that is said to have killed millions of people, but Boris got fat, and was back at work after a two week holiday that was cut short because... because he got fat.
Gullible and naive.
It’s been more than a year, and still no one is fighting back, Twitter is still tweeting, and the mass murdering continues, but now they kill with the vaccine, and everyone is falling for the bullshit, partly because “Twitter” is a cute name for a social media website.
Today, the Joe Biden Brigade rolled out the eventual “Open Carry is a Crime” narrative.
If you thought the pressure associated with wearing a Corona Mask was harsh when you don‘t want to wear the fucking mask, wait until you get a load of the Open Carry Pressure Campaign that was rolled out today. The terror bastards do not want any competition, so, what do you think fake politicians wielding real law will do in order to get their way? After fifty years of careful planing and success along the way, the shills are going to wield those laws as if the law itself is a weapon of mass destruction. At this point in the global takeover with fifty years invested in the actual takeover, and many decades more in planning it, they indeed will be feeling “Too Big To Fail” among their inner circles.
“Open Carry is a Crime” campaign began today, the beginning of more momentum in that direction is happening now.
The nitrous gas they use is volatile, a small flame will clear the air so you can breathe and think clearly. Only those who carry and release the gas will be offended when you use a lighter to clear the air.
Think of this: The British are the top leaders of this terror take over, they command SAG, and SAG commands the terror army. With that in mind, and with the knowledge that they are fooling everyone with a fake Biblical sized plague, know that Boris Johnson said this week that “The UK is a scientific superpower”. The virus, if there were one, would be composed of germs, hence the mask mandate excuse, so, scientific superpower of the UK cannot figure out that a small flame will clear the air of germs?
They don’t want you to use a lighter either, so that “Open Carry is a Crime” campaign is going to include anyone seen using a Bic Lighter, there will be “Drop Specialists” to make sure that if a lighter is seen, then a gun will appear, and the frame work will be done to disappear the people who want to protect themselves from exposure to poison gasses, and being killed.
They will eventually eliminate their own terror army.
The plan is to reset the global population to 500,000 select people world wide. Trust me, that is the plan. They are rolling out the next phase now.
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10:36 pm:
There was a news story put into circulation this past week that suggests there are some special people somewhere, and those special persons have made it a public statement presented in network news that there are plans to build out what the said was a “noah’s Ark” of sorts, on the moon. The so called Ark is to house the genes of all animal and plant life that exists on Earth. Basically that is the story, you can find it on your own. The thing that gets my attention about that story is why was it considered so important that it should  be shared in the mainstream news media, for something that would be decades out into the future just to get started on it. That kind of thought crosses my mind all the time when I read the news, “Why is this a news story?” and “Who does this news story serve most?” and “What could possibly be the real underlying message to this story that seems to have very little if any socially redeeming quality?” ... I can‘t help but find that so many news stories simply do not need to be told to millions of people, as they don’t offer anything of value that we can use to help make our lives more pleasant, or easier in some way.
I say the Moon Unit Ark story is a “Go” order from “On-High” to begin the final elimination phase of Corona Virus global terror take over. Things have gotten even more weird than they already were, after that story was first presented. I further suggest that the story today about “Children in school can reduce distance to three feet” is another part of that same terror order to begin the next phase of the global reduction of populations.
It’s going to get increasingly more difficult to survive, and won’t return to the way things were say, in 1999. They certainly won’t return to 1969 life quality, which by comparison to today, was real nice, lots of freedom in USA in 1969, and almost no fear of any harm coming to us, in 1969.
By 1989, think about it, did 1989 offer a feeling of safety, well-being, or freedom?
What will be the reality on earth in 2029?
It looks bleak to me.
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11:06 pm:
I have been trying to report terrorism for so long I don’t know exactly when I realized that when I made a crime report, the report was more than crime, then reports of corruption I learned of, when did I realize it was not corruption that I was reporting to authorities? I don‘t know. At some point after 2001, when I saw people being thrown into a blender and turned into liquid at the Walmart, that is for sure when the reporting I still do, became reports of organized terrorism. I saw fourth graders pushed off of a cliff at Table Rock in Medford Oregon on a field trip from school in around 1998, but even then, I had not realized the report I made about it should have been as a terror event, not the murder of fourth grade elementary students.
