If you’re a Keesler FCU member, and are willing to travel to the MS Gulf Coast, you can get the shot. I have no idea of scheduling, or what variant they’re shooting you up with. Registration is required, available on the Keesler website.
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That struck me too, but I think the right interpretation given the shots per capita for NY and the west coast are more in the middle of the pack -
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ (see state table at bottom)
is that these overly liberal states are doing about average, maybe a touch worse at rollout.
However, what the first chart shows is that these states have finely grained levels of privilege in their rollout schemes, so that it will be that much longer before “anyone” can get a vaccine rather than for example prioritizing younger subsectors of the population (homeless, drug addicts, favored minority or low income groups, govt or union jobs, etc). So they will no doubt have more deaths than a system that strictly prioritized rollout by risk of death (ie by age, for the vast part; no one giving priority to men although the virus does, etc), but this way those liberal politicians can score virtue points and if a few more older whiter people die on average, well, they were on the wrong side of history anyway.
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Depends how you see it. On a personal basis, I consider it a positive because I got protected earlier than I would have been otherwise. And what happens to older folks deciding against getting protected is not exactly keeping me up at night. It’s their choice.
Once everybody has had a chance to get their shot though - say past this summer -, I don’t think I’ll feel very inclined to keep wearing a mask or socially distance. Also outside of those who cannot get vaccinated for proven medical reasons, I don’t think COVID testing and care should remain free for much longer, definitely not past 2021. At some point the financial burden associated with remaining unvaccinated should shift back to those making this decision.
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Or if you’re not. MS isn’t enforcing the residency requirement. The Biloxi site is giving Moderna.
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Louisiana moving to everyone eligible on Monday. 16+.
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That’s shortsighted.
Detecting new variants and keeping a close watch on them will continue to be important. The costs for testing and monitoring are infinitesimally small compared to the other economic costs from not doing so. It’s insane we had virtually no sequencing of tests (this is after the results, to determine which specific variants the infections are) at all going on throughout the prior administration (relative to other countries) so were completely blind.
Everyone is at risk if there’s negligence, not just the unvaccinated.
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It’s not always choice To some extent, it’s a failure of the rollout. For instance, see my post. My 64 year old mom that just turned 65 didn’t think she could get the vaccine until she turned 65 because her doctor said “call me after your birthday and I’ll see what I can do.” Yet her local health department was taking registrations and she had no idea that was happening. That’s a failure up and down the chain (federal, state, local gov’t, health care and insurance providers, community leaders, senior citizen organizations, etc). The insurance providers rolling over on this are the one that surprises me the most. More people getting the vaccine helps their bottom line, so I don’t understand why they aren’t front and center on this. My health insurance last emailed me about the vaccine on Feb 18 with a link to a page dated Jan 25. A lot has changed since then. I’m surprised they aren’t emailing me weekly at this point.
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perfect intersection of two threads: Liquid % +vax!
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I guess bad rollout/communication could be a reason.
But the communication I’ve seen in my state, really colored my comment. The eligibility changes were announced weekly on the state department of health website. They made a special centralized website for finding a vaccination center near you which linked you directly to providers where you could make an appointment. It was also propagated in the news pretty much everywhere (which made signing up pretty challenging when they opened up a new age group). I’ve even seen electronic billboards on the highway about registration for what age group. My doctor also emailed me a few days ahead of when they opened it up for 40+ people. But you’re right, I never heard anything from my insurer somehow. honestly it would have been very difficult for me to not know before or shortly after I became eligible. And they even setup a service where they can shuttle you to a vaccination place if you don’t have means of transportation.
So from my experience, out of the 30% of unvaccinated people in each age group above 60 in my state, there has to be a large amount who remained so by choice rather than by missing out for other reasons. It could be different in other states of course.
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When it comes to the communications side, your state seems to be doing much better than others
There are definitely a lot of gray areas in the rollout.
Here in Washington, there are a few “ins” that could make me eligible come March 31, including some volunteer work I do at our church, and the fact that my wife’s an engineer and is ramping up for on-site work with folks who don’t exactly take the pandemic very seriously.
She definitely qualifies, but by a strict interpretation of the definition, I may not qualify. However, I think I do under a more liberal one. Given the sheer number of appointments available in the eastern half of the state next week, and the state’s ridiculously conservative rollout strategy I don’t feel like I’m taking up a spot for someone who may be more qualified than I am. I will therefore get vaccinated out east next week. There are other reasons (parents visiting, upcoming travel) that make me want to get vaccinated on the earlier side of things as well, pre-May 1.
Hearing of many appointments being available, are these not being filled from a waitlist?
Here they had setup a waitlist ordered by age and location for people not yet eligible. If there were unfilled appointments or missed appointments, they’d call people who put themselves on this waitlist to come and get their shot rather than having unfilled appointments and potentially wasting doses. That seemed to make sense to me when you cannot control how many people you’re gonna get each day.
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There is an issue in WA where the more populous, blue, western half of the state has relative scarcity of appointments while the less populous, red, eastern half of the state has plenty of vaccine and wide open appointments. Literally thousands of appointments available at mass vaccination sites.
The problem the state faces is that (a) people in the west haven’t shown a willingness to travel east, (b) the east has a sizable migrant population, and thus pulling vaccine westward would violate their “equity” principles - these doses would likely go to tech workers, and (c) they have been unwilling to loosen the guidelines in the east versus keeping them strict in the west.
Just look at the appointment availability - there are over 3,000 appointments available in Yakima next week (as of the time of this post): Appointments in Yakima
Not only did your state do communication correctly, but you have a waitlist too? In what state do you live?
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Thanks for linking to the per capita chart. It’s pretty obvious that NY is not doing as well as the New England states, or NJ. Not sure why that is so hard to see, dark green vs lighter green. Natural conditions such as weather, density, are somewhat similar. CA is colored the same as NY, so grouped by the chart author the same as NY.
We don’t have to jump to Democratic (as in the Democratic Party / blue) states - I can’t see VT or RI not being included in the Democratic states group. I won’t use the word liberal since that unfortunately means different things to different people these days.
Funny guy; haha. NYC’s mayor must be doing a bang up job.
Waitlist should be used only in situations where the shots are already defrosted, or will otherwise expire soon. Eg. the Doctor from Texas having to find 10 people to vaccinate because the vial was opened for a person that was scheduled. Otherwise, I expect they’ll just rotate the vaccines, ie. use oldest first.
What I find repulsive and unethical is hoarding shots, or whatever reason, in certain low demand areas, while depriving others of the shots in high demand areas. Particularly so if there were days or weeks of supply just sitting in storage in the low demand area. If demand shifts, supply could simply be reallocated there then.
No climate guilt or excess carbon from encouraging people to drive hours and hours, eh? 
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Ohio.
I just scheduled our two older kids for their shots this week. They opened appointments ahead of schedule. Only our youngest won’t be able to get his for a while since he’s only 13.
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Yes better to vaccinate someone a bit ahead of schedule than just doing nothing or having a dose go to waste. The other purpose is simply having last minute openings for appointments that people cancel late. So they wanted a list of people they can call same day to fill in these cancellations last minute. I don’t know how effective or useful this measure was but the idea made sense.
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Allergic reaction kills a woman in KS. She was treated at the site shortly after getting the vaccine, was then hospitalized and didn’t make it.
https://www.kansas.com/news/coronavirus/article250196655.html
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the CDC says.