Millions Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines (nytimes.com) 247
Millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their Covid-19 vaccines, and their ranks are growing. From a report: More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several weeks of the nationwide vaccine campaign. Even as the country wrestles with the problem of millions of people who are wary about getting vaccinated at all, local health authorities are confronting an emerging challenge of ensuring that those who do get inoculated are doing so fully. The reasons vary for why people are missing their second shots. In interviews, some said they feared the side effects, which can include flulike symptoms. Others said they felt that they were sufficiently protected with a single shot.
Those attitudes were expected, but another hurdle has been surprisingly prevalent. A number of vaccine providers have canceled second-dose appointments because they ran out of supply or didn't have the right brand in stock. Walgreens, one of the biggest vaccine providers, sent some people who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to get their second doses at pharmacies that only had the other vaccine on hand. Several Walgreens customers said in interviews that they scrambled, in some cases with help from pharmacy staff, to find somewhere to get the correct second dose. Others, presumably, simply gave up. From the outset, public health experts worried that it would be difficult to get everyone to return for a second shot three or four weeks after the first dose. It is no surprise that, as vaccines are rolled out more broadly, the numbers of those skipping their second dose have gone up.
Those attitudes were expected, but another hurdle has been surprisingly prevalent. A number of vaccine providers have canceled second-dose appointments because they ran out of supply or didn't have the right brand in stock. Walgreens, one of the biggest vaccine providers, sent some people who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to get their second doses at pharmacies that only had the other vaccine on hand. Several Walgreens customers said in interviews that they scrambled, in some cases with help from pharmacy staff, to find somewhere to get the correct second dose. Others, presumably, simply gave up. From the outset, public health experts worried that it would be difficult to get everyone to return for a second shot three or four weeks after the first dose. It is no surprise that, as vaccines are rolled out more broadly, the numbers of those skipping their second dose have gone up.
G*d D**n the pusherman (Score:2, Funny)
You know those vaccine pushers. Only the first taste is free. Then they've got you.
America doesn't have mandatory sick leave (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and if anyone's wondering why this matters, every one of them is a disease vector capable to getting the virus and creating fun new mutations that might get past our vaccine and put us right back in lockdown.
Re:America doesn't have mandatory sick leave (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and if anyone's wondering why this matters, every one of them is a disease vector capable to getting the virus and creating fun new mutations that might get past our vaccine and put us right back in lockdown.
Oh, and if anyone's wondering why this may not matter at all, see virus inoculation rates in third world countries.
Three years from now.
At the end of the day, we're all sharing the same highly interconnected planet. From the standpoint of the virus, we might as well be collectively dancing in the rain chanting for the return of Mutato.
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Oh, and if anyone's wondering why this matters, every one of them is a disease vector capable to getting the virus and creating fun new mutations that might get past our vaccine and put us right back in lockdown.
Virii do not get past a vaccine. They get past the immune system. A vaccine primes the immune system. The immune system fights the virus. This is just like antibiotics do not kill bacteria (except for a very very very very few bacteriacides). They weaken (in various ways) the bacteria so that the immune system can kill it. If your immune system is busted then there is no help for you (except a plastic bubble).
On another note, I do not think that there has been even one death worldwide as a result of S
I know that (Score:2)
Re:America doesn't have mandatory sick leave (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like splitting hairs. It's like the old joke that falling off a building doesn't kill you, it's the sudden deceleration when you touch the ground that kills you.
Whatever the source of this "defective immune response", it wasn't really killing people or making too many others very sick until SARS-CoV-2 came around. It may be pedantically correct that excess immune response is what kills people, not the primary infection of the virus, but I doubt its the only illness whose secondary effects or physiological responses are what's dangerous.
Most people who die of opioid overdose die of respiratory failure -- so technically, they die of hypoxia from not breathing. It doesn't mean that high doses of opioids aren't dangerous.
I will say that we probably don't have a great handle on autoimmune illnesses generally, and many of our primary illnesses might actually be functionally a byproduct of immune response from environmental factors.
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Virii (sic) do not get past a vaccine. They get past the immune system. A vaccine primes the immune system. The immune system fights the virus.
So far so good.
This is just like antibiotics do not kill bacteria (except for a very very very very few bacteriacides). They weaken (in various ways) the bacteria so that the immune system can kill it.
