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My 74 year-old mother was supposed to "update" her file with Northwestern Medicine, unbeknownst to her. That's the excuse they're giving her. Now she's afraid she got lost in the vaccine shuffle. She has much younger retired friends that have already received one or both doses. I'm so livid.

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Through my employment in the NWS, recently was notified we're eligible for the 2nd highest priority vaccine group status as essential workers/first responders. Having had covid already, I wasn't thinking I was going to make a huge priority of getting the vaccine as soon as possible. My thinking changed as studies have come out about the variants (especially South African) evading prior immunity.

 

I'm younger (36) and healthy, so it's never been about particular fear for my own health (and while symptomatic, my case was pretty minor), but not wanting to be part of a chain of transmission that sickens my coworkers and possibly ends up in others getting very sick and/or dying. Also, my mother in law is 60 and had cancer and had her spleen removed years ago. So even though there aren't signs that the variants have spread much yet in the US, that could change over the next month or so, and I feel like there's more urgency to vaccinate, even for those of us who have had the virus.

 

And on that note, unfortunately the vaccine situation in Will County IL (where WFO Chicago is) is frankly extremely frustrating. The health dept has had a few people staffing a phone line in which thousands of people per day are calling. A few of my coworkers managed to make appointments and get their first shots, and a few others have theirs scheduled, but now WillCo Health Dept is saying they overbooked appointments and it's uncertain when they can schedule appointments again.

 

I firmly believe the Trump admin should have done more to help the states organize their vaccine distribution regimes, similar to testing, but states and counties absolutely bear some of the blame for not planning better. It was known for months that the vaccines were coming on line -- they should have had better systems built up even with federal support lacking. I find it hard to believe they couldn't have had call centers set up and contracted out to build websites for scheduling appointments. Now I'm hoping I can get an appointment soon with my primary care health group, fingers crossed.

 

 

 

 

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Dupage county: wife logged in on line as we are both essential and scheduled us for a vaccine within 7 days. Showed up at 8:30 AM on appointment day. We were in and out in 30 minutes. Despite all we've been through hard to believe we may have a vaccine in less than a year for a virus that barely existed a year ago at this time.  Realize, it's not the same for everyone. But there are some positives that do exist. My hope is as time goes on my experience becomes the norm. Might add the nurse that administered my dose  was well into her 70's and struggled mightily with some of the technology aspect of inputting the tracking info. But as she said," I'm not good at this, but I know how to give the shot" My guess: a volunteer. In the end, there are good people and positive tales.

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On 2/12/2021 at 4:14 AM, Stebo said:

Good luck, and wow I never knew you were 70!

Thanks....yeah, I had a degree from I.U. in the early seventies in public health with a minor in earth science.  Ended up eventually going to seminary and became a progressive United Methodist pastor who still is a weenie for snow storms and svr weather.  But man how things have changed since I took my few met courses for the earth science requirements back in the day.   All for the good and appreciate the contributions of many on this board.  I've been a spotter but never a chaser although I have seen a confirmed tornado once in my life.

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2 hours ago, purduewx80 said:

Been a recent uptick in cases at work that is driving a move back to staffing restrictions. The office has been a bellwether for trends in the national population, so I’ll be curious to see how things shake out the next few weeks. 

My work has been like that during this pandemic as well. We had a full blown outbreak heading into Thanksgiving, but it has been quiet since late December. A bunch of us have been vaccinated so we might not follow the national trends anymore.

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9 hours ago, Jonger said:

I'm waiting to see people clamoring for lockdowns to protect the population against the new variants that the vaccine doesn't protect against.

The vaccines do protect against them, but the vast majority of the population isn't vaccinated...

Uncontrolled spread is what causes the variants to pop up so why wouldn't we want to have some restrictions in place to keep that from becoming a huge problem while we vaccinate people? Some of us want this to be over

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The good news we are at the point where a good percentage of the most at risk of hospitalization/deaths have at least had 1 dose of the vaccine. Even if another spike occurs mortality rates should be lower. Additionally, new therapies are in late stage trials which may further reduce mortality. Finally getting results of clinical studies with Ivermectin which do suggest benefit there(not just reports of hospitals having success in a non-quality controlled setting). With hospitals less under strain you can target new therapies, even if their supply limited, to higher percentage of patients.

That said we are not out of the pandemic phase of this until we get herd immunity, The virus will certainly become endemic (like the four common coronaviruses), but vaccines in the short-medium term, new treatments, and likely long term tendency of the virus to become less pathogenic over time as it mutates will eventually turn it into a nuisance bug and not much else down the line. We still have to get to that point, unfortunately.

 

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At the current pace, we are a few weeks away from 10% of Indiana having tested positive.  Obviously there were tremendous numbers of cases being missed early on due to testing shortages, with less cases being missed as the months went by.  Hard to get a firm handle on it but if only 1 in 4 cases have been detected since March 2020, it would mean nearly 40% of Indiana has had covid.

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17 hours ago, Hoosier said:

At the current pace, we are a few weeks away from 10% of Indiana having tested positive.  Obviously there were tremendous numbers of cases being missed early on due to testing shortages, with less cases being missed as the months went by.  Hard to get a firm handle on it but if only 1 in 4 cases have been detected since March 2020, it would mean nearly 40% of Indiana has had covid.

If that's even close than the increasing roll out of the vaccines in the next few months will hopefully drive  new cases way down. Optimistically if the Pfizer vaccine is somewhat effective against the variants that could help to bring this under control by mid summer

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3 minutes ago, KokomoWX said:

One thing I wonder is where do we go when we have vaccines for everyone but not everyone choses to get the vaccine.  I think we will end up with 20% not taking it for whatever reason (valid or not).  I really am hoping to not start the fall school year with mandatory masks.  

It won't matter as herd immunity is 70%. Between infections and vaccines that 20% won't matter.

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