The coronavirus

oftenreading

As the situation gets worse, covid-wise, in many areas around the world, governments are taking stiffer actions against vaccine hesitancy.

In Russia, many regions are mandating vaccination for employees in a wide range of sectors including government, health care, retail, and food service.

In the Philippines, Duterte has threatened to arrest Filipinos who refuse vaccination and suggests that they leave the country if they won't comply. It doesn't appear that he has the power to do this, but who knows? There's a precedent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8rJCOWBo7Q

lastexitlondon

Our government  are all fucking mistresses  and breaking rules leading  to covidiots to grow in number and say. ... see told you so.  
Why  do these people  in power abuse such power  and shit on all the progress. And our lap dog boris  forgives  him  and moves on. Eerr no  mate thats not how it works.  This is why we are fucked
 NO TRUST

cblock4life

nicknyr15 said:

oftenreading said:

Some people who lost their sense of smell to covid-19 have not regained it at all, or it comes and goes. Some are experiencing parosmia, in which familiar things have unfamiliar odours, some of which are disgusting or off-putting and prevent them from eating certain foods. It's still unclear why this is and when/if they might see full recovery.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lost-sense-smell-covid-parosmia-1.6078500

I’m definitely experiencing this 

Me too….

F Me In The Brain

Yeah I spoke with a guy the other day who told me he no longer can take the smell of coffee, makes him retch now.

If that is the only side effect that stays with him at least he quit his coffee habit.

HughFreakingDillon

lastexitlondon said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2viZa1NJMy0

Thats awful

not a white stripes fan?

lastexitlondon

Ive not really listened i clicked the link and i guess its a no from me.

josevolution

Why is it that there’s open jobs everywhere and no takers, are high school kids not working anymore I’m at shop rite there’s like 6 cashiers working and the self check out is completely full line 

josevolution

There’s 3 cashiers out of 15 registers unreal 

F Me In The Brain

People make more staying home, unfortunately

mickeyrat

F Me In The Brain said:

People make more staying home, unfortunately

people receive more from not working right now.

they arent making anything.

F Me In The Brain

mickeyrat said:

F Me In The Brain said:

People make more staying home, unfortunately

people receive more from not working right now.

they arent making anything.

Ha.

Halifax2TheMax

After how many ‘Muricans carried themselves and behaved over the past year and a half, I wouldn’t be eager to work in a public facing position either. People suck.

nicknyr15

Halifax2TheMax said:

After how many ‘Muricans carried themselves and behaved over the past year and a half, I wouldn’t be eager to work in a public facing position either. People suck.

No. Not at all. People are on vacation, at concerts, at the beach, shopping , flying, etc… people are making more staying home. That’s the one and only reason. 

mickeyrat

nicknyr15 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

After how many ‘Muricans carried themselves and behaved over the past year and a half, I wouldn’t be eager to work in a public facing position either. People suck.

No. Not at all. People are on vacation, at concerts, at the beach, shopping , flying, etc… people are making more staying home. That’s the one and only reason. 

mickeyrat said:

F Me In The Brain said:

People make more staying home, unfortunately

people receive more from not working right now.

they arent making anything.

F Me In The Brain

People suck. 
I agree.

oftenreading

nicknyr15 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

After how many ‘Muricans carried themselves and behaved over the past year and a half, I wouldn’t be eager to work in a public facing position either. People suck.

No. Not at all. People are on vacation, at concerts, at the beach, shopping , flying, etc… people are making more staying home. That’s the one and only reason. 

The one and only reason? That’s bs. It’s a reason but there are many others. 

Like parents having to be home to look after kids who were not at school and for whom they could not find child care.

Like health care workers who dealt with the stress and fear and pressure for a year and a half and decided it wasn’t worth it. 

Like people who got laid off from their former positions when their workplaces closed and whose industries haven’t recovered yet. 

Like people who left positions that pay much more than covid benefits due to daily harassment from customers or clients. 

Those and other reasons weigh in just as much as the laziness that you assume
 

nicknyr15

oftenreading said:

nicknyr15 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

After how many ‘Muricans carried themselves and behaved over the past year and a half, I wouldn’t be eager to work in a public facing position either. People suck.

