RebKell's Junkie Boards

[Howee]

[Ex-Ref]

Really?

Chick fil A manager had to be called in to "fix" a drive through vaccine clinic by telling them that they needed more than ONE person doing the registration for hundreds of people? Somebody needs to be embarrassed, fired or both.

[tfan]

[FrozenLVFan]

No big surprise. After Trump banned exportation of vaccines, Canada sourced theirs from Europe where the EU has restricted exportation, and now Canada is getting slammed for requesting vaccines from CoVax. They're between a rock and a hard place, as it were, when it comes to obtaining vaccines.

[jammerbirdi]

Wall St Journal:


With Covid-19 Vaccine Waiting Lists in the Millions, Some Skip the Line
Across the U.S., people are flouting eligibility rules and using connections to get a coveted shot

By Scott Calvert and Cameron McWhirter

February 6, 2021, 5:30 a.m. EST

Board members of a Rhode Island medical system were invited to get vaccinated, regardless of their age or occupations. Judges and their staff received vaccines ahead of schedule at a Nevada medical center. And a SoulCycle fitness instructor in New York got a shot after saying she was an educator.

While millions of Americans await their turn during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, some people are securing the coveted injections before they are eligible by tapping connections or circumventing their states’ rules. Government officials have criticized the line-cutters, prosecutors in at least two states have launched reviews and some hospitals have had their vaccine allotments curtailed by health authorities as punishment for questionable vaccination practices.

Each state—and even some local jurisdictions—have set up different rules for who gets vaccinated first and where they are distributed. In addition to vaccine supply shortages, the lack of a centralized registration system in many areas has set off a scramble for doses.

As of Thursday, about 35.2 million doses had been administered in the U.S., out of about 57.5 million doses delivered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Distribution roadblocks have caused a slower-than-expected pace of vaccinations.

In Rhode Island, Attorney General Peter Neronha is investigating whether two health-care networks vaccinated employees and others in accordance with state eligibility rules. “There has been particular concern regarding the vaccination of board members, trustees and administrative employees who primarily telework,” he wrote to executives of Lifespan and Care New England in a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“A small amount of bad optics can shake confidence in the system,” Mr. Neronha, a Democrat, said in an interview. “In Rhode Island, which has the reputation of being the ultimate ‘know a guy’ state, because it’s so small and nobody ever leaves, that lack of confidence is really exacerbated.”

Lifespan said board members were offered vaccinations the second weekend in January, when the health system opened up eligibility to employees who didn’t interact with patients and to volunteers. “We have been working closely with [the state Department of Health] and carefully followed their guidance from the start,” a spokeswoman said. Care New England didn’t comment.

A state health-department spokesman said hospitals were allowed to vaccinate their whole organization, including radiology staff, off-site employees and volunteers, noting that they are “active in the operation of a hospital.”

Jay Egge, an 84-year-old retiree in Barrington, R.I., said it angered him to hear about hospital trustees and board members receiving shots. He said he hasn’t had any luck getting inoculated despite a host of medical ailments that make him highly vulnerable to Covid-19.

“If I’m in a line trying to get my fried clam sandwich and some idiot jumps in front of me, I don’t like it. It’s just the same thing,” he said. But when it comes to Covid-19, “I am afraid for survival.”

Some officials said because the rollout has involved so many jurisdictions with different rules, timelines and supplies, it has been impossible for states or the federal government to ensure everyone is following the rules.

“We’re not the vaccine police,” said Max Reiss, spokesman for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat. “We’re putting a lot of trust in local providers to make sure they’re vaccinating the most at-risk people in their communities.”

Stacey Griffith, a SoulCycle instructor, was lambasted on social media after identifying herself as an educator so she could be vaccinated at a Staten Island, N.Y., clinic, then publicizing her gambit on Instagram.

“I made a terrible error in judgment and for that I am truly sorry,” she posted Feb. 1. She didn’t respond to requests for comment. A SoulCycle spokeswoman said the company doesn’t encourage its employees to seek vaccines as educators.

“It doesn’t sound like someone who should have gotten vaccinated to me,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said when asked about Ms. Griffith at a news conference.

After judges and staff with the municipal court in Reno, Nev., got vaccine shots at a medical clinic, City Manager Douglas Thornley said the court employees had used personal relationships to skirt Nevada guidelines.

