Eh, availability varies geographically. My husband had been hesitating because until recently it was hard to get an appointment here, and he felt that there were lots of people who needed the protection more urgently than he did. He just got his first dose today. But it could just as well have been Wednesday. I’d prefer you didn’t call him unpleasant names.
I work with a young woman who didn’t want to cut in front of old folks. I showed her data that the local old folks had pretty high rates of vaccination, and she put herself on the waiting list, but she is taking a high-stakes test tomorrow, and I assume she’ll wait until after that, so as not to risk feeling unwell at the exam. I expect she’ll get her first dose within a week.
I do hope the US starts exporting vaccine, though. Even with the 12-15 year olds becoming eligible, soon, i think we have enough that we should be sharing, not hoarding.
I admit, that’s how I felt in January. In my state healthcare workers had to fight elderly people for that first round of vaccines, because there just weren’t enough and we were all put in the same eligibility group.
I live in one of the poorest performing states in the US when it comes to vaccinations (Thanks Kemp!) and therefore ended up driving 1.5 hours away to get my vaccination 7 weeks ago. Today, I can literally make hundreds of appointments in the next day or so within 5 miles of me. That’s not shots, that’s timeslot/location combinations, many of which can easily handle simultaneous people. I literally can’t find a COVID-vaccinating pharmacy in my area that doesn’t have openings between now and Thursday.
I’m glad that he’s got his first one, and will cut plenty of slack for anyone who still faces issues. I’m just pretty sure that that number in the US is small enough today that we could easily reach herd immunity in the near future if the rest got vaccinated as soon as they are easily able to.
If there are truly still places in the US where it is hard to find the vaccine, I’d be interested in reading about it. It would be very odd since I see an apparent surplus of the vaccine. Some of the locations even let you choose between Moderna and J&J. And if you are truly picky, there are plenty of Pfizer locations available too.
BTW, most pharmacies are doing walk-in appts now too.
267million people are eligible for the vax, here in US, out of 330 mil people. Which is 80%. The low end of the number needed for herd immunity. And that doesn’t take into consideration those who should not or can not get it.
Prob never get there.
But, we could try…
Currently 105 mil are fully vaxed. Out of the remaining 162 mil, 40 mil have already had one shot. Which leaves 284 million shots still to be given. (Assuming 2 shots each). There are 2.5 mil doses a day available. Which means 114 days still to go. Not everywhere does shots on the weekend, so we’re looking at between 4 to 6 months to give out the rest of the shots. So we may all just wanna pump the breaks on all the judgement flying around.
Which doesn’t account for those under 16, as I noted above. Should be eligible soon.
How many people (aside from age restrictions) is that? 100, 1000, 50 million? I’m guessing it’s closer to 100 than to 50 million.
In many many areas, there are vaccines just waiting for people to sign up to use them. We have shown that we are perfectly capable of doing 4 million per day if we want to do so. We just don’t currently have enough people willing to get the shots. If you think the 2.5 million doses is due to inventory, do you have any cites to back that up? My cites state otherwise:
Again, if someone is actively trying to get a shot but can’t, I have nothing but sympathy for them. I just want to know who these people are, if they do exist, so that we can fix the issue.
I do believe there is probably a group who have transportation issues making it harder, but I believe that most areas are working on solutions if they haven’t already implemented them.
And in fact, that is exactly what is happening. Here in the festering cesspool of vaccination screwups known as Georgia, we have free shuttles running to mass vaccination centers from major mass transit hubs. We even have vaccination centers inside our rail stops. Hop on and get a vaccination.
You walk into your pharmacy and ask for a vaccination. It’s even being shown on that TV thingamajig that this is an option. Radio as well. I’ll check to see if smoke signals are an option.
Who are these people? I can’t help them if I don’t know they exist.