No. Not at all. People are on vacation, at concerts, at the beach, shopping , flying, etc… people are making more staying home. That’s the one and only reason. 

The one and only reason? That’s bs. It’s a reason but there are many others. 

Like parents having to be home to look after kids who were not at school and for whom they could not find child care.

Like health care workers who dealt with the stress and fear and pressure for a year and a half and decided it wasn’t worth it. 

Like people who got laid off from their former positions when their workplaces closed and whose industries haven’t recovered yet. 

Like people who left positions that pay much more than covid benefits due to daily harassment from customers or clients. 

Those and other reasons weigh in just as much as the laziness that you assume
 

Laziness I assume? What’s lazy about staying home and making more money than going to work? I’d take that deal any day. Working sucks. 

Intake back “the one and only “ line. That is nonsense. There are other reasons as you stated. But IMO, this is the biggest reason. 

Almost every small business in my neighborhood has a help wanted sign up, including mine. I would get applications the minute I would put that sign up. Now im lucky if one person comes in a week to inquire. I’ve never seen anything like it before. 

mickeyrat

 

Smartphones NYC State Wire NY State Wire LA State Wire HI State Wire CA State Wire Wine Coronavirus pandemic Government and politics TX State Wire New York

States hesitant to adopt digital COVID vaccine verification

By DAVID A. LIEB

Today

Customers wanting to wine, dine and unwind to live music at the City Winery's flagship restaurant in New York must show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination to get in. But that's not required at most other dining establishments in the city. And it's not necessary at other City Winery sites around the U.S.

If City Winery tried doing such a thing at its places in Atlanta and Nashville, "we would have no business, because so many people are basically against it,” said CEO Michael Dorf.

Across the U.S., many hard-hit businesses eager to return to normal have been reluctant to demand proof of vaccination from customers. And the public and the politicians in many places have made it clear they don't care for the idea.

In fact, far more states have banned proof-of-vaccination policies than have created smartphone-based programs for people to digitally display their vaccination status.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends masks when dining or gathering indoors for those who aren't fully vaccinated. But few states require it, and most businesses rely on voluntary compliance — even in places with low vaccination rates where COVID-19 cases are climbing.

Digital vaccine verification programs could make it easier to enforce safeguards and tamp down new outbreaks.

"But that only works when you have mass adoption, and mass adoption requires trust and actual buy-in with what the state health department is doing, which is not necessarily present in all states,” said Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.

Hawaii is the only state enforcing some version of a vaccine passport. It requires travelers to upload a photo or PDF of their Hawaii vaccination document or pass a pre-arrival COVID-19 test to avoid having to quarantine for 10 days.

Earlier this month, California became just the third state — behind New York and Louisiana — to offer residents a way to voluntarily display digital proof of their COVID-19 shots. None of those states requires the use of their digital verification systems to access either public or private-sector places.

By contrast, at least 18 states led by Republican governors or legislatures prohibit the creation of so-called vaccine passports or ban public entities from requiring proof of vaccination. Several of those — including Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota and Texas — also bar most businesses from denying service to those who aren't vaccinated.

“Texas is open 100%, and we want to make sure that you have the freedom to go where you want without limits,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in signing a law against vaccine passports.

The prohibition doesn't apply to the demands employers make on their employees. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Texas threw out a lawsuit from 117 Houston hospital employees who challenged a workplace requirement that they get vaccinated. More than 150 were later fired or resigned for not getting their shots.

In Louisiana, under a Republican-passed bill facing a potential veto from Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, public facilities would not be allowed to bar unvaccinated people until the COVID-19 vaccines have received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The vaccines for now are being dispensed under emergency FDA authorization.

In May, Louisiana launched a program allowing residents using the state's digital driver's license, LA Wallet, to add a record of their COVID-19 vaccination.

But its reach is still limited. About 105,000 people have activated the COVID-19 verification function. That's about 14% of those with a digital license and less than 4% of Louisiana's 3.1 million people with valid driver's licenses.

Democratic state Rep. Ted James, who wrote the bill creating the digital driver's license, said he has used the feature just once — to show an Uber driver in Nevada that he didn't need to wear a mask. But James said he has never been asked to show it in Louisiana and doubts he ever will.

