COVID-19 | Coronavirus January 2021

Some of us don't have the option of not going to the grocery store, unfortunately.

And Mom (in her 70s) has been trying to find a clinic for shots for her and Dad (90s) with no luck. I don't think there was much, if any, coordination on this; lots of places still seem to think we're on first phase, and supply seems spotty at best. Seems like either sheer luck if you refresh the page fast enough, or someone sniped the appointments for their own people/employees and the rest of the population can suck it. (I have no proof of the latter, save how this strikes a vibe with me, how concert tickets and new Xboxes sell out faster than is humanly possible to load a webpage because someone set a bot to grab them... I wouldn't be surprised if one of the larger and pushier companies did the same.)

I don't think anyone has or even can scalp appointments to sell or give to others. You have to put your personal data in for any appointment. It's wrong though that your parents didn't get a slot before our otherwise excellent governor decided to just open the flood gates with nowhere to actually get appointments. Totally sucked.

But there will be more vaccine coming, that's what I believe. In the meantime try Overlake. They were the only place scheduling appointments out a couple months. The rest of the county sites are opening up appointments a day or two at a time and it's essentially the luck of the draw getting them. My appointment isn't until April, but at least I'm essentially in the queue instead of playing appointment derby and getting upset about it.

Edited to add: Also try the Safeway and other retail pharmacies. There are new ones added on the King County list.


I too have to go to the grocery store. My son orders it delivered but there are things like lettuce that I prefer to choose and I don't think I could even make an order up without going down the aisles. But I did find the Vox article useful to help me keep myself safe as best I can. I may start wearing my N100. I have a couple left that were open and I couldn't donate them. I am going to start avoiding the crowded post office line. That I can do and I can go to my PO Box in the evening after the PO is closed. Oh, and I'm going back to Snitchcat's information and wiping everything down with clorox wipes as best I can when I bring things in the house.

I just tried Kaiser again and there were a dozen openings, all new at a Northgate clinic. I actually have an appointment for Sat after next (the 30th).


I can hardly express what a relief this is. If I caught this virus I could easily die from it. The odds I have of dying are really high. That is so scary to think about.

It's amazing to me how many people just don't understand how serious this pandemic is. The US is going to have half a million dead by Feb. And Biden found Trump had no vaccine distribution plan whatsoever!

I have forgiven Fauci. It's a relief to hear the relief in his voice talking about how he can now actually do his job.

I believe they're on United, not Kaiser. (Whoever takes Swedish.) I hope she gets something sooner rather than later. As for myself, I'm pretty sure I won't see a needle at this rate until summer or fall. If then. (Under 50, light warehouse worker, unless somehow the library system is slated as "essential" which I doubt.) Heck, I couldn't even get a flu vaccine this year because every time I went to get an appointment it was no-go.

I had the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine a week ago, but that's because I work in a hospital.

My parents had one shot on the 13th (they're in assisted living). 2nd dose scheduled for February 3.

I don't know which one they got.

Brightdreamer said:

I believe they're on United, not Kaiser. (Whoever takes Swedish.) I hope she gets something sooner rather than later. As for myself, I'm pretty sure I won't see a needle at this rate until summer or fall. If then. (Under 50, light warehouse worker, unless somehow the library system is slated as "essential" which I doubt.) Heck, I couldn't even get a flu vaccine this year because every time I went to get an appointment it was no-go.

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I have flu vaccine left and I'd be happy to give you a dose, no charge. Send me a PM if you are interested.

I'm not sure providers are contacting their patients (the way it should be) or if the patients are on their own to find a dose. Swedish at Seattle U still shows no slots. You could try Swedish in the Highlands, I don't have that link.


Friendly Frog, that doesn't surprise me about the vial overfill. I used to get an extra dose of flu vaccine out of a vial but not in the last few years. And one of my suppliers only sells single dose syringes now.

In Canada, there are 'suddenly' delays in getting the Pfizer vaccine that was supposedly on it's way. I am trying to think that it's just demand outpacing production, and not that Pfizer is expecting big orders from the US, now that the supply-line has been unclogged.

