So much is going on with the vaccines, and every time I thought about writing a post, something would change or something new would happen. Here's the latest as of today.
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| Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels |
Availability: As vaccines move through the various phases in each state (e.g. by profession or age), people have been struggling to navigate the patchwork of vaccination options to secure an appointment. I do keep seeing more and more people saying they and their family members are able to get it, so it does seem to be becoming more widespread. In our area, if you're just a regular individual person not affiliated with a place that's vaccinating all their staff or residents, the main options seem to be getting it through your health system, your county, or at one of the few pharmacies offering appointments. For weeks, myself and two other family members tried to sign a 90 year old relative up for any option we heard of, with no success (and how are elderly people with no computers supposed to navigate this on their own?). Finally, they received an invitation from their health system to register for an appointment, and should be getting their first dose tomorrow 🙏🏻 Coincidentally, that same day, they also received a notification from the county system to make an appointment.
New Findings: Some new studies of the Pfizer vaccine found that in addition to protecting the recipient, it does also seem to protect them from spreading the virus to others, and that it provides protection against the new UK and South African variants that are becoming more widespread. (Hopefully there are similar findings for some of the other vaccines in use; the Pfizer one just gets studied first because it was the first one approved.)
Personal Access: Being in a relatively younger age group, and able to work from home full time, I was not expecting to be able to get vaccinated anytime soon. But I will admit that I was a little jealous as I watched friends and family members become eligible due to their age or through their jobs, and yet I work closely with a source of one of the vaccines, and didn't have the opportunity to receive it myself. On Tuesday my employer announced that they had secured permission from the government to vaccinate all its US colleagues on site. I still expected it would be a while before anything came of it, but by that evening a message had gone out for the first cohort of colleagues (those in the oldest age group) to start booking their appointments for as soon as the following day! There is no specific schedule provided for my site, but from what I've seen at other US sites, it may just be a matter of days or a couple weeks before my age cohort is eligible to schedule - so I may be getting vaccinated sooner than I expected!
