48 with no medical conditions.
It may actually be faster for me to go to medical school and become a doctor so I can move to the front of the line.
Perhaps I was being too optimistic. As of about 10 minutes ago:
The prime minister says by the middle of February, “if things go well”, the government expects to have offered a first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups.
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I’m in the Moderna trial, so I might have already gotten it. I have an appointment on the 20th to sign new consent forms, get “unblinded” if I wish (and I do), and get the first shot if I previously got the placebo. I’m glad I wound up in the Moderna trial instead of the Pfizer one, because I would probably be at the bottom of the list otherwise (30s, healthy, doing most of my job remotely although occasionally have to meet with an incarcerated client through glass.)
Of course, a handful might get lucky, like these guys: DC Friends Get Lucky, Randomly Receive COVID-19 Vaccine Before Doses Expire – NBC4 Washington
- 51 years old
- no health conditions
- slightly overweight (almost all of that has been added since the lockdowns!)
- university instructor, working remotely for the Spring semester
I’ll be near the end of the line.
That was the case until a few days ago. Pfizer just announced that it will bump up all (willing) placebo group participants–regardless of their eligibility group–to get the real vaccine by the end of February.
That’s good to hear! I think it’s only fair for the volunteers to get priority. Plus they can continue to collect data from them.
I just found out that my 100-year-old mother, along with the other residents and staff in the care home in which she lives, will get their initial vaccines this Saturday.
It is, of course, totally up to each individual to choose to be vaccinated. Mom opted in as soon as she had the opportunity.
If they’re using MyChart it’s probably worth a quick call to the doctor’s office (or any doctor you use that uses MyChart) and make sure all your info is correct. You don’t want to be further down the line because the occupation field is blank or they put [chronic medical issue] in the notes instead of using the check box for it.
My husband was told by his employer that they would be getting their vaccinations by the end of January!
I’m in group 1C, with no known date. The state is still working through group 1A - medical personnel and residents of LTC facilities.
Group 1B are those over 75 and essential front line workers, such as school employees. There is disagreement as to whether grocery workers fit this category, I have no idea what the outcome will be.
Group 1C are those between 65 - 74, those between 16 - 64 with medical issues (me- transplant) and essential workers not from 1B.
I’m hoping I’ll be jabbed by April.
In Wisconsin ‘grocery store workers’ were explicitly listed as part of phase 1b. We’re waiting for finalization, but we seemed to have bumped from 1b and replaced by prisoners. Which, while I understand the logic, it’s going to be a tough sell for the politicians to get the general public on board with that one.
That’s what it was here, next door to you. As people started pushing for full ‘return to classrooms’, grocery workers slipped down the ladder. Now that restaurants are reopening next week for indoor dining, I foresee them going down another rung.
I’m in Group 2 (over 65 with no health conditions). I just got a message on MyChart (NC) that if I was 75 or older I should request an appointment to get vaccinated. I’m assuming that I will similarly be notified when I’m actually eligible, but at this time I have no idea when that will be.
My 88-year old father is resident in a memory-care facility. In New York, those facilities are in a different category than nursing homes, some of which have apparently already gotten the vaccine.
But okay, no problem, he’s getting the vaccine this coming Wednesday, which is great. I have his health care proxy, and I filled out a bunch of consent forms.
As for me, I’m at the end of the line. 61 years old, with no co-morbidities, and I don’t work in health care or any prioritized field. I’m looking at getting the vaccination sometime this summer, as far as I can tell.
I posted this is the “vaccine refuser” thread, but I thought it was worth posting here.
A lot of the general discussion about vaccines over the past few weeks has pointed out that the main bottleneck right now is production, distribution, and storage. That’s true; it takes time to produce the vaccines, and they then have to be transported and stored under very specific temperature conditions. This makes things more difficult.
But there are places where the vaccine is getting distributed and stored, but is still not being administered quickly enough, and in some of these cases, the most troubling impediments to vaccination are (often well-intentioned) bureaucrats and politicians putting too many roadblocks in the way.
In New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo has placed such tight restrictions on who gets the vaccine first, including massive fines for hospitals and clinics that violate the rules, that some clinics have actually chosen to thrown some doses of the vaccine out or let it expire rather than administer it to the “wrong” people. Others hospitals have supplies sitting in freezers because they’ve administered all of their doses to eligible people, but can’t move on to new groups without the Governor’s permission.
If you can keep it in the freezer, at least it can be used later, but once it’s out of the freezer it has to be used pretty quickly or discarded. One of the problems is that the vaccine comes in vials of 10 doses, so if you have to open a new vial to give a person the shot, you need to have nine other people available if you don’t want the rest of the vial to go off. The same New York Times story talked about a health center in Harlem that faced exactly this problem:
They managed to find another couple of eligible people, but threw three doses away because they didn’t want to risk violating the Governor’s order.
In Britain, a different type of red tape is getting in the way. A whole bunch of retired doctors and nurses are willing to help administer the vaccine, so it can be distributed more quickly, but before they can do it, they need to complete a National Health Service checklist of certificates and documentation, including things like:
- Conflict resolution, level 1
- Data security awareness, level 1
- Equality, diversity & human rights
- Fire safety, level 1
- Preventing radicalisation, level 1
These are trained health professionals, often with decades of experience, who are coming back with the sole purpose of administering the COVID vaccine to people whom the NHS has already deemed eligible, and they have to sit through hours of online training on irrelevant human resources bullshit.
Since I’m low risk and completely unimportant I assumed I’d be back of the line, maybe getting something over the summer. My most likely path to getting the vaccine is via the military, and even there I’m at the end of the line (non-deployable, non-essential reservist). However, I’ve now heard that they are making the vaccine optional at my base, and among the active duty/full time reservist population who are currently eligible, only 52% are opting to get vaccinated. Consequently, anyone who wants an appointment has been able to get an appointment, mostly scheduled over the next couple of weeks.
I’m now starting to think that I might actually be looking at an opportunity in early February or early March. I did not expect this turn of events. 48% refusal. Crazy.
My state’s rollout is 9th-worst in the country, so who can say at this point?
A friend of mine works in an assisted living community. ~85 residents and 40 staff. Their Covid vaccine clinic was this past Thursday. Of the 40 staff members, only 4 – yes, 4 – opted for the vaccine. My friend was not one of them.
This is southern Oregon, deep in Trump country and a vast majority of the locals subscribe to the “its a hoax!” theory so I’m not surprised but am quite disappointed.
Question: at what point do states decide enough healthcare workers have been immunized that they can move on to the next level of recipients? Washington, like some other states, has a timetable (of sorts–as stated before, ours has gaps and isn’t finished), but if the number of Level 1 recipients trickles down to almost none before the end of that group’s allotted time, do providers just twiddle their thumbs until the time slot expires, or can they move on to the next group earlier than planned?
Also, I just read an interview on CNN with Dr. Wen, who says we’re basically all stuck with the current guidelines–maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, not hugging grandkids (if you’ve got 'em), etc. until we reach herd immunity. With the large number of people who refuse the vaccine, when will that be? I live alone and have followed the protocols scrupulously, but I simply cannot live this way indefinitely because some people opt (as opposed to those who have no choice) out of getting the vaccine.