"It's just a bad Flu, we gotta just live with it." Gaining ground

The Quarantine Zone
61

I would be careful about assumptions here. Infection severity seems to be a function of viral load in the environment, even for breakthrough cases. Just anecdotally, since my sister is a teacher, I know a number of vaccinated teachers in her school system got breakthrough infections, probably from the overwhelming number of kids that were forced back to school in this Delta wave. Similar with healthcare workers who are vaccinated but just slammed with continuous heavy exposure.

People really, really need to cool it with the assumptions about people being unvaccinated. Competing media machines are pushing competing narratives about who is unvaxed, and why, in ways that don’t reflect reality.

62

Never heard any of this where I live. I don’t know who you are talking to.

Where I was you had to make an appointment for a while, on computer. You could not get an appointment until you were eligible. I never heard of anyone “strolling in”, everyone was in the same boat. I suppose an older person with no computer or computer skills would have problems. My mother is that way. But she lives in assisted living and they took care of it for her.

Eventually I got in through a state program. It was drive through. I waited in my car in a big line and they vaccinated en masse. This was in early April. Again nobody “strolling in.”

63

The states rolled out vaccine at different enough rates that there were some states that opened to anyone while in others 60 year olds were still struggling to get an appointment. Or just waiting, because they weren’t yet eligible.

All the states got about the same amount of vaccine per capita each week. So the states that did it quickly did so because fewer people chose to get vaccinated. There were very large differentials in who could get it for several weeks, though.

64

These were people in Connecticut and it was in the Feb/March period I recall. I have no knowledge of it on the ground. The people I was speaking to are in the pharma business and not prone to exaggeration but I only know what they told me.

65

And even within states there were large differentials. Rural areas had lower uptake, so vaccine was often available in those areas when it was unavailable in larger cities. Here in St Louis it was not at all uncommon for folks to drive an hour or two to get a vaccine a month or more before it was available for younger folks in the city and suburbs.

Finally our governor adjusted the allocation based on demand, not just population. By April it was pretty much “anybody that wants it can get it” though.

66

I’m in Wisconsin. If you didn’t go through the state mass program, you went to individual pharmacies. Which you had to book online. The pharmacies themselves controlled the distribution. If they were locking people out online, then allowing walk-ins (someone just “strolling in”) that’s on them. I guess 18 to 64 was the age range, so yes, the older person could get locked out if they did that. I know people were offered shots at some odd times because someone had supply.

67

As I say, I’m not familiar with the detail but the general impression I got was one of a very “free-form” process shall we say.
It contrasted strongly with the NHS roll-out here where you had to wait for your age group to be eligible, then everyone in that group was contacted by the NHS and both of your jabs were booked and administered through them (and only them).
I’m sure the federal nature of the USA contributed to variable roll-outs.

68

I don’t think that’s true. I live in Connecticut, my sister in Utah, and I kept a close eye on the stats for both states for months. The data I observed was contrary to a per capita distribution.

For the first couple months of the rollout, states were ranked by percentage of distributed shots that had actually been put in arms. I was checking the rankings multiple times a week, where Connecticut was consistently in the teens and Utah was consistently top 3, or at worst top 5 out of all states. Seriously, Utah was crushing it. These rankings held consistent for months.

After several months the rankings switched from % of shots in arms to % of population that had been vaccinated, presumably because enough people had been vaccinated that those numbers wouldn’t be super depressing anymore. With the switch, Connecticut shot up to top five or top 10 while Utah plummeted to bottom 3.

If shots were really distributed per capita, Utah should have maintained its top five status when the rankings switched from percentage of distributed shots administered to percentage of people vaccinated. Since Utah immediately dropped from top five to bottom five, the only logical conclusion I can see is that shots were distributed based on per capita basis that factored in how many people would willingly take the shot if available. And if so, whoever calculated that percentage of willing population for Utah knocked it out of the park.

I think you or they have the details confused. I’m in Connecticut, and I can definitively say that the situation you describe in a vacuum did not happen.

It was likely one of those situations where people didn’t show up for their shots and instead of throwing shots away, they instead gave them to any warm body they could convince to take it. In those cases, a 20-year-old absolutely could have strolled in and gotten a shot while a 60-year-old was still fighting with 70-year-olds to get scheduled.

But to extrapolate that out and imply that was the policy in Connecticut is deeply misleading.

EDIT: My experience as a 50-year-old was that I became eligible in late March, got my first shot 4 days after becoming eligible, during which they scheduled me for my second shot exactly 4 weeks later. (Connecticut mostly had Moderna.)

When I went back to the same place to get the second shot in mid-April, there was a sign on the main road that said walk-ins were available.

69

They were in Connecticut, the people involved in getting the jabs were not necessarily located there. The upshot was that , in the same country, young people could walk up and get a shot while older people were jumping through hoops. Whether it was within-state or interstate disparity seems to be a distinction without a difference.

These were personal reports regarding friends and family members so I’ve no reason to doubt them.

70

Again, that is a deeply misleading mischaracterization of the situation.

Those old people could have done the same thing the young people did: Strolled in and take the shots from cancelled appointments that otherwise would have been thrown away.

To characterize this as young people could stroll in and get shots while old people had to wait in line is about as false as it gets.

