I am super excited about extended eligibility.
I am not super excited to be the one vaccinating teenagers. They are fainters! It’s going to break my streak for the year. I’ve had some close calls but no one has passed out on me yet (knock on wood).
Parents, make sure your kids have something to eat and drink before their vaccines. And please warn staff if your child has a history of fainting!
Exactly the group and mindset I was describing, great example. And I’m sure your aunt is a lovely and well meaning person. It’s a sizable but possibly convincable group that needs hope of a faster return to normal than currently suggested by experts. Some may be motivated enough by PA-style ‘70%, no more masks’ policies, but others need to see more of an immediate individual benefit to be motivated. I don’t have the answers, but spent awhile fairly close to that mindset.
So here’s another one for your 2020.1 oddities bingo card… (thanks for the alert @sliddlenc_686656!)
Loose tiger roaming Houston suburbs is pet of suspected murderer out on bond.
Yes, things have gotten to the point where cows on freeways DO NOT even come close to making the oddities cut:
Oh, and I missed there was a new video out last month in the Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self series. They range from amusing to brilliant. Here they are, in order, if you haven’t seen them… 
(a few bits of adult language and mild political references)
My 16 year old nephew on Mother’s Day "I had my first dose yesterday and nearly passed out!’…me, knowing DS12 is just around the corner from getting his vaccine and the kid is horribly afraid of any and all needles/medical procedures: ‘Don’t you dare say that around your cousin!!!’
My 15yo DD is so excited! “I’m ready for this to be OVER” has been her mantra for months. She asked to be 1st in line when the CDC says “Go”. Thankfully, our state has been ahead of the pack on this, and already had plans ready for roll - out to 12-15 year old’s. We are scheduled for a drive through vaccine clinic Thursday after school. DD wants to leave early so that she can literally be 1st in line. She should be fully vaccinated by our July trip!
So I had a weird moment today. We actually got to go into DS9’s school today. I haven’t been in there since Read Across America at the beginning of March 2020. It was a little surreal and sad since he is graduating to his next school for 4th grade and he’s our last. He is in a recorder club with 13 other kids and they had a little 10 minute concert before school for the parents (no more than 2 people per child). Parents of course were required to wear masks during the performance. I was glad we had the chance to have a brief real life view of something he is doing in school. Educators that are on this board, this kind of stuff is important for parents to be connected. I’ve never seen our Middle school from the inside and am excited to get a glimpse at my 6th grade twins’ band concert in a few weeks.
More good news in PA. Our cases have really been dropping the last few weeks.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings has said today that the county is nearing the level of vaccinations needed to eliminate the mask mandate when outdoors.
Mayor Demings announced late in April that when 50% of the population 16+ has been vaccinated, the facial covering mandate will be lifted for all individuals outdoors. When 70% of the population 16+ has received their first dose of the vaccine and/or Orange County’s 14-day rolling positivity rate is 5% or below, all mandates will be lifted.
In today’s update, the vaccination level for Orange County is 46.98% and 50% is expected to be reached this week.
This is 90% me. There is zero motivation for me to get a shot. I’ve had covid. Posted elsewhere that I still have antibodies. The absolute only reason I would get the vax now is if I could pull the mask off and burn it as soon as the band aid went on. (Not the masks @Shmebulock made, though. I’ll save those.)
This is awesome.
None of my kids are enrolled for college for the fall. DS20 just graduated with his BS. DS18 gets his AS next week and is up in the air about next year. Though my DD16 would be taking college classes (we homeschool) if life were normal, we are planning to move to a new state in June and we have not idea what the fall will look like. I do know my kids won’t get the covid vaccines, so that could influence the decisions we make.
Unfortunately, the data coming out of some of the trials is showing that may not give you any protection from at least the SA variant. Something to kept in mind if that variant (or similar ones) becomes more widespread here. (It’s only ~1% at the moment though.)
“In this placebo-controlled vaccine trial, we found that previous infection with first-wave prototype-like, pre-B.1.351 viruses did not appear to reduce the risk of Covid-19 due to subsequent infection with B.1.351 variants among placebo recipients during the initial 2 months of follow-up. This finding is preliminary and may have public health implications for pandemic modeling, control strategies, and vaccine development and deployment efforts. It is also consistent with the lack of incremental benefit conferred by preexisting immunity in vaccine recipients as evidenced in our trial by consistent levels of efficacy regardless of baseline serostatus for SARS-CoV-2. ”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2103055
YLE posted an update on some of the boosters in trials. Her educated prediction:
“We’ll probably have a booster by the end of the year. And probably annually for at least a few years until we get transmission down, so mutations slow down.
By the way, we just got word of the first animal trial on a flu/COVID19 combo vaccine by Novavax. So, ideally and eventually we would only need one shot a year.”
And then there’s this…
Super low prevalence.
No idea which virus I had in the first place.
And I wasn’t concerned about having Covid in the first place.
The bottom line is I relate heartily to @Jeff_AZ ‘s aunt.
Thank you for mentioning this. This is not helping the message. It’s every bit as cringey as Trump suggesting Clorox or Fauci saying normalcy might be here by next Mother’s Day. Someone needs to talk to leaders about the optics.
I was thinking today that it’s going to take a variant wave of significant proportion to get people to choose vaccination. I don’t even know if promising an end to masking would work in Texas, even if it would work in New York for @qwerty6.
Hopefully I’m wrong and we are done with the virus.
I hear you on the optics. I don’t think I have as strong of a reaction as you do to it, but I understand why that image wouldn’t go over well for a number of folks.
To me, it is not the same level of cringe worthy, though. At all. Wearing a mask and distancing isn’t physically harmful. Drinking/injecting/etc bleach has the potential to sicken, maim or kill you.
FWIW, it doesn’t bother me.
I tend to think about who else is in the room that we cannot see. While to us the President may look like he is alone and wearing a mask, but out of the camera’s view there may very well be other people in the room.
When our company CEO is on a joint meeting, the feed makes him look like he is by himself but there is a group of people “behind” the camera area helping with support and meeting logistics.
Some good news - vaccination rates are stabilizing at 2M / day after falling pretty quickly from 3M when the J&J pause was announced. Hoping this holds. Probably at least partially due to opening up to 16+.
https://twitter.com/cohokelly/status/1392212892729085952?s=21
Update. The tiger is named India and still hasn’t been located.
But he was not in the room alone. He was the only one visible on the call, but others were in the room with him.
We are coming from different places, it seems. 
Trump’s comment was 100% stupid, spur of the moment, asinine brain-fart. And I’d be willing to bet you could count on one hand the number of people who actually entertained the thought that it was a good idea, vs. the thousands of Americans who will likely still wear paper on their faces til next May bc of Fauci.
My heart breaks when I hear of people who have put their lives on hold for a year+ now. We have been hanging out with friends and family, un-masked, indoors and outdoors since Easter of last year. We have our parties and picnics and holidays and sleepovers and we’ve shopped and dined and continued to live. This is especially valuable as we plan to move this summer and are grateful for these memories. We’ve missed the museums and activities that have normally graced our lives, but we made up for it with more gatherings and play dates and fellowship. What is saddest is that people who have had vaccines are still not confident! What will it take for people to reclaim their lives? 
But weren’t they all vaccinated?