Since the time I first started reporting crime, murder, corruption, mass murder, then terrorism, I have been targeted for take out ever since.
My family was destroyed, my sister killed in hospital, I watched as they put my brother into that giant blender at a time that I had been told he was already dead, and went to his funeral, only to see that he was in the trunk of a car, where his captors had put him as they waited for a time when I would see them put my brother into the chipper/shredder, alive and screaming in horror.
My children are dead or held captive.
My father was murdered and they stole his estate from me.
I was shot in the face, lost all my teeth as a result.
I have had glass dust shards thrown into my eyes many times, it’s very painful, and when the shards come loose after a week, they get lodged again while you try to rub them out of your eyes.
I get attacked in my home at least once a week.
All of the residences around my home are occupied by the same terror cell now, they prey on me daily. I cannot go outdoors for more than few minutes without being attacked.
They bring African Lions, and release the Lions when I try to take a walk, I have fought with and killed many African Lions while armed only with a small folding knife.
The terror neighbors shoot cross-bow arrows at me regularly from Monroe’s while I walk on my own driveway.
I have been shot hundreds of times with the small custom .25 guns they all seem to have.
I was run over by a Chevrolet Silverado in 2012, and suffer from a spinal cord injury, and, I was a disabled man at the time, since 1994 or so for spinal conditions.
That, and more, I have endured.
now, I am suffering from an attack with poison injection, and am unable to walk very far, cannot reach my own mailbox at this time. Healing is slow to non-existent.
I keep saying what I know, I keep begging for help.
I try to help others, so that they will help me.
no one will help.
Only assassins come in return for my cries for help.
Please study this account, this account is the reason so many attempts to kill me are happening, but it’s not the first account of terror explanations, the bastards have deleted others. This one is the current one, in it, are secrets of terrorism that many of the terror soldiers themselves are not aware of, there are leadership secrets in this account.
Please study it and learn, then devise a plan to conquer the terror take over of USA, and by extension, preserve freedom all over the world.
There is enough information in this account to stop 90% of all the terrorism on earth, forever, if the information were to be used to counter the terrorism.
0 notes
orbemnews · 3 years
Link
How Rhode Island Fell to the Coronavirus PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The numbers began ticking up in September. After a quiet summer, doctors at Rhode Island Hospital began seeing one or two patients with Covid-19 on each shift — and soon three. Then four. Cases climbed steadily until early December, when Rhode Island earned the dubious distinction of having more cases and deaths per 100,000 people than any other state in the country. The case rate still puts it among the top five states. Where did this tightly knit state go wrong? Former Gov. Gina Raimondo’s “pauses” on economic activity were short-lived and partial, leaving open indoor dining, shopping malls and bowling alleys. But the shutdowns were no patchier than those in many other states. Until late summer, she was lauded for reining in the virus. Even now, few residents blame her for the bleak numbers. (Ms. Raimondo was sworn in as the secretary of commerce on Wednesday night.) Experts point instead to myriad other factors, all of which have played out elsewhere in the country but converged into a bigger crisis here. The fall chill sent people indoors, where risk from the virus is highest, and the holidays brought people together. Rhode Island is tiny — you can traverse it in 45 minutes. But crammed into that smallish area are a million people, for a population density second only to that of New Jersey. If everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation, Rhode Islanders seem to be connected by maybe two. Central Falls, the epicenter of Rhode Island’s epidemic, has a density of 16,000 people per square mile, almost twice that of Providence. “Just imagine, 16,000 people per square mile — I mean, that’s amazing,” said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a member of the government committee that guides Covid vaccine distribution in Rhode Island. “It doesn’t take much for the spark to create an outbreak.” Apart from its density, Rhode Island has a high percentage of elderly residents in nursing homes, accounting for the bulk of deaths. Packed into the state are multiple urban areas — Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence — where language barriers, mistrust and jobs have left immigrant