All adults can get a Covid vaccine booster in CA, not just those CDC listed
npr.org
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For boosters, I'm "too healthy" and do not qualify under even the most generous reading of the CDC guidance.
On office access, my office is still not open while the rest of my family has gone back to work/school. My spouse is higher risk and my kids only got their first shots last week.
So why the fuck am I, "the low risk one", stuck at home alone all day? Who the fuck am I protecting? What is the point anymore?
Maybe it would help to work from a cafe, or even outside on a picnic table. You can tether to your phone.
Of all the things I miss from pre-pandemic life, commuting in to the office is NOT one of them.
A debate wouldn't be productive but let's just say a cafe or park is not a long term solution.
That may just be a factor of my neighborhood, as many people that could re-locate, relocated to the same areas.
Given all the commercial space available as companies vacated, its just the free market in action.
What I'm finding is that people rejected one environment, but have not been given a framework to navigate an unstructured life. And like a familiar structure.
For some person having a ritual marking the beginning and the end of the workday can also be useful to balance work and personal life.
This doesn't help with missing the coworkers of course, but depending on what kind of job and where they live maybe something can be done about that too ?
If anything, not being in the office should give you more time to exercise in the way you want to.
I'm not looking for everyday, but one day a week would be nice to have more interactive discussions about the work that week etc.
Given a choice, she'd rather be the one that's home all day but that's sadly not to be.
1) A booster
2) A less restrictive workplace or perhaps an "essential" job.
3) A medical condition that precludes the vaccine.
That's the only thing I can work out - they are worried about one person getting sick and dying on campus from a back to work mandate - then what happens?
If this reasoning was logically sound then the same should apply for all of the existing fatal diseases listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics. Let's also not forget seasonal flu.
It's not about you.
I'm not convinced that boosters should be required, in order to go back to work. But, really, to answer your question: It's not about you. It's about the people you're around. At work.
Just like everything else with COVID -- the reality is that we have to account for the affect on everyone, and not just ourselves. Individually, we have extremely low odds of suffering the worst from COVID. Collectively, hospitals have overflowed, 700,000+ people in the States have died, and many are suffering long-term health consequences.
It's not about you. It's about everyone.
That being said: I'm in Canada, where boosters are still uncommon. I've never heard of any booster requirements, just to go into the office.
Also to clarify, I'm very much NOT arguing for forcing people to return to work or an in-person model of work. In fact, I quite like the "remote style" of work and would continue it even while in person. I just miss my commute and the scene.
When we were dealing with a completely and utterly unknown virus for which we had no information, no effective responses, no useful therapies or treatments, no real understanding of how it spread, no vaccines, and not even a clear idea of where community spread already happened, taking some extreme measures in response to a pandemic made sense.
We now have much better information than we had plus vaccines faster than we ever had vaccines in response to a new pandemic before plus the resilience of the COVID survivors, both known survivors and unknown survivors, and useful therapies and treatments.
The risk calculus has changed and so must the response shift from the public to the private: from government to individual.
I don't think it has shifted all that much in many countries. Yes, we have vaccines and better treatment. At the same time, vaccination rates aren't as high as they should be, plus we're dealing with a new variant that's more than twice as contagious and probably causes more severe cases. We're also dealing with waning immunity.
I wouldn't go as far as saying these factors offset each other completely, but last year, we've had all kinds of non-pharmaceutical interventions in place (masks, contact restrictions). Many countries have now abolished these.
I might buy the "individual choice" argument if negative effects were only felt by those choosing to not get vaccinated, not wear masks or similar, but once hospitals/ICUs overflow, other people suffer or die too.
This bears repeating every time this gets mentioned:
In the US, even before the pandemic, it was "standard" for ICUs at most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities to operate at 80-90% capacity[1] and for ERs to be overwhelmed by patients in bad flu years[2].
SARS-CoV-2 is basically already an endemic virus, just like influenza, and in the near-term it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that somehow miraculously unlike influenza, it won't have a material impact on hospital utilization rates.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...
[2] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
And beyond that, limits on individual activity have as much to do with collective regional transmission rate as they do with individual risk (though CA numbers look pretty decent recently).
Saying because people in my family didn't know about this, and would have wanted this relatively new information to help make a decision.
It's like getting pulled over and being able to say "trust me officer, I've got a license" and they believe you. Honesty and waiting your turn buys you nothing. Total incompetence.
- Your personal risk if you caught COVID
- The risk that you would spread COVID to other people if you caught COVID
- How productive you can be at home compared to your office/school
Your overall health only impacts the first one which is why you haven't been eligible for a booster. You still have just as much risk of spreading COVID as anyone else so unless you would be much more efficient at the office/school, it still makes sense to stay home.
For example, I would bet you would agree that your kids are getting more out of going to school rather than doing it remotely so that third variable shifts the overall equation to favor them returning to in person schooling.
