Just got our boosters. They are advising to stay hydrated this time.

I had no side affects from both shingles shots but the sore shoulder thing.

You guys aren't making the shingles shots sound fun. I can almost empathize with folks afraid of the covid-19 shots.

How long after your second injection are you guys getting the booster? In the UK it's 6 months, which I guess fits with the strategy that a longer gap leads to a greater response with subsequent jab (which is what happened here with increasing the interval between jabs 1 & 2). Also, the effect of the AZ vaccine doesn't wane as fast as the others.

As of this morning, Florida now has America's lowest COVID rate! Gotta love our governor! No lockdowns or masks and we've got the lowest infection rate in the nation! Disney was packed last weekend and no masks barely anywhere.

And here Whoopi is telling people on the telly not to go to Florida or you'll probably die.

Crossing the Rubicon.

I went to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown over the weekend. I figured since I am vaccinated and the wearing of a mask is to protect others there was no point to masking up. The gamble was if I turned into a breakthrough case then perhaps I would not get very sick. And if the other guy was not vaccinated then it was his problem; Tough on him.

Less than 5% were wearing masks. The 3 people I was traveling with were vaccinated. How many other attendees were vaccinated? I have no idea; It would be a crap shoot. What is the nationwide vax rate? 60%? I'll go with perhaps 40% were not vaccinated.

But, for sure, you could call it a spreader event.

I sure had fun playing lots of pinball. There were a lot of nice pins at the show.

EDIT: Out on I-70 in the middle of small town/gas stop/highway town nowhere, the McDonalds was Now Hiring with starting pay of $12.80 per hour ! The Pizza Hut and Arby's just down the road were also hiring. In that small town, they are just poaching each other's help

So that means NY has a higher infection rate???

History of now….any thoughts crazylevi??

Total confirmed cases per 100,000 population since start of the pandemic. Sorted highest to lowest. Just the first few rows.

Notice a theme?

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A4701704-0C68-47CB-BC1B-D0817CCC0DB8.jpeg

One important thing to consider is how long you'll be out if you actually get shingles. I (stupidly) deferred my vaccination to the fall to avoid missing a day or two of summer and wound up missing more than a week.

It gets kind of interesting when you look at deaths per capita. Florida is among the worst, but so is New York, New Jersey, etc. I wish it was easier to see this broken down by demographics, when the deaths occurred, etc.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/

Yes I do.

NY and NJ aren’t on top of the list, due to lack of testing.

Even the officials in NJ admit, that our official numbers aren’t accurate due to that lack of testing early on. Days where we were reporting 4,000; it is believed it was really 20,000+ per day.

I agree with this, amount of testing is going to have a direct impact on confirmed cases. Deaths would probably be the easiest way to get a more accurate picture.

Correct, we know they willfully chose NOT to report nursing home deaths in places like NY.

Ok let’s do this. In brief:

Now what was going on in those first few months? Oh that’s right, we had minimal knowledge, minimal test kits, no vaccines, no treatments, etc…

East Coast got hit HARD when we knew little and had little supplies. Even with that, all those other states that had the luxury of time to prepare, treatments, vaccines, etc…still ended up by and large overtaking the east coast.

Mistakes were made. Mistakes were learned from. Can’t say the same for the current leaders. It is totally unacceptable for florida to manage to have had a positivity rate approaching 20% this late in the game.

2CCA4F54-09DA-4DD5-AD25-0B7F777B1919.jpegE2DAADFE-5069-483D-9975-53D11AFD8CE8.jpeg46D26D9A-1B57-4815-8DF3-470B80D3EF6E.jpeg

I really don’t put much stock in any of the numbers these states are putting out. To me the best way to get a fairly accurate number of deaths is take the total deaths from 2018-19 and subtract it from total deaths from 2020-21.

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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

And taking any and all politics out of this, Florida and Arizona should have the highest death rates, as they are the states with the oldest populations.

Problem is if I give death data, then they will ask for age distribution of population and infected.

Then it will be covid type.

Then it will be seasonal.

Etc…

Forever there will be excuses for why it is really New York and New Jersey that are really the worst actors while the Dakotas are really the gold standards. If only we slice and dice the data just so.

Wasn’t everyone swooning over the NY Governor? Didn’t he write a book about his leadership skills? Wasn’t he called the Love Gov or something like that?

Then look at Florida. Has by far the most amount of senior citizens. When that is factored in, it shows just how much better Florida was at protecting their vulnerable than NY was.