families in multigenerational homes particularly vulnerable. The state is also home to multiple colleges that set off chains of infection in the early fall. For months, the hospitals in Rhode Island were understaffed and overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses were trying to cope with rising caseloads, often without the protective equipment they needed, with constantly shifting guidelines and with their own resilience stretched to the limit. Dr. Megan Ranney, a researcher and public health advocate, is also an emergency room physician at Rhode Island Hospital who has witnessed the full scope of the state’s crisis firsthand. What she saw unfold over a single shift offers a window into what happened. Plowing Through It One day in late December, as the crisis reached new heights, Dr. Ranney girded for a long eight-hour shift. The sores behind her ears, where her glasses and the straps of the N95 and surgical masks dug in, still had not healed. But how could she complain, Dr. Ranney said, when her medical residents “eat, sleep, breathe Covid” five days a week? The patients had it worse, she knew. Anxious and isolated, they became even more discomfited by the masked and unrecognizable doctors and nurses rushing around them. During Dr. Ranney’s shift the prior week, she had seen a broad spectrum: elderly people on a downward spiral, otherwise healthy young Latino men, Cape Verdean immigrants with limited English comprehension. These demographics are partly what made Rhode Island particularly susceptible, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University in Providence: “Certainly in New England, it is the poorest state — so a lot of poverty, and a lot of multigenerational poverty.” As in most of the country, the Latino community has borne the brunt of the epidemic. In Rhode Island, Latinos have 6.7 times the risk for hospitalization and 2.5 times the risk of death, compared with white people. In the days before her shift, Dr. Ranney had been working in a part of the hospital intended to deal with non-Covid cases. But even people with other ailments, like ankle fractures, turned out to be positive for the virus, she found. “I never know from day to day how bad the surge will be,” she said. “I’ve just got to plow through it.” It turned out to be an extraordinarily busy day. “The E.R. is full, the hospital is full, the intensive care unit is full,” Dr. Ranney said. “All of our units are moving as quickly as they can, but the patients keep coming in.” Every time she took off masks during a shift, she ran the risk of contaminating herself. She had had four cups of coffee before this shift, and nothing since. The average age of the patients that night was about 70. One elderly woman who had trouble breathing could not isolate because she lived with her children and grandchildren. At any rate, she arrived at the hospital 10 days into her illness, too late for isolation to matter. Updated  March 5, 2021, 5:03 a.m. ET Rhode Island’s epidemic has been disastrous for immigrant families in multigenerational households. “How do you isolate from someone when you have one bathroom?” Dr. Ranney said. It’s a problem throughout this diverse state. When Djini Tavares, 60, became infected in July, she was prepared to spend about $120 a night at a hotel — a sum many in her Cape Verdean community cannot afford — to isolate from her vulnerable 86-year-old father. Even before the pandemic, Ms. Tavares was fastidious about hygiene, keeping mounds of wipes and cleaning supplies in the house at all times. She could not imagine where she had picked up the virus. The loss of her godmother and a friend to Covid-19 had shaken her. Cape Verdeans are a close-knit community, and not being able to mourn the dead has been painful, Ms. Tavares said: “Culturally, I think it’s causing us to hurt even more.” On her shift, Dr. Ranney encountered Covid-19 patients who had blood clots or heart problems, or who still needed oxygen weeks after their diagnosis. Many patients had been very careful — or said they had — but were infected after a family member brought the virus into the household. The story is told too often in Rhode Island. Abby Burchfield, 58, lost her mother and stepfather to Covid-19 within days of each other at an assisted living center in New Jersey in April. Devastated and afraid, she and her family stayed away from restaurants, washed their hands often, and tried to wear masks everywhere. It wasn’t enough. Ms. Burchfield’s younger daughter, Lily, 21, became infected at her college in Virginia in August and was hospitalized. Then, in late October, her husband, Jimmy, 58, caught the virus from a co-worker who was infected but did not wear a mask. Despite Ms. Burchfield’s best efforts she, too, was infected. She was hospitalized after she collapsed suddenly in the family kitchen. She recovered, but her husband, who was also admitted to the