“It is unconscionable to me that anyone would put their interests before those who need the vaccine first: among them our health care workers, first responders and seniors who are 70 and older,” he said in a statement. “For at-risk groups, the vaccine could mean life or death.”

In DeKalb County, Ga., which includes part of Atlanta and a portion of its suburbs, health workers found that some people who were issued QR codes that enabled them to sign up for a vaccine appointment then shared them with friends, said S. Elizabeth Ford, the county’s district health director.

“They brag about it on social media,” she said in an interview. “I’ve been shocked.”

Hundreds of people have gone to county vaccination centers with copies of the QR codes, claiming to be properly registered, Dr. Ford said. County workers cross-referenced codes with actual registrations and withheld shots from people lacking approval.

Beyond questions of legality and fairness, line-cutting erodes public trust in this historic vaccine rollout, said Johns Hopkins University biomedical ethicist Ruth Faden.

“Part of the reason people shouldn’t use their social advantage and their power is precisely because it undermines the whole system,” she said. “Why should I follow the rules if rich people, connected people, powerful people are breaking the rules?”

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[jammerbirdi]

So I posted this because it’s on topic and it’s always difficult to actually read an entire WSJ piece without a subscription which I don’t have.

But I’m... kind of dubious about some of it and the focus and why wouldn’t I be, because, it is, after all, the WSJ.

So... focusing on hospital employees and specifically administrative employees who are mostly working from home. Okay, this cuts close.

A hospital is a big complicated thing. For it to operate at the peak of its capabilities in order to provide the kind of excellence throughout its many systems requires all of the parts to be in place and functioning. Only naive short-sighted perspectives would even suggest otherwise.

All of that is multiplied significantly during a once in a century pandemic that severely alters and brings about a constriction of the workforce, i.e, the team, and puts more of a workload on fewer parts of the machine, fewer people with less immediate support around them because so many are working from home. These pieces, humans doing work in the health care system during a crushing pandemic, are essential to keeping those systems functioning in constantly and quickly changing realities.

It is a terrible thing even to witness. The stress people are going through can’t be imagined. If one or more of those people go down, the effect could very likely be devastating. And we don’t know how long any of this is going to last, how long we will need these health care systems and the people working in them to be functioning at these levels of providing top level support to their communities while operating so far outside the realm of standard operating procedure.

And so now we isolate the phrase ‘mostly’ working from home. But not always. So a person who is working for a hospital in an administrative capacity who goes into work on occasion out of necessity who must ride elevators and walk through indoor areas and even work around others with now more contagious variants in the mix... we’re going to call THEM out and hospitals out for vaccinating those people? That’s bad journalism.

Look. Life is very stressful right now. It looks like this thing might be starting to lay down a little here in LA. But there’s so much going on here around the issue of who gets the vaccines. Better articles than this one. And the lifting of restrictions, the politics behind that. I could be having a field day posting and commenting on all of it.

But shit is just too real here for doing much of that right now. Kind of in survival mode at this point.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[Howee]

On a tangential note:

My county in PA is pushing 1000 deaths. Not good. However, I'm always amazed at how many people I know who ARE/HAVE BEEN Covid positive, and have had only mild symptoms....many of them with one or more co-morbidities. Cases of wife is sick for a while, hubby never tests positive, or 3 members of a 4-person household test positive and demonstrate symptoms, but the one with gravest co-morbidity doesn't even test positive. Very, very puzzling.

_________________
Oregon: Go Ducks!
"Inévitablement, les canards voleront"

[Ex-Ref]

More people that I work with are getting vaccinated. Yea! I think for full time staff in my department, we're soon going to be up to 57% vaccinated. For our PRN staff it's at least 75% (they're mostly older people - mid-50s and up vs. our full time staff that is almost all 30's and early 40's).

I'm still hearing of a lot of people that are going out of the county to get them. One county they are going to has a large Amish population. I'm wondering if the vaccines were distributed based on county population and if the Amish are not taking advantage of the vaccine therefore leaving a surplus in that county. I don't see many Amish around here but it seems like the ones that I do see never have a mask on.

_________________
"Women are judged on their success, men on their potential. It’s time we started believing in the potential of women." —Muffet McGraw

“Thank you for showing the fellas that you've got more balls than them,” Haley said, to cheers from the crowd.