We fix it by not waiting for people to come to the vaccine. It’s time to get out in the field and take the vaccine to the people. Get in the neighborhoods that are pharmacy deserts. Get in the community centers. Get in the homeless shelters. Get into the migrant worker camps. Get mobile vaccination trucks out and about.
We aren’t doing enough to reach those who can’t reach out themselves.
I have no issues with any of those things and many are already taking place. My issue, and I thought I had made it pretty clear, isn’t with anyone who wants to be vaccinated but truly isn’t able to. My issue is with the 20%, 30%, or 40% of the population who isn’t really interested in being vaccinated, whether because of “mah freedoms”, “I ain’t afeared of no flu”, or whatever screwed up reason they come up with tomorrow. If all of them got vaccinated, we’d get through the worst of this mess pretty damned fast.
I’ve heard the estimate is that a full 20% of the American adult population will never consent to vaccination. I think the cite comes from polling by the Kaiser Foundation. I would say those are ‘anti-vaxxers’.
The other groups in the poll were labelled ‘vaccine enthusiast’, meaning they had received one or two shots or want to get vaccinated as soon as they can, and ‘wait-and-see’. @Heffalump_and_Roo seems to want opinions on this latter group - those that are neither vaccine enthusiasts nor anti-vaxxers.
If 20% of American adults are consistently anti-vax, and 61% are vaccine enthusiasts (up from 55% in March), that leaves only 19% of adults in the ‘hesitant’/‘wait-and-see’ group (down from 25% in March).
That’s the point I (and others) are trying to make.
Not all of those counted as “hesitant” truly are. There’s been a marked slowdown of vaccination rates, not only due to those who won’t, but also those who can’t, or for whom it’s very hard. I get that you think that those people don’t add up to very many. But I think you underestimate the number.
And as for those just not interested at all, who cares what you call them? It’s not gonna change their minds and only makes you madder. So we should just let it go.
There’s been surveys that don’t indicate rising hesitancy and fairly broad interest in being vaccinated. I’m hopeful that the drop in vaccinations is that the tidal wave of early eager beavers are now satisfied, and we’ll drop back to a steady rate of vaccination at, say 1.5M/day for a steady number of weeks or months. This will be fine, and the doomsaying that it isn’t seems premature. Not necessarily incorrect, but way early. I mean, we’re at 2.2 million jabs a day right now, a level unimaginable 12 weeks ago. Chill for a few weeks guys.
I’m still willing to believe that people who can get vaccinated but haven’t yet are merely “hesitant.” In a couple more months, maybe not.
As I’ve mentioned roughly 7,394 times already, I was in the Moderna trial. When I first told people about it last fall, everyone looked at me bug-eyed. Some people thought I was crazy; some thought I was heroic; not a single person asked me how they could get in on that racket. A few months later when the results of the trials started coming out, everyone was suddenly envious, and several people asked me if they were still taking volunteers. It’s only been a few more months since then. People are still coming around.
I do not think the use of “vaccine hesitant” is intended to be accurate. It’s intended to gently prod people into eventually getting the vaccine. They can mentally categorize themselves as merely hesitant, rather than any of the other terms, which then pushes them to actually go out and get one.
I do personally believe there is sufficient hesitancy that this could be a good strategy. I still know several people who seem to be on the “I’ll eventually get it” side. While it’s possible calling them “refusers” or worse would motivate them to prove they are not in that group, it’s also possible that accepting them as hesitant helps. And it’s possible some who are refusers might then start to see themselves as merely hesitant.
It’s hard to know. Do we have any comparable situations that would could look to, and see which nomenclature works?
Those are mostly the states where the demand was lowest, and where it became easy to get fastest, you know. I live in a state with relatively good numbers.
And my husband signed up to get an appointment on the first day that I was able to find more than one opening at pharmacies near me. I’d been checking, and as long as there were zero or one appointments within 10 miles, he wanted to leave those for people with more exposure than he has. He can work from home and let me do the shopping.
The “not in a hurry” people are now getting vaccinated where i live.