If by very very very very few you mean all antibiotics within the classes: penicillins; cephalosporins; polymyxins; rifamycins; lipiarmycins; quinolones; aminoglycosides; and sulfonamides then yeah, that's not many at all. Of course after that lot we're only left with: macrolides; lincosamides; and tetracyclines that are bacteriostatics, so possibly you're a tad mistaken.
On another note, I do not think that there has been even one death worldwide as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The deaths have been caused by defective immune responses to the infection triggering an auto-immune defect that called ARDS that has been endemic for years. The so-called COVID-19 pandemic has just doubled the prevalence of death from this already pre-existing genetic defect.
Firstly I might suggest that unless you're aware of which specific genes, which variant(s) of them, and their complete and
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Reminded me of a classic [ofb.net].
Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion.
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Sure we do?
America's been on Mandatory Sick Leave since March of 2020!
The longest sick leave in history!
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It's important, as the first vaccine shot goes by pretty easy - you get a sore arm for about a day and that's it.
It's the second shot that's a real doozy - with reports that Moderna causes worse symptoms, while the Pfizer still knocks the wind out of you. It's regularly reported that one should plan on being incapacitated for a day after getting the second shot.
That means one should plan on sick leave after getting their second shot for at least a day.
As for those who might already have antibodies, it's bee
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Wife had almost incapacitating reaction to both shots. Couldn't work either day.
On the other hand, I didn't have any (obvious) reaction. They stuck me, I went about my days normally.
For what it's worth, this is how the normal flu shots work for us - she's sick as a dog for a day, I don't react at all....
Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
8% skip means 92% don't.
A single shot of the mrna vaccines isn't as good as two but is a lot better than zero.
Other than needing filler material to avoid talking about the end of the pandemic in the US, who cares?
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point I want to get on a plane or go into a store without a mask, and Republican governors saying there is no COVID and banning masks and proof of vaccine is not going to create a safe situation.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
South Dakota is averaging one COVID death per day. I know we want to pretend stupid republicans screwed this up but it was democrats who put COVID patients in nursing homes. I bet it saved their states money, though.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
You stupid fuckwit. CDC guidelines, you know, that altar of consistency that Dems have been worshipping for the past year, explicitly stated that Covid patients were only to be released back into nursing homes if the nursing homes were capable of providing medical isolation and that no covid positive workers were to be around the elderly. Angel of Death Cuomo as well as Pudding Cup Biden's Assistant HHS secretary both issued orders contraindicated by the CDC guidance well after it was put in place. What's m
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I don't know if you noticed but "the left" has been trying to get Cuomo out of office
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Had COVID. And I've had worse seasonal allergies - any other year and I would have thought it was just seasonal allergies!)
Irrelevant.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
But "covid is a threat to me" is conclusively disproved by walking it off.
And is conclusively proved by people who contracted it and suffered injuries to their organs.
We don't decide on public policy based on one person. In the case of pandemics, we not only don't decide public policy on individuals, but we must actually take into account network effects. Someone is going to get it for whom it would be dangerous, and we can't know who that would be until they contract it. And they would contract it from someone for whom it is not a problem. So "not a problem for me" is irrelevant, especially since it ignores who you spread it to.
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But "covid is a threat to me" is conclusively disproved by walking it off.
You don't know it until you get it. It could've just as easily killed you. Maybe there's another poster on /. that used to think like that, but they don't get to post here any more.
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As a South Dakotan, I can assure you we do not have people "dying by the acre load." People have died, and that's bad. But please take a look at the links ObscureCoder provided. Vaccinations are at 54% for at least one dose. This month, ten people died of Covid19.
Re: Who cares? (Score:3)
Clue bat must be broken.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Infection fatality rate by age per million unfections:
0â"17 years old: 20
18â"49 years old: 500
50â"64 years old: 6,000
65+ years old: 90,000
If you're under 50, your chance of survival if infected is 99.95%. It is 99.4% if you are under 65, and 91% if you are over 65, with the latter number heavily weighted by the over 80 crowd.
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Worldwide, this is changing with the new variants. Here in Canada, it is mostly 30-50 year olds getting hospitalized. Lucky the medical community has got a lot better at keeping people alive. They're (the medical people) still burning out though.
Re: Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
US too. It's because most of the old timers got their shots a few months ago and the younger set are the least vaccinated.