[FrozenLVFan]

[jammerbirdi]

Thank you. Definitely wasn’t making the case for board members, life trustees, donors, etc. However, if they’re advanced in age to the point where their age groups are now being vaccinated as per guidelines etc. I don’t see anything wrong with them getting their vaccines through the hospitals they are associated with or have contributed their time and expertise or millions to. They shouldn’t have to go to the Forum or Dodger Stadium. I just think we need to be getting the shots into old people’s arms and quit worrying so much about who or how or where.

Volunteers even more so. Usually elderly, on campus, interacting with the public. Just do it.

And this piece daring to call out x-ray technician as if they shouldn’t be vaccinated by hospitals is really outrageous. Aides, attendants, the people who clean the rooms, work in the cafeterias, laundry and on and on...you want to try to run a functioning medical center without any of those people?

On the other hand, and this is where I can’t actually be bothered to put together a dissenting rant right now, but who is being official placed next up in line here in California, and the incredible confusion and about faces that have occurred, along with the blatant political aspects to the decisions that are being made here, is a huge subject right now.

I can sum it up in a joke headline I made up.

State of California announces next group in line for coronavirus vaccines: registered voters.

It’s that bad.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[Ex-Ref]

[Ex-Ref]

Interesting article about how Pfizer makes it's vaccine. I would have liked more detail (was it TOO technical or just proprietary?), but it was still very interesting to know some of the steps that go into getting a vaccine made.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2021/02/07/how-covid-vaccine-made-step-step-journey-pfizer-dose/4371693001/

_________________
"Women are judged on their success, men on their potential. It’s time we started believing in the potential of women." —Muffet McGraw

“Thank you for showing the fellas that you've got more balls than them,” Haley said, to cheers from the crowd.

[jammerbirdi]

Strange scene at Dodger Stadium where 7000 vaccination appointments are no shows. The story of why is not easily understood. Something about the county only giving second doses at this time but Dodger Stadium being run by the city. Incredible. The cone lines were basically empty until a frantic social media outreach brought some people to the site but wow.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[tfan]

They have just opened up the San Francisco 49ers stadium to vaccines (Governor Newsome even made a trip down to bless it) and it is said to be the largest vaccination place in the state. But I looked at the pictures they had online with the newspaper article and it isn't what I imagined - they are giving the vaccines in the bars/restaurants that are underneath the stands and luxury boxes. I thought the whole field was going to become an outdoor vaccination setup (with tents to protect from the rain). But that is similar to the vaccinations at the County Fairgrounds - they just take place in a building on the property and don't make use of the large fairgrounds area.

[FrozenLVFan]

You need access to electricity for things like computers and freezers, which would mean a massive tangle of extension cords or portable generators out on the field. It's also possible the number of staff is better suited to the indoor areas. At least those facilities are able to handle traffic and parking.

[jammerbirdi]

You could make a great thread here starting most posts with, “Didja hear the one about the...?”

Didja hear the one about the doctor in Texas who’s facing (or was, judge threw it out) criminal prosecution for not wasting left over doses from a vaccination site. I’ll grab it.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[jammerbirdi]

Washington Post here. This insanely long Philadelphia story is in many ways a microcosm of things that seem to be part and parcel of what is happening in America right now. Almost everything in it has tendrils throughout our society and systems.

In Philadelphia, a mass vaccination clinic opened with fanfare, then closes amid rifts of trust


By Frances Stead Sellers

February 14 at 6:45 PM PT

PHILADELPHIA — This city's first mass vaccination site looked like a model of 21st-century efficiency. Run by a neuroscience graduate student who spoke of creating a blueprint for high-volume clinics across the country, the innovative operation delivered coronavirus shots to almost 7,000 people in just five days, ushering them swiftly through private immunization pods.


“It was like the checkout at the supermarket,” said Tonya Warden, 51, who went to get her shot with a co-worker. “Really fast.”


But after Philadelphia’s health department learned that Philly Fighting Covid, established in April as a nonprofit, had launched a for-profit company in December, the city abruptly shuttered the vaccination clinics. Officials said they had lost trust in the group, citing concerns that changes in its data policy might allow personal information to be sold.