hospital, still has no taste, a limited sense of smell, and continuing fatigue. “My biggest fear right now is protecting my older daughter,” Ms. Burchfield said. Workplace exposures have especially hurt the Latino and Cape Verdean community, many of whom hold jobs that cannot be done from home. But in state surveys, it also became obvious that people still were holding get-togethers of 15 to 20 people even as the virus spread, said Dr. James McDonald, medical director of the Covid-19 unit at the Rhode Island Department of Health. What You Need to Know About the Vaccine Rollout “People weren’t willing to live differently during the pandemic,” he said. Dr. Ranney said there were several such cases in the emergency room that night. “It’s frustrating to see patients come in from car crashes when they were not wearing a seatbelt, or to see patients with a firearm injury because the firearm wasn’t stored safely,” she said. “It’s like that to see folks with Covid.” The Masks ‘Were Disgusting’ Some nights in emergency medicine, the diagnoses and treatments are immediately obvious. But on this shift, Dr. Ranney said, “there was very, very little that was straightforward or smooth.” A number of patients with substance abuse problems appeared, as well as people with mental illness who had become a danger to themselves. And “we’re seeing a lot of people who are just lonely,” she said. Dr. Ranney would get a respite, but many medical residents and nurses in Rhode Island were already burning out. Some felt that hospital administrators had not protected them. Early in the pandemic, most health care workers in Rhode Island, as in other parts of the country, did not have N95 masks. The masks are single-use, but when the nurses received an N95 each, they were asked to place them in paper bags at the end of their shift and put them back on again the next day. “They stunk, they were slimy, they were disgusting. They made your face break out,” said a nurse at Rhode Island Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the hospital had instructed employees not to speak to the news media. If a strap broke, the mask would be returned with new straps stapled on. “The staples would dig into your face,” the nurse said. Many nurses got just 40 hours of sick time a year, which roughly translated to three 12-hour shifts; a fourth day out might earn a reprimand. Because of this, many nurses weren’t tested, and some came to work even when they were sick. At Eleanor Slater Hospital in Cranston, R.I., ill staff members led to an outbreak of at least 29 employees and nine patients. It’s a phenomenon seen in hospitals throughout the United States. The rules for patients don’t always accord with the science, said one nurse at Rhode Island Hospital. At first, the hospital did not allow anybody up from the E.R. until test results were back. But as the first surge ebbed, the rules became lax. Patients were sent up with pending test results, potentially exposing other patients as well as the nurses who cared for them. After treating one such patient, at least nine nurses tested positive for the virus, the nurse said. The policy at most hospitals in Rhode Island now is to have health care workers wear N95 respirators or similar reusable masks at all times, and to test anyone suspected of having Covid-19. But that does not account for patients who might be asymptomatic and who come in for other ailments. Rhode Island has adopted one unusual approach: Officials are distributing vaccines to anyone who will take them in Central Falls, regardless of age. It’s a strategy that few other jurisdictions have tried. “We decided to do that because of the horrific toll of the pandemic in those communities,” said Dr. Rodriguez, the vaccine committee member. Twenty percent of the adult residents have received at least one dose at local clinics, not including those who may have been immunized at work or elsewhere. The state’s plan to immunize those at highest risk by age and geography, he added, “will put out the fire where it is burning the most intensely.” In recent weeks, the number of cases in Rhode Island have fallen, as they have in the rest of the country. And fewer health care workers are getting sick because they have been immunized, so hospital shifts are better than they used to be, Dr. Ranney said. But cases in the state are still the third highest per capita in the country. And doctors are continuing to see patients who have so-called long Covid, she said: “The trouble is that once patients get admitted, they don’t leave.” Source link Orbem News #coronavirus #fell #Island #Rhode
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The Vaccinated Class
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The coronavirus vaccine wasn’t supposed to be a golden ticket. A tiered and efficient rollout was meant to inoculate frontline workers and the most vulnerable before the rest of society.