Don’t forget the children is Florida held up so much better by being in school. Small businesses fared better in Florida than in NY.

People are voting with their feet. They are leaving NY to go to Florida. Can’t say I really blame them. Look at NYC, it’s on its way to going back to what it was in the 70’s.

Just going to conveniently ignore all the fuckery that has occurred with Florida's data?

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article251838913.html

Yea it sucks. I've see so many NY plates in my city it makes me mad. They should stay and fix their own mess instead of coming down here and complaining how Florida isn't like New York. No kidding?! We'll probably go blue next year and lose desantis due to the massive influx honestly. Can't fix stupid.

It's been nice though. My kids haven't missed any school but a few weeks during the 15 days and haven't worn a mask but a few days in the beginning as well. Honestly I thought covid ended a year ago.

Data is useless if no one believes it or trusts the source, it’s sad, but that is where we are at. People on both sides of the fence are going to believe what they want at this point.

Hopefully my mentioning NYC or NJ didn't lump me in with that lot. I've been pretty horrified by the "pretend the pandemic doesn't exist" crowd and wear n95s in public, and I'm fully boosted. I just found it interesting that the death per capita list didn't cleanly follow the cases per capita, and trying to pinpoint the exact reasonings why each state did better or worse seems complicated.

Yep. They were even counting motorcycle deaths as covid! Glad they fixed the reporting to be more accurate.

As for Rebekah Jones you don't hear about her too often these days for a reason..

https://www.dailywire.com/news/rebekah-jones-who-falsely-claimed-florida-altered-covid-death-totals-has-falsely-claimed-gov-desantis-press-secretary-faced-criminal-charges

https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud

The east coast was completely shut down.

NJ went as far to shut down parks...you know, those big green places that are located OUTSIDE. I actually had a police officer, remove me off a street because I was running on it. Told me I had to run on a different street. Why? Because the street I was on bordered a park.... How can anyone think this is not insane, is beyond me.

Death rates remove the testing data. NJ is number 3 on the list...and we were completely shut down.

These states have the highest death rates because they were hit big very early on before we knew how to recognize and treat people with severe Covid and our hospitals were overwhelmed and short on supplies. I'd be more concerned about the states that have the highest infection, hospitalization and death rates currently, than what happened last year.

Florida's current data is highly suspect, we all know about the whistleblower and the Governor's constant refusal to cooperate with supplying data AND taking the recommended CDC safety guidelines, but there are factors in why their infection rates could be lower:

-Florida has a decent vaccination rate, it's 21st in the U.S. with 59.43% fully vaccinated.
-It's temperature. It doesn't get cold, people are eating outside in cafes, restaurants and bars which put them at far less risk of transmission.
-So many of the most vulnerable people in Florida already died of Covid, they have the 9th highest overall death rate in the U.S.
-So many people have already had Covid, they have the 7th highest infection rate over the course of the pandemic. A combination of having had Covid + being fully vaccinated gives one the lowest risk of being infected again with Covid.

I really do hope their data is real, I'm spending 10 days there in December. I plan on spending all my time outside and will mask up indoor public spaces, so I'm not too worried about it.

Research shows that is true, vaccinations reduce the spread of COVID:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/

“What is important to realise, de Gier says, is that the full effect of vaccines on reducing transmission is even higher than 63 per cent, because most vaccinated people don’t become infected in the first place.”

That’s a good article. But, not taking the vaccine because it may create a variant that’s resistant to that specific vaccine is a circular argument (you can’t say that vaccine resistance is a bad thing, if you think the vaccines are useless). Anyway, the unvaccinated create a much larger pool for viral mutation, simply because there are many many more unvaccinated people getting infected, and their viral load is higher.

The “worst case scenario” is no vaccinations.

Yeah, I drank at least 8 glasses of water yesterday and it helped a lot. I felt like I had a slight hangover all day, and hydration is my go-to for hangover recovery.

Here’s my armchair scientist explanation for why cases are still going up in some places, but more slowly than they would have with no vaccines. The population of infected people increases exponentially (viral growth). Vaccines slow that exponential growth but they can’t reverse it, especially in poorly vaccinated populations. Then you have factors like easing restrictions and people getting “back to normal”.

Wat? This is the US, sorted by # of active cases per capita. Florida is #7. And I’m being nice, if you go by raw number of active cases, Florida is #2.
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Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

But back in the summer, Florida had some of the worse numbers in the country and NY had good numbers.

