Somewhat reassuring article about increasing uptake of the vaccine among long term care workers. Because they were some of the first to be offered the vaccines, some reportedly felt like “guinea pigs” and declined, but as time goes on more and more accept vaccination when they see that their friends and colleagues are fine. Vaccination rates among LTC workers in B.C. are about 89%.
Teachers in Colorado are still months away from getting a vaccine in many cases. If you sign up today you'd be about #100,000 in line. Somehow our superintendent got our district to cut the line and we all can get it Thursday. Despite my irrational fear of needles, I signed up. I'm a wuss with needles, I've passed out getting a shot before. Its a drive-through vaccine station too, my only comment was if they don't let me get out and sit down for the shot I'm driving off, i'm not going to sit behind the wheel light headed and dizzy while I pass out again.
I wonder if you could get a driver and then sit in the back seat for the shot.
My wife got her first dose on Saturday...walked into a building. They made her sit for 15 minutes before going anywhere. I'm kind of surprised about the whole "drive-thru" vaccine thing.
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Teachers in Colorado are still months away from getting a vaccine in many cases. If you sign up today you'd be about #100,000 in line. Somehow our superintendent got our district to cut the line and we all can get it Thursday. Despite my irrational fear of needles, I signed up. I'm a wuss with needles, I've passed out getting a shot before. Its a drive-through vaccine station too, my only comment was if they don't let me get out and sit down for the shot I'm driving off, i'm not going to sit behind the wheel light headed and dizzy while I pass out again.
I wonder if you could get a driver and then sit in the back seat for the shot.
My wife got her first dose on Saturday...walked into a building. They made her sit for 15 minutes before going anywhere. I'm kind of surprised about the whole "drive-thru" vaccine thing.
They did a drive up clinic at the high school my wife teaches at. They got the shot in one part of the parking lot, drove a short distance to park in another part and waited the 15 minute period. It actually worked pretty good. They were able to vaccinate around 1000 people that day.
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Kat
There's a lot to be said for nowhere. Posts: 4,777
Somewhat reassuring article about increasing uptake of the vaccine among long term care workers. Because they were some of the first to be offered the vaccines, some reportedly felt like “guinea pigs” and declined, but as time goes on more and more accept vaccination when they see that their friends and colleagues are fine. Vaccination rates among LTC workers in B.C. are about 89%.
Just got the 2nd dose. No soreness or anything yet...but I bet it’s coming.
Good luck. I have heard such a range of side effect. Just like Covid, you don’t know what you are going to get. My sister got pretty sick from the second shot for about 36 hours. My two cousins just had slightly sore arms. No other effects at all.
Just got the 2nd dose. No soreness or anything yet...but I bet it’s coming.
Good luck. I have heard such a range of side effect. Just like Covid, you don’t know what you are going to get. My sister got pretty sick from the second shot for about 36 hours. My two cousins just had slightly sore arms. No other effects at all.
My 80+ aunt and uncle in Florida have gotten both shots with sore arms after the 2nd shot.
Just got the 2nd dose. No soreness or anything yet...but I bet it’s coming.
Good luck. I have heard such a range of side effect. Just like Covid, you don’t know what you are going to get. My sister got pretty sick from the second shot for about 36 hours. My two cousins just had slightly sore arms. No other effects at all.
Yeah, I was very sore from the last one. It is starting to slowly creep in, but at least I’m prepared for it this go around
Just got the 2nd dose. No soreness or anything yet...but I bet it’s coming.
Good luck. I have heard such a range of side effect. Just like Covid, you don’t know what you are going to get. My sister got pretty sick from the second shot for about 36 hours. My two cousins just had slightly sore arms. No other effects at all.
My 80+ aunt and uncle in Florida have gotten both shots with sore arms after the 2nd shot.
I have read that senior people don't get as many harsh side effects due to their immune system being naturally weaker. Apparently, the harsher the side effects, the more robust the immune system - so I have read.
This grandma has lost child and grandchilds in three different car accidents..she trying to suiside few months ago but people save her.. today, she sells some items from her garden on a square..''not for money, i can stay home with all those pictures'' 300 euro penalty..
20 hours after dose 2 of Moderna and only a slight headache (welcome to normal life lol) and a sore arm. Not ready to celebrate yet, but it's looking good for not feeling like hell.