Residents were beset with confusion about where to get their shots as an automated system sent out reminders for appointments that have since been canceled. One senior health official from the city resigned. Allegations of incompetence and angry calls for racial equity erupted, aimed not only at the start-up but at the health department and the mayor, who had implicitly endorsed the operation by showing up on the first day shots were administered in early January.


“It was botched, completely botched,” said City Council member Cindy Bass (D), who chaired a Feb. 5 hearing questioning the health department’s decision to entrust 6 percent of its vaccine supply to an organization run by recent college graduates who had little medical training.

The evolving crisis highlights the challenges facing cities and states, each charged with creating its own vaccine delivery system and facing criticism for confusing registration requirements, hours-long waits and failure to administer vaccine doses in high enough numbers to communities of color.

Philadelphia has stood out as one of a handful of cities receiving doses directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and for its willingness to create unconventional partnerships — in this case, pairing Silicon Valley-style strategies with its public health program.


Days before the relationship collapsed, James Garrow, the public health department’s communications director, described the leeway the health department had given Philly Fighting Covid:

“It’s their clinic. They run it as they see fit. We are there to keep an eye on our vaccine to make sure it’s used properly.

”
In an email to The Washington Post two days before the arrangement fractured, Philly Fighting Covid’s founder and CEO, Andrei Doroshin, 22, pledged that preregistration data collected on 100,000 Philadelphia residents would not be sold.


“Anyone who pre-commits on our platforms and had entered their personal information into our systems can feel confident that their data is private, safe and will not be sold to a third-party company,” Doroshin wrote.


Becoming a for-profit entity was necessary to expand, Doroshin told The Post, explaining that he took advice from health-care lawyers.


“Creating new sites is very expensive,” he said. “It cannot just be funded by donations.”

In a statement that has since been removed from the start-up’s website, Doroshin says that instead of defending against “Philly’s dirty power politics,” his organization should be busy “vaccinating thousands of people.

”
But soon after ties were severed, another controversy erupted. While some providers nationally were winning praise for finding inventive ways to administer soon-to-expire doses, Doroshin took things a step further: After a participating nurse tweeted that Doroshin “took home a ziplock bag-full of vaccines,” the CEO acknowledged on air that he had administered leftover doses to four friends.


The fallout has been rapid. The acting deputy health commissioner, Caroline C. Johnson, an infectious-disease expert with extensive immunization experience, resigned over communications with Philly Fighting Covid and another testing partner, the Black Doctors Covid-19 Consortium. Those communications appeared to give the groups a head start in winning the city’s burgeoning vaccine business. The city’s inspector general launched an investigation, promising a public report. And some state legislators called for the city’s health commissioner, Thomas A. Farley, to step down.
Farley declined to comment, citing the inspector general’s ongoing investigation.


On Feb. 5, the city council grilled Farley for three hours, calling on him to explain the relationship with Philly Fighting Covid. Farley, who described the partnership as a “mistake,” faced broader questions about why Black residents have been underrepresented among the rolls of vaccine recipients — especially in a city in which people of color are the majority.

Farley acknowledged that “the people who force their way to the front of the line . . . often are people who are White.” While Farley did not have data to show that was the case at the Philly Fighting Covid clinics, sign-up links had been shared, allowing some people to jump ahead of their priority status.
Witnesses at the city council hearing evoked the Tuskegee Study, in which Black men with syphilis were deprived of treatment without their knowledge, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The meeting vaulted into the charged territory of race, laying bare the historical and contemporary grievances that plague public health nationwide — and now the coronavirus vaccine rollout.


“When you look at those past government failures, when you’re African American, you see a pattern,” Bass said in an interview. “It’s a form of disenfranchisement, and it’s not just from guys that stormed the Capitol. It’s from the government itself.

”
Early in the pandemic, the health department sought to ensure coronavirus testing reached underserved and hard-hit populations by forging relationships with organizations presenting innovative approaches and with roots in communities of color and neighborhoods where many residents do not speak English. Once the vaccine became available, the department built on those relationships to administer shots.


Philly Fighting Covid, which Doroshin launched as a nonprofit last spring to make face shields using 3-D printing, had already evolved once to provide free testing centers, which were used by more than 15,000 people. The group won a $194,000 contract with the city for testing.