In any case, I am not expecting a shot in the near future - I am 60 and have health issues, but I live a self-contained life, and am at almost no risk of anything but boredom. It would be a ridiculous waste to give me an injection while there are people in much worse situations waiting for one.

Pfizer are implementing some changes in the manufacturing process so they can ultimately make more but it means short-term that they are cutting production in Europe
https://www.pmlive.com/pharma_news/...n_shipments_of_covid-19_vaccine_to_eu_1361464

frimble3 said:

It would be a ridiculous waste to give me an injection while there are people in much worse situations waiting for one.

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Same here. No major health issues, morale still holding, so I can go a long way on 2 meters, a reusable mask, and hand washing. Dunno about your area but in QC the rollout is timely & orderly. Nothing different from what I remember from the SARS vaccination a few years back. Same template I guess, bar the special fridges. Supplies seems to be the main issue, not distribution nor the actual vaccination.

-cb

Swedish has been sending out links through their MyChart app thing, but they just say, "Yeah, here's the categories, find a clinic if you qualify, good luck."

(And we're much closer to the Highlands campus. One of the main drivers of them getting that plan is that we don't - or shouldn't - have to go downtown for everything. Pill Hill is a pain in the tail to get to at the best of times... and is it just me, or is it invariably under construction?)

I'm hoping my mom gets hers soon. I am calling her to nag tomorrow, though to be fair to my mom, she may already be on it. She's pretty proactive about her health care usually.

It's going to be a while for us community college teachers. I understand that people over 65 and some K-12 teachers in the state are already receiving vaccines, but the rollout is highly variable between cities, counties and health care systems. Our local KP is telling people over 65 to submit their contact information so they will be notified when vaccine is available, and they say nothing about teachers or other essential workers yet.


Faculty at my college are adamant that being vaccinated is necessary but not sufficient for re-opening, and of course administrators have NO IDEA what classes in different disciplines entail and what the various challenges will be, but they are not really inviting feedback from faculty in different disciplines either. They have some kind of committee discussing re-opening in the fall, but there don't appear to be many, if any, faculty on it. Our administrators have always been especially ignorant about labs and their requirements (for instance, they think ending the semester on a Weds, so Thursday labs have one less meeting, is just fine, because they can add a few minutes to each Thursday lab and we can somehow do the orphaned lab exercise in those few minutes of time each week over the entire semester--and that's just one example).

I can tell you I won't be comfortable having 24 students in a small, poorly ventilated room--where I frequently have to stand right next to students to look through their microscopes or examine their lab set up and answer questions--until most of them are vaccinated too and we have more hard data on whether or not the vaccine does actually prevent asymptomatic transmission and therefore produce robust herd immunity.

Logically, it should, as every other vaccine I can think of protects against transmission as well as symptomatic disease, but this is a weird virus and a new vaccine technology, and the experts have been understandably reluctant to say for sure until we have more data.

cbenoi1: Canada had a SARS vaccine? I think you are mixing memories. We all do it.


Anyway, I went in for a lab and an Rx this evening, minor UTI, and Kaiser had a COVID vaccine clinic set up in the lobby. They had a tent (inside the lobby) for the shots and a nice line with 6 ft spots where people stood to check in.

From there I had to shake my head and roll my eyes. There was a decent sized area where people had to wait after getting the shot so they could be observed for reactions. They did have masks on. But it was fairly crowded, people certainly weren't six feet apart. And there was a lot of excited talk, they were happy to have gotten the shots.

I do hope that doesn't turn out to be a super-spreader event. I hope the vaccine clinic I go to in a week has a better set up. If it doesn't I will have trouble not saying something. Or maybe I'll be proactive and double mask.

I was able to stay 6 ft away from people in the lab waiting area, but it made me uncomfortable that there was a crowd of people all talking to each other only a dozen or so feet away. It is a large lobby with a high ceiling, but it is not outdoors.


I understand the dilemma teachers have. Here in WA State there is a fairly vocal group pushing for schools to reopen. And that means they are also pushing for teachers to get vaccinated.