But scattershot and delayed distribution of the still-limited supply now threatens to create a new temporary social class — one that includes not just people who are at higher risk for infection or severe illness and death, but also grocery store customers in Washington; Indonesian influencers; elementary schoolteachers; American celebrities; New York Post reporters and others who, because of their work or because of luck, have been able to get immunized quickly.
Tests of the vaccines show they’re incredibly effective. But people can still get the coronavirus while in the process of getting inoculated, and could possibly still spread the virus, especially if they come in close contact with others or stop wearing masks.
As a result, as people clamor to get in line for what represents the only real safety from a disease that has killed millions, plenty of individuals who have been vaccinated will wait patiently until they are told it’s safe to gather.
But others will feel emboldened to begin to congregate with their vaccinated peers. Some of them will be among the most privileged people in the world.
Knightsbridge Circle, a luxury travel service in London that charges 25,000 pounds a year for membership, made waves earlier this month when its founder, Stuart McNeill, told The Telegraph that the club would fly members who were 65 or older to the United Arab Emirates to receive privately obtained vaccines. (In Britain, the vaccination is only available through the National Health Service.)
Since going public with the offer, the club, which arranges luxury experiences and accommodations for its members, has received more than 2,000 applications for membership and thousands of phone calls, emails and social media requests, according to Mr. McNeill. He also wrote, in response to emailed questions, that his organization has been approached by “several private jet companies” looking to team with the club to transport the vaccinated.
On Friday, his organization announced that it would begin selling vaccines to people who were not previously members of the club for the price of 10,000 pounds per person, as long as individuals are 65 or older — or can prove that they have underlying health conditions. (Knightsbridge Circle will “ask for proof of this when booking,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email.)
The vaccines will come as part of a three-week “membership package.” But that package will not include anything beyond the vaccine and transport to and from the airport and vaccination sites. Interested parties will have to book airfare and three weeks worth of accommodations themselves.
For Mr. McNeill’s clients, the real fun will come once the inoculations are done. Some of those who expect to be vaccinated in the U.A.E. have been looking to schedule specialized excursions after they are inoculated, he said, adding: “Desert safari seems to be the most popular.” (Members who travel to the U.A.E. will stay in the country for the required time before a second dose.)
Mr. McNeill also said that, given the uncertainty around staples of the spring calendar this year — the Royal Ascot, Monaco Grand Prix and Wimbledon — he expects his vaccinated clients to “head to the Mediterranean” earlier than usual. (Top destinations for the company’s clients, he said, included St.-Tropez, Mykonos, Ibiza and Bodrum.)
A leisure class of the newly vaccinated will mean that hotels, catering services and other businesses will be scrambling to employ bartenders, servers and other staff who are also vaccinated, the better to ensure the safety of all. A vaccination will begin to represent not only safety from the virus but also, for some, a leg up in the job market.
“Just like business partners require background checks for all of our professionals today, a lot of people are going to start wanting to say, ‘Hey, send vaccinated professionals as well,’” said Jamie Baxter, the chief executive of Qwick, an Arizona-based web platform that connects service workers with employers. He said that Qwick had already started thinking about how to verify which workers on its platform had been vaccinated.
‘Haves and Have-Nots’
Over 40 million doses of the vaccine have been administered worldwide, mostly to health care workers, first responders and older individuals, many of whom live in nursing homes. The vaccinated class is and will remain a relatively small portion of the population during the first half of 2021.
Covid-19 Vaccines ›
Answers to Your Vaccine Questions
If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine?
While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.
When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated?
Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.
If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?
Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they’re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.
Will it hurt? What are the side effects?
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?
No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.
That makes it difficult for economists and businesses to anticipate when people will begin to gather in substantial numbers (in places where they haven’t been doing so already) and what the economic impact of such activity might be.
“As people are excited to become vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, they may be overestimating what that protection means,” said Jennifer Reich, a professor at the University of Colorado-Denver who specializes in health policy. “It’s important that they calibrate their expectations and understand that their behavior after immunization still has to be focused on protecting people around them.”
