Re: Coronavirus
Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:19 am
i execute you coronavirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-Qs-n ... e=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-Qs-n ... e=emb_logo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... e-used-up/
Vaccine reserve was already exhausted when Trump administration vowed to release it, dashing hopes of expanded access
States were anticipating a windfall after federal officials said they would stop holding back second doses. But the approach had already changed, and no stockpile exists.
By Isaac Stanley-Becker and
Lena H. Sun
Jan. 15, 2021 at 10:02 a.m. EST
When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.
Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding eligibility for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others are still in the dark.
Because both of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are two-dose regimens, the Trump administration’s initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against the possibility of manufacturing disruptions. But that approach shifted in recent weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The result is that next week’s allocations will remain flat.
These officials were told that Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to speed the development of vaccines and therapeutics, stopped stockpiling second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year, instead taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line. The last shots held in reserve of Moderna’s supply, meanwhile, began shipping out over the weekend.
The shift, in both cases, had to do with increased confidence in the supply chain, so that Operation Warp Speed leaders were confident they could reliably anticipate the availability of doses for booster shots — required three weeks later in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech product and four weeks later under Moderna’s protocol.
But it also meant there was no stockpile of second doses waiting to be shipped, as Trump administration officials suggested this week. Azar, at a Tuesday briefing, said, “Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve.” He explained the decision as part of the “next phase” of the nation’s vaccination campaign.
HHS spokesman Michael Pratt confirmed in an email that the final reserve of second doses had been released to states for order over the weekend but did not address Azar’s comments this week, saying only, “Operation Warp Speed has been monitoring manufacturing closely, and always intended to transition from holding second doses in reserve as manufacturing stabilizes and we gained confidence in the ability for a consistent flow of vaccines.”
He also said states have ordered only about 75 percent of what is available to them.
Azar’s comments followed a Jan. 8 announcement by President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that his administration would move to release all available doses, rather than holding half in reserve for booster shots. Biden’s advisers said the move would be a way to accelerate distribution of the vaccine, which is in short supply across the country.
When Azar embraced the change four days later — after initially saying it was shortsighted and potentially unethical in risking the availability of a booster shot — he did not say the original policy had already been phased out, or that the stockpile had been exhausted. Signaling to states that they would soon see expanded supply, he also urged them to begin vaccinating adults 65 and older and those under 64 with a high-risk medical condition. Officials in some states embraced that directive, while others said suddenly putting hundreds of thousands of additional people at the front of the line would overwhelm their capacity.
In subsequent conversations with state and local authorities, federal officials sought to temper those instructions, said people who participated in the conversations. Gustave F. Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, spoke directly to officials in at least two of the jurisdictions receiving vaccine supply, explaining that allocations would not increase and that they did not have to broaden eligibility as they had previously been told, according to a health official who was not authorized to discuss the matter.
The health director in Oregon, Patrick M. Allen, was so disturbed by the realization that he wrote a letter Thursday to Azar demanding an explanation.
“Earlier today, we became concerned when we discovered there were no additional doses available for allocation,” he said in the letter, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.
On a call with Perna earlier the same day, Allen wrote, the four-star Army general “informed us there is no reserve of doses, and we are already receiving the full allocation of vaccines.”
“If true, this is extremely disturbing, and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk,” Allen added. “Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about “releasing the entire supply” you have in reserve. If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on Jan. 23, as planned.”
The revised instructions led additional jurisdictions to hold off on broadening their priority groups. One state health official noted that the updated guidance announced Tuesday as to eligibility did not appear on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even though it was stated as federal policy by Azar and by Robert R. Redfield, the CDC director, in their remarks earlier this week. Under the original recommendations, adults 65 and older and front-line essential workers were to comprise the second priority group, known as phase 1b, in line after medical workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
But the issue of supply was most troubling to state health officials.
“States were shocked and surprised that they did not see an increase in their allocations, and when they asked for explanations, some of them were told there was not a large stockpile of second doses to draw from,” said an official working with numerous states on vaccination planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount sensitive conversations. “They thought they were getting more doses and they planned for more doses and opened up to 65 and up, thinking they were getting more.”
There was additional confusion. Another change in the distribution system announced Tuesday by Azar — making allocation of doses dependent on the pace of inoculations in the states — would not take effect for two weeks, he said Tuesday. But Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) on Thursday tweeted that federal officials had notified the state that it would receive an additional 50,000 doses next week “as a reward for being among the fastest states” to get shots into arms. West Virginia, meanwhile, which is moving at the fastest clip based on CDC data, did not get any additional doses, said Holli Nelson, a spokeswoman for the state’s National Guard.
