Stay Safe Everyone!

[Sabin]

My Grandfather has COVID. My Grandmother will follow. They are both isolated in a nursing home in Arizona which just suffered an outbreak. They're all doing their best. He just celebrated his 101 birthday over Zoom last week. My Grandmother will turn 92 in 12 days (we share the same birthday). He is served in inactive duty during WW2. She is a Holocaust survivor who is suffering from dementia.

We are crossing our fingers. They are both do not resuscitate.

[danfrank]

My brother-in-law is now in the hospital with pneumonia caused by COVID. He’s of special concern because he had a kidney transplant about two years ago. More and more people I know—mostly in Southern California, where it’s raging—are contracting it, including two nieces and a nephew.

Stay vigilant in your safety practices, folks.

[Big Magilla]

I don't know, Greg. He thinks he'll have to wait the full two years, but things can change.

My now-29-year-old nephew in Texas, who was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, was in a trial for an experimental heart drug a couple of years back. He developed heart problems before the trial ended so he had to be told which group he was in. I don't recall which group he ended up being in, but he was fine.

[Greg]

I also have a nephew by marriage who was in one of the trials (Pfizer I think) but he's in the trial for two years and they won't tell him whether he received the vaccine or the placebo.

Do you know if they will tell him what he got when mass vaccinations begin, or will he still not be sure if he needs to be vaccinated when he can get one?

I filled out a questionnaire over the phone to be a local participant in the Novavax trial, which was late getting to phase three trials compared to Pfizer and Moderna. I got the call back just after Pfizer was approved and before Moderna was officially approved, but appeared to be heading for approval. I said I decided I did not want to participate, because I did not want to be locked in a trial, with a 50% of only being given a placebo, when I would have a chance to get an approved vaccine.

[Sabin]

My father got the vaccine last week. He reported no side effects. He's a physician in Phoenix, Arizona, and claims the hospital is overrun with COVID patients. Two weeks ago they had 115 patients and now they're up to 179. Last year, he was 67 years old and couldn't really fathom retirement. This year, he is 68, has no idea what he's going to do once he's retired, but cannot wait.

[gunnar]

My cousin is a nurse and is in charge of the vaccine program at her hospital. She got the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last Monday.

I've had six family members get Covid-19 and they all recovered. I've lost count of how many other people that I know who have had it. A couple ended up on ventilators for a period of time, though most of the rest didn't need hospitalization. There have been at least six people that I know who died at least partially as a result of the virus, though only one of them was someone that I knew pretty well. She was 97, but had been in really good health prior to getting sick.

I doubt if I will be eligible for the vaccine before June, but we'll see what happens. Maybe it will be sooner.

[OscarGuy]

I believe my count is four friends that have contracted it. One is a virtual friend whom I've never met IRL. She lives in Oklahoma and works at Walmart. The other three I know personally, though two of them I haven't seen in 5 to 10 years while the other I last saw 3 years ago.

Of my closest friends, two of them are scheduled to get the shot this week, another person I know got the vaccine last week (apparently lucked into it since he wasn't on the receipt list). I expect my mother will be in group 1B or 2A as she's 67 and has both a heart condition and diabetes. I am not sure when I'll get it as I'm in the essential list (insurance falls under the finance branch), but I have no clue how they will determine it's your turn because under Trump, the roll-out has been an utter clusterfuck.

[Big Magilla]

Thanks for sharing, Dan.

I have emergency room nurses in my family who reported the same slight body ache that went away the next day. I also have a nephew by marriage who was in one of the trials (Pfizer I think) but he's in the trial for two years and they won't tell him whether he received the vaccine or the placebo. He thinks he got the real thing because he experienced those same body aches at the time of his injection. He's a detective in upstate New York and had to quarantine for a week just before Christmas because his partner had Covid.

For a long time, I didn't personally know anyone other than a former neighbor in a nursing home who got it and quickly died from it. Now, I hear of someone I know almost on a daily basis from a woman I work closely with (she's the reporter on the community newspaper I'm editor of on the Jersey Shore) to my widowed sister-in-law in Northern Pennsylvania who moved in with her sister after the sister's husband got it and now she and her sister unsurprisingly have it as well.

It's beginning to feel like the ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers out there. Until we've all been exposed or gotten the vaccine, no one is safe.