But some private event spaces are gearing up for boom times in the spring and summer all the same. Peerspace, a commercial space rental platform (think Airbnb for events and parties) said it is already seeing bookings for its 20,000 locations around the United States, starting in late May. (Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the U.C.L.A. Anderson Forecast, which issues economic predictions at the opening of each year, said it is “a regulatory question, how soon will those kinds of larger event spaces become available.”)
Eric Shoup, the company’s chief executive, said he was interested to see whether cities and states would make special allowances for those who had been inoculated, especially once a significant portion of the population was vaccinated.
“There are going to be the haves and have-nots, if you will,” he said.
Matt Bendett, Peerspace’s head of operations and strategy, wondered whether one’s vaccination status would be available to share through an app like Apple Wallet. (According to Bloomberg, interest in such applications — essentially, passports that would show proof of immunization — has surged.)
“If that’s something that becomes accepted and is not considered a privacy violation of some sort, or we start to see governments kind of changing their tune on how people can use that as verification, I certainly think that’s something we could look at how we would leverage,” he said.
Doctors who have been on the terrible front line of the crisis have, through the fact of their exposure, had a preview of the social world that some who are vaccinated could return to fairly soon. Dr. Alex Tran is an emergency medicine resident physician at Mount Sinai and Elmhurst Hospitals in New York City, where he has worked throughout the pandemic. As of this month, he is fully vaccinated.
Given that he and his peers developed antibodies when they were exposed to the virus at the beginning of the crisis, he said, they had not been particularly worried about hanging out with one another. With the vaccine, though, he plans to travel across the country to California to see his parents for the first time in a year.
“What I’m waiting for is actually that C.D.C. card that they’re giving out being accepted as a method of entry, whether that be for flights or for restaurants, like indoor dining or whatever it may be,” he said, referring to the verification card that those who are vaccinated receive.
“I could see a situation where a club makes it their official policy that you need to show your vaccine card,” Dr. Tran added. “But I think that’s just going to open the way up to forged vaccine cards. There’s going to be another market there.”
Already, health care workers are finding that vaccination comes with some small perks. On Friday, the N.F.L. announced that a significant percentage of the crowd at Super Bowl LV in Tampa would be vaccinated health care workers, who will receive free tickets. (How large venues will determine who has been vaccinated is still a contentious subject.)
Dr. Tran also expects vaccination status to become a draw on dating apps. He mentioned that a vaccinated friend updated his dating profile on one of the apps to say “Dating me is like dating a golden retriever … who’s been vaccinated,” and that it had already attracted a good amount of attention.
The ‘Hottest Thing’ in Dating
Dating app companies confirmed that vaccination has become a hot topic on their platforms. On Tinder, vaccine mentions in user bios rose 258 percent between September and December. “Those who have gotten the vaccine are using their status as a way to spark conversation with potential matches about their experience,” Dana Balch, a Tinder spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
On OkCupid, those who indicate that they have already received the vaccine are being liked at double the rate of users who say that they are not interested in getting the vaccine, according to a spokesman for the app, Michael Kaye.
“Basically, getting the vaccine is the hottest thing you could be doing on a dating app right now,” Mr. Kaye said, adding, “What a world we’re living in. …”
And social media communities for the newly vaccinated (and those interested in being newly vaccinated) have quickly been established. One subreddit, r/Covid19VaccineRats, was created last month by Jamal Fares, a humanitarian aid worker in Beirut, where the vaccination has not yet begun. Mr. Fares said he started the group to combat rumors and misinformation about the vaccine. Over time, he expected it to become a social hub where people might read tales from and about the happily inoculated.
“They will start going out, they will start socially interacting, and I presume they’ll start sharing those experiences with others,” he said of the subreddit’s vaccinated members.
Dr. Reich, the sociologist at the University of Colorado-Denver, said that she was concerned that government officials would enable irresponsible activity by the newly vaccinated. She urged even those who had been vaccinated to restrain themselves until the protection granted by immunization was better understood — or that protection was more widespread — in order to stave off worst case scenarios.