In a sign that the incentive structure may not be long-lived, a senior Biden transition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address ongoing deliberations, said this week the team did not look kindly on a system that “punishes states.”
LA and the surrounding SoCal counties are pretty much the epicenter of bad cases for the entire nation right now. Oddly, despite the massive Christmas/NY travel, a new "spike upon spike" doesn't seem to be happening and we may be leveling off. It's also interesting that California has and has had some of the most restrictive lockdown policies in the Nation since last March.chaos wrote: ↑Tue Jan 19, 2021 5:02 pmHospitals are pretty full here, but we seem to be doing better than in other parts of the country.
I've been coming across some pretty horrifying reports about California; it's like the way NY was times 10.
I think CA hasn't gotten as much nationwide coverage though since the past few weeks have been so crazy.
In L.A., the Virus Is Pummeling Those Who Can Least Afford to Fall Ill
By Jill Cowan and Matthew BlochJan. 29, 2021
On a recent weekday afternoon, not long before officials eased strict orders to stay home, cars sped down Los Angeles freeways when they would normally crawl.
In Pacoima, a northeastern San Fernando Valley neighborhood, brightly painted storefronts along Van Nuys Boulevard were mostly closed. There was no line alongside a trail of signs advertising rapid Covid-19 tests.
In Los Angeles County, the impacts of the pandemic have been relatively diffuse, with millions of residents suffering and grieving in isolation across a famously vast sprawl. Lockdowns — some of the nation’s most stringent, credited with saving thousands of lives — have kept Angelenos apart for months on end.
But recently, as Los Angeles County has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, the astonishing surge has reinforced the virus’s unequal toll, pummeling poorer communities of color. Experts say that deeply rooted inequality is both a symptom and a critical cause of Covid-19’s overwhelming spread through the nation’s most populous county.
“The challenge is that even before the surge, we had unevenness in Los Angeles County and in the state of California — we had smoldering embers in parts of our community all the time,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, the vice dean for population health and health equity at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Our interconnectedness is part of the story.”
County officials recently estimated that one in three of Los Angeles County’s roughly 10 million people have been infected with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. But even amid an uncontrolled outbreak, some Angelenos have faced higher risk than others. County data shows that Pacoima, a predominantly Latino neighborhood that has one of the highest case rates in the nation, has roughly five times the rate of Covid-19 cases as much richer and whiter Santa Monica.
Experts point to a combination of factors that have made the uneven impacts of the virus tragically predictable across the country, an imbalance that is often magnified in California.
The essential workers who risk getting sick on the job are more likely to be Latino and more likely to live in overcrowded houses and apartments without space to isolate, experts have said throughout the pandemic.
Their jobs — including those in warehouses, food processing plants, restaurant kitchens and factories — are likely to be lower paid, and workers are less likely to be able to take time off when they’re sick.
“It’s a double whammy for these workers: Covid, and unemployment or underemployment,” said Daniel Flaming, president of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Economic Roundtable.
Los Angeles County, long plagued by a gaping chasm between its rich and poor, has a particularly large service sector that requires workers to interact face-to-face with customers, Mr. Flaming said.
“Latino or African-American workers predominantly in service jobs are providing services to more affluent neighborhoods where there’s more capacity for consumption,” he said. “So the income polarization is certainly a factor.”
While the median household income is about $43,000 in Boyle Heights, a Latino enclave where longtime residents have fought gentrification, in Brentwood, home to Hollywood celebrities, the median income is about $120,000. One in five Boyle Heights residents have gotten Covid-19, compared with one in 25 Brentwood residents.
Senator Alex Padilla, who was appointed this month to fill Vice President Kamala Harris’s vacant seat, grew up in Pacoima, the son of a short-order cook and a housekeeper. Seeing the uneven effects of the pandemic, particularly on predominantly Latino communities like the one where his family still lives, “I can’t help but take it personally,” he said.
The problem, experts say, is that once the prevalence of the virus is high enough in any neighborhood, it puts everyone who lives there in danger, even if people are cautious and follow public health guidance.
Such was the case for Leonila Olivares, 45, who lives with her four children in Pacoima.
In December, she and her 10-year-old daughter contracted Covid-19, but she’s unsure how. She had been strict about wearing masks and had stopped gathering with her siblings and their families, she said, and she’d tried to keep her distance from other shoppers at the grocery store. She had stopped working at a garment factory in 2019 because of a disability. Nevertheless, she and her daughter were among more than a dozen members of her extended family in the area who contracted the virus.
She said it has troubled her to see people standing too close in mobile Covid-19 testing lines and she’s asked people to give her space at the market. Ultimately, though, she said she decided all she can worry about is keeping herself and her children safe.
“It’s not going to be me against the world,” she said in Spanish.