20 hours after dose 2 of Moderna and only a slight headache (welcome to normal life lol) and a sore arm. Not ready to celebrate yet, but it's looking good for not feeling like hell.
Not feeling great this morning 18 hours after 2nd dose. Just achy and sore mostly, almost like flu body aches. We’ll see what the day holds...
Just got the 2nd dose. No soreness or anything yet...but I bet it’s coming.
Good luck. I have heard such a range of side effect. Just like Covid, you don’t know what you are going to get. My sister got pretty sick from the second shot for about 36 hours. My two cousins just had slightly sore arms. No other effects at all.
My 80+ aunt and uncle in Florida have gotten both shots with sore arms after the 2nd shot.
Widespread assumptions that suicide rates would increase during the pandemic are not supported by the growing amount of evidence coming out of Canadian provinces and other jurisdictions around the world, say experts who study the topic.
"It's a good example of how sometimes the story we tell ourselves, we look for reasons to support it and we don't always use the data," said Tyler Black, a psychiatrist and suicide expert the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
"When we look back at the numbers, it just doesn't pan out the way we thought."
Numerous public figures have claimed a link between public-health restrictions and increased suicide rates, without evidence to back it up. Some merely speculated about the potential early on in the pandemic, while others have made stronger claims more recently.
Ontario MPP Roman Baber was kicked out of the Progressive Conservative caucus in January after sending an open letter asserting public-health restrictions were "causing an avalanche of suicides," among other claims.
But Black pointed to recently released data out of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan that suggest suicide rates declined in 2020. He also noted coroners in Quebec and the chief medical examiner in Newfoundland and Labrador have recently said there were no increases in suicide rates in those provinces last year.
Data from Ontario and other provinces is still forthcoming. Black says counting suicide deaths always comes with some degree of uncertainty because investigations into both cause of death and a person's intentions can take a long time.
What the early data tells us
Still, Black said the data collected so far suggests the pandemic's arrival in 2020 didn't bring with it a surge in suicides.
"There might be small fluctuations because there are inquests and investigations ongoing," he said. "But they're likely not large enough to substantially change the results."
Alberta saw a particularly noticeable decline, according to preliminary data compiled by the province in late January that counted 468 deaths by suicide in 2020.
That compares to more than 600 in each of the previous four years.
Alberta considers the data for both 2019 and 2020 to be preliminary, as the office of the chief medical examiner may still make adjustments as death investigations continue.
Robert Olson, a research librarian with the Calgary-based Centre for Suicide Prevention, said the decline is striking, nonetheless.
"The difference between 2019 and 2020 is pretty large," Olson said. "So I can't see a big difference between the preliminary numbers now to the official numbers [later]."
Saskatchewan, too, saw a significant decline in suicides last year, according to provincial data with similar caveats. That province recorded 134 deaths by suicide in 2020, compared with an average of more than 200 over the previous four years.
B.C. hasn't released full data for 2020 yet but preliminary, year-to-date figures from January to August were lower last year than in 2019.
Researchers say this isn't out of line with what's been observed during past calamities.
Suicide is complicated
Black said it's true that levels of distress have increased amid the pandemic and the public-health restrictions that have upended virtually everyone's life.
But he said suicide is a complicated phenomenon, and some people were making "quite strong shortcuts" in believing the pandemic would necessarily lead to more deaths by suicide.
"As someone who studies suicide a lot, I care about distress very much," he said. "But there's not a straight line between distress and suicide."
Various distress centres have reported increased call volumes during the pandemic, but Olson said that can actually have an upside.
"That suggests to us that people are reaching out," he said.
"And that helps offset suicide deaths."
Black said another factor is a "a well known phenomenon called the pull-together effect," which has been seen during disasters or other situations where an entire community is affected by a hardship that demands collective action.
"The pull-together is counter-intuitive," Black said. "When we're distressed and we're all trying to do something together for society for the benefit for others, it actually does significantly decrease suicide rates."
A third factor, in Olson's view, is the relatively strong financial and social supports governments in Canada have provided during the pandemic.
He said researchers who issued forecasts and warnings early in the pandemic about the risk of suicide increasing amid public-health restrictions came with a big caveat.
"And the caveat they often often suggested was: 'unless the government intervened with social supports,'" he said.
"That was done, I think, really well in Canada," he said. "So I think that is a major reason why we have seen a decline in suicide rates."