“Earlier in the year, I felt that at some point we would be limited in travel, going to certain places, unless we had the vaccine,” James said. Now, "I don’t foresee us ever having some type of requirement.”

As a step in reopening, New York in March launched its Excelsior Pass, the first state system to provide digital proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a recent negative test. As of early June, more than 2 million people had gotten the digital pass — about one-fifth of those who have been vaccinated.

At the City Winery, most customers bypass the Excelsior Pass and instead show their paper CDC vaccination cards to gain entry, according to Dorf, who said patrons at the 1,000-person capacity venue "appreciate going into a bubble of safety, knowing that everyone around them is vaccinated.”

Though larger ticketed events, like concerts at Madison Square Garden, require proof of vaccination, most businesses don't ask.

“Think of a bar,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance. "You have four friends that go in — maybe two of them have it, the other two don’t. You’re going to turn the other two away when small businesses are struggling so much?”

Though most states have shied away from creating digital vaccination verification systems, the technology may soon become widespread nonetheless.

Vaccine providers such as Walmart and major health care systems already have agreed to make digital COVID-19 vaccination records available to customers. Apple also plans to incorporate the vaccination verification function into a software update coming this fall.

Within months, hundreds of millions of people across the U.S. will be able to access digital copies of their COVID-19 vaccination records, said Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at the nonprofit MITRE Corp., part of a coalition of health and technology organizations that developed such technology.

People will receive QR codes that can be stored on smartphones or printed on paper to be scanned by anyone seeking vaccine verification. Those who scan the codes won't retain any of the information — a protection intended to address privacy concerns.

The California Chamber of Commerce said it welcomes the state's new vaccine verification system as a way for employers to check on their employees. California regulations require most employees who aren't fully vaccinated to wear masks when dealing with others indoors.

Digital vaccine verification "allows an employer who really wants to make sure the workplace is vaccinated to require that without having the impossible problem of ‘John says he’s vaccinated but he lost his vaccine card. What do we do?’ This solves that issue,” said Rob Moutrie, a policy advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce.

mickeyrat

 

The CoronavirusOutbreak

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As Parents Forbid Covid Shots, Defiant Teenagers Seek Ways to Get Them

Most medical consent laws require parental permission for minors to get a vaccine. Now some places are easing restrictions for Covid shots while others are proposing new ones.

Image

When the mother of this Florida teenager blocked her from getting the Covid vaccine, the 15-year-old was uninvited to a friend’s party and continues to feel excluded from many social events because she remains unvaccinated.Credit...Maria Alejandra Cardona for The New York Times

By Jan Hoffman

June 26, 2021Updated 7:03 p.m. ET

Teenagers keep all sorts of secrets from their parents. Drinking. Sex. Lousy grades.

But the secret that Elizabeth, 17, a rising high-school senior from New York City, keeps from hers is new to the buffet of adolescent misdeeds. She doesn’t want her parents to know that she is vaccinated against Covid-19.

Her divorced parents have equal say over her health care. Although her mother strongly favors the vaccine, her father angrily opposes it and has threatened to sue her mother if Elizabeth gets the shot. Elizabeth is keeping her secret not only from her father, but also her mother, so her mom can have plausible deniability. (Elizabeth asked to be identified only by her middle name.)

The vaccination of children is crucial to achieving broad immunity to the coronavirus and returning to normal school and work routines. But though Covid vaccines have been authorized for children as young as 12, many parents, worried about side effects and frightened by the newness of the shots, have held off from permitting their children to get them.

A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only three in 10 parents of children between the ages of 12 through 17 intended to allow them to be vaccinated immediately. Many say they will wait for long-term safety data or the prod of a school mandate. But with many teenagers eager to get shots that they see as unlocking freedoms denied during the pandemic, tensions are crackling in homes in which parents are holding to a hard no.

Forty states require parental consent for vaccination of minors under 18, and Nebraska sets the age at 19. (Some states carve out exemptions for teenagers who are homeless or emancipated.) Now, because of the Covid crisis, some states and cities are seeking to relax medical consent rules, emulating statutes that permit minors to obtain the HPV vaccine, which prevents some cancers caused by a sexually transmitted virus.