EDIT: My college-age niece lives in Texas, where apparently they prioritized college age students so they could get kids back in school. All three of us (me, my sister, and my niece) got our final shots within about 3 weeks of each other.

I could absolutely see 60-year-olds in Texas having to wait in line behind 20-year-olds who were actually eligible to get in line. But not in Connecticut, because 20-year-olds were not eligible until the end of April.

71

Well I’ll be sure to tell them that their experiences didn’t happen.

But why are you focussing on Connecticut? If you admit the possibility of their reported scenario coming to pass somewhere in the USA then their point seems to stand. I believe people are allowed to have family and friends that live elsewhere in the country.

72

It’s still misleading. Both the 20-year-old and the 60-year-old had to get in the same line in Texas and wait their turn. The difference is they were both eligible at the same time.

Your mischaracterization is that 60 year olds had to wait in lines while 20 year olds could just stroll in off the street and get a shot without an appointment.

That is what I’m objecting to.

73

I never said they claimed a 60 year old had to “wait in line”. I said that they were having difficulty getting a jab arranged, that they were jumping through hoops to get an appointment booked, not that they were denied one. That contrasted with the UK process where they were hand-held from the start.

74

Semantics. Jump through hoops, get in line, sign up online; let’s stipulate that all mean the same thing: Scheduling an appointment.

You are saying that there was a difference between the 20-year-olds who didn’t have to jump through hoops, compared to the 60-year-olds who did. That is completely false. Everyone had to jump through the same hoops.

Ask your friend what state specifically allowed young people walk-ins without appointments at the same time old people were still forced to schedule appointments. I’m curious to find out what state that was.

Reminder of your original statement that I’m objecting to:

I’m saying this was factually not true in any state in America. At no point anywhere in the country could young people walk in off the street while old people at the same time were still forced to schedule appointments.

The only exception was at the end of the day if there were extra shots that would otherwise have to be thrown away. Anyone could walk in off the street and get one of those, old and young alike.

75

In my part of the country, in March, if you were willing to troll a a few websites, make a few phone calls, and drive an hour or more, young people could get shots at rural vaccination events while old people were still waiting for their turn in their home county. No appointment was required.

Sure, an older person could jump through the same hoops, but they were obviously much less likely to.

This largely had to do with an inequitable distribution system in the state of MO.

At that time roughly 1/3 of vaccinated folks had traveled outside their home county to get the jab.

76

Not what he said. He said the young people didn’t have to jump through hoops, while the old people did.

If he was describing the same situation you’re describing, he was still being deeply misleading.

77

Not really sure that this is true, since young people are less likely to be vaccinated overall. On average, old people are more determined to be vaccinated. So the presumed computer savvy is cancelled out by the disinterest demographically.

78

Not sure where that was. Here in Texas, it was strictly the aged(65+ IIRC) and chronically ill at the very beginning, then extended to at-risk people, and then all adults above 18.

It was a bit strange in that at first, from the introduction of the vaccines in January through probably Apri-ish, the only place to get the vaccine was from the public health authorities, and it wasn’t available at the usual vaccine places like GP offices, urgent care centers, pharmacies, etc… Basically if you wanted to be vaccinated in March, you had to basically go to one of the local (in my case County) vaccination centers and get it.

That was only at first; by now it’s available everywhere from what I understand. I guess there might have been a short period where some 60+ person couldn’t schedule it through their GP, but some 18 year old could go drop in at the County site and get a shot, but it wasn’t a long stretch, and was probably more an issue with their GP than anything else.

But yeah, on a national level, the whole pandemic response has been sort of shambolic, unfocused and arbitrary. Some chunk of that is because unlike the UK, we aren’t a unitary state. Due to the way that dual-sovereignty works between the US Federal government and the States, stuff like public health is left to the States as far as the actual policies and implementations. The Feds can do things like negotiate vaccine buys with manufacturers, fund research, and otherwise grease the skids for the States to do their thing, but the States are the ones deciding how that’s actually done. So Texas’ guidelines for when/who to vaccinate are going to be different than Oklahoma’s. And Louisiana’s are going to be different than both. And in most states, the boots-on-the-ground responsibility for that sort of thing is delegated even further to the County level. So by nature it’s going to be a zillion different local flavors.

But it could have been handled better in the prep stages before the vaccines were released; the Federal government (really the Presidential administration) should have been spending the latter half of 2020 getting states on board with vaccinations and cajoling them into meeting basic guidelines, and ensuring they didn’t neglect anyone, and so on. But it appears that they had other priorities (cough, cou-insurrection-gh, cough, cou-election stealing-gh) instead of coordinating a unified national vaccination plan.

79

I never said that there were different hoops, just what the experiences were of people who were right in the middle of it.
For all I know there were exactly the same hoops for all groups but even if that is the case isn’t that precisely the point? It may have been a level playing field but should it be?
Does it not strike you as strange that a group at far, far greater risk (the over 60’s) were having to navigate the process to get a vaccine appointment in exactly the same way (and at the same time as) a group that experiences very little risk and are better placed to navigate those hoops and hurdles.

80

Bolding mine, why have you used that word? I didn’t.

So it couldn’t have happened except the cases where it could?