I can't imagine how awful it must be for parents with kids out of school for a year now. Or kids who were in their junior or senior years in high school, that had to be tough.


But how do you decide between high risk worker categories and high risk medical conditions people have?

I hope the vaccine roll out will go better now.

H1N1.

-cb

cbenoi1 said:

H1N1.

-cb

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Aw yes... that makes sense.

Oh crap! It's been so long since I taught any respiratory protection classes I'd forgotten about N, P, and R designations.

Filtration standards

Includes US and EU Standards—see the charts in the link.

Respirator standards around the world loosely fall into the two camps of US- and EU-like grades. According to 3M, respirators made according to the following standards are equivalent to US N95 or European FFP2 respirators "for filtering non-oil-based particles such as those resulting from wildfires, PM 2.5 air pollution, volcanic eruptions, or bioaerosols (e.g. viruses)":[39]

Chinese KN95 (GB2626-2006): similar to US. Has category KN (non-oily particles) and KP (oily particles), 90/95/100 versions. EU-style leakage requirements.[40][41]
Australian/New Zealand P2 (AS/NZ 1716:2012): similar to EU grades.
Korean 1st Class (KMOEL - 2017-64), also referred to as "KF94": EU grades, KF 80/94/99 for second/first/special.[42]
Japanese DS (JMHLW-Notification 214, 2018): see below
The NPPTL has also published a guideline for using non-NIOSH masks instead of the N95 in the COVID-19 response. The OSHA has a similar document. The following respirator standards are considered similar to N95 in the US:[43][44]

Mexican N95 (NOM-116-2009): same grades as in NIOSH
Brazilian PFF2 (ABNT/NBR 13698:2011): EU-like grades
Japanese DS2 / RS2: EU-like grades with two-letter prefix – first letter D/R stands for disposable or replaceable; second letter S/L stands for dry (NaCl) or oily (DOP oil) particles[5]

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So the N category doesn't stand for NIOSH it stands for not oil resistant, in other words dust and other particulates. An oil resistant mask uses absorbent filter material like charcoal.


It's important to remember that virus sized particles are not filtered by particulate respirators. The largest viruses can be one micrometer in length. Mechanical filters such as those on respirators usually filter particles two microns and larger.

A saliva droplet full of virions is filtered by the wicking effect of the mask.

But a typical airborne virus like measles is not stopped with any respirators except self-contained respirators. People need to be careful believing their masks block viruses perfectly.

Hmm. Most of this is medical jargon I can’t parse, but the gist seems to a blood test that can reliably predict, wthin the first days of COVID infection, how severe the disease will be?

https://elifesciences.org/articles/63195

A novel haemocytometric COVID-19 prognostic score developed and validated in an observational multicentre European hospital-based study.

Abstract
COVID-19 induces haemocytometric changes. Complete blood count changes, including new cell activation parameters, from 982 confirmed COVID-19 adult patients from 11 European hospitals were retrospectively analysed for distinctive patterns based on age, gender, clinical severity, symptom duration, and hospital days. The observed haemocytometric patterns formed the basis to develop a multi-haemocytometric-parameter prognostic score to predict, during the first three days after presentation, which patients will recover without ventilation or deteriorate within a two-week timeframe, needing intensive care or with fatal outcome. The prognostic score, with ROC curve AUC at baseline of 0.753 (95% CI 0.723–0.781) increasing to 0.875 (95% CI 0.806–0.926) on day 3, was superior to any individual parameter at distinguishing between clinical severity. Findings were confirmed in a validation cohort. Aim is that the score and haemocytometry results are simultaneously provided by analyser software, enabling wide applicability of the score as haemocytometry is commonly requested in COVID-19 patients.

...

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This could be especially useful. We have some treatments, like the antibody therapies, that are extremely helpful if given during the first few days of the disease, but with Covid, people often have relatively mild symptoms for several days before progressing to respiratory distress etc. Unless you are the POTUS, or in their inner circle, you are not likely to get these drugs early in the course of what could prove to be a mild disease anyway.

And if they can do it for Covid, could they use the same technology to develop similar tests for other infectious diseases that have variable courses and outcomes?