outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

yeah p much. especially when it's David Motherfucking Brooks blaming teachers for ruining black and brown kids' lives; lives he has shown 0 evidence of ever caring about.

He’s probably just feeling cooped up with his child bride and wants to pack her back up to Choate or whatever

Really inspired by politicians and others getting worked up about schoolkids's mental health, I'm looking forward to them getting worked up about other stuff that's injurious to mental health like poverty, precarious work, gross economic inequality and scapegoating public employees.

Exactly.

Pretty sure that everyone who is making a super-well-reasoned argument for re-opening schools also happens to have kids under 8 in their house.

Again, I don't really understand how what I wrote is wrong. Just a more pithy take than some of the more informed and nuanced posts below, which I thank you for.

Also, Euler otm-- the US has reserved enough doses to vaccinate every adult several times, and meanwhile, they're saying that many parts of the Global South won't be fully vaccinated until 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/upshot/schools-reopening-coronavirus-experts.html

It's certainly possible that every single one of these experts has children under 8 I guess...

shame on you all for not providing childcare for man alive's kids

oh fuck off. I have childcare.

of course you do

Here's a modest proposal. In order to combat against the global injustice of vaccine distribution, countries outside of the Global South can contribute their vaccines to countries in the Global South.

The USA & Canada can contribute all of their remaining doses & all its forthcoming doses to Mexico, Central America, and South America, until those countries are fully vaccinated. Then the USA & Canada may vaccinate its own residents.

The UK will do the same for India, Pakistan & Bangladesh.

France will do the same for Algeria, Tunisia & Morocco.

The rest of the EU will do the same for the rest of Africa.

And so on.

This is a way to live up to one's supposed commitments to global justice in a way that actually has costs.

You can each ask yourselves if you favor the continued injustice in favor of you & your fellow national residents, or if you want to fight against global injustice.

Unfortunately, whether we as individuals favor that injustice or not— I don't think many of us do, in theory— that injustice will continue to go on unabated. We can make our beliefs known, but against the machinations of global capital, extraction economies, colonization, and imperialism, there's not so much that we can do except put individual pressure on governments and pharmaceutical companies. And there, well, good luck.

And tbh, to put the onus on individuals within first world countries is pretty typical blame-shifting. Our governments and their corporate partners have the resources to do the right thing, and we can put pressure on them to do so, but if they don't, that isn't on us as individuals.

I agree with all of that. I didn't mean to put the onus on individuals, but rather on governments & their corporate partners, as you say. As you say, though, we as individuals could organize to push our respective governments to do this. The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments. Of course there is no reason to be optimistic that this would work, but it's at least an exercise to gauge our individual commitments to global justice. If not now, when?

i like it! :)

I can just imagine the reaction in the UK if the government said it was sending vaccines to India. Oy!

They'd probably bring up Joe Root's failed appeal against Rahane in the cricket the other day.

But also, at some point there needs to be a non-shifting standard for what is "safe."

"The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments."

Private pharma has been a disaster in terms of developing this vaccine so that we all get it. The profit motive seems to have ensured a scarcity of supply. This problem is not one of administration.

Hopefully we can do better during the climate crisis.

CDC reports nearly 4.5 million doses administered over the last two days. Each day was a single day record on its own.

This is major progress. https://t.co/QIDdUjrw5o

— Tim Fullerton (@TimFullerton) February 14, 2021

of course, but starting to have that conversation before even 10% of the US population is vaccinated feels reckless. Let's talk about it when we tick up to 65-70%? It's not going to require a lot of effort to make the shift.
― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Sunday, February 14, 2021 11:33 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But why set the bar that high to reopen school? Why not do it, e.g., when most school staff and elderly are vaccinated, which will be much sooner? We might not even be at 65-70% in the fall. I think you're underestimating how significant these spans of time are in, e.g., the life of a 6-year-old, vs your own life.

my partner teaches at a charter school in brooklyn with maybe 60 teachers and staff and only something like five of them have gotten their first shots. the school isn't and can't organize shots so everyone's at the mercy of local dispersal and - as much of the staff lives in places where their local hospitals aren't getting vaccines - most of the teachers are shit out of luck. they've had two covid scares over the two weeks PREPARING to go to hybrid and ended up canceling due to that.

If it's easier for you to see that note as "talk about it when the teaching staff's vaccination rate ticks up to 65-70%"

oof. my thoughts are with your partner and her colleagues, forks.

gotcha. I think that will probably change quickly - H got her appointment canceled the first time around but then got a new one pretty quickly, and that's what I'm hearing from others.

i hope you're right! i'm just saying until that changes in a trackable way, asking why we can't go back to normal just isn't an okay question.

my partner DID get her first shot two weeks ago but she's very much in the minority... and we spent all day today dealing with a concerning allergic reaction that she developed today two weeks afterwards. Just got back from the clinic with some prednisone.

two weeks later? damn

yeah. since we're talking about it - and she doesn't seem to mind me sharing - she had regular soreness on the two days after. A week later she developed some variation of "COVID arm": an itchy rash, a raised lump over the injection area, general discoloration. She saw the doctor about that and they gave her a week's worth of amoxycillin. That stopped on Friday and she's been feeling "off" since Saturday, then woke up with a coating of hives all over her body and her face swollen and ruddy. No impeded breathing or itching or pain but it was still concerning. Doctor gave her cortisone today and told her to stay on benadryl until it passed. She'll try her GP on Wednesday or sooner if it gets worse.