Well before vaccines were available, Doroshin said he and his team started figuring out how to get shots to recipients with as little human contact as possible.
“We had six months’ lead time,” said Doroshin, who said he and two friends plowed about $300,000 of their own money into Philly Fighting Covid. He declined to describe how he acquired the funds, apart from saying on different occasions that he has worked since he was 14 and that he has profited from “cryptocurrency.”


“It wasn’t that [the health department was] partnering with us to build a solution,” said Karol Osipowicz, a cognitive neuroscientist and Doroshin’s mentor first at Drexel University and then at Philly Fighting Covid, where he served as chief science officer.

“We gave it to them.”


“They trusted us,” said Victoria Milano, 23, site manager at the vaccination clinic.
Just before Christmas, as coronavirus cases surged and hospitals were tied up vaccinating their front-line workers, Philly Fighting Covid and health department officials had a meeting.
In mid-January, as Philly Fighting Covid was winning accolades for its first clinics, Johnson, then acting deputy health commissioner, recalled her reaction to the group’s the-sky’s-the-limit proposals.


“We are always suspicious, but we didn’t have much to lose,” she said, describing how she was providing some medical oversight and committed a staff member to watch over the vaccine. “It wasn’t our good name that would go up in flames.

”
By lowering barriers to access, Philly Fighting Covid would allow the health department to focus resources on members of high-risk groups who may not have cars or proper documentation, said Johnson, who was also collaborating with the Black Doctors Consortium.

Johnson said she had seen the benefits of working with outside groups. Philly Fighting Covid and other grass-roots partnerships reminded her of the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when citizens founded their own response organizations, many of which gained national prominence.


If Philly Fighting Covid expanded, Johnson said, the health department would probably “go along for the ride.”
Johnson said she believed the group would apply for city funding and start billing insurers.


“We are silent on that,” she said, referring to billing.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the payment rate to administer single-dose vaccines is $28.39. For multiple doses, the initial rate is $16.94, with $28.39 for the final shot.
Following her resignation, Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.


The health department did not sign a contract for vaccinations with Philly Fighting Covid as it had done for testing. Instead, as is the case with more than 100 nonprofit and for-profit vaccine providers in the city, the group had to meet requirements set out by the CDC.


On five days in January, Philly Fighting Covid transformed the yawning hall of the Pennsylvania Convention Center — better known as the backdrop for the city’s famous flower show — into an immunization assembly line, delivering about 140 shots an hour, almost 1,500 a day.


“We’re treating it like a factory, with quality control and safety checks,” Doroshin said after the first two days of vaccinations, explaining that he had his eyes on a stadium where he believed they could vaccinate “20,000 a day without breaking a sweat.”

Buoyed by their early success, Doroshin said he was looking into taking the show on the road — perhaps to another major city, such as Los Angeles or D.C., or to a purpose-built site, possibly with the help of out-of-work concert roadies.

The opportunity to innovate — and far faster than government — had appealed to City Council member Mark F. Squilla (D) from the moment he met the team of young entrepreneurs with degrees in engineering and neuroscience and expertise in data management. Now, he was excited to see what was happening at the Convention Center, which sits in his district.


“You go in. Boom! Boom! Boom! And you’re done,” he said, even as he anticipated some criticism of the swashbuckling approach. “Are people going to push back? Say there’s something we didn’t do right?” he said before the controversy blew up. “I’m sure that’s going to be the case. But we can’t wait until it’s perfect.

”
Things didn’t go perfectly. Internet connectivity wasn’t reliable at the start, resulting in the loss of data on the race and ethnicity of some vaccine recipients. The sign-up link intended largely for health-care workers who don’t work in hospitals — many of whom are people of color — was shared more widely so that real estate developers and financiers were among the people speeding through, some apparently unaware they had skipped ahead.


Doroshin said at the time that Philly Fighting Covid was tightening access and remained “committed to making this process as equitable and accessible as possible.

”
Garrow acknowledged that officials were concerned but said that the problem also exists in pharmacies and that sticking too rigidly to priority groups can slow the process or leave vaccine doses unused.


“We know that if someone is hellbent on jumping the line and don’t care that they are, there’s not much we can do about it,” Garrow said.

What’s more, the “boom, boom, boom” approach wasn’t for everybody in this multiracial city, according to Ala Stanford, a surgeon who founded the Black Doctors Consortium, which is increasing the number of vaccinations it provides in partnership with the health department. The community-based campaign draws on principles Stanford developed driving door to door and church to church to deliver coronavirus tests to underserved neighborhoods.


