Pandemic Thread (CoronaVirus etc.)

[neanderthal]

There aren't any fucking legit reasons to not wear a mask. Especially if it's a simple medical/surgical mask, the super-lite ones.

If it fucks up your beard, too bad. Shave it off or modify it.
If you have difficulty breathing because you're a smoker or severely out of shape, too bad. You can still breathe through them for minutes at a given time.
If you have an actual medical breathing issue, like COPD or something (or, even worse, YOU USE AN OXYGEN TANK), then you're an EXTREME Covid risk and you probably shouldn't be out in public, regardless of mask.

I wear one, with brief breaks, for an entire 8 hour shift. I never ONCE have "difficulty breathing." Like, even close to it.

We have a customer here who has been spoken to numerous times for coming in without a mask, literally because "it messes up my beard, and no one messes up my beard!" Vain asshole.

I'm lucky because i'm in management and have the capacity/ ability to throw people out if need be. Most have opted to simply put their mask on properly, (now that wasn't so hard was it?) others have threatened to sue me, other have walked out stating they're never going to shop at Costco again "here let me walk you to membership and put you at the front of the line so you don't have to wait to cancel your membership..." the usual threats, etc.

I'm lucky that our management will back us on evicting people. Swear at my employees and you're getting 86'd. And when it comes to masks, i'm taking my employees side before I even listen to anything you have to say.

[neanderthal]

One of our local univerisities, Cal State LA, just announced Wed. night that they had tons of extra J&J vaccine and that walk-ins were welcome with no eligibility check. That made it to the LA Times and all over social media, and Thursday morning they were slammed and apparently started turning people away, but said if you have an appointment, you're fine. They also said they aren't doing eligibility checks on those appointments, they just want that to regulate how many people are there. I believe the quote was something like "If you have to say you're a teacher or something to register, don't worry, we won't check." So I did that, now I'm booked for tomorrow afternoon. Here's hoping they don't check.

I think there are lot of people who are eligible, but don't have papers who aren't coming forward to get jabbed because "la migra." Census shows us how many people live in X county/ town/ etc. But since they want your ID I think it ends up with a lot of people just skipping the whole process.

I could be wrong of course. At some point they need to just say come with your ID, ANY ID, and you can get a shot.

[neanderthal]

I'm scheduled for my second shot next week. Pfizer. I had to drive two hours to Tyler, east Texas, to find the Pfizer shot. Everybody nearby that had the Pfizer vaccine was fully booked, and I wasn't interested in any of the other ones.

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, there are big problems both on the "la migra" front and on the expecting people to be good at tech front. I can say that the neighborhood I live in apparently is 55%(!!) vaccinated. I assume it's because the neighborhood skews older so they've been eligible longer. There's also been a concerted effort to try to help people who are not technically savvy get registered for shots, but who knows how well that goes. The website was overall really good and really snappy even under load, so it seems better than your average local government site. On the downside, it won't allow my home address because there's a fraction in it. The curse of living in a place that's "nnnn 1/2". Ended up putting in "nnnn and a half".

I do wonder how the worry about being picked up by immigration affects things. I know ideally we don't care if you're here with all the right documentation or not - you're a human and can both get sick and get others sick, you should be vaccinated. The place I was registered with (and assuming things go smoothly tomorrow then I can cancel my other appointment) was in the middle of Compton and they were not asking for much information at all. St. John's out here appears to run a number of "wellness" centers throughout the region that don't ask many questions if you want to register, and from what I gather some churches are also serving as vaccination sites.

I also know that California has a "health equity" metric which is part of the re-opening for counties that's supposed to make sure that it's not just affluent parts of the county that are doing well. I don't know many details, though.

[Crazed_Insanity]

When there’s a scarcity of supply, it’s just unreasonable to expect there will be equity. They really should’ve been more targeted with the vaccine effort.

Starting with the seniors of course. Besides nursing homes, social security or IRS or DMV all know about how old we are and where we live. Should just automatically make appoints and track them down based on birthday.

And then focus on hotspot cities! Send more vaccines to pharmacies to those cities and just vaccinate the entire city and maybe even neighboring cities and then expand the effort outward.