Last fall, the District of Columbia Council voted to allow children as young as 11 to get recommended vaccines without parental consent. New Jersey and New York Legislatures have bills pending that would allow children as young as 14 to consent to vaccines; Minnesota has one that would permit some children as young as 12 to consent to Covid shots.

But other states are marching in the opposite direction. Although South Carolina teenagers can consent at 16, and doctors may perform certain medically necessary procedures without parental permission on even younger children, a bill in the Legislature would explicitly bar providers from giving the Covid shot without parental consent to minors. In Oregon, where the age of medical consent is 15, Linn County ordered county-run clinics to obtain parental consent for the Covid shot for anyone under 18. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which has been tracking Covid-related bills, some states, including Tennessee and Alabama, are working on legislation to prevent public schools from requiring Covid shots.

The issue of who can consent to the Covid shots is providing fresh context for decades-old legal, ethical and medical questions. When parents disagree, who is the arbiter? At what age are children capable of making their own health decisions and how should that be determined?

“Isabella wants it because her friends are getting it, and she doesn’t want to wear a mask,” said Charisse, a mother of a 17-year-old in Delray Beach, Fla., who asked that her last name be withheld for family privacy. Charisse fears the shot could have an effect on her daughter’s reproductive system (a misperception that public health officials have repeatedly refuted).

“Isabella said, ‘It’s my body.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s my body until you’re 18.’”

Image

Many teenagers see the Covid shot as unlocking freedoms denied to them during the pandemic. In New Orleans, Ava Kreutziger, 14, left, high-fives Croix Hill, 15, after Croix received her first dose.Credit...Kathleen Flynn/Reuters

As both the legal debates and family arguments unfold, those administering the vaccine at pharmacies, clinics and medical offices are trying to determine how to proceed when a young teen shows up for the Covid shot without a parent.

“We may be in a legal gray zone with this vaccine,” said Dr. Sterling Ransone Jr., a family physician in Deltaville, Va. In his health system, a parent can send a signed consent form for a teenager to be vaccinated. But because the Covid vaccine is authorized only for emergency use, the health system requires a parent to be present for a patient under 18 to get that shot.

Marina, 15, who lives in Palm Beach County, Fla., — and who, like others interviewed, asked not to be fully identified — longs for the shot. But her mother says absolutely not. The subject is not open for discussion.

And so Marina has been excluded from the social life she covets. “Five of my friends are throwing a party and they invited me, but then they said, ‘Are you vaccinated?’” she said. “So I can’t go. That hurts.”

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Latest Updates

Updated June 26, 2021, 4:13 p.m. ETJune 26, 2021

June 26, 2021

• Due to Covid-19 protocols, a College World Series run ends abruptly for North Carolina State.
• Britain’s health minister, accused of violating restrictions, resigns amid a Delta-driven surge.
• When parents refuse permission, some teenagers defiantly seek ways to get their Covid shots.

As the pandemic ebbs, some teen social circles are reconstituting based on vaccination status. “I see my friends posting on social media — ‘Woo-Hoo I got it!’ — and now when I see them, they ask me things like, ‘Where have you been? Are you traveling a lot? Are you sure you don’t have Covid?’ It sucks that I can’t get the shot,” Marina continued.

Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents’ consent. Some have found their way to VaxTeen.org, a vaccine information site run by Kelly Danielpour, a Los Angeles teenager.

The site offers guides to state consent laws, links to clinics, resources on straightforward information about Covid-19 and advice for how teenagers can engage parents.

“Someone will ask me, ‘I need to be able to consent at a vaccine clinic that is open on weekends and that is on my bus route. Can you help?’” said Ms. Danielpour, 18, who will begin her freshman year at Stanford in the fall.

She started the site two years ago, well before Covid. The daughter of a pediatric neurosurgeon and an intellectual property lawyer, she realized that most adolescents know neither the recommended vaccine schedule nor their rights.