“We don’t rush them,” Stanford said in a January interview.
Stanford, who has a private practice in the Philadelphia suburbs, said clinicians make themselves available to answer questions, especially in communities with a historic distrust of public health measures.


“Grandma needs you to take time,” she said. “Someone needs to look after kids while we take care of mom.”

Across the country, public health departments are struggling to overcome vaccine hesitancy and increase access to clinics in communities of color. Recently released CDC data shows that in the first month of vaccinations, just 5.4 percent of the 13 million people vaccinated were Black, although Black people account for about 16 percent of health-care workers. But the data is limited, with information on race and ethnicity missing in about half of the cases.


In Philadelphia, which is more than 40 percent Black, African Americans account for about 18 percent of the people vaccinated so far, according to health department data.
Stanford said that to reach hesitant people, she relies heavily on word of mouth and trust born out of personal connections, rather than what she referred to as Philly Fighting Covid’s “tech aspect.”

For the men and women who came to the convention center, getting a vaccine required an electronic appointment and about half an hour of free time. After they passed through security and checked in, it took a matter of minutes to be waved through to one of eight private vaccination pods, where nurses, each with an assistant, asked brief screening questions and used pre-filled syringes to give the injections.


People moved in a clockwise direction — by design, according to Osipowicz, the group’s chief science officer.

The circular movement reflects what behavioral scientists have identified as the natural herding behavior of human beings, he said.
Each step had been mapped out to the second, said chief operating officer Jesse McGrath, who designed the system and believes it remains superior to almost any in the country.


Once vaccinated, for example, dozens of people waited on chairs several feet apart to be monitored for side effects, with emergency medical staff on hand in case anyone needed to go to a hospital. That allowed a far more efficient flow of people than in pharmacies and small clinics, where limited space for observation restricts the number of shots that can be given.


And if there was any doubt this was set up by young people, the newly vaccinated left by way of a selfie station. (“My first!” exclaimed one judge, as he snapped a celebratory shot.)


The clinics attracted immediate attention.


Milano, the site manager, received an email from a member of a professional organization for roadies, who erect and dismantle small cities every day to put on festivals around the world.

“We are logistics geniuses,” read the email, from a representative for the bands Mumford & Sons and the 1975. “The work you are doing mirrors what we do on the road, and the arenas and stadiums across the country are our offices. It just seems like the perfect match to get out-of-work roadies involved somehow.

”
The nine-month-old start-up was also coming under scrutiny.
Asked about the business model in the days before the breakup, Doroshin described Philly Fighting Covid as a “company,” then as a “501” or nonprofit.


In a Jan. 23 email, Doroshin wrote that “Philly Fighting Covid switched to for-profit LLC status in early December.”

The new company, Vax Populi, would eventually bill insurance companies for vaccine administration, Doroshin said, although recipients would not incur out-of-pocket costs.
At the time, the Philly Fighting Covid website described it as “a 501(c) 4 not-for-profit organization.”


A day later, Doroshin wrote again, this time offering “an explanation and an apology” and saying the company was “transitioning” to for-profit status and would update the public once the process was complete.


“The reality is that I, like many of us, am learning as I go,” he wrote. “The learning curve is maybe a bit steeper for a young guy like me.

”
On Jan. 25, after the Philadelphia Inquirer raised concerns with Farley, the health department sent out a statement, terminating the partnership with Philly Fighting Covid “effective immediately.” While the department works with many for-profits — including pharmacies and hospitals — to provide doses of the vaccine, Garrow wrote that Philly Fighting Covid had altered its status without telling city authorities.

“As part of this change, PFC updated its data policy in a way that could allow the organization to sell data collected through PFC’s preregistration site,” the statement said, also criticizing the group for abruptly stopping its testing program.


Doroshin said in a statement that the data policy contained “problematic” language, and “as soon as we became aware of it, we removed it.

”
The bigger problem was that the partnership with Philly Fighting Covid had been based on trust, Garrow said, faulting the group for its lack of transparency.
Doroshin remained bullish on the methodology, even on the day the health department cut ties.


“This is what other efforts look like if you need a comparison to our operation,” he wrote in a text to The Post, attaching an article about a state-run vaccine rollout in neighboring Delaware where residents complained of “nightmarish” waits.


