Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #106

[Teche]

Bernie Sanders Reintroduces Bill To Send Free N95 Masks To All Americans

Baldwin, other Democrats back $5B proposal to send an N95 mask to every American

View attachment 329974

The Masks for All Act

Would appropriate $5 billion for the domestic manufacturing, procurement and distribution of N95 masks, which filter out at least 95% of airborne particles. Recent data shows that such masks protect wearers against omicron-infected, unmasked people for up to two and a half hours ― compared to just 20 to 30 minutes of protection provided by cloth or surgical masks.

The Washington Post reported Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon formally recommend people wear these better masks. That’s a shift away from its previous guidance, which was crafted when there was a shortage of N95 masks and the agency needed to ensure health care workers had access to them.

This should be interesting…4 Covid tests per family and I wonder how many disposable masks. Many, many southerners have large multigenerational families.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

Meanwhile..

California county leaves more than $10M worth of COVID protective gear out in the rain

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Workers in California's San Mateo County are scrambling to clean up a mess uncovered by our sister station in San Francisco, KGO-TV's I-Team. More than $10 million worth of precious personal protective equipment-- purchased with your tax dollars - was left outside in the rain.
...

This seems hard to believe, but top county officials didn't know that thousands of boxes of PPE were moved outside and forgotten for months until the I-Team told them.

KGO-TV's Dan Noyes got a tip on a recent rainy day and went straight to the San Mateo County Event Center, Gate 9, and couldn't quite believe what he found. Thousands upon thousands of boxes containing all sorts of brand new personal protective equipment soaking in the rain; stacks of boxes collapsing, too many to count, some breaking open and spilling their contents.
...

I want to know why someone bought all of that PPE if it wasn't going to be used. Are they storing it for the next pandemic? JMO.

 

[acutename]

Will ship in 7 to 12 days. That's a long wait to process an order. Hopefully the USPS isn't processing these. We are looking at a potential 14 to 16 days wait.

We contracted with national pharmacies to provide testing and vaccine. This was highly successful. Why not contact this out to Amazon, they have perfected the order/ship/track service. They already have heavily discounted delivery contacts and I know I will receive my package or they will find it.

Scares me, they are using the post office doing this.

I waited 28days for a birthday gift for grandson. It showed on the USPS site it was at the PO. I went to the PO and was told....we'll never find it, you'll just have to wait till we get to that stack.

Senator says mail delivery issues spreading across Virginia
The senator says his team is working on the issue on the ground level.

“My hope is that the postal board that now has a majority Biden appointees will look at this top level management of the post office, including the postmaster general just to make sure that we can bring more efficiency,” Warner said.


Sen. Warner says he's 'cautiously optimistic' about mail in Charlottesville

Warner & Kaine Seek Answers on Mail Service Delays in the Central Virginia Region

maybe we will have them for the next variant....

 

[CharlestonGal]

This should be interesting…4 Covid tests per family and I wonder how many disposable masks. Many, many southerners have large multigenerational families.

Not a problem. Southerners don't give a darn about tests, or masks, vaccines until they are sick themselves. I live in a southern state and witness this first hand every day. They aren't going to be requesting masks or tests or vaccines. They don't care about these things until they get invariably get infected themselves, begging for medical care. Only then do then do they suddenly care about mabs and antivirals when they are sick and spiraling downward when it's too late. Then they beg for everything else to save them from their folly. The south will continue to carry on with their lack of vaccines, lack of vaccine uptake, lack of masks. And that is not going to change any time too soon. They have made that perfectly clear where I live. jmo

 

[acutename]

Meanwhile..

California county leaves more than $10M worth of COVID protective gear out in the rain

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Workers in California's San Mateo County are scrambling to clean up a mess uncovered by our sister station in San Francisco, KGO-TV's I-Team. More than $10 million worth of precious personal protective equipment-- purchased with your tax dollars - was left outside in the rain.
...

This seems hard to believe, but top county officials didn't know that thousands of boxes of PPE were moved outside and forgotten for months until the I-Team told them.

KGO-TV's Dan Noyes got a tip on a recent rainy day and went straight to the San Mateo County Event Center, Gate 9, and couldn't quite believe what he found. Thousands upon thousands of boxes containing all sorts of brand new personal protective equipment soaking in the rain; stacks of boxes collapsing, too many to count, some breaking open and spilling their contents.
...

It never rains in Calif ... oh, wait, it does rain there:

24 inches
San Mateo, California gets 24 inches of rain, on average, per year. The US average is 38 inches of rain per year. San Mateo averages 0 inches of snow per year.

Climate in San Mateo, California - Sperling's Best Places

 

[Caylee Advocate]

Will ship in 7 to 12 days. That's a long wait to process an order. Hopefully the USPS isn't processing these. We are looking at a potential 14 to 16 days wait.