She'll still be getting the second dose but this certainly is giving her pause.

fwiw MA: i'm real sensitive to how much damage this time off is creating for students. my partner is doing a lot of admin work in addition to teaching and a significant portion of her student body is either failing or has just disappeared. It's horrible!

New variant drops:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/32-cases-of-latest-covid-variant-of-concern-found-in-uk

would have been nice if the article explained wtf "surge testing" is

4 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus after receiving both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, health officials said. https://t.co/bZKxw3POS6

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 14, 2021

These headlines are so shitty and unhelpful.

for anyone who didn't click through, the second para there is:

There are two cases each in Yamhill and Lane counties, the state's Health Authority said in a series of tweets on Friday. The cases are either mild or asymptomatic.

Yeah, that's why I'm so annoyed by this type of headline. The important part isn't getting shared, just the fear-mongering headline.

Which I suppose I did the same, but in an attempt to call it out.

I'm getting my first vaccination shot on thursday. I don't really understand how - I'm 45, I live in Tottenham, I'm not a key worker and aside from a heart murmur at birth that has never really caused an issue since, I'm relatively healthy. Fully expecting to be told at the vaccination centre that there's been a mistake and I should go home...

The murmur might be it? I had mine last week on the basis that having cancer as a 4yo put me in the clinically vulnerable category. Which seems weird considering my asthmatic pals my age haven’t come up in the queue yet.

i think younger people with underlying conditions are the next group (along with over 65s)

yeah, here's the list (from Wales)

1) People living in a care home for older adults and their staff carers
2) All those 80 years of age and older and frontline health and social care workers
3) All those 75 years of age and over
4) All those 70 years of age and over and people who are extremely clinically vulnerable (shielders)
5) All those 65 years of age and over
6) All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions
7) All those 60 years of age and over
8) All those 55 years of age and over
9) All those 50 years of age and over

13m in the queue before me (which doesn't seem to have changed since last week)

(might be 5 and 6 next, might be 6 and 7. and there will be slight regional differences, i guess)

I also have a heart murmur that hasn't affected me, I do still have it though as doctors have commented on it. I don't think that's it.

13m in the queue before me (which doesn't seem to have changed since last week)

― koogs, Tuesday, 16 February 2021 08:49 (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

UK has a couple of weeks of reduced supply due to (iirc) work taking place to increase AZ production. Second dosage window will also begin to slow that queue. Hope you brought a crossword.

or i could've misremembered...

> koogs wrote this on thread outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc) on board I Love Everything on 09-Feb-2021
> 15m people in front of me in the uk queue, but that's down from 17m last week

(it's a range, and i can't remember which end of the range i used)

anyway, 19th april it's quoting, as earliest date

Also your GP could’ve gone through everyone on their books ahead of you, which would explain why some of us who attended GPs to have ours done got in sooner?

I am in Camden and Islington health group, which seems to be pelting through their vaccinations.

I'm getting my first vaccination shot on thursday. I don't really understand how - I'm 45, I live in Tottenham, I'm not a key worker and aside from a heart murmur at birth that has never really caused an issue since, I'm relatively healthy. Fully expecting to be told at the vaccination centre that there's been a mistake and I should go home...

In late 2019 (when the world was still relatively normal) my GPs kept texting me saying "you still haven't booked your flu jab", which puzzled me as I was 46, with no obvious health issues and had never had a flu jab. In the end I booked a slot on a Saturday morning so they would stop hassling me. When I went into the doctor's room he took one look at me and asked why I was having a flu jab. I said I had no idea, but his surgery kept telling me to get one. He looked on the system and it said that I was down as a carer. I told him I wasn't - he gave me the jab and said he'd update the data. If I hadn't done this, presumably I'd have been offered a COVID jab by now as a carer? It's possible some kind of mix up like this has happened for you.

my GP texted me this afternoon asking me if I'm still a carer (they should already know I am not, might as well have asked me if my wife's still dead) - but that was so they could offer me carer counselling services (thanks a bunch for your swift response, it's only been 2 years since I registered) not a covid vaccine.

good piece

https://newrepublic.com/article/161375/west-virginia-covid-vaccine-new-york-california

manhattan federal courthouses otm

https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/manhattan-federal-court-buildings-now-require-two-masks/

(the headline is bad. they require a (K)N95 or two masks. but don't wear two masks. wear a (K)N95.)

Which (K)N95 mask maker do you work for so I can make sure to order the right ones for your kickback, caek?

Nature on the future of life with covid.
https://media.nature.com/lw800/magazine-assets/d41586-021-00396-2/d41586-021-00396-2_18861336.png

you still haven't booked your flu jab", which puzzled me as I was 46, with no obvious health issues and had never had a flu jab.

Hopefully this will be less puzzling to both you and your GP next season!

Human Challenge study has gotten ethics approval:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/worlds-first-coronavirus-human-challenge-study-receives-ethics-approval-in-the-uk

jesus