Dang I am so sorry to hear this. It's difficult enough when you are able to somewhat get a child to understand. Sending positive thoughts to you and your family.

 

My 20 year-old son doesn't live with us, so the rest of my family is not at risk from him.

He lives in a group home with other people who are in a similar place on the autism spectrum.

 

He's not my nephew, he's my son. But thank you!

 

Thank you. I'm just happy and blessed to have a grandmother who survived it against all odds, and a son who's young enough and healthy enough that it hasn't affected him in any way.... that we know of. I know a lot of other people who've lost family members to this and it's very sad. Those stories could have been my story.

 

I will keep positive thoughts for your son.


The truth is out there

 

Florida vs. New York, from the perspective of an NY Post reporter:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/covid-florida-ny-karol-markowicz

 

That’s nice. I have a good friend that lives in “southern” Florida and she’d give you a whole different story and have a few words to share with that reporter that wouldn’t be printable, lol.

 

I take it you're referring to Florida, NY where people are under Cuomo's regulations.

http://www.villageoffloridany.org/

 

No, that would be you.

 

Let's hope the Chinese don't start tinkering with this one:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210106-nipah-virus-how-bats-could-cause-the-next-pandemic

 

Sounds deadly enough without any tinkering. I think wearing masks in public is going to be a permanent change in the way we go forth. Hopefully none of these emerging virus will take off but who expected SARS-CoV-2 to spread like it did.

 

It's deadly, but not apparently very infectious. My worry is that they alter a virus (like they probably did this time) to make it MORE infectious to man. Can you imagine half the world's population dying? The wars and famine that would follow? I know worrying about the sky falling isn't productive, but one can't help but be concerned...

 

Governor Kate Brown tweeted this 6 hours ago

Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses.


The truth is out there

 

That really is disturbing. Gov. Andy announced today that instead of receiving 300,000 doses per week that was promised from the federal government, we'll only be getting 250,000. I really hope Biden uses the Defense Protection Act to ramp up production. I read that by March the more easily spread mutant virus that ravaged the UK will be the predominate strain here. We need more vaccine. ASAP.

 

Here’s a follow up story to @Sharpie61 ‘s post:

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ccine-reserve-trump-admin-already-shipped-it/


Amid the chaos, the Trump administration isn’t offering clear answers on what happened or why officials misled states. According to the Post’s reporting, the Trump administration stopped reserving second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year, and the last reserves of Moderna’s vaccine supply were shipped out over the past weekend.

There was no stockpile to release on Tuesday when the Health and Human Services secretary said at a press briefing that "because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve.”

In a Twitter thread Friday morning, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown she was “shocked and appalled” to learn that the state “will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses.”

“[T]hat they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences… This is a deception on a national scale,” Gov. Brown went on.

And there’s more. Azar also said on Tuesday that they would change how they calculated each state’s allotment, taking into account the pace of vaccination in each state. Fast states would get additional doses while slow states would be punished with fewer doses. Azar said the change would take effect in two weeks. However, as the Post notes, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont on Thursday tweeted that federal officials had notified the state that it would receive an additional 50,000 doses next week “as a reward for being among the fastest states.”

 

I know that's disappointing, but remember, 6 months ago the common wisdom was that we wouldn't have a vaccine out for several *years*. The fact that we have a vaccine at all at this point is a tremendous feat of science, and the fact that people are already being vaccinated is a testament to human will. I don't think this is a "glass is half empty" situation, but a "glass is 95% full" one.

 

Some doctor in Calif. wants to halt vaccine distribution because a few people had an allergic reaction to it. Some people will ALWAYS have reactions to things. A few might even die from it. If it saves lives overall, it's worth it to society. I'm surprised an epidemiologist wouldn't think like that.

As an aside, they've been giving out the Pfizer vaccine here, and people seemed to be pretty much trouble-free with the first dose, but there have probably been a good half-dozen people either fainting or becoming woozy to the point of having a response team called when receiving the second dose. Also, *multiple* people have gotten feverish, etc., to the point of needing a day or two off after the second dose, so not exactly symptom-free. Still worth it, though, IMO.


"Dr. Erica S. Pan, the California epidemiologist, issued a statement Sunday recommending a pause in the distribution of a specific lot of Moderna vaccine after "fewer than 10 individuals required medical attention over the span of 24 hours."

She said the Moderna Lot 041L20A is in question, but she insisted that she called for the pause "out of an extreme abundance of caution," according to Fox 11.

The report said that more than 330,000 doses from the lot have already been distributed throughout the state to 287 providers. Fox 5 San Diego reported that the California Department of Public Health said fewer than 10 people appeared to be experiencing "a possible severe allergic reaction during the standard observation period.""

https://www.foxnews.com/health/cali...-vaccine-lot-after-possible-allergic-reaction


And "yes", it is important to get a vaccine out there:

"
Los Angeles County this weekend surpassed 1 million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic and reported its first case of the more contagious variant that was initially discovered in the United Kingdom last year.

On Saturday, the county recorded more than 14,000 cases and some 253 deaths and 7,597 hospitalizations, statistics from the country’s department of public health show."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-strict-coronavirus-lockdowns-1-million-covid-cases