The COVID-19 Discussion Thread (OTB)

[schlaugh]

Very good. Hopefully the pharmacy you chose will have the vaccine when it comes time for your appointment.

It should, but let’s see.

Publix said they would book appointments only if they had the vaccine in stock.

[grant hutchison]

Thanks for this information.

I second that.

You're welcome.

And I also wanted to post something unrelated, which bothers me a bit but I'm not sure if it should. It's about mortality statistics. The WHO lists how many people per million population have died of COVID-19, which is important. However, the problem with that statistic is that if you look at it for say a month or two months, it gives you an idea of how serious the problem is, but as the time span grows longer, is seems to lose its relevance. For example, if you look at "cumulative deaths from cancer," it might be larger than the population just because people have been dying from cancer for a long time.

The best statistic for mortality is a bit of a moving target and subject to debate. Nothing is ideal, for reasons such as the one you mention.
Early in the Current Unpleasantness, I seemed to have difficulty convincing some people that national per capita measures of cases and deaths were inappropriate comparators at that time, because the disease was largely confined to hotspots, so that the population of the entire country had scant relevance to the progress of the disease.
Now that community spread is everywhere, per capita measures become more useful, but still need caution flags, because demographics and the provision of acute hospital beds vary from country to country and within countries, so we're not comparing like with like.
And once a disease has a longterm presence in the community, you need to add in a time factor. So cancer mortalities, for instance, are quoted as deaths per capita per year. Because of the way Covid-19 has come in waves at different times in different locations, we don't have a time interval yet that allows useful comparisions, and the duration of the pandemic is short enough that cumulative per capita figures alone are not grossly misleading, given the other caveats that surround them. If the disease attains endemicity, then at some point it will become useful (as with, for instance, tuberculosis or measles) to quote mortality per capita per year, but we're not at that stage yet.

Grant Hutchison

[Trebuchet]

Hot diggity, Mrs. Schlaugh and I were able to book vaccine appointments this morning through one of the big grocery chains in the southern US (Publix). The company announced last week that they would open up vaccinations at 108 of their pharmacies with appointment booking through their web site starting at 06:00 today EST.

So I got up early and waited for the site to come up, which it did about 06:10.

Reminded me of trying to get tickets to a Rolling Stones concert.

Our provider is still in "Don't call us, we'll call you" mode.

Also, the USA will hit 400,000 deaths sometime today. And deniers are still denying.

[Trebuchet]

Nevermind, posted in wrong thread!

[Roger E. Moore]

Not good at sharing, but here goes. Am 65, have high blood pressure + diabetes II, etc. About 2 weeks ago caught a bad sore throat. Could not be seen by CVS nurse-prac until I had a COVID-19 test, for which my wife made an appointment using her smart phone, which I never learned to use. App't. came about a week later, went to the little CVS "cootie cottage" (which is which the staff calls that little testing building to the side), swabbed nose (ouch!), waited for result later same day. Result: no COVID-19. Test was free because I'd checked so many boxes as to make it mandatory.

But... by then the sore throat was gone. Presto! No need for app't or follow-up.

Remember: cootie cottage.