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Vaccines for Me, I’ll Get Around to Thee
My state of Maryland holds an impressive spot in the national rankings of states who have distributed vaccines: We are dead last. Every other state in the country has distributed their COVID-19 shots faster and more efficiently. Compare this logjam to the neighboring state of West Virginia, where all nursing homes and long-term care facilities have already received the vaccine.
For Bloomberg, my county health official offered nothing but excuses (despite a $6 billion budget for a county of one million people,
As of Dec. 28, Maryland had worked through only 10.9% of its 191,075 doses from the first three weekly allocations, according to Bloomberg’s analysis.
In Montgomery County, Chief of Public Health Travis Gayles said he’s preparing for obstacles like staffing shortages. Years of budget cuts kneecapped municipalities’ ability to build effective virus responses from scratch — at one point, Montgomery was tallying virus cases by fax — and those cuts may hobble vaccine distribution as well.
“With Covid right now, it definitely shows a bright light on the impact of those budget decisions,” Gayles said.
Miraculously, Gayles himself managed to obtain one of the first hundred doses of the vaccine as soon as it became available. Take a moment and just look at this man who inserted himself at the front of the line and tell me he needed it more than a resident of a nursing home.
County Health Officer Dr. Travis Gayles got his first of two COVID-19 vaccinations today after the County received 100 doses. Those who will become the vaccinators got vaccinated first.
More: https://t.co/p3jwIV7Am0 pic.twitter.com/GW8Dc3vh8N— Montgomery County DHHS (@MoCoDHHS) December 23, 2020
When I tweeted about this, those with family members in these facilities weighed in:
We haven’t been able to visit him, lives 3 miles from us, since March.
— Katie Carney (@kgcarney) December 31, 2020
This is a scandal, or should be. But Gayles has a (D) after his name, in a county dominated by Ds, in a blue state. And so, he is free to keep making excuses about fax machines
Published in General
What vaccine did Montgomery County buy? Because if they got the Pfizer one, it makes it harder to distribute the vaccine around easily due to the ridiculously cold temperatures it has to be stored at (minus 70C/minus 94F). Moderna’s a little better, but even it has to be kept in minus 20C (minus-4F) temperatures, which tends to mean the larger medical facilities with cold storage capabilities are going to end up with the lion’s share of the vaccine, while it’s tougher for individual physicians’ offices to keep it on hand. Benefits the big facilities and of course, the politicians and extra-special people with preferred access to those facilities.
The great thing about being the first ones vaccinated (especially if you are in a near zero COVID-19 risk group) is that a month from now you can condemn your moral inferiors who have delayed or even refused getting the vaccine. That also means they get to retain control over all economic and social life on the grounds that those bad people are keeping the risk of an outbreak alive.
Maryland is 43rd in cases per million and MoCo is not the hotspot that PG and Baltimore have been. 72% of MD deaths are people 70 and over. Elderly, minority persons are COVID’s favorite lethal targets so why not go there first?
The current case wave in MD peaked three weeks ago. By the time the vaccine gets to 50% of us, the bug will already be receding for the last time, laughing at us as it leaves town for wherever it is viruses hide after epidemics and especially laughing at our esteemed “experts” and “leaders” who will soon actually take credit for the destruction and complete failure they achieved.
The press made a big deal about Florida shifting to vaccinating old people first – but the policy is “old people and their caregivers” first.
Which is a good idea.
Governor DeSantis publicly blew off the idea of getting a vaccination for himself, for now, since he’s “not the priority.”
Again, a good idea. Set the example.
Looking at the Florida plan, I fall into the seventh cohort to get vaccinated, due to my age and job (not quite old enough, not an important job). Just above “almost anyone else, including pets and furniture.”
Gayles and AOC should be required to attend the funeral of an elderly COVID casualty every week until herd immunity is achieved. Oh, and the elderly deceased must be a registered Democrat.
My favorite part of this is?
Part 1: Damn capitalism, you little people and your small businesses don’t mean jack**** to us… Shut it all down!
Part 2: Gee, how do we do all this stuff without tax revenue?