We contracted with national pharmacies to provide testing and vaccine. This was highly successful. Why not contact this out to Amazon, they have perfected the order/ship/track service. They already have heavily discounted delivery contacts and I know I will receive my package or they will find it.

Scares me, they are using the post office doing this.

I waited 28days for a birthday gift for grandson. It showed on the USPS site it was at the PO. I went to the PO and was told....we'll never find it, you'll just have to wait till we get to that stack.

Senator says mail delivery issues spreading across Virginia
The senator says his team is working on the issue on the ground level.

“My hope is that the postal board that now has a majority Biden appointees will look at this top level management of the post office, including the postmaster general just to make sure that we can bring more efficiency,” Warner said.


Sen. Warner says he's 'cautiously optimistic' about mail in Charlottesville

Warner & Kaine Seek Answers on Mail Service Delays in the Central Virginia Region

MOO, but I think anything to do with the Government is s l o w. Hopefully the site will not experience major crashes like the rollout with the Affordable Care Act.

USPS will have the honor of delivery. They think porch pirates are bad now, look for it to rise with freebie tests.

 

[Arkay]

Photos capture the debris left behind by cargo looters on Los Angeles railway | Daily Mail Online

YIKES!

I see we can't rely on Amazon and UPS, either, to expeditiously ship the tests to us.

Although, according to the article, the thieves are leaving behind packages containing Covid tests because they aren't considering them to be valuable.

I imagine if they gave it some thought, they'd find buyers on the black market. But I hate to think of people buying them that way.

It's painful seeing those tests lying discarded by the railway. Obviously also painful to see all the looting that's been done, but I don't want to go off-topic.

 

[Caylee Advocate]

What a perfect analogy! Yes they would, endangering everyone around them.

Sneaking in to whisper "hi pocket" ... quietly exiting, glad to read your words my long lost friend.

 

[Lilibet]

ERs are overwhelmed as omicron continues to flood them with patients

This is being felt acutely at the emergency room where Dr. Bradley Dreifuss works in Tucson, Ariz.

"Our hospitals are totally full. We're not able to admit patients," he says. "It's led to major delays in care and patients sitting in the waiting room, eventually leaving and then coming back even sicker."

In Colorado, the situation is bad enough that ambulances are operating under new crisis protocols, where some patients may not be brought to a hospital if their condition isn't considered serious enough.

Schmitz says many hospitals are so full they are on diversion — meaning they aren't accepting ambulance traffic or transfers — and then patients end up stuck in the ER and waiting for a hospital bed to open up.

"You may be in a bed in the emergency department, not just for many hours, which was already very bad, but possibly even for several days," says Kelen at Johns Hopkins.

Some patients who need to be transferred from one ER to another for higher level emergency care are stuck. Snedecor says she's seeing this in Phoenix because the system is so inundated.

"They just sit there and they die, or they have long-term ill effects related to the fact that they couldn't get the care that they needed when they needed it," she says. "And we all know with a lot of these conditions — stroke, heart attack — time is of the essence."

A dear friend of mine has been in a hospital in Phoenix for almost a week for heart and kidney-related issues. She is VERY fortunate they had room for her!

 

[Lilibet]

Photos capture the debris left behind by cargo looters on Los Angeles railway | Daily Mail Online

YIKES!

I see we can't rely on Amazon and UPS, either, to expeditiously ship the tests to us.

Although, according to the article, the thieves are leaving behind packages containing Covid tests because they aren't considering them to be valuable.

I imagine if they gave it some thought, they'd find buyers on the black market. But I hate to think of people buying them that way.

It's painful seeing those tests lying discarded by the railway. Obviously also painful to see all the looting that's been done, but I don't want to go off-topic.

This is getting awfully close to anarchy IMO.

 

[CrimeAway]

I thought everyone in China was vaccinated.

Just a friendly reminder that no vaccine is 100% effective, and that is why it is so important for the majority of a given population to be vaccinated; it reduces the spread of disease and protects those who cannot be vaccinated, and those who did not mount a protective immune response to a vaccine.

Here's some more information about the Sinovac (inactivated) vaccine:

CoronaVac - Wikipedia

The Sinovac-CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine: What you need to know

China’s COVID vaccines have been crucial — now immunity is waning

Covid-19 vaccines: Sinovac recipients ‘may need two booster shots’

While the Sinovac vaccine may offer a little less protection than some other vaccines, particularly against new variants, IMO, some protection is better than no protection. I have seen death from vaccine preventable diseases and it is tragic.
I will be interested to see how China deals with this virus after the Olympics. All JMO.

 

[CrimeAway]

I had incredibly slow mail service in November 2020-January 2021, but this past holiday season has been fine, including packages from outside the US. Last year (2020-2021) I had packages that were sent tracked airmail from Europe that took almost 3 months to arrive .

