Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

Outside of the 1/5th of Americans who refuse to get the shot, the biggest thing holding back the rest of Americans now from getting the vaccine is the ability to get time off from work. Getting time off from work is not an option for millions. And unless this issue is addressed, we will struggle to get enough people vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
So this is (sort of) my problem. Right now, we are in the middle of our busiest time of year. I am pulling a lot of late hours and every time I think it's easing up, I get another group that doesn't have someone assigned so they stick me with whatever orphaned group. It sucks, but it's an expected suck. I want to get vaccinated, but I'm concerned that it will make me sick and I'll have to take a day off. Any other time of the year, no big deal, but right now, I can't afford to be sick. In two weeks, my workload should be at the level where I can finally take off if I have an adverse reaction. But until then, I'm just avoiding people and wearing my mask.

This is a very real thing though. And it's not because people can't get off to get the shot, it's that people are concerned about how sick they could potentially be after the shot, and how they are going to deal with that and a work schedule that doesn't let people be sick.
 
So this is (sort of) my problem. Right now, we are in the middle of our busiest time of year. I am pulling a lot of late hours and every time I think it's easing up, I get another group that doesn't have someone assigned so they stick me with whatever orphaned group. It sucks, but it's an expected suck. I want to get vaccinated, but I'm concerned that it will make me sick and I'll have to take a day off. Any other time of the year, no big deal, but right now, I can't afford to be sick. In two weeks, my workload should be at the level where I can finally take off if I have an adverse reaction. But until then, I'm just avoiding people and wearing my mask.

This is a very real thing though. And it's not because people can't get off to get the shot, it's that people are concerned about how sick they could potentially be after the shot, and how they are going to deal with that and a work schedule that doesn't let people be sick.
I am in the same boat. I just got my second shot and I was very up-front with my boss(es) about how I was expecting to miss work tomorrow. Luckily most of them already have had their shots and are understanding because they had nasty reactions too. Although one of my bosses tried to shrug off my concerns because his reaction wasn't very bad.
 
All that is incredibly disappointing to me. This is so important... I feel like you should have some sort of legal defense for vaccination and a reasonable recovery period. If they can make it so that Jury Duty is legally protected, then protecting the population of the country should be as well.


Humanity is doomed. I need to buy more records.
 
Bill Gates is an asshole who only pretends to care about public health.

Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution — despite a growing international call to do exactly that — is a bad idea.

Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it "would be helpful" to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: "No."

Asked to explain why not, Gates — whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth — said: "Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it's novel — it's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all."

 
The situation in India is freaking scary. I have a coworker from there and she already has multiple family members and friends who have died of COVID. And it's only speeding up.

They are getting over 300k positive new tests A DAY, and that's with the crackdown on the release of proper information. The risk of further mutation nullifying the existing vaccines is a real danger.
Yeah, it's getting really really bad. About half my team is in India and we've had a few people out because it, but I've heard that other teams have been absolutely decimated by members or their family getting covid. And it's getting worse seemingly by the hour. We're starting to have staffing problems because of it. One team who is in the middle of a high profile launch had to ask the client for extra time because they don't have the healthy developers to do the work.
 
One of the reports I heard on the Today Show this morning related to India was how this could be an emergency for us here in the United States soon. Not the covid cases, but the direct effects of what is going on in India.

4/5ths of prescriptions in the United States are generics. These generic drugs are widely manufactured in India. So if manufacturing shuts down due to the covid outbreak, we could have a prescription drug shortage here in the United States. People not able to get their prescriptions because they are either unavailable or their insurance won't cover a brand name drug manufactured right here in the United States.
 
Bill Gates is an asshole who only pretends to care about public health.

Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution — despite a growing international call to do exactly that — is a bad idea.

Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it "would be helpful" to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: "No."

Asked to explain why not, Gates — whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth — said: "Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it's novel — it's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all."

Sounds like a colonialist. They are good enough to manufacture prescription drugs foor us but can't be trusted to produce vaccine for themselves
 
One of the reports I heard on the Today Show this morning related to India was how this could be an emergency for us here in the United States soon. Not the covid cases, but the direct effects of what is going on in India.