“People are going to feel betrayed if they learn later that they thought they were protected,” she said. “And they killed their grandparents.”
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CVS and Walgreens Under Fire for Slow Pace of Vaccination in Nursing Homes
The effort to vaccinate some of the country’s most vulnerable residents against covid-19 has been slowed by a federal program that sends retail pharmacists into nursing homes — accompanied by layers of bureaucracy and logistical snafus.
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This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free.
As of Thursday, more than 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna covid vaccines had been allocated to the federal pharmacy partnership, which has deputized pharmacy teams from Walgreens and CVS to vaccinate nursing home residents and workers. Since the program started in some states on Dec. 21, however, they have administered about one-quarter of the doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Across the country, some nursing home directors and health care officials say the partnership is actually hampering the vaccination process by imposing paperwork and cumbersome corporate policies on facilities that are thinly staffed and reeling from the devastating effects of the coronavirus. They argue that nursing homes are unique medical facilities that would be better served by medical workers who already understand how they operate.
Mississippi’s state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said the partnership “has been a fiasco.”
The state has committed 90,000 vaccine doses to the effort, but the pharmacies had administered only 5% of those shots as of Thursday, Dobbs said. Pharmacy officials told him they’re having trouble finding enough people to staff the program.
Dobbs pointed to neighboring Alabama and Louisiana, which he says are vaccinating long-term care residents at four times the rate of Mississippi.
“We’re getting a lot of angry people because it’s going so slowly, and we’re unhappy too,” he said.
Many of the nursing homes that have successfully vaccinated willing residents and staff members are doing so without federal help.
For instance, Los Angeles Jewish Home, with roughly 1,650 staff members and 1,100 residents on four campuses, started vaccinating Dec. 30. By Jan. 11, the home’s medical staff had administered its 1,640th dose. Even the facility’s chief medical director, Noah Marco, helped vaccinate.
The home is in Los Angeles County, which declined to participate in the CVS/Walgreens program. Instead, it has tasked nursing homes with administering vaccines themselves, and is using only Moderna’s easier-to-handle product, which doesn’t need to be stored at ultracold temperatures, like the Pfizer vaccine. (Both vaccines require two doses to offer full protection, spaced 21 to 28 days apart.)
By contrast, Mariner Health Central, which operates 20 nursing homes in California, is relying on the federal partnership for its homes outside of L.A. County. One of them won’t be getting its first doses until next week.
“It’s been so much worse than anybody expected,” said the chain’s chief medical officer, Dr. Karl Steinberg. “That light at the end of the tunnel is dim.”
Nursing homes have experienced some of the worst outbreaks of the pandemic. Though they house less than 1% of the nation’s population, nursing homes have accounted for 37% of deaths, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Facilities participating in the federal partnership typically schedule three vaccine clinics over the course of nine to 12 weeks. Ideally, those who are eligible and want a vaccine will get the first dose at the first clinic and the second dose three to four weeks later. The third clinic is considered a makeup day for anyone who missed the others. Before administering the vaccines, the pharmacies require the nursing homes to obtain consent from residents and staffers.
Despite the complaints of a slow rollout, CVS and Walgreens said they’re on track to finish giving the first doses by Jan. 25, as promised.
“Everything has gone as planned, save for a few instances where we’ve been challenged or had difficulties making contact with long-term care facilities to schedule clinics,” said Joe Goode, a spokesperson for CVS Health.
Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, acknowledged some delays through the partnership, but said that’s to be expected because this kind of effort has never before been attempted.
“There’s a feeling they’ll get up to speed with it and it will be helpful, as health departments are pretty overstretched,” Plescia said.
But any delay puts lives at risk, said Dr. Michael Wasserman, the immediate past president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.
“I’m about to go nuclear on this,” he said. “There should never be an excuse about people not getting vaccinated. There’s no excuse for delays.”
Bringing in Vaccinators
Nursing homes are equipped with resources that could have helped the vaccination effort — but often aren’t being used.