Overdoses on the rise
At the same time, there has been a significant rise in the number of overdose-related deaths during the pandemic.
Black said some overdose deaths can end up being classified as suicides, but it's often quite difficult for investigators to determine the intent of a person who dies from opioid poisoning or other illicit substances.
"They could have been using it recreationally; they could have been using intentionally to hurt themselves; they could have been using it recklessly; or they could have been using it in a moment of despair," he said.
"You can't really be certain, because the person who could answer the question can't do it, so you have to try to piece it together.
"And, usually when they make a determination, they do it on the preponderance of all the evidence."
Concerns have also been raised about an increasingly toxic supply of opioids in 2020, as the pandemic disrupted international supply chains of the drug.
What the future holds
In general terms, Olson noted there has been relatively little study about the effect of pandemics, in particular, on suicide.
He said the decrease in suicide rates that has sometimes been observed after major disasters is not a "hard-and-fast rule," and the most robust studies on the topic have been on natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, not widespread outbreaks of disease.
He noted another name for the phenomenon is the "honeymoon" phase, because the decrease in suicide rates is usually not permanent.
A recent paper in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour found evidence that the suicide rate in Japan declined in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, but then rose again amid the second wave of the virus.
The authors note that "reliable empirical evidence regarding the link between the COVID-19 pandemic and suicide mortality remains scarce."
Black said there is always variance when looking at suicide rates around the world, but so far there doesn't appear to have been a major increase in suicides globally. If anything, he said the emerging data so far seems to suggest the opposite.
"We've seen some jurisdictions report higher rates. We've seen most report around average rates. And, if there's anything that's not normal, it's tended to be in the lower rates," he said.
It's something he said researchers, including himself, will continue to monitor closely.
But he believes the numbers we have, to date, for 2020 are worth noting because they run counter to a narrative that had developed about allegedly skyrocketing rates of suicide during the pandemic.
"People were able to say whatever they wanted about suicide, because we didn't have numbers for months. And there was a lot of political manoeuvring around the use of suicide as a device, to either end lockdowns or end restrictions," Black said.
"So I hope it's a wake-up call that we need more real-time monitoring of cause of death."
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
In LA County, over 25% of whites have received vaccinations.
^ Yes, and our country is going to start phase 2 for people over 80 soon. It was shorted 20% of Moderna units twice by the US along with Europe's Pfizer delays.
24 hours after dose I developed a rather nasty migraine. I get them a few times a year and it has presented in it's usual form, but it is among the most severe I've had. In and out of bed all day today and I'm going to need at least one more 2 hour nap to shake it...if I do, then I will be up all night 🤦♂️
Monkey Driven, Call this Living?
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
For those of you who have been vaccinated and had some strong effects, did you take any fever or pain reducers? gambo, anything usually used for your migraines utilized this time?
24 hours after dose I developed a rather nasty migraine. I get them a few times a year and it has presented in it's usual form, but it is among the most severe I've had. In and out of bed all day today and I'm going to need at least one more 2 hour nap to shake it...if I do, then I will be up all night 🤦♂️
For those of you who have been vaccinated and had some strong effects, did you take any fever or pain reducers? gambo, anything usually used for your migraines utilized this time?
Tylenol seems to help, but like rgambs, I still have a pretty severe headache. Arm soreness isn’t as bad as the first one, but I feel worse in general. Energy is shot.
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
For those of you who have been vaccinated and had some strong effects, did you take any fever or pain reducers? gambo, anything usually used for your migraines utilized this time?
Tylenol seems to help, but like rgambs, I still have a pretty severe headache. Arm soreness isn’t as bad as the first one, but I feel worse in general. Energy is shot.
Damn, sorry. I haven’t had a migraine in years. You’re on your second day, correct?
My 27 year old son got his 1st Pfizer shot on Thursday. Friday he had a sore arm and body aches. Saturday felt fine. Sunday he got the worst headache he said he's ever had, fever (101) body aches, cough and painful pressure in his sinuses. Monday he felt somewhat better. This morning he got a rapid covid test and it's positive. He now is experiencing shortness of breath, difficulty breathing in deeply along with the other symptoms. He is very healthy with no pre-existing conditions but his wife is keeping an eye on him because he's the "oh I'll be fine" type about everything.