Laura Hidalgo, the leader of a Covid-19 outreach team for the Pacoima-based nonprofit Meet Each Need With Dignity, interpreted for Ms. Olivares. Ms. Hidalgo said that for many Latino immigrants, close-knit extended families provide a crucial support system.
So in the months leading up to the winter surge, public health messaging about the need to stay away from everyone — no dropping food off at your daughter’s home and staying for 15 minutes to chat, no going into your parents’ house to check on them — was met with some resistance in the hard-hit neighborhoods where Ms. Hidalgo works.
Recently, though, that’s changed, as deaths have soared and hospitals in the region have been inundated.
“I see a lot more fear in people,” Ms. Hidalgo said. “What we’re seeing, still, is that a lot of families don’t have any other choice but to continue business as usual.”
Edward Flores, an associate professor who has researched the impacts of the pandemic on workers for the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, said that even though California has issued some rules aimed at keeping workers safe, they’ve too often gone unenforced until it’s too late.
Now, as Los Angeles County officials once again move to allow businesses to reopen, experts say the clock is ticking to not only vaccinate workers, but to also implement more sustained protections.
Those must include federal aid that goes directly to frontline workers and affected communities, Mr. Padilla, the senator, said.
“These are not stimulus checks, these are survival checks,” he said.
Mr. Flores said he’s been especially dismayed by the fact that most undocumented workers have gone without aid.
He has also been frustrated, he said, to see so much discussion about individual behaviors when it’s long been clear that systemic forces are making certain people more vulnerable than others.
“We get locked in these conversations about, well, someone doesn’t wear a mask,” he said. “We’re almost one year into this, and part of me worries we haven’t really learned as much as we should have.”
Well that didn't last long...one of my friends from high school just lost his Mom...which is horrific...she had suffered a fall and had a couple breaks and was bedridden recovering... so he was helping out, doing laundry and getting food and stuff for her and his dad...he thinks he got covid and gave it to them both...she is dead and his dad is now in a hospital fighting for his life...pretty much the worst case scenario...nicest fucking guy too...
‘It’s just a matter of time’: Inmates detail horrid conditions amid COVID spike in Oregon prisons
By Kale Williams | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Frances Lanegan has watched with a growing sense of dread over the past month as coronavirus cases have exploded where she lives.
Her home -- for the moment -- is Coffee Creek Correctional Institution. Lanegan, a 56-year-old inmate, is serving a three-year sentence after a drug conviction last year. Of the 219 coronavirus cases at the Wilsonville facility since the beginning of the pandemic, 164 have been diagnosed in the past three weeks.
She and her cellmate both tested negative on Dec. 19 and 28, but when tested again on Jan. 6, Lanegan’s cellmate tested positive, though she did not. Lanegan expected to be moved, but when she asked the guards, they told her that since she had already been exposed, she would be staying with her infected cellmate.
“I’m vulnerable,” said Lanegan, who suffers from respiratory issues. “They just left me in there with her.”
Lanegan is one of eight inmates in three Oregon state prisons interviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive over the past week. One of them told of suffering direct retaliation after asking for additional personal protective equipment. Two said they weren’t told of their own positive diagnosis until they asked about it. Three said inmates feel punished when they receive a positive test and that, in some prisons, inmates are sent to “The Hole” for quarantine.
All said they had seen COVID-positive inmates put into cells or dorms with other inmates who had not tested positive, in direct violation of the policies and protocols issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which the Department of Corrections says it follows to control the spread of the illness.
Together, their stories shed light on a dire situation in Oregon’s prisons, where COVID cases have spiked dramatically, prisoners are afraid and frustrated, and many, including Alexander Vazquez, an inmate at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla County, expressed a feeling of hopelessness.
“It’s just a matter of time before everyone gets infected here,” he said.
McKenzie said he took a COVID test in early January, but after nearly a week with no news, he asked medical staff about the results. On Jan. 19, they told him his test had come back positive and he needed to go into isolation.
He was restricted to his cell, only allowed out to walk and make phone calls for about 30 minutes a day. But then, just three days after he was informed of his infection, the guards moved a new inmate into his cell who hadn’t contracted the disease.
“I can’t fathom some of the stuff they do in here,” McKenzie said. “They really don’t care.”
I guess for my age group, I'll be able to get one in September.Officials expect to begin vaccinating people 80 years and over by the third week of March.
The proposed schedule in the following weeks, Hillier said, will look something like this as long as supplies of vaccine stay steady:
April 15: vaccinations begin for people 75 years old and over.
May 1: vaccinations begin for people 70 years old and over.
June 1: vaccinations begin for people 65 years and over.
July 1: vaccinations begin for people 60 years and over.