You don't have to imagine how much worse it would be in the US and Canada now if the old folks still weren't vaccinated. You just look to the other side of the planet, south or east, to see.
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Yes, that is part of it, though we're quite behind the US in getting shots, my first is on Saturday, could have been a couple of weeks back being 60 this year, which would still mean it wouldn't have kicked in yet.
These new variants are still a lot worse then the first variant. More contagious and make people sicker. Hopefully the world gets vaccinated before a worse mutation happens
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
I read an article a while ago somewhere that talked about an immune compromised individual who got covid early in the pandemic.
His immune system was too weak to ever fully clear the virus, and samples sequenced through the course of his illness showed variation in pretty much the same places the "new and scary" variants changed. This was over a few days or a few weeks at most.
This person didn't make it obviously, but the point is that the variants are unlikely to be new if they show up that easily. What's l
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It's possible. OTOH, the new variations correspond with the a huge uptick in the pandemic here, even with the mask mandates, stricter rules then early in the pandemic and the older being vaccinated. Perhaps it is as much pandemic fatigue causing less caution but the hospitals are in real danger of being overrun with modeling showing it happening here in mid-May. Other Provinces are worse, the military being deployed in Ontario, where I just read about a healthy 14 year old girl dying at home, which seems to
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Variants (Score:2)
People need to calm down about variants. This isn't an influenza virus with fancy wild recombination genetics to avoid immune system detection.
We don't have vaccine resistant varieties of measles or rubella, even though we've had vaccines since the 60s and the diseases are still far from eradicated. Our immune system isn't that stupid, it takes more than a small spike protein mutation to get around it.
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If you're under 50, your chance of survival if infected is 99.95%. It is 99.4% if you are under 65, and 91% if you are over 65, with the latter number heavily weighted by the over 80 crowd.
Unlike Mortal Kombat, fatality is not the only negative outcome. I have at least one healthy, ~50 year old friend who needed to be intubated and put into an induced coma, and needed to learn how to walk again afterward. Lasting damage to his internal organs is still unknown.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Unicode is a broken idea. If it can't be expressed in ascii, it's not worth communicating.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
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I think that herd immunity, if it will ever be possible with COVID-19 and variants, isn't going to get there with 8% of people getting one shot. I mean, maybe the math works out, but it certainly does slow down the progression to herd.
And "a lot better than zero" is that infinity thing, right? Nice use for the rhetoric.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
One shot provides 60% protection, if everyone just got one shot, I mean every one, 100%, that would suffice for herd immunity and put this virus in check.
If half the population gets 2 shots, giving 96% immunity, not so much.
Of course, lets not forget the tens of millions of people who had and overcame vivid, they have natural immunity, only increasing the numbers.
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Check out the new variants. In Brazil there are cities where most everyone had it and now they're getting it again.
Lets hope we get enough people vaccinated to head off any worse mutations.
BTW, here in Canada, the current goal is to get everyone one shot, with the 2nd coming months later. As you point out, getting everyone a shot is better then half the people getting 2 shots.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Mathematically, heard immunity is the number that brings the reproductive number below 1.
If we assume x fraction of the population is vaccinated with an efficacy of y, and each infected person would ordinarily infect r other people, then (roughly) the condition for herd immunity is
r(1-xy) \lt 1
Caveats:
These are really distributions and not single numbers over the whole population.
r is distinct from r0. The latter is predicated on "normal" behavior, the former includes things like masking, physical distancin
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If 20 percent take only one dose and 80% take two does, then we get 94% protection with these numbers instead of 95% if everyone takes two doses. Same effect as 1% not getting any injection at all.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
I looked up the efficacy for 1 shot and after 21 days (right before the 2nd shot) you hit as high as 80%
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/2... [cnbc.com]
Some people I talk to say the only reason they will get the 2nd shot is for these travel passports
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between 80% and 90% is halving the risk. 10% is half of 20%.
Given how widespread and lasting the damage from that virus can be I do not want to give it any unnecessary chance.
There is also the issue that we haven't had trials with data either way about how long immunity lasts without an eventual second dose of an mRNA vaccine. It could be long-lasting, but "test what you fly, fly what you test" is a well-proven rule.
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Given how widespread and lasting the damage from that virus can be I do not want to give it any unnecessary chance.