I still have some hope for USPS, but maybe I'm just optimistic

 

[Caylee Advocate]

I think they just announced something yesterday about the idea of sending masks too! I guess we'll see soon what happens. Thankfully we have boxes of tests in case we need them so no need to contribute to overloading the website.

Fortunately we are stocked up also and have plenty of N95 masks, I couldn't stand the thought of going online up against millions of others. I have always thought "it's better to have and not need... than to need and not have" Good luck to others though!

 

[Lilibet]

I had incredibly slow mail service in November 2020-January 2021, but this past holiday season has been fine, including packages from outside the US. Last year (2020-2021) I had packages that were sent tracked airmail from Europe that took almost 3 months to arrive .

I still have some hope for USPS, but maybe I'm just optimistic

I think it’s kind of spotty. Our daughter sent an anniversary and gift cards to us here in Oregon from Atlanta in September. Three weeks later we were about to ask to put a trace on it and it showed up. I can’t imagine where it was all that time!

 

[Lilibet]

Fortunately we are stocked up also and have plenty of N95 masks, I couldn't stand the thought of going online up against millions of others. I have always thought "it's better to have and not need... than to need and not have" Good luck to others though!

I’m the same way. I bought rapid tests in early December and keep stocked up on masks. Unfortunately, the N95 masks I bought recently leak air out my chin, so my dh can use them and I’ll use the KN95s. I can’t imagine relying on the government to provide either tests or masks, although it’s good for those who can’t afford them at all and don’t mind the hassle.

 

[Simply Southern]

I’m thinking that it’s probably true that a for-profit behemoth like Amazon could handle the logistics better. However, since it is a commercial and not a government entity, there are likely many people who are not Amazon customers and don’t necessarily want their addresses on its list.

I worked in private healthcare under contracts federal and state, they have pages and pages of confidentiality, privacy, and prohibit "mining " of any information.

All the long term care vaccination were private pharmacies CVS and Walgreens. Free testing is private pharmacy, web-based.

I'm willing to bet this would not be the first dance with Amazon and federal contracts.

I agree, I so hope this postal program is successful. I live in rural American and we ain't seen a home test kit, PCR or rapid test in over a week. Most are having to drive 60 to 90 minutes. We NEED these kits desperately. Our positive rate is almost 40%, outbreak at city and county high school, and the hospital is diverting patients.

Three hours away, Richmond Va, has pop up testing, clinics, schools, everywhere testing an abundance of supply. I've fought from day one, ranted in the earlier threads, they know me by name at the governor's office. When the regional health manager wouldn't return my calls, I drove 2 hours and waited all day to see him, he didn't seen me. He did the next day when the local news accompanied me . When testing numbers for my community didn't add up with what the state shipped us, I dug to discover a "sister" hospital had taken them. Made front page news, posted it on here. I need free testing for my community and I don't need another road block or any mistakes.

Moo... And sorry for the rant.

 

[Simply Southern]

This is getting awfully close to anarchy IMO.

I saw it earlier and my first thought was mail trucks and the home test kits we so desperately need.

 

[Simply Southern]

Just a friendly reminder that no vaccine is 100% effective, and that is why it is so important for the majority of a given population to be vaccinated; it reduces the spread of disease and protects those who cannot be vaccinated, and those who did not mount a protective immune response to a vaccine.

Here's some more information about the Sinovac (inactivated) vaccine:

CoronaVac - Wikipedia

The Sinovac-CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine: What you need to know

China’s COVID vaccines have been crucial — now immunity is waning

Covid-19 vaccines: Sinovac recipients ‘may need two booster shots’

While the Sinovac vaccine may offer a little less protection than some other vaccines, particularly against new variants, IMO, some protection is better than no protection. I have seen death from vaccine preventable diseases and it is tragic.
I will be interested to see how China deals with this virus after the Olympics. All JMO.

I was referring to the article and photos of China locking up citizens in pods. China has not been kind to its citizens. MOO...

 

[pocketaccent]

MOO, but I think anything to do with the Government is s l o w. Hopefully the site will not experience major crashes like the rollout with the Affordable Care Act.

USPS will have the honor of delivery. They think porch pirates are bad now, look for it to rise with freebie tests.

Hmm..maybe we can receive the free test by Mother's Day?

I was randomly selected to participate in CalScope's free, at-home Covid antibody test back in early November last year. I did the lancet finger prick (ouch!) and sent several drops of my blood around Nov 10. My test result still not received yet.

(Miss ya, Caylee Sis and your hilarious posts)

 

[Simply Southern]

Fortunately we are stocked up also and have plenty of N95 masks, I couldn't stand the thought of going online up against millions of others. I have always thought "it's better to have and not need... than to need and not have" Good luck to others though!

I am fully stocked and resumed using my N95s last week.