Most likely your office is still WFH because nobody cares. Maybe nobody else wants to go back, maybe the company saves money, maybe someone high-up is still nervous about covid, probably a combination of those three.
It's similar to how at most places there are signs everywhere saying "please remain 6 feet apart", "due to covid ..." and people don't even follow these rules. Nobody bothered to take the signs down.
Ultimately if you're vaccinated, there's not really a point to masking or social distancing. The exception is masking in public areas like supermarkets and doctors' offices where sick people have to go and it's not a big deal. Or in areas where there is hospitals are overflowing and there are too many unvaccinated, like earlier in the year.
For people outside of Cali, the requirements are pretty broad and the forms themselves state that no one will ask which of the requirements apply to you. One entire class of requirements is for working in "high-risk" settings. The medical risks requirements list is a mile long, and includes a BMI of >25 kg/m^2, which includes upwards of 75% of Americans.
Now is prime time to be giving out boosters. With the holidays coming up, waning immunity from people who got their vaccines early, and another wave on the horizon, it makes complete sense to let as many people get boosters now, that way, they have maximum defence coming into the holidays.
We had secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca. We have yet to receive even one dose (We eventually received some from Serum Institute of India, COVAX, etc. but none from our main contract for 20 million doses with AstraZeneca corporation). We had 'secured' 38 million Johnson & Johnson doses. we received 300k, which turned out to be most likely contaminated and could not be used, so they were sent back. We have yet to receive a single usable dose of Johnson & Johnson out of the 38 million we have 'secured'.
Secured just means they have the budget and the contract in place. It doesn't say anything about delivery timeline.
(Of course if everyone takes this advice to the point where there stops being enough supply in your area, then that will probably trigger larger orders for doses, which maybe could impact other places that need them more.)
Some do, especially under the BMI cutoff, but how are they supposed to know that? They're otherwise healthy.
I don't qualify, but CA is giving me the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that I can just ignore the guidelines and go get one. No one will ask questions.
The messaging is incredibly bad and inconsistent.
It would have been different back in the early days, when there wasn't enough to go around. Then it made sense to restrict vaccines to the most vulnerable (elderly, people in poor health, people who are exposed a lot in the course of their employment...)
If there's plenty to go around, why not let people decide that for themselves?
Edit:
https://www.unicef.org/supply/covid-19-vaccine-market-dashbo...
20.9 billion doses have been secured.
If someone can't get a first or second dose, it's because their government is fucked up in some way, not because there is a shortage of the raw vaccines.
> Rich countries have about twice the population of low-income countries, yet they have received about 50 times as many Covid-19 vaccine doses [0]
[0] https://www.vox.com/22759707/covid-19-vaccine-gap-covax-rich...
I agree completely.
My understanding is that Booster shots are extremely effective at further preventing the spread of Covid. Indeed, the first result I get when searching "covid booster effectiveness" says that booster shots reduce infections by a factor of 11:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/09/studies-...
And if you don't get infected, you can't spread it. So there should be a big public health benefit to giving boosters to as many people as possible.
Am I misunderstanding something, or was the reasoning behind the recommendation stupid?
For me the reasoning is very simple: I want to maximize my chances if I get infected and minimize my chances for actually getting infected. Vaccines do that. And I definitely want to minimize the risk of me spreading this to somebody else that might actually die. For example, I know of one case of a person that got infected and then visited his parents. They died; he lives apparently. COVID sucks.
Those still arguing that it's all a big com-plot by Bill Gates or whatever, stop being selfish needle shy dicks, and get vaccinated already. Lets face it, men are pathetic weasels when it comes to needles and that's all there's to this. Been there done that. Get over it. People are dying. Don't be part of the problem and stop rationalizing the fact that you are scared of a tiny little needle.
"Allow patients to self-determine their risk of exposure" -> ??? I'm not a doctor, why are you making me do that?
"If you think you will benefit from getting a booster shot, I encourage you to go out and get it" -> ??? Everyone would technically benefit, why are you not just saying everyone?
In another article: "Ghaly said that guidance is in line with the federal government’s eligibility rules for booster shots" -> ??? It's not! "Wanting a booster" is not one of the eligibility criteria.
I'm going to get the booster soon, even though I don't qualify under CDC guidelines, to be clear. But only because CA is giving me the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that I can just ignore the guidelines and go get one. No one will ask questions.
What's the protocol for six months having passed but also tested positive for COVID? Like, this guidance here is pretty clear, but it doesn't seem to be enough to judge personal risk tolerance.
Many seem to have forgotten life is not risk free.
Isn't this what everyone wanted? Everything being run "like a business" to maximize profits? Wasn't that how we all intentionally set it up? Shouldn't y'all be feverishly shaking the pom poms and doing backflips and squad cheers for capitalist efficiencies and the free market?
Probably has to do with the fact that the booster is effective.