The virus, SARS-CoV-2, does not have any lasting effect. Those with defective genetics (malfunctioning safety systems) will suffer from their innate defects for a long time, but the actual injury caused by the viral infection will heal quite well and quickly just like any other "common cold".
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There's also the people who don't die, but recover very slowly. lady friend caught it, ended up in ICU, is now virus free but still in the hospital, been over a month now.
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First, with regards to the data you’re referencing, your source literally says (emphasis theirs):
Table 1. Parameter Values that vary among the five COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios. The scenarios are intended to advance public health preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19.
Second and more importantly, you’re missing the forest for the trees. Sure, looked at on an individual basis, reducing the risk of death from “very low” to “really low” may not seem like it matters much, but the primary driver by which vaccines reduce that risk is by reducing the transmissivity rate (R0), rather than the infection fatality rate (though they reduce the latter t
Re: Who cares? (Score:2, Troll)
The vaccine doesn't prevent infection or being contagious
Citation needed.
Vaccines inhibit viral replication. Viral replication is necessary for being contagious and spreading the virus. Therefore vaccines inhibit viral spread.
Masks do not "prevent" infection or spread. But they inhibit the spread. You see people "mask up when leaving home," you don't see people saying "mask up *and* stay home." Although I have seen people watering their plants outside their front step hundreds of feet away from the next house over...wearing masks.
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Vaccines inhibit viral replication.
Vaccines do no such thing. Vaccines prime the immune system so they know what to look for. Sort of like putting up "Wanted Dead of Alive, $1,000,000 Reward" posters on the Post Office wall. Vaccine effectiveness, like poster effectiveness, depends on the masses (the immune system) going to the post office and seeing the poster and then remembering what they are looking for and not having "old timers" (a defective immune system) and shooting the sheriff instead of the thugster.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
...and the effect of vaccinating an individual is that for most infected individuals, fewer virus replication events occur within that individual...meaning that vaccination has the effect of inhibiting viral replication...
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This is manifestly untrue. Whether or not a vaccine has any effect at all depends of the rate of reproduction of the virus in the body and the efficacy of the immune system at killing the "right" offspring. If the offspring do not look like the poster in the window (the vaccine) then the immune system might not kill them. These are called "mutations". Also, rather than clear the infection the immune system may decide to deploy rocket launchers, grenades, mortars, and machine guns against "self" rather t
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
The only relevant part of your link:
Experts continue to monitor and evaluate how often this occurs, how severe their illness is, and how likely a vaccinated person is to spread COVID-19 to others.
Nowhere does it say or imply that vaccination does not reduce viral transmission. And simple logic that viral spread requires viral replication, which is inhibited by vaccinating en masse, suggests that like every other virus and vaccine, covid transmission is reduced by vaccinating, thereby creating herd immunity.
Folks, herd immunity is not a Republican talking point and it's not something Trump saw floating in his morning cup of covfefe. It's a real effect observed in h
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
I mean scenario 5 in "box 1" column 5 that gives the CDC's "current best estimate" of the quantities in the table including infection fatality rate and reproductive number.
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People who can multiply care.
Go ahead and do some math. Multiply the portion of people who chose to get vaccinated (a low number in the USA), with portion of people who can get vaccinated (a higher number in the USA but not 100%), and now for good measure multiply that by 0.92.
Little numbers start becoming significant when your end goal is full coverage.
Not a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
the U.K.'s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) says that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine's short-term efficacy was 89 percent between days 15 and 21 after the first dose, so actually you get most of the protection after the first dose. [reference: https://www.newsweek.com/covd-... [newsweek.com] }
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org]
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Re: Not a big deal (Score:2)
A perfectly logical statement. Unfortunately it is not recognized as such.
Covid is a remarkable virus. Not only does it not need to infect people to shut down their brains, the *vaccine* does it too, without even having to be administered.
Maybe there is something to this 5g shit after all...
Re: Not a big deal (Score:2)
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Not enough time has passed for us to know whether it is skipping or delaying yet.
Exactly this. My wife got her first shot, but then was scheduled without consultation for her second shot on a day that she couldn’t make it last week. She wants the second shot and reached out as quickly as she could to get it rescheduled, but because they schedule appointments for a whole week at a time (i.e. you get bumped to next week if you need to reschedule) and they only offer second doses on certain days of the week, it’ll still be another few days until she gets it.