I’ve had Covid, so I don’t plan on getting inoculated until everyone who has not had it and wants it gets inoculated. Might not then, because if I am not immune from getting it, I don’t see how an inoculation will improve things, especially since my case was mild to begin with. My brother (63) got it because he works at a hospital (in their IT department – no contact with patients) and enough other staff members declined to take it he moved to the front of the line. His wife has had it because she is a school nurse. Ironically, she had to wait until after he had gotten it.
Penguins never want to be the first penguin in the water for fear there might be a predator lurking unseen. They crowd around the break in the ice until one plunges in. If no one goes in penguins further from the edge begin jostling the penguins nearest the edge until one is pushed in. It seems a metaphor for human behavior in getting shots.
Out of curiosity @seawriter: Is the school that brother’s wife works at actually open? Thanks.
Don’t take it personally @cirby, but my cats happen to be very important to me.
Generally. It’s Texas. It’s been open several times during the school year.
Good. I was worried that they were giving the teachers, school people priority in the vaccine line but then still not opening the schools!?!
Even if they weren’t a democrat before they died, they’ll be a democrat after, and vote accordingly.
Good point kedavis, might turn into a ballot harvesting opportunity.
Outside of the a handful of the deepest of deep Blue urban areas in Texas, schools have been open in the state either since mid-August (mainly for the smaller exurban and rural districts) or mid-September (urban/large suburban) with the option for parents to continue with remote learning.
Oh, that’s an easy one. Appeal to the feds to replace lost tax revenue, and complain loudly when the money is not forthcoming within 24 hours. That is what our Dictator has been doing for months.
Plot twist: The feds also don’t get revenue from non-working employees and closed businesses.
That’s okay. They have the printing presses at the Treasury Department. Instant revenue.
You need to cue up the great SNL skit with Dan Akyroyd playing Jimmy Carter- Inflation is Our Friend. It is typically block from viewing on YouTube b/c it was too true…..
transcript-
https://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78dcarter.phtml
That’s not really revenue, but it is money, and they don’t actually have to print money they can just announce that it exists, and I expect that is at least what they want. Whether it actually happens or not might depend largely on if we end up with President Biden.
Actually, the plan to vaccinate over 75, but not over 65 is smart.
People between 65 and 75 are a very large boomer cohort, and they generate a lot of Medicare cost due to new risk conditions that all tend to hit right then, plus the Social Security pension expense. If you hold off on vaccinating that group, the more you kill off via COVID-19, the more money you save out of the entitlement budget. It’s a win-win!
One flaw: Everyone over 75 is also over 65!
Guess they will have to be disappointed with what happened to me, then. I suspect they will get a lot of other disappointments, too.
What if that group survives because they did NOT get the vaccine?
Many made the same argument ~40 years ago as to why the Feds were slow to crack down on cigarette smoking. The Feds got the revenue from tobacco sales from young people and cancer didn’t strike typically until in their 60s when they would no longer be working (and paying income tax) but would be collecting SS and Medicare. Since lung cancer kills quickly the Feds even save in medical costs vs long term Medicare coverage. This is the exact argument I heard from a very prominent surgeon (and the head of his specialist society) while I was in med school.
It’s old guys like us (I’m 68 and living high on the hog spending SS money) who now have the opportunity now to do the noble thing, succumb, and Save The Republic! Glad you came through it fine, as the vast majority do other than the mental and emotional stress induced by Legacy Media.
I doubt that the vaccine is a problem. This particular inoculation may be the most medically-supported in history. It could be an opportunity to thin out the the cohort of anti-vaxxer nutcases, though.
I was amazed when dealing with docs and nurses how many of them still smoke (I worked for a university med school doing legal research support for about 15 years before retiring, and the smoking caregivers thing was especially noticeable when I was in nursing school myself in the 1990’s).
You shouldn’t conflate getting one vaccine at perhaps age 60+, with expectations or even requirements that infants/children get DOZENS of vaccines, often simultaneously, by age 2.
Isn’t an open secret that oncologists smoke because their job is so stressful?
Please spare me the anti-vaxx nuttiness, OK? I have too much background in such stuff to bite. You can find isolated examples of a given drug being incompatible with a person of unusual genomic traits for any medication in history, just as you can find a very unusual case of a child reacting to a vaccine. That does not make it smart to kill thousands of kids with diseases instead. And thimerosal does not cause autism.
Nice job going off the deep end there. If only there was water in the pool…