Category: Health

We’re at 600,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States. The real death tolls in the U.S. and around the globe, are probably significantly higher than the official numbers, with many cases overlooked, or concealed.

As for the vaccine, in California, 72% of residents older than 18 had gotten at least one dose, and 70% for New York state.  Both states lifted most of their Covid-19 restrictions today.
Washington State (at 72% one dose, same as California) will follow suit at the end of June.

So life is returning to normal in many ways in the United States, but the pandemic is far from over. Some 25% of people that had contracted Covid-19 and survived, or even those that were asymptomatic, suffer long-term symptoms. Millions of people are still grappling with the loss of a family member or a close friend.

The incentives for getting the vaccine are getting wilder and wilder.
Yesterday, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) greenlighted state-licensed cannabis retailers, to offer one pre-rolled marijuana joint ‘to adult consumers who receive a vaccination at an in-store vaccination clinic’.

So add the ‘joint for a jab’ incentive to the list of free beers, free donuts, free pizza, scholarships (for kids), cash prizes, free air tickets and who-knows-what-else.

We’re at a vaccination rate of 60% (at least the first shot) of those older than 16, here in Washington State.

Governor Inslee had said that Washington State should be able to fully reopen June 30— or sooner, if 70% of residents older than 16 get at least the first shot before then.

This cartoon from The New Yorker magazine illustrates the quandary that the CDC has created for businesses, and managers of public indoor spaces. Unvaccinated people should definitely still wear a mask.
It is just about impossible, though, to determine who is vaccinated, and who is not (and anti-mask).

For me, the updated CDC guidance about not wearing a mask for vaccinated people, feels like a stunning reversal of their guidance issued just two weeks ago.

There are lots of green ‘Fully vaccinated’ maskless smiley faces on this guidance diagram from the Washington Post (compiled from the CDC guidance). I added my own ‘guidance’ in there, for now.  I’m just not ready to go everywhere without a mask (esp. indoors), and pretend that the pandemic has ended.

Let’s not forget that the failure of the CDC to contain this pandemic, is at a level I would call ‘Epic’. As the NYT noted in a June 2020 article: ‘The technology was old, the data poor, the bureaucracy slow, the guidance confusing, the administration not in agreement’.

Wishing all the moms a happy Mother’s Day, belatedly.
It’s been an especially hard year for working moms that had to work from home while taking care of the kids.

It’s in my arm, my second shot of Pfizer-made COVID-19 vaccine.

To the COVID-19 deniers and conspiracy theorists:
YES, COVID-19 is real.
NO, the COVID-19 death rate numbers are not inflated.
NO, there is no microchip in the vaccines.
NO, the vaccine will not change my DNA.
NO, the vaccine is not a plot by Bill Gates, by the US Government, or by any other entity, to take over the world.

I have been counting the days after Wednesday, April 14 when I got my first Covid-19 vaccine shot.

The graph below has been doing the rounds on Twitter, and has been featured in articles about the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
It was compiled in 2020 by Pfizer with data from the vaccine trials.
New coronavirus cases quickly tapered off in the vaccinated group of volunteers about 10 days after the first dose*. In the placebo group, cases kept steadily increasing.
The second dose boosts and extends the protection (for at least 6 months, possibly for much longer).

*If someone in the vaccinated group did get infected, the symptoms were milder, and there were no fatalities, either.

My appointment for the second Pfizer shot has been rescheduled, to exactly 21 days out, from my first shot (4 days later than the 17 days out, that I was told at first).

Per a text message from my health care provider, the  CDC guidance for second shots has been updated. (It seems that before today, there was a 4-day grace period, so the second shot could be had as early as 4 days before the 21-day mark, or 4 days after the 21-day mark).

From cdc.gov:
You should get your second shot as close to the recommended 3-week or 4-week interval as possible. However, your second dose may be given up to 6 weeks (42 days) after the first dose, if necessary. You should not get the second dose early … However, if you do receive your second shot of COVID-19 vaccine earlier or later than recommended, you do not have to restart the vaccine series. 

P.S. So Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine is back in business, in the US, in Europe and in South Africa. Good news.

Everyone in the USA over age 16 now qualifies for the vaccine.
Now if only everyone (alright, 70% of everyone) will go and get it.
It’s not going to be easy.
Too many Americans subject themselves/ are influenced by, information bubbles that stoke their fears, or lie to them.

My personal D-Day in the war against the vaccine is here: I will get my first shot at 8 am on Wednesday morning.

I believe it will be the Moderna vaccine that I’m getting.
The Johnson & Johnson it will not be, with the pause that was announced today by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) here in the US. Of the 120 million or so shots administered in the States, less than 7 million were J&J, and White House officials expressed confidence that the roll-out here in the States will not be negatively impacted.

The unwillingness of people to get the vaccine, the so-called ‘vaccine hesitancy’, is the bigger challenge.

Now we are tall and Christmas trees are small
And you don’t ask the time of day
But you and I our love will never die
but guess we’ll cry come first of May
– lyrics from First of May, recorded by the Bee Gees in 1969

All Washington State residents older than 16 will qualify to get the COVID-19 vaccine, come May 1.
I will be one of the last group*, 1.2 million of the State’s 6 million adults, to get my shot (or two shots).

*I’m not complaining. I’m very lucky to be able to get the vaccine this early, compared to people in most other places around the globe.

Late today, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine.

The vaccine works a little different than the messenger-RNA vaccines of Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna. It uses a modified adenovirus as a wrapper for DNA material.

The number of daily Covid-19 infections in America — and hospitalizations — are going down (again), but losing 500,000 souls was unimaginable a short year ago. Six hundred thousand now seems inevitable.

An estimated 750,000 Americans lost their lives in the four years of the American Civil War (Apr. 1861- May 1865).

The AstraZeneca vaccine ran into trouble in South Africa.
Preliminary findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, of a study of around 2,000 participants (median age 31), were disappointing. The vaccine had been showing a 75% efficacy against mild to moderate COVID cases, before the B.1.351 strain became dominant in South Africa. These days, 90% of new infections in SA are of the new strain. For these new infections, the efficacy seems to have dropped to just 22% percent, based on 42 symptomatic cases. The 42 cases is too small a number to draw firm conclusions, but it’s a big red flag, for sure.

South African health authorities have now put the roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine on hold. They are negotiating with Johnson & Johnson for 20 million doses, and trying to ascertain if there is value in giving shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine to younger people.