According to this st
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Yes, we do have data and you cited it about what happens when dose 2 comes later.
If there are any studies out there which answer what happens if dose 2 is "never" as opposed to later, I'd be pleased to hear of them so I could go read them.
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the U.K.'s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) says that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine's short-term efficacy was 89 percent between days 15 and 21 after the first dose
What is the efficacy 120 days after the first dose? Because the Canadian government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to stretch the interval between doses to 4 months.
I've gone back for third and forth shot (Score:4, Funny)
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Can't get enough of them.
Sweet! I mean hell, they are free. Why not?
Hit that shit like a Costo food pimp slingin' the daily samples.
Two doses is too complicated for many people (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not so much complicated as a simple desire to getting things over. We've been in this situation a year and a quarter. People are becoming battle-weary with no end in sight.
Re:Two doses is too complicated for many people (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so much complicated as a simple desire to getting things over. We've been in this situation a year and a quarter. People are becoming battle-weary with no end in sight.
Ah, so one shot appointment? Hooray! There's an end in sight!
But two shot appointments, at defined intervals? Unacceptable! This is now going to take somewhere between 17 years and forever.
(Sorry. Guess I don't have too much "battle-weary" sympathy for one extra 15-minute appointment after a fucking year of lockdown.)
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While this is utterly pathetic, I do agree that most people cannot even handle the very minor complexities involved here.
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Not sure how accurate... (Score:3)
I had a second dose appointment with CVS, but they had no easy way to move it; so I had to cancel it and make a new appointment; so I have to wonder how many folks like me cancelled, but only to make a new appointment and aren't being counted correctly. I also see a few folks posting about no sick leave, and folks who are concerned about side-effects - and honestly that makes a lot of sense. I'm not that old, and I'm off work today with fatigue, sore throat, and other mild flu like symptoms.
That's why Johnson & Johnson is best (Score:5, Insightful)
Any UX designer will tell you that a huge number of users drop off with each click required to complete the action. Vaccine design needs to consider distribution and mass psychology to be as important as raw efficiency. Current early adopters complete two doses at pretty high rate and we can expect the problem to get worse as vaccination moves to hesitant / busy / erratic individuals. Then offer high risk and motivated a booster for greater protection.
Re:That's why Johnson & Johnson is best (Score:4, Insightful)
Any UX designer will tell you that a huge number of users drop off with each click required to complete the action.
LOL UX designer reducing clicks to the point of completely ballsing up the functionality is a very apt analogy. If a user did one click of Pfizer and then gave up they'd still be better off than doing the only click of the J&J vaccine.
Great analogy though. UX designers are typically the kind of morons who prioritise singular metrics over thinking about how their product actually functions.
Bad record keeping (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither Walgreens nor New York State has a record of me receiving my second shot even though I got my second shot exactly when I was scheduled. They both show a record for my first shot). I scheduled both shots at the same time through Walgreens website. All I have to prove it is my vaccine card.
Some Thought That Mixed Vaccines are Beneficial (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.cambridgetimes.ca/... [cambridgetimes.ca]
The UK Study Web Site:
https://comcovstudy.org.uk/ [comcovstudy.org.uk]
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Canada is already experimenting on its population by stretching the time between shots from the recommended 3-4 weeks to 4 months.
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Where is one to find something that works? That does not yet exist.
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At least this explains the previous article (Score:2)
Are they really skipping? (Score:5, Interesting)
I signed up for my first and second appointment on the web. Got the 1st show no problem but while i was leaving the place they gave me a card that had a different date 12 days earlier for my 2nd shot then my second appointment. I got my vaccine at the new second appointment but come time for my scheduled second appointment and i got texts like i should go get my 2nd shot. I canceled the original 2nd appointment but it was a hassle to do and I suspect less computer literate people would just skip canceling the appointment which might show up as people missing their shots.
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I signed up for my first and second appointment on the web. Got the 1st show no problem but while i was leaving the place they gave me a card that had a different date 12 days earlier for my 2nd shot then my second appointment. I got my vaccine at the new second appointment but come time for my scheduled second appointment and i got texts like i should go get my 2nd shot. I canceled the original 2nd appointment but it was a hassle to do and I suspect less computer literate people would just skip canceling the appointment which might show up as people missing their shots.