He was out to dinner last Tuesday night with clients who have all been fully vaccinated (hospital administrators). My guess is that's where he got it because other than that, he wears a mask quite diligently.
I was over at his house for about 15-20 minutes on Friday so I'm getting a test tomorrow just in case, though I have no symptoms.
For those of you who have been vaccinated and had some strong effects, did you take any fever or pain reducers? gambo, anything usually used for your migraines utilized this time?
Tylenol seems to help, but like rgambs, I still have a pretty severe headache. Arm soreness isn’t as bad as the first one, but I feel worse in general. Energy is shot.
Damn, sorry. I haven’t had a migraine in years. You’re on your second day, correct?
Correct, 2nd day (got the shot yesterday morning) Best way I can describe it is that my body feels flu-like, but I don’t feel “sick”. Just run down and achy.
My 27 year old son got his 1st Pfizer shot on Thursday. Friday he had a sore arm and body aches. Saturday felt fine. Sunday he got the worst headache he said he's ever had, fever (101) body aches, cough and painful pressure in his sinuses. Monday he felt somewhat better. This morning he got a rapid covid test and it's positive. He now is experiencing shortness of breath, difficulty breathing in deeply along with the other symptoms. He is very healthy with no pre-existing conditions but his wife is keeping an eye on him because he's the "oh I'll be fine" type about everything.
He was out to dinner last Tuesday night with clients who have all been fully vaccinated (hospital administrators). My guess is that's where he got it because other than that, he wears a mask quite diligently.
I was over at his house for about 15-20 minutes on Friday so I'm getting a test tomorrow just in case, though I have no symptoms.
Man I'm tired of all this, as we all are.
Hope your son feels better soon! I hate the “what if” that runs through your mind when someone contracts this :(
I searched but didn’t find anything on here, but what ever happened to all the kids having lung issues from vaping? Kind of strange how that was all happening in the fall then covid started that January (I think It started way before then because I knew people sick in December who couldn’t explain what they had). Just thinking out loud....
^ Christ. That sucks, wndowpayne. And jesus, that's gotta be scary when your kid gets it.
In Vancouver, the Red Cross has contacted the Salvation army to do meal preparations for single room occupancy hotels in the infamous downtown east side. They are considering locking down the buildings with outbreaks and providing drugs and food to addicts so they don't need to go out and spread disease when infected. .
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Not ready to celebrate yet, but it's looking good for not feeling like hell.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suicides-alberta-bc-saskatchewan-canada-2020-no-increase-1.5902908
Widespread assumptions that suicide rates would increase during the pandemic are not supported by the growing amount of evidence coming out of Canadian provinces and other jurisdictions around the world, say experts who study the topic.
"It's a good example of how sometimes the story we tell ourselves, we look for reasons to support it and we don't always use the data," said Tyler Black, a psychiatrist and suicide expert the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
"When we look back at the numbers, it just doesn't pan out the way we thought."
Numerous public figures have claimed a link between public-health restrictions and increased suicide rates, without evidence to back it up. Some merely speculated about the potential early on in the pandemic, while others have made stronger claims more recently.Ontario MPP Roman Baber was kicked out of the Progressive Conservative caucus in January after sending an open letter asserting public-health restrictions were "causing an avalanche of suicides," among other claims.
But Black pointed to recently released data out of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan that suggest suicide rates declined in 2020. He also noted coroners in Quebec and the chief medical examiner in Newfoundland and Labrador have recently said there were no increases in suicide rates in those provinces last year.
Data from Ontario and other provinces is still forthcoming. Black says counting suicide deaths always comes with some degree of uncertainty because investigations into both cause of death and a person's intentions can take a long time.
What the early data tells us
Still, Black said the data collected so far suggests the pandemic's arrival in 2020 didn't bring with it a surge in suicides.
"There might be small fluctuations because there are inquests and investigations ongoing," he said. "But they're likely not large enough to substantially change the results."
Alberta saw a particularly noticeable decline, according to preliminary data compiled by the province in late January that counted 468 deaths by suicide in 2020.
That compares to more than 600 in each of the previous four years.
Alberta considers the data for both 2019 and 2020 to be preliminary, as the office of the chief medical examiner may still make adjustments as death investigations continue.
Robert Olson, a research librarian with the Calgary-based Centre for Suicide Prevention, said the decline is striking, nonetheless."The difference between 2019 and 2020 is pretty large," Olson said. "So I can't see a big difference between the preliminary numbers now to the official numbers [later]."