Most already work with specialized pharmacists who understand the needs of nursing homes and administer medications and yearly vaccinations. These pharmacists know the patients and their medical histories, and are familiar with the apparatus of nursing homes, said Linda Taetz, chief compliance officer for Mariner Health Central.
“It’s not that they aren’t capable,” Taetz said of the retail pharmacists. “They just aren’t embedded in our buildings.”
If a facility participates in the federal program, it can’t use these or any other pharmacists or staffers to vaccinate, said Nicole Howell, executive director for Ombudsman Services of Contra Costa, Solano and Alameda counties.
But many nursing homes would like the flexibility to do so because they believe it would speed the process, help build trust and get more people to say yes to the vaccine, she said.
Howell pointed to West Virginia, which relied primarily on local, independent pharmacies instead of the federal program to vaccinate its nursing home residents.
The state opted against the partnership largely because CVS/Walgreens would have taken weeks to begin shots and Republican Gov. Jim Justice wanted them to start immediately, said Marty Wright, CEO of the West Virginia Health Care Association, which represents the state’s long-term care facilities.
The bulk of the work is being done by more than 60 pharmacies, giving the state greater control over how the doses were distributed, Wright said. The pharmacies were joined by Walgreens in the second week, he said, though not as part of the federal partnership.
“We had more interest from local pharmacies than facilities we could partner them up with,” Wright said. Preliminary estimates show that more than 80% of residents and 60% of staffers in more than 200 homes got a first dose by the end of December, he said.
Goode from CVS said his company’s participation in the program is being led by its long-term care division, which has deep experience with nursing homes. He noted that tens of thousands of nursing homes — about 85% nationally, according to the CDC — have found that reassuring enough to participate.
“That underscores the trust the long-term care community has in CVS and Walgreens,” he said.
Vaccine recipients don’t pay anything out-of-pocket for the shots. The costs of purchasing and administering them are covered by the federal government and health insurance, which means CVS and Walgreens stand to make a lot of money: Medicare is reimbursing $16.94 for the first shot and $28.39 for the second.
Bureaucratic Delays
Technically, federal law doesn’t require nursing homes to obtain written consent for vaccinations.
But CVS and Walgreens require them to get verbal or written consent from residents or family members, which must be documented on forms supplied by the pharmacies.
Goode said consent hasn’t been an impediment so far, but many people on the ground disagree. The requirements have slowed the process as nursing homes collect paper forms and Medicare numbers from residents, said Tracy Greene Mintz, a social worker who owns Senior Care Training, which trains and deploys social workers in more than 100 facilities around California.
In some cases, social workers have mailed paper consent forms to families and waited to get them back, she said.
“The facilities are busy trying to keep residents alive,” Greene Mintz said. “If you want to get paid from Medicare, do your own paperwork,” she suggested to CVS and Walgreens.
Scheduling has also been a challenge for some nursing homes, partly because people who are actively sick with covid shouldn’t be vaccinated, the CDC advises.
“If something comes up — say, an entire building becomes covid-positive — you don’t want the pharmacists coming because nobody is going to get the vaccine,” said Taetz of Mariner Health.
Both pharmacy companies say they work with facilities to reschedule when necessary. That happened at Windsor Chico Creek Care and Rehabilitation in Chico, California, where a clinic was pushed back a day because the facility was awaiting covid test results for residents. Melissa Cabrera, who manages the facility’s infection control, described the process as streamlined and professional.
In Illinois, about 12,000 of the state’s roughly 55,000 nursing home residents had received their first dose by Sunday, mostly through the CVS/Walgreens partnership, said Matt Hartman, executive director of the Illinois Health Care Association.
While Hartman hopes the pharmacies will finish administering the first round by the end of the month, he noted that there’s a lot of “headache” around scheduling the clinics, especially when homes have outbreaks.
“Are we happy that we haven’t gotten through round one and West Virginia is done?” he asked. “Absolutely not.”
KHN correspondent Rachana Pradhan contributed to this report.
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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