Now that fall is here FL/GA numbers dropped and NY numbers are up. This appears to be totally seasonal/vacation related and the governors can't take credit for that.

Sweet, just got an appointment for a booster Moderna shot on Friday!

As I posted previously. The "whistle blower" was a liar and the media ate it up. There's a reason they dropped that story like a hot potato. Front page news, back page retraction and people still believe the original lie.

https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-suspends-fraudulent-covid-whistleblower-172804851.html

MattS was nice enough to post some pictures from Expo - starting with the Covid notice sign posted at entrance. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-expo-2021-new-location-/page/4#post-6572017 . I was scheduled to be in the vendor hall but covid changed that plan. I hope it's a great show.

-Rob
-visit https://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my replacement LED display boards for model D, E, H & S Skee Ball

Around here it’s approved at 6 months out too, I believe for all of the vaccines.

Doesn’t take the word of Rebekah Jones to show that Florida has done their darndest to have one of the most opaque and manipulated datasets in the USA.

Note that I am NOT saying that they falsified data. But it has been like pulling teeth to get it at all and especially to get it in a timely manner. (Researchers have had to go around the state dept of health at times in order to get updates).

Also they have not consistently followed standards on how they present it. Case in point, how deaths are recorded and reported out. They changed the rules during the last wave so that when deaths spike in real life, they don’t immediately in the dataset. Months later they backfill the data after the crisis has passed. No good scientific reason to do that. Some great non-scientific reasons though.

I’m glad to see Expo is more civil and using common sense with their rules than MGC’s 12-years and up need to be vaccinated or tested before entering.

Either you’re lying or misinformed.

More bunk claims on data without evidence. Funny how that works lol. http://www.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/2021/08/083121-fdoh-sets-the-record-straight-false-data-claims-miami-herald.pr.html

I live here and have friends in healthcare. Our charts have accurately matched what spikes we’ve had with and when. No funny business from what I can tell. People just believed the original Rebekah jones story and other lies and believe it to be fact.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/2021/08/083121-fdoh-sets-the-record-straight-false-data-claims-miami-herald.pr.html

This is the craziest part. No matter how many articles I post showing Jones lied, the other articles were lies and that Florida is actually reporting properly? I could show you 100 articles and you would still believe the original lies.

That is called confirmation bias and scary as all get out.

We were both a little fatigued the first evening (got boosters ~3 PM). We both felt fine the next morning, but my wife was more fatigued than me the as the day progressed. She ended up with a fever and sweats last night. I was fine, maybe just a little more tired than usual. We're both fine now.

Regarding the pain of the shots, I think a lot has to do with the experience of the person giving you the shot. We both felt our flu shots last week were the most painful of any we've had in a long time. The pharmacist was a bit fidgety. My wife had significant swelling at the injection site.

Correct for Pfizer and Moderna. Two months for the J&J with the only requirement that you're 18 or older.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html

So did lot of other people.

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Interesting article in The Lancet today about Fluvoxamine and COVID. Around 1500 patients in the study, showed improvement in hospitalization rates with those given fluvoxamine vs placebo. Might be another drug in the arsenal.

That's a National Review article, it's a goofy far right opinion magazine, not a news source. I was aware of her Twitter suspension and she was charged with hacking into the the state's database and downloading info. She's definitely taken some bold tactics, but no one has proven she lied about Florida pressuring state employees to change the Covid reporting data, at least as far as I can tell in 10 minute Google search of more trusted news sources. Regardless, that wasn't my point, there are other real factors why Florida could have lower infection rates currently.

Most of these things are governed by the state's rules, rather than the people putting on the festival.

Personally, I think vaccination requirements for large indoor events during a global pandemic are civil and common sense while infection rates are still high and 1,500 Americans are still dying from the virus every day. After having one of my staff show up to work with symptoms, not tell anyone, and test positive for Covid the next day, I don't trust that the average person would do the right thing and stay home with symptoms after buying an expensive ticket, hotel room, and travelling to a festival.

What's common sense about not requiring a free, safe and effective vaccine that's been available for 6+ months?

It's absolutely mind-boggling to me how public health has been politicized like this.

Ah thanks.

In other news:

Covid: Double vaccinated can still spread virus at home
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59077036

Transmission rate from double vaccinated is 38% to non-vaccinated, and 25% to other double vaccinated. And vaccinated less likely to catch Covid, of course.