My wife and I are booked for our second shots on Saturday. We had our first shots on the 4th and 5th of May. My daughter had her first shot on June 6 and is getting her second on July 6. She’s under 16 so will get Pfizer for sure. We can get either Pfizer or Moderna and I’m betting on Moderna. We had Pfizer for the first shot. Hopefully the mixing will increase our superpowers!
It appears that our Glorious Leader Doug Ford and his minions (the yellow ones) have moved the goalposts again. After saying that everyone who received an mRNA shot before May 30th are eligible, that have quietly changed the rules to say that this only applies to 18+. I don’t believe this is due to the current delays in Pfizer deliveries or the would be pointing fingers at the Feds.
Were people under 18 allowed to receive vaccination prior to May 30th? Honestly can not remember.
Yes, my kids got their 1st shot more than a month ago. Until about noon today, the published plan was that at 8AM today, anyone in a Delta hotspot (which includes 10 municipalities including Toronto) was eligible to book a 2nd shot if they were jabbed May 30th or earlier. They quietly changed it to 18+.
Second dose appointments can be booked by anyone who received a first Pfizer or Moderna vaccine dose prior to May 30 or AstraZeneca on or before May 1.
The City of Toronto still has press releases from this morning on their web site with 12+ for 2nd doses and the WaybackMachine shows the old schedule on the provincial site.
Got an email from the city today letting me know I’ll be getting Moderna tomorrow, as they’re saving Pfizer for the 12-17 cohort due to the dwindling supply of that one, Pfizer being the only vax approved for that age group. No problem with me, I’ll happily take either mRNA one.
Can’t find it now, but I saw an article this morning about some people just ignoring their 2nd vax appointment as they want to hold out for Pfizer. It’s turning into a Coke v Pepsi thing for some people, which is frustrating the province and city which want to get the numbers up as quickly as possible, and are also left with plenty of unfulfilled reservations.
I got my second shot, Moderna, through Halton Region yesterday. Arm is sore but otherwise I’m fine, so apparently I have a fairly chillaxed immune system. The first shot didn’t affect me either.
If your arm is really sore from the shot, stretch it and exercise it. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it works surprisingly well.
I’m looking at vacation deals. I’m honestly desperate to not be here for a few days.
Right now, 90-92 percent of all vaccinations in Canada are second shots; the rolling average of first shots is only about 55,000 a day. As 24% of all eligible people still haven’t gotten a first dose, that would mean at current rates it would take five months to get a first shot into the remaining eligible people - and that’s if the first shot rate stays here, which I suspect it will not. The numbers suggest the vaccine refusal rate is quite high, then, likely at least fifteen percent and maybe a bit higher.
That’s been a major issue here in the states, of course.
Today’s bit of Toronto weirdness. My manager asked me how the process for 2nd shots at Rexall worked. I desrcibed the conversation I had with them last week (detailed above). She was going up to the pharmacy to get a scrip filled anyway and asked the pharmacist about it (we work building services, so we know most of the retail folks pretty well). The Pharmacist tells her, we have some spots, and you can just get in line, you’ll need to wait a bit. My manager says, I’ve got some deadlines, can I book a slot today? And gets set up with an appointment right after lunch for a Pfizer jab.
On one hand, I’m glad people are lining up shots with no problem. On the other, this pharmacy still hasn’t called me for my follow-up and if it’s that easy to grab an opening, what’s the deal? I’ve still got my MTCC appointment for Moderna this afternoon (also, how is my manager getting Pfizer if it’s being embargoed for the teens?) so I figure I’ll be jabbed by dinnertime anyway. Feeling like a bit of entropy is infecting the booking system. That said, 25,000 people booked for the weekend at the Scotia, so if our incoming supply holds out, hopefully Toronto can do that every weekend and the autumn can feel a bit more normal.
It’s a sprawling non-unified logistics nightmare. Expecting consistency out of it is a fool’s game. What we do know is that Canada is administering ~1.2 doses/100 pop/day at the moment, and has been over .9/100 since the middle of May, which is a higher sustained average than anywhere else in the world right now. What’s amazing isn’t the glitches and failures of this hodge-podge of distribution systems, but that it’s working as well as it is.
Pharmacy finally called us yesterday. They said they could get us in for a second AZ shot today, but we decided to continue with the mix-and-match plan and get a Pfizer shot, as it’s less than two weeks now and it doesn’t seem as urgent here in BC. It’s not like the border is going to open any faster if we get the shots earlier.
I do feel a little guilty for turning down a vaccine, though, even though we seem to be following the current advice and are scheduled for the second jab.
This thing is that the actual administration of a vaccine is extremely easy, and the number of people who can do it is far above the number you actually need. Basically ANY distribution system was going to work, more or less, to get them out. Supply was the only holdup.
They distribute flu vaccines every other year with ease; the COVID situation was a bit more complex in that they wanted to work backwards from the oldest people, but that’s not a huge complication.
I’m hoping SUMMER will feel more normal. Backing that up to autumn isn’t much of an expectation. There is no apparent reason why we can’t be back to almost normal pretty soon.
The only concern is Delta in the unvacced population, although a number of the Twitter pundits think our daily positives will hold steady.
We are currently in semi-quarantine ahead of our kids leaving for camp on Friday. The rest of my family gets shot #2 tomorrow, so by July 11 I expect to to be socializing outdoors with friends, indoors with fully vaxed people, and eating on patios. I’m not anxious to go to a mall, but then again I wasn’t prior to March 2020.
And @RickJay, I know you and I had some back and forth on the rollout. I’m very happy that as Canadians we have pulled this off both because of and in spite of politicians at all levels. I certainly didn’t think we would come this far in 6 months.
I got my second shot yesterday. My first was astrazeneca, second was moderna. My arm started to hurt very shortly afterwards and was quite painful within a couple hours. Yesterday evening I became really, really tired. Like, I can’t function I might fall down tired…but I couldn’t sleep. Part way through the night I got the chills and was shivering. Had a pretty good headache when I got up this morning. Now I just feel normal tired although my arm is still very sore.
It was a rough night that I don’t regret in the slightest!
Precisely identical to my shots and how I felt afterwards.
Just back from my second shot. I was expecting Moderna as I read that we received an abundance of it this week and when I scheduled I said I’d take what was available. Turns out we are a Pfizer family with all 3 of us getting 2 shots of Pfizer.
2nd shot (Moderna) done yesterday in the morning.Aside form some arm soreness it’s been fine so far. My AZ shot was equally non eventful. Honestly immune response variations alone would be fantastic bit of research for someone to do.
My mom just got her second shot in Maple Ridge, BC. First shot: Pfizer. Second: Moderna.
It was scarily efficient. People lined up in rows of chairs between plastic / plexiglass barriers, with a two-nurse team: one to give the shot and counselling, one to record the data and keep an eye on the time. The first shot was an efficient setup, but this was a marvel.
Canada is still (I think) near the top of the pack in terms of number of shots given/million people. China recently edged us out I think.
My wife and kids just went to the massive ScotiaBank Arena event where as of 3:30pm they were up to about 14k vaccines out of 25k planned. The wife got Moderna, kids got Pfizer.
The line was LONG, but they were done less than an hour after I dropped them off, including the mandatory wait.
Every member of our extended family, with the exception of four kids below 12, is now double vaxed!
I feel left out regarding the second shot, but I refuse to compromise by booking somewhere far away. My appointment remains end of July, at a clinic just up the street. Since it’s almost July already I guess that’s not too bad. I’ve tried about four times through the Ontario booking site. I did manage to rebook once, and that’s how I got end of July instead of mid-August.