SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Electron sent a booster with a GoPro with audio enabled. The audio worked for me.

Bob Wilson

 

again, only bad for health care workers. what are you gonna do? some are resigning, others are retraining.

don't leave your blue state

 

My brother George flew back to Phoenix where he works a nurse. His wife tested positive and remains in Denver.

Meanwhile, my wife remains in a nursing home where I can't visit her. Yet it is probably the safest place.

Bob Wilson

 

mrs b is a nurse, and we have many friends and relatives working in health care. i'm glad we live here where they get decent support, but it is still horrible work, spending the day in a moon suit, hardly able to get a sip of water, and constantly worried about infection of yourself and your relatives.

still, it is much better here than some places where the state government has no regard for the welfare of health care workers and others, in the name of 'freedom'.

all that being said, we still have about 40% of our population who may not want the vaccine

 

'pfizer experiencing difficulties with mass production of vaccine'

 

That means more for the rest of us!

Bob Wilson

 

I know a distant relative who is a nurse and is openly saying she would not get vaccinated. I also know of people who would not get the COVID-19 test even if they suspect contacting a positive person, due to a fear of losing their jobs. Those are all real people and real problems. Sad to say, vaccine or not I suspect this pandemic is not going to go away any time soon.

 

it's going to continue to be a battle individually, but should be good news for hospitals and businesses

 

Our local hospitals have vaccine requirement for all employees, and they're already indicating that when the vaccine is available they will take it or look for employment elsewhere.
It's probably pretty easy to gun-deck the vaccine paperwork, but I would not want to get caught doin it.....

I'm old enough to remember when virus-shaming was....a shame.
I personally know two people who lost 2 weeks on the job because they had enough integrity to self-report COVID positive family members.
One got paid for their time off.
The other one lost 2 weeks pay.

I KNOW which course I would take.....but it's easy for me to be self-righteous in this regard.......since I would be one of the "paid" people.
I'd like to think that if I were impoverished and had a desk full of past-due bills that I would make the same choice.......

 

Stupidity comes in all shapes and sizes.

 

Bit of a radio silence from me as it was my turn to take a shift at the hospital and it takes me a little while to recover from it these days

Many thanks to @SFO and @Salamander_King for stepping up to help clarify my position on the vaccine science; effectiveness vs transmission, etc. It was much appreciated.

Their peer-reviewed results were published in the Lancet yesterday. It provided the added detail behind the headlines in the recent news. There is confirmation about their study method for testing transmission and it confirms the rumours we had heard along our medical grapevine. A subset of volunteers were enrolled to perform weekly swab tests from the first injection for the duration of study. As many of these were volunteer healthcare workers, they could then compare the transmissions against those who received the control vaccine.

It looks like (so far) the reduction in transmissions (27%) was not as good as the primary endpoint of effectiveness in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 (70%).

The link to the original paper is here:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext

If too detailed to absorb, or behind a paywall for you, a brief summary is here:
astrazeneca covid vaccine: AstraZeneca vaccine better at stopping Covid than slowing transmission - The Economic Times

Our hospital chief has decided not to make vaccines mandatory for our staff. However, he put it in a way that made it clear a refusal would likely not be tolerated
(I share his position, we took an oath to protect our patients so not taking the vaccine when offered would be a clear breach of that principle. In any case, there are other already mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers like Hep B, so this can't be considered unprecedented!)
Many of us wear masks all day, and for years before Covid, for the protection of our patients. It's really not an issue and I know this is clearly supported on this forum.

Sadly hospital cases remain high; and even critical in parts of Wales, if you heard on the news yesterday. One unit reached the pandemic CritCon level 3B (High Surge) which is the last step before level 4 (Triage) - where the resources are so overwhelmed that there is 'non-clinical refusal'. That is a polite way of saying patient care will be turned away or refused for non-medical reasons. Shocking if that happens here, where we claim to be the world's fifth largest economy.

So as we enter the holiday period and deeper winter; please everyone keep festive but do take extra care on the roads. Keep your speeds lower than usual and stay alert. You *really* don't want to be needing critical care anytime soon.

 

'massachusetts drivers speeding during covid more thany time in the past'

 

what's up with the anaphylactic shock?

 

In Huntsville, the traffic was lighter so there was more opportunity to drive faster.

Bob Wilson

 

https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

 

Had an anaphylactoid reaction to a treatment decades ago and would be happy not to do that again.

 

... because there are fewer traffic jams to stop them from speeding.

... a risk from just about any vaccine or medication. Also triggered by numerous other things.

I have witnessed a cow going down from vaccine-induced anaphylaxis. Saved by a dose of epinephrine. We were little kids, and dad was screaming at us to go get the epinephrine from the house fridge. But he had never mentioned this sort of thing before, and his mispronunciation was so severe that we would not have matched up the word he used with any spelling of anything on the vet supplies in the fridge, and in his panic he was unable to articulate any other clues. So he had to get it himself. It sounded like the pickup engine was redlining.

 

Common in all vacs

 

Bell's Palsy?