Only if we have excessive supply, then we open up online and let people register for them...

Is Santa Monica really a hotspot? There’s really no need to vaccinate most of the population there other than that neighborhood being old and rich too? For those who could afford to WFH, we probably are the ones who need it the least?

I think the current way just isn’t very effective..., so yeah, we just have to be patient. Frustration won’t help us get the vaccines any faster.

What I hate to see is politicians already planning to open up on certain dates... why not just set conditions for reopening? If we have new cases drop to a certain level or reached a certain level of vaccinations, then we can open up... rather than just throwing out dates...

[SportWagon]

I notice with our province-wide lockdown, Doug Ford made sure to keep "Marine and Pleasurecraft dealerships" open. Wouldn't want to piss off any of his rich buddy boat owners.

But Walmart won't sell you pens or paper.

[Tom Servo]

Is Santa Monica really a hotspot? There’s really no need to vaccinate most of the population there other than that neighborhood being old and rich too? For those who could afford to WFH, we probably are the ones who need it the least?

It's not really, but I also don't live in Santa Monica. I was looking at Century City, Cheviot Hills, and Rancho Park (I live kinda on the border of all three). It's definitely affluent. I have no idea how it compares in vaccination rates to other neighborhoods that skew older, I wasn't bothering to do a comparison.

I think the current way just isn’t very effective..., so yeah, we just have to be patient. Frustration won’t help us get the vaccines any faster.

What I hate to see is politicians already planning to open up on certain dates... why not just set conditions for reopening? If we have new cases drop to a certain level or reached a certain level of vaccinations, then we can open up... rather than just throwing out dates...

I actually think it's been very effective. We have over 30% of the county population with at least one shot. Don't forget, a few months ago, we were on pace to have everyone vaccinated in *10 years*. Now, at the pace we're going, it'd be done by the fall. It's also effective if *anyone*, deserving by whatever criteria or not, gets a shot. Every single person that gets vaccinated gets us closer to herd immunity.

Also, we have set conditions for reopening. The idea to reopen the state is based on the current trends continuing. If they don't, and we start seeing a surge in May or something, those will all change. So far, though, the re-openings we've done so far don't appear to be heading for a surge, which is good news. That doesn't mean it won't happen, just means we haven't seen the move at least into the red tier starting one yet...it's been a month since that happened and all the trends are still going the right direction.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Regrading being effective, of course I don’t mean that we’re making too slow of progress given our limited supplies, but just saying we probably should fight this like firefighters fight fire. Rather than soaking the ground indiscriminately or equitably, we probably should have a more targeted approach? If a city has very low case rate, maybe we should try to build herd immunity in real hot spot cities and their surroundings by giving more vaccines in those areas?

Also, pharmacists really shouldn’t have to worry about having too much vaccines at times and not knowing what to do with them or feel bad about or be slammed by giving them to “ineligible” people in order to not waste it.

But anyway, no system will be perfect I guess.

As for the date part, I was a bit irked when Biden and Fauci were pushing to reopen schools, when there aren’t even vaccines available for kids. CA is also pushing to reopen. I know we’re not as bad as them red states, but I still feel that we are rushing things. Projections could change at a moments notice...

Anyway, maybe I’m just too out of touch and Americans are ready to put this behind us.

[Rare White Ape]

I can't wait for mine.

[Tom Servo]

But anyway, no system will be perfect I guess.

I'm reading a book on software architecture for work. It's pretty boring. However, there's one bit of wisdom in it that I think applies here, and while it seems obvious in hindsight, it was revelatory for me.

You are not looking to create the perfect system, the best system, or even the right system. That system does not exist. You are looking to create the least worst system. Everything has tradeoffs, and you're looking for the one that sucks the least.

People are going to refuse to take the vaccine. You can't just automatically sign people up because the vaccines have a shelf life and unfortunately we have a sizable part of the population that will not take them. That size will change as people see their friends getting it and not turning into sentient 5G towers, but you can't predict that.

The system right now works pretty well all things considered. It is likely the least worst.