I had a similar experience. When I got my first shot I got an appointment for my second. A few days later my second appointment was cancelled, apparently because the site where I got my first was shut down. I signed up for a second appointment, but when I turned up for my shot I was told that they didn't have the data from my first site, so they couldn't give me a complete vaccination card. I got my second shot anyway, but I suspect I am counted as one of those who skipped my second shot.
Loss of a work day (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are not lucky enough to be able to schedule the shot on a Friday or Saturday, there's a fairly good chance you'd lose a work-day if you have side-effects, or feel crappy at work. Roughly half the people I know had mild-to-medium flu-like symptoms on the second dose.
Many of the flakers may come back if they can pick a better time. Many are living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no vacation days left, often due to family duties.
Correction (Score:2)
"Millions Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines"
Correction: "Millions Are Stupid As Shit And Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines"
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"Millions Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines"
Correction: "Millions Are Stupid As Shit And Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines"
Further correction: Vaccination record keeping is so poor that it shows millions have skipped their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine
Skipping 2nd dose or getting it elsewhere? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how many in that 8% did get their second dose, only at a different location than the first.
I live in California, and a month ago you could read stories of people driving to rural areas for a better chance to get a vaccine. As availability recently improved in big cities, it is possible these people would have made an appointment closer to home instead of driving a long distance again for the second dose.
It is very common to see posts in local subreddits where people ask "which sites offer Moderna / Pfizer?". Sure, it could be people really picky about the type of vaccine they want to get, but my guess is that in many cases it's people looking for the right 2nd dose
Many sites don't let you get the 2nd dose there if they didn't give you the first. But at the same time they give you the shot without requiring an id. So you could easily lie and say it's your first shot, in which case you would be counted twice as missing your 2nd dose. The article also mentions pharmacies cancelling 2nd dose appointments because they didn't have the right vaccine on hand. My guess is that affected people would have tried to book an appointment elsewhere. Again, lying about being the first dose if necessary (I know I would have)
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Many sites don't let you get the 2nd dose there if they didn't give you the first. But at the same time they give you the shot without requiring an id. So you could easily lie and say it's your first shot, in which case you would be counted twice as missing your 2nd dose.
I can only speak to my personal experience in a California city of 500,000. I got ahead of the eligibility list by waitlisting at Walgreen's for Pfizer #1. They gathered personal info including ID check. Because it wasn't an official appointment they wouldn't schedule me for a second but would call me on or after day 21. I received a CDC vaccine card.
On day 21, I hadn't heard from them so I went to the drive thru clinic run by a university medical center. They required the card and ID and took info for the
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Many sites don't let you get the 2nd dose there if they didn't give you the first. But at the same time they give you the shot without requiring an id. So you could easily lie and say it's your first shot, in which case you would be counted twice as missing your 2nd dose.
At least it's not the AstraZeneca vaccine (or else they'd only have gotten two half doses, IIRC).
Brazil (Score:4, Interesting)
This is also happening in Brazil, in some cases the vaccination places don't have doses in stock but in most cases people are just not coming back, but here it is worse because we are using vaccines that a less effective, and with just one dose they don't protect much at all, so it is potentially giving people a false confidence that they are protected when they are not and can have bad consequences.
Hopefully the government will get its shit together and start a proper campaign to convince people to come back for the second dose, but I'll not hold my breadth, because just today the last health minister that got kicked out last month after a lot of political pressure was seen in a shopping mall without a mask and was being an ironic asshole when people pointed it out.
Bullshit headline! Try "92% get both doses!" (Score:5, Insightful)
But a headline reading "Vaccine program a success! 92% get both doses!" won't get as many clicks I guess.
Grumble grumble... Nor would mentioning that 1 dose of the mRNA vaccines is proving to be (yes, from collected, peer-reviewed data) more effective than past vaccines for other diseases, or some of the single-dose more conventional COVID vaccines.
Natural response to J&J shutdown (Score:3)
The giant tragedy of the full shutdown of J&J was not just the hundreds of thousands of people it delayed or outright canceled getting vaccinations for, but it gave weight to otherwise paranoid claims that vaccines were unsafe. It's no wonder millions now say they will not get a shot, either a first or a second if they have had one.