“We automatically talk about parents but not about teens as having opinions on this issue,” she said. “I decided I needed to help.” Ms. Danielpour wrangled experts to help her understand vaccination and consent laws, and she recruited teenagers to be “VaxTeen ambassadors.”

“I want teenagers to be able to say to pediatricians, ‘Hey, I have this right,’” added Ms. Danielpour, who gives talks at conferences to physicians and health department officials.

Image

In Los Angeles, Kelly Danielpour, 18, started VaxTeen.org, a site that lists state health care consent laws, vaccine clinic locations and advice for how teens can address vaccine hesitancy in their parents.Credit...Jessica Pons for The New York Times

Elizabeth surreptitiously got her vaccine at a school pop-up clinic.

After administrators at her boarding school informed parents they would be offering Covid shots, her mother gave permission. Her father forbade it. Upset, Elizabeth consulted the school nurse, who said she could not be vaccinated without approval from both. Elizabeth researched state laws, learning that she wasn’t old enough to consent on her own.

She showed up anyway. At worst, she figured, the school would just turn her away.

Apparently, they took note only of her mother’s consent. Saying nothing, Elizabeth stuck out her arm.

Now she is in a pickle. The school is requiring students to be vaccinated for the fall semester and she says her father has begun warring with the administration over the issue. Elizabeth is afraid that if he learns how she was vaccinated, he will be furious and tell the school, which will discipline her for having deceived vaccinators, a stain on her record just as she is applying to college.

Gregory D. Zimet, a psychologist and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, pointed out the irony of an adolescent being legally prevented from making a choice that was strenuously urged by public health officials. Developmentally, he said, adolescents at 14 and even younger are at least as good as adults at weighing the risks of a vaccine. “Which isn’t to say that adults are necessarily great at it,” he added.

In many states, young teenagers can make decisions around contraception and sexually transmitted infections, which are, he noted, “in many ways more complex and fraught than getting a vaccine.”

Pediatricians say that even parents who have themselves been vaccinated are wary for their children. Dr. Jay Lee, a family physician and chief medical officer of Share Our Selves, a community health network in Orange County, Calif., said parents say they would rather risk their child having Covid than get the new vaccine.

“I will validate their concerns,” Dr. Lee said, “but I point out that waiting to see if your child gets sick is not a good strategy. And that no, Covid is not just like the flu.”

Elise Yarnell, a senior clinic operations manager for the Portland, Ore., area at Providence, a large health care system, recalled a 16-year-old girl who showed up at a Covid vaccine clinic at her school in Yamhill County.

Her parents oppose the vaccine so she wanted to get it without them knowing, which she could do legally because Oregon’s age of consent is 15. She teared up when she saw the shots were not ready before she had to be home, but she was able to return that night without alerting her parents and was vaccinated.

“She was extremely relieved,” Ms. Yarnell said.

Isabella is the 17-year-old daughter of Charisse, the Delray Beach, Fla., mother who refuses to grant permission for the vaccine. Asked why she wanted the shot, Isabella gave a stream of reasons. “A lot of older people in my family are at risk for catching Covid and possibly dying,” she said. “I want to get the vaccine so I can be around them, and they’ll be safe. And then I can go out with my friends again, and they won’t be so much at risk either.”

Although doctors have been trying to instill vaccine confidence in parents as well as patients, there’s not much they can do when parents object. Recently, Dr. Mobeen H. Rathore, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida medical college in Jacksonville, told a patient whose mother refused consent that she couldn’t get the Covid vaccine until she turned 18, three weeks hence.

“She got vaccinated on her birthday,” Dr. Rathore said. “She sent me a message saying that was her birthday gift to herself.”

Jan Hoffman writes about behavioral health and health law. Her wide-ranging subjects include opioids, vaping, tribes and adolescents. @JanHoffmanNYT

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23scidoo

mrussel1 said:

23scidoo said:

mrussel1 said:

I wonder if the vaccine works...

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/560240-almost-all-us-coronavirus-deaths-among-unvaccinated

Me too..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-covid-vaccines-riskier-than-advertised-11624381749

Does an opinion article talking about side effects change the data on the efficacy?

The one is professor on UCLA and the other on Yale.. i think their opinion has some weight..