Saskatchewan, too, saw a significant decline in suicides last year, according to provincial data with similar caveats. That province recorded 134 deaths by suicide in 2020, compared with an average of more than 200 over the previous four years.
B.C. hasn't released full data for 2020 yet but preliminary, year-to-date figures from January to August were lower last year than in 2019.
Researchers say this isn't out of line with what's been observed during past calamities.
Suicide is complicated
Black said it's true that levels of distress have increased amid the pandemic and the public-health restrictions that have upended virtually everyone's life.
But he said suicide is a complicated phenomenon, and some people were making "quite strong shortcuts" in believing the pandemic would necessarily lead to more deaths by suicide.
"As someone who studies suicide a lot, I care about distress very much," he said. "But there's not a straight line between distress and suicide."
Various distress centres have reported increased call volumes during the pandemic, but Olson said that can actually have an upside.
"That suggests to us that people are reaching out," he said.
"And that helps offset suicide deaths."
Black said another factor is a "a well known phenomenon called the pull-together effect," which has been seen during disasters or other situations where an entire community is affected by a hardship that demands collective action.
"The pull-together is counter-intuitive," Black said. "When we're distressed and we're all trying to do something together for society for the benefit for others, it actually does significantly decrease suicide rates."
A third factor, in Olson's view, is the relatively strong financial and social supports governments in Canada have provided during the pandemic.
He said researchers who issued forecasts and warnings early in the pandemic about the risk of suicide increasing amid public-health restrictions came with a big caveat.
"And the caveat they often often suggested was: 'unless the government intervened with social supports,'" he said.
"That was done, I think, really well in Canada," he said. "So I think that is a major reason why we have seen a decline in suicide rates."
Overdoses on the rise
At the same time, there has been a significant rise in the number of overdose-related deaths during the pandemic.
Black said some overdose deaths can end up being classified as suicides, but it's often quite difficult for investigators to determine the intent of a person who dies from opioid poisoning or other illicit substances.
"They could have been using it recreationally; they could have been using intentionally to hurt themselves; they could have been using it recklessly; or they could have been using it in a moment of despair," he said.
"You can't really be certain, because the person who could answer the question can't do it, so you have to try to piece it together.
"And, usually when they make a determination, they do it on the preponderance of all the evidence."
A 2018 study in Alberta suggested the increase in death accompanying the opioid crisis was primarily due to unintentional poisoning, rather than intentional self-harm.
Concerns have also been raised about an increasingly toxic supply of opioids in 2020, as the pandemic disrupted international supply chains of the drug.
What the future holds
In general terms, Olson noted there has been relatively little study about the effect of pandemics, in particular, on suicide.
He said the decrease in suicide rates that has sometimes been observed after major disasters is not a "hard-and-fast rule," and the most robust studies on the topic have been on natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, not widespread outbreaks of disease.
He noted another name for the phenomenon is the "honeymoon" phase, because the decrease in suicide rates is usually not permanent.
The authors note that "reliable empirical evidence regarding the link between the COVID-19 pandemic and suicide mortality remains scarce."
Black said there is always variance when looking at suicide rates around the world, but so far there doesn't appear to have been a major increase in suicides globally. If anything, he said the emerging data so far seems to suggest the opposite.
"We've seen some jurisdictions report higher rates. We've seen most report around average rates. And, if there's anything that's not normal, it's tended to be in the lower rates," he said.
It's something he said researchers, including himself, will continue to monitor closely.
But he believes the numbers we have, to date, for 2020 are worth noting because they run counter to a narrative that had developed about allegedly skyrocketing rates of suicide during the pandemic.
"People were able to say whatever they wanted about suicide, because we didn't have numbers for months. And there was a lot of political manoeuvring around the use of suicide as a device, to either end lockdowns or end restrictions," Black said.
"So I hope it's a wake-up call that we need more real-time monitoring of cause of death."
Within the black community? 3.5%.
Pretty fucked up.
Hampton 2016
In Vancouver, the Red Cross has contacted the Salvation army to do meal preparations for single room occupancy hotels in the infamous downtown east side. They are considering locking down the buildings with outbreaks and providing drugs and food to addicts so they don't need to go out and spread disease when infected.
.