I asked when I got my second shot if the same arm was okay and they said it didn’t matter. Customers are not always right. I mean, we’ve been told that the vaccine is a microchip, is a way to inject copyrighted material into your body from a tech company, and is a way to sterilize the population. Why would somebody be right about which arm you get it in? However - my armpit is swollen even more this time, so maybe I should’ve switched arms.
It’s just a bigger reaction which is expected. I tend to think it would be the same level of swelling regardless of what arm you got it in.
Yeah, this time I’m resorting to an ice pack just to make it feel less annoying. I’d rather be the one shoving something in my armpit by choice.
I got the AstraZ, no reaction, nothing for a few hours now. My follow up is July 17th. This is far sooner than I expected.
Nice. I'm hoping to get it sometime in the next couple of weeks. I'm on the Costco and Shopper's waiting lists, seeing which one hits first.
In Georgia, there's a Department of Health website that has a vaccination link to click on. You can see all the available vaccinators in your area. Most have links to sign up from there. Do y'all not have a centralized way to do that?
We have about 8 ways. The province was looking fucked up so our local regional health office did their own. And then each pharmacy that got an allotment did their own. Some didn’t even do that and just put out a sign in the front window “we have 200 doses, ask within”. It’s a bit of a cluster fuck. As a result I’m signed up to about 4 different systems to get the first one available.
What I’m hoping is that people see it’s very easy to get in right now if you put in minimal effort. There is still a large population of well-functioning people around here who seem to expect it to drop into their laps. If they’re worried about lines, I’m yet to see any. They are booked with strategy to keep people apart.
Here in New Jersey it’s similar. State, county, pharmacies, all have separate systems and vaccine allocations. It’s a bit disjointed but now that there is so many doses of a variety of vaccines available it’s very easy to get vaccinated.
Feel lousy today, but not god-awful. A shitty night’s sleep of body temp jumping from low to high extremes like a rubber ball, and nightmares which is REALLY odd for me. Wifey got her first shot today, I can pretty much guarantee it will be far worse for her.
Massachusetts announced their roll-back plan and will have everything back open and all restrictions lifted by August 1st... except the indoor mask mandate, which makes zero sense. 70% of the people in this state have received at least one shot. By June 1st, the vast majority of people here will be fully vaccinated. The governor is waiting for the CDC and Biden to make a decision, but one of these smoothbrains needs to pull the trigger on it.
Masks are literally the lowest cost mitigation measure we have. It requires no special medical infrastructure, no onerous restrictions on commerce, nothing. It's just "wear this thing until vaccines can drive community spread low enough to make it no longer necessary." The reason no one has put a timeline on the end of masking yet is because it depends on the prevalence of the virus in the population, which depends on how well we execute mitigation measure between now and then.
The real reason no one has put a timeline on ending it is because no one wants to risk their political careers if it ends up being a mistake. It makes zero sense to not lift if the vast majority of the state is fully vaccinated. If that’s not the criteria for doing so, I don’t what is. Waiting until the infection-rate hits zero seems unnecessarily conservative in approach. If there is a small minority of people that are still too dumb to get the vaccine by the end of the summer, then they deserve to be gasping for air on a ventilator.
Yes, public health professionals are by and large conservative (in the risk sense). What they don't want is to put a hard date on something, the rest of us fucking up the requisites that date is based on, and then people abandoning mitigation measures at that, now invalid, date because "you said we could." Given how the general public has fucked up literally everything that's been asked of us so far, I have no problem with the professionals not relying on us to do what we have to.
That still doesn’t make sense. The ask of the general public now, which is to get vaccinated, will have been largely satisfied by that point. The risk of complications with COVID without a vaccine is low. The risks with the majority of the population being vaccinated has to be a fraction of that. So why would the mandate need to continue further?
Will it? Vaccination rates have started to slow slightly as we've gotten through the "eager to get vaccinated" crowd and into the "eh, I'll get around to it" crowd. Who knows how they'll slow once we get to the "I ain't lettin' the gubmint change my DNA!" crowd. We also don't know how changed behavior will affect community spread in a partially-vaccinated population over the next few weeks. Public health officials aren't assuming anything; if we hit our targets they'll change their recommendations at the time we hit them.
We will cross 100 million people fully inoculated today or tomorrow. Still a long way to go. So, MA might have their native population vaccinated to the point of herd immunity, and I am sure they can just shut down their state borders and airports to the places like WV that have significantly less of their population vaccinated. Also, there is still the possibility of a mutant strain that's vaccine resistant, and it poses a greater threat in areas with highly concentrated populations. A mask mandate also ensures Hotspots of unvaccinated folks have some mitigation in place.
Jungle Julia and I got the first dose of Moderna yesterday. (Something I said I wouldn't do, but I did it for EVERYONE ELSE.) I'm doing my part, so now can we PLEASE stop with the social distancing shit?
Yes, it will. 65% of MA residents have received 1 dose of the vaccine as of this week. As previously mentioned, just under 75% will have both doses and will have completed the requisite waiting period for it to take full effect by June. Short of a Mexican-style horde of West Virginians heading to the MA border, what's your point? I'm not saying, "I'm vaccinated, therefore restrictions should be lifted tomorrow." But surely August is a reasonable target to hit that milestone or at least plan to do so? And is there any concrete evidence of any the current variants being considerably deadlier, more transmissible, causing complications at higher rate or being alarmingly resistant to available vaccines? If so, why would there be re-opening plans in effect at all? If shit hits the fan again between now and then, by all means, hold off on further roll-backs. But if things continue progressing, at some point the general public needs to assume the minimal residual risk.