4/5ths of prescriptions in the United States are generics. These generic drugs are widely manufactured in India. So if manufacturing shuts down due to the covid outbreak, we could have a prescription drug shortage here in the United States. People not able to get their prescriptions because they are either unavailable or their insurance won't cover a brand name drug manufactured right here in the United States.
We rely on India and China for both active ingredient synthesis and drug manufacturing, with China edging out India on the active ingredient side of things. This is an article from 2019, and was already a known hole in our supply chain.

While the Department of Defense only purchases a small quantity of finished pharmaceuticals from China, about 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used to make drugs in the United States are said to come from China and other countries like India. For example, the chemical starting material used to make doxycycline, the recommended treatment for anthrax exposure, comes from China. When an influential Chinese economist earlier this year suggested that Beijing curb its exports of raw materials for vitamins and antibiotics as a countermeasure in the trade war with the United States, the worries surrounding our API dependence to China seemed to be vindicated. Concern about a disruption in the supply chain could explain why the tariffs on Chinese products proposed by the United States Trade Representative in May 2019, worth approximately $300 billion, excludes “pharmaceuticals, certain pharmaceutical inputs, and select medical goods.”
 
I'm ready for my kids to eventually get the vaccine as Disneyland said out of staters like us can come in the future if we have been vaccinated. So maybe we'll just ditch the kids and do a parents trip. That's not weird is it?
In all honesty. No. Not weird at all. My girlfriend and I went to Disney World for a week right before this all started, and it was the best trip we’ve ever been on. We don’t even have kids!! 🤣 It was just so much good food, drinks, and rides.
I do like that Disneyland has come out and said “if you’re fully vaxxed you’re welcome from out-of-state”. It’s the biggest entertainment company in the world. If this works, others will follow suit. We could be seeing Full Vax Concerts in the coming months and I am so down for that!
 
In all honesty. No. Not weird at all. My girlfriend and I went to Disney World for a week right before this all started, and it was the best trip we’ve ever been on. We don’t even have kids!! 🤣 It was just so much good food, drinks, and rides.
I do like that Disneyland has come out and said “if you’re fully vaxxed you’re welcome from out-of-state”. It’s the biggest entertainment company in the world. If this works, others will follow suit. We could be seeing Full Vax Concerts in the coming months and I am so down for that!
I have never been to Disney with my kids, but I have been without them. I can say with certainty that going to Disney without kids is way more fun than going to Disney with kids.
 
Chiming in with an update on my reaction to the Moderna 2nd shot.

Started getting a headachy hangover feeling at 8hrs post shot. Lasted about 5 or 6 hours but near 11pm I started feeling hyperactive? Like really hungry and lots of nervous energy but still with a low-grade headache. Almost like being on an oral steroid. Went to sleep fine and woke up with a lingering feeling like a hangover. All in all, not really the horrible reaction I was nervous about. Didn't get any chills or body aches. I'm counting myself as lucky.
 

There is a new record for the number of coronavirus infections traced back to a single commercial airline flight. A whopping 47 passengers who flew on Vistara flight 6395 from New Delhi to Hong Kong on April 4 have since tested positive for Covid-19. That number represents 25% of the 188 passengers on board.

All of the passengers on the Vistara flight had tested negative for the virus within 72 hours prior to departure, in keeping with Hong Kong’s travel requirements. Yet 25 travelers tested positive immediately after landing in Hong Kong, and a further 22 cases were discovered on day 12.

As to sum up why this will never happen in the United States? The reason is both shocking and not surprising. The United States lacks the contact tracing capabilities needed to trace exposure back to a particular flight. In fact, contact tracing in the United States is also completely voluntary.
 



As to sum up why this will never happen in the United States? The reason is both shocking and not surprising. The United States lacks the contact tracing capabilities needed to trace exposure back to a particular flight. In fact, contact tracing in the United States is also completely voluntary.
The problem is that contact tracing is voluntary here. In places with the best contact tracing, it's mandatory. Our system works okayish when we are talking about STI/STD contact tracing because of the relative time between infection. With something that moves this fast and can be caught in the air, either everyone needs to participate in contact tracing or we are wasting our time and money. I think a voluntary system could work, but in a society that trusts its government and private institutions that would be collecting and retaining data. They would have assurances that their data would be collected without exploiting it to try to sell us something or to run through credit algorithms to create scores for us to be societally "graded" on.
 
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