Yes the other vaccines are unrelated, but most people do not really understand that. The governments action killed the vaccination momentum, at a level we may never recover from. From this point onward the actions of the government in regards to J&J are winds in the sails of the anti-tax movement.
I once thought the U.S. would reach at least a 70% vaccination rate; now I think the final tally will be about 60%.
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The giant tragedy of the full shutdown of J&J was not just the hundreds of thousands of people it delayed or outright canceled getting vaccinations for, but it gave weight to otherwise paranoid claims that vaccines were unsafe.
You're half right. The tragedy was that after the AstraZeneca clotting concerns, knowing that the U.S. was already starting to see vaccine demand taper off, the U.S. still approved another adenovirus vaccine that turned out to have the same problems.
The J&J vaccine was a mistake. The purpose of both J&J and AZ was as a hedge in case the new mRNA vaccines didn't work. They did. Why did they continue down that path, knowing that the adenovirus vectors, once used, can never be used for any future v
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You're technically correct — the best kind of correct. Of course, what you're leaving out is that the only reason that's true is because the COVID-19 virus is, itself, responsible for causing lots of blood clots. The risk in younger women is quite a lot higher than the normal risk for that age group.
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This is how it went down for us: (Score:3)
sore arm (bump at the injection site)
fever for 3 days
nausea twice during those 3 days
All is good now.
92% completion is ridiculously good (Score:3)
From the NYT article referenced: "the overall rates of follow-through, with some 92 percent getting fully vaccinated, are strong by historical standards. Roughly three-quarters of adults come back for their second dose of the vaccine that protects against shingles."
This paper puts the completion rate for two part hepatitis vaccinations at less than 40%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
This paper puts the completion rate for two part HPV vaccinations at under 40%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
92% are getting their 2nd shot (Score:2)
So that looks quite successfull to me, especially comparing it to other vaccinations:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
There's nothing to see here but someone irresponsible selling clicks on the internet using a catchy, panicky headline.
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If people don't follow through, that's not why.
Your larger cause, of redeeming Trump's legacy, well good luck with that. I'm not even going to bother arguing it.
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Re: Thanks goodness for the private secotre (Score:5, Informative)
1) There were not widespread shortages of 2nd doses. It was very difficult for a while to get 1st doses because they had to start prioritizing the 2nd doses, but for the most part, people who already got the 1st does were able to get the 2nd dose.
2) In the cases where there were shortages of 2nd doses, it was generally only very short term...for a few weeks.
3) While the recommended time between doses is 21/28 days, that is a minimum. Getting it a bit later doesn't reduce the effectiveness of the 2nd does. It merely increase the time you were only protected at the first dose effectiveness rate.
4) It's worth noting that the vaccines requiring 2 doses were the MRN vaccines, and according to the data, those vaccines are actually slightly more effective after the first does than the 1 dose vaccines are. So if it's OK to let someone get a 1 dose vaccine, I don't see how it's such a scandal for them to have to wait just a little bit longer for that 2nd dose
On the other hand, because of the change to the distribution plan, a ton of people went from no protection to the first dose protection considerably sooner than they would have under the old plan. I can only imagine that would have a net-beneficial outcome.
Re: Thanks goodness for the private secotre (Score:3)
Re: Thanks goodness for the private secotre (Score:2)
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"it's complicated". The vaccine isn't a permanent stat increase, it's a temporary powerup. It's not like dose 1 takes you to 80% forever and dose 2 takes you to 96% forever; they're decaying curves. The long-term effects (insofar as there has been enough of a "long te
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Has to assume people are lazy and apathetic mixed with stupidity.
Does this group even count here? Sounds like the group of humans who won't even make it off the couch for any number of shots.
Therefore one dose is always going to be much, much better than two.
Safe would be the key factor here. Better is a matter for sales to argue about.
I wonder if we would still have smallpox if the smallpox vaccine had required two doses ?
We started inoculating against smallpox in the 1500s. A more modern vaccine was developed in 1796. We got serious about it in 1967, and finally eradicated it in 1980.
Not sure if you meant to do that, but smallpox vaccine was a pretty bad comparison. Needless to say, it took us a while. 300 million p
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Was reading about the last Smallpox pandemic in Montreal, 1880's or 90's, forget. There were a lot of people refusing to get vaccinated, or take precautions. Mostly the poor French part of the population, who were also very religious.