Our mole in the U.S. health care system, the author of Medical School 2020, reports that his hospital ended up being supplied with way more coronavirus vaccine than needed for patient-facing clinical workers. “It doesn’t last that long, so they needed to get rid of it.” Did they take the leftovers to the local nursing homes and try to save the elderly? “No,” he responded. “They’re just giving it to anyone with a badge, even if they’re not clinical.”
Happy Christmas Eve! Here’s hoping that Santa brings you a vaccine, even if you don’t need one!
Related:
- “Does the flu vaccine work as well in elderly people?” (health.harvard.edu): The flu vaccine can be less effective in elderly adults. That’s because the flu vaccine works by priming the body’s own immune system to mount a response to the virus if it’s encountered. Older adults may have weaker immune systems, and therefore a weaker immune response to the vaccine.
- “Fact check: Coronavirus vaccine could come this year, Trump says. Experts say he needs a ‘miracle’ to be right.” (NBC, May 15, 2020): “I think it’s possible you could see a vaccine in people’s arms next year — by the middle or end of next year [2021]. But this is unprecedented, so it’s hard to predict,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. … “A lot of optimism is swirling around a 12- to 18-month timeframe, if everything goes perfectly. We’ve never seen everything go perfectly,” [Rick] Bright said. “I still think 12-18 months is an aggressive schedule, and I think it’s going to take longer than that to do so.” Bright, an internationally recognized vaccine expert, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that he was fired for opposing the use of an unproven coronavirus treatment promoted publicly by the president. Trump has called Bright a “disgruntled” employee.
Sound decision in this layperson’s humble opinion, as it inoculates all the business staff, the cafeteria staff, the custodians, etc., so it reduces the chances of COVID being brought into the hospital by non-medical staff in terms of patient exposure. Meantime, just heard from my 86 yo mother that she & Dad, 90 yo, will get the vaccine next week, or in any event have been told prior to Dec 31st. My parents’ CCRC has contracted with CVS to administer the vaccine, under the supervision of the gerontologist (who’s on site about 10 hours/week as he has contracts with several CCRCs). It’s the outside staff, including housekeepers, who’ve infected residents several times since March (leading to 14 day strict quarantine in their apts). But sounds as though this vaccine will be administered based on age (75+) which describes all of the 325 residents, and that doses won’t be given to the concierge, lifeguarding, etc., staff.
re: “Here’s hoping that Santa brings you a vaccine, even if you don’t need one!”
Before that, I’d suggest reading this Science magazine blog post on Antibody Dependent Enhancement, but more importantly the varied comments noting things the author missed (especially that there are other types of vaccine enhanced disease and that the FDA notes its an “important risk” in the future after the initial immunity wanes that the trials hadn’t lasted long enough to even have data on, i.e. the risk you’d get a more severe case of covid-19 in the future after the vaccine fades than if you hadn’t been vaccinated).
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/18/antibody-dependent-enhancement
In the Department of Unintended Consequences there is “Repeated flu shots may blunt effectiveness” ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4387051/ ).
Delivered extra or none of the staff wanted it?
In New York, the Times is fanning the flames as hospital workers go Full Hobbesian on each other in their attempts to get the jab. In any system where you try to apply quotas and make people wait in line, lots of people try to jump. Anyone archaic enough to remember gas rationing during the Carter Administration will see the parallels. In my town, neighbors turned into enemies trying to siphon gas out of each other’s tanks at 2:30 in the morning so they could skip waiting in line.
https://dnyuz.com/2020/12/24/hospital-workers-start-to-turn-against-each-other-to-get-vaccine/
Antisocial workers:
“One nurse at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital said she had gone as far as to confront a social worker who she believed had jumped the line about why the social worker thought she deserved the vaccine ahead of others.
“She said, ‘We have to go to E.R. sometime,’ but that’s not true,” the nurse said of the social worker.”
Merry Christmas!