[danfrank]

Got my vaccine on Saturday. Moderna. I’m in mental health, so as healthcare workers go I’m not in the highest risk category, obviously, though I do occasional consultations in the emergency department and hospital. My company, Kaiser Permanente, participated in the trials for both Pfizer and Moderna, and was apparently sourced a very large supply. I had a very slight body ache the night of, which disappeared the following day. The injection site on my arm was pretty sore the next day, is better today.

I feel super-privileged to have received the vaccine but am not without worries. Early results—with small sample sizes, so beware— show that levels of antibodies start to drop within about 4 months post-vaccination, most particularly in those over age 55 (that’s me). It’s unknown what level of protection this lower antibody level has. Though there is uncertainty in this apparent long slog toward neutralizing Covid I am mostly hopeful.

[Sonic Youth]

It's been about 9 months since this covid pandemic changed our lives.

I'm curious to know that despite all the hardships around us how many of you now are mentally reconciled to this new way of life and have started carrying on (with obvious protocols) without constant grumbling or fear?

Hmmm. Curious you should ask this now with a vaccine in sight. Do you think everything will remain as it is now even after the vaccine?

Also, depends on the "hardships". There are things like masks, distancing and isolation, not going to the movie theater, not using public tranportation, etc.. And then there's more personal hardships like losing a job or family members getting infected, in which case some people will have had a far worse experience than others. But if you mean the former, you'rquestion suggests this is going to be a permanent way of life, and I don't see that. Yeah, some things will have changed but we don't know what they are yet. Me, I'm willing to muddle through for a few months longer now that there may be an end in sight.

[Reza]

It's been about 9 months since this covid pandemic changed our lives.

I'm curious to know that despite all the hardships around us how many of you now are mentally reconciled to this new way of life and have started carrying on (with obvious protocols) without constant grumbling or fear?

[gunnar]

Some of the districts in Michigan had already made the decision to be virtual through at least the end of the first semester while others were in-person or planning to do so. The state recently mandated virtual at the high school level for a three week period, but left the decision for the rest of the schools up to the local districts. Numbers in Michigan have been way up since the beginning of October and show no signs of abating.

I feel bad for my friends who are still teaching, whether virtually or in-person. I retired in 2018 and am glad that I was able to avoid this mess at a personal level. I taught a college class in 2019 and was offered the chance to teach again this fall, but declined.

I think we're about to go back on virtual.

Cases are up in our area (as they are everywhere, obviously), and I think the plan is to get to Thanksgiving Break (next Friday) and transition to virtual until Christmas at least. Nothing is official, but if you read between lines, it's there.

We've still managed to not have any positive cases at our school--I really have to hand it to our administration for taking it seriously. But our district has had several, and neighboring districts have as well. My niece and nephew (at a private school) are on virtual until "at least" Thanksgiving.

[Greg]

Extraordinarily good news has just been released on the Covid-19 vaccine front. Both Pfizer and Moderna, Moderna in conjunction with the National Institutes Of Health, announced that the results of their final-phase-3 trials show their vaccines are 95% effective. The Center For Disease Control set a minimum effectiveness of only 50% for authorization. Safety data for the Pfizer vaccine show only mild side effects, while the safety data for the Moderna vaccine is still to be reported; however, the Pfizer vaccine requires ultra-cold storage while the Moderna vaccine can be stored at kitchen-refrigerator-freezer temperatures.

AstraZeneca (in conjunction with Oxford University, a vaccine I mentioned a few times earlier) and Johnson & Johnson also have vaccines that should have data released soon.

[dws1982]

I think we're about to go back on virtual.

Cases are up in our area (as they are everywhere, obviously), and I think the plan is to get to Thanksgiving Break (next Friday) and transition to virtual until Christmas at least. Nothing is official, but if you read between lines, it's there.

We've still managed to not have any positive cases at our school--I really have to hand it to our administration for taking it seriously. But our district has had several, and neighboring districts have as well. My niece and nephew (at a private school) are on virtual until "at least" Thanksgiving.

[OscarGuy]

That's the primary reason shut downs aren't working. Trump purposely downplayed the pandemic and made it sound like it wasn't so bad. If his supporters don't actually know someone who died, they are less likely to think it's a big deal. For some dumb reason, our nation is filled with people who are either "out of sight out of mind" or "if it doesn't impact me, I don't care" kinds of people.