On that point, the health department agrees.
“Philly Fighting Covid demonstrated they can get people through a site and get them vaccine,” Garrow said. “Most people who came through came away super impressed.”


Now, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D) is seeking to regain residents’ trust by overseeing the opening of a new mass vaccination clinic at the same site. This time, it’s run by the health department.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[pilight]

Got my second dose today!

_________________
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[jammerbirdi]

[FrozenLVFan]

[jammerbirdi]

mrs jammer got her second dose back in January. Incredibly happy for that. But unless somehow something breaks in terms of the availability of vaccine I honestly can’t see this happening for me for another couple of months. Very happy for the mrs obviously but this disparity of vulnerabilities has definitely created an interesting and certainly unprecedented dynamic here in jammerworld.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[PUmatty]

I somehow managed to find an appointment and got my first shot yesterday.

Not ashamed to admit I cried when I got the appointment set up.

[tfan]

I had my first shot Saturday. The site had more injection stations with Pfizer than Moderna and I was directed to a Pfizer station, which is what I wanted since the difference I have heard (effectivity is very slightly different and one week difference in time between shots) is that Moderna was less effective for older people. But it is supposed to be a three week duration between Pfizer shots and they scheduled me for 5 and a half weeks later. I guess they are not saving half the doses for follow-up shots. I did a search and found some doctor in Wisconsin saying it was OK to wait up to 6 weeks, but I would still prefer to have gotten what was prescribed. My online appointment for next time even says: COVID 19 Booster (Pfizer 21 day).

As when I had a colonoscopy in November, none of the medical personnel were wearing N95 masks, just surgical masks. And both times I was given a surgical mask to wear. This time it was in-addition-to, last time it was in place of. I read an article the other day about USA companies who are either startups or created a new product line and made N95 masks for the first time in 2020, and now can't sell them and are about to go under. Something about not being able to get into the supply chain that hospitals use. And Amazon and eBay still have a policy that N95 masks cannot be sold to individuals. It seems surreal that a country reeling from COVID-19 with a shortage of N95 masks would also have companies with 30 million they can't sell.

None of the medical personnel seemed concerned about maintaining 6 feet distance. I asked one if they had all been vaccinated and she said that everyone who wanted one had gotten one. Hard to believe that some medical people would turn it down. It was discomforting to be in areas where it was impossible to move around without going within 6 feet of people. They were using basement hallways for waiting and check-in/check-out. But I did have three masks on by then - surgical, cotton and KN95.

My arm was only the slightest bit sore and I haven't had any other symptoms. I would like to have had them since they talk about them as a good thing - your body is reacting to the vaccine like it should. But I hear that the second shot is the one that produces more post-vaccine symptoms.

[jammerbirdi]

Man, tfan. Sounds like vaccine side effects were the least harrowing of concerns for you. Makes those drive through sports stadium venues sound very attractive.

mrs jammer was terrified of the vaccine. But she survived the experience with just a sore arm for a couple of days after the first shot and after anticipating full on anaphylactic shock for the second one I don’t think she even had a sore arm.

So anything can happen and tomorrow’s not guaranteed and all that but it seems that one thing is not going to happen and that is that we might lose the mrs jammer to coronavirus anytime soon.

Happy to hear you guys are getting your vaccines. I wonder if Reb got his.

_________________
Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[FrozenLVFan]

I got my first vaccine (Pfizer) yesterday. Here you get whatever they have to give you, no patient choice. Given the numbers that Israel is releasing over the Pfizer efficacy there, I was perfectly happy. I had this done at the National Guard Armory, manned mostly by Guard personnel and some local EMS people. It was a drive-though procedure which was very well organized. Everyone was preregistered with an appt time, and I had to complete an online medical questionnaire beforehand. The staff had on masks and face shields, and the vaxees had to wear masks.

The biggest problem was that it was ten degrees here, I'm sure the staff's hands were freezing, and everyone had to divest themselves of about a dozen layers of clothing, requiring contortionist ability in the car, to expose their arms. Anyone with a history of relevant allergies had to go park in a monitored area for 15-30 minutes before leaving. They gave me an appt card to return for my second dose in 4 weeks. I have some mild arm soreness but am otherwise fine.