Pirate's Cove

This is a big blow for so many of the teacher’s unions, who are trying to keep in person learning shut down. Why? Pick your own theory. Getting full pay for working from home in sweatpants, holding out for more pay, all sorts

CDC: Strong evidence in-person schooling can be done safely

The nation’s top public health agency said Friday that in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies, and vaccination of teachers, while important, is not a prerequisite for reopening.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of a pandemic that has killed nearly 480,000 people in the U.S. But the agency’s guidance is just that — it cannot force schools to reopen, and CDC officials were careful to say they are not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.

Officials said there is strong evidence now that schools can reopen, especially at lower grade levels.

Recommended measures include hand washing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school. It’s also more emphatic than past guidance on the need to wear masks in school.

So, the stuff that we’ve known of over nine months. And saying that there is no need for everyone, including teachers, to be vaccinated. Plenty of essential workers have been working hard for almost a year now, going in to work, doing their jobs, taking the risk. Not so many teachers, though, and not their unions. And, yes, many are just fine going back, want to go back, and many are back. Many, especially in the hardcore Democrat areas, are not.

Biden said schools will need more money to meet the CDC’s standards and called on Congress to pass his COVID-19 package quickly to get $130 billion in aid to schools.

Here’s a question not being asked: where’s all the money that was saved for the schools not being opened for almost a year? The savings on electricity and water not being used? Not having people constantly cleaning the schools? Not having to bus kids to school, saving on paying drivers and fuel? How much does that add up to for schools across the nation? Perhaps not $130 billion, but, has to be quite a bit, right? It can’t be used for disinfecting and cleaning? Buying a few thermometers to check the kids in the morning? What else is that Biden money used for?

This is really dumb, @NBCNews: we shouldn't shame people who look to get a vaccine shot instead of seeing doses thrown out. Really, really bad journalism https://t.co/emfJTVY4Bi

— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) February 12, 2021

From the story, which isn’t quite as bad as the headline

For this vaccine chaser, the second time was the charm.

On her first attempt to get a Covid-19 shot last month, 28-year Leah Robson arrived at a Los Angeles city park at 4 a.m., waited all day with hundreds of other hopefuls, and wound up going home without the vaccination.

She tried again the next day at 2:30 a.m. at the Balboa Sports Complex in the Encino neighborhood and found six people already ahead of her in line. But this time, after another all-day wait she got her shot.

“It was worth the wait,” Robson told NBC News. “There were about a hundred shots left over at the end of the day that would have gone to waste if they weren’t used, so just about everybody I was in line with got a shot.”

The shots expire if not used, so, yes, lots of people are working to get the ones that not used and going to expire. What’s the problem? It’s a good idea. They’ve been doing it in Israel, calling it the Pizza Guy vaccination, where they just grab random people off the street to give them the unused and about to expire doses. It’s smart.

Because the vaccine doses have a shelf life of just five hours once defrosted, they have to be used that same day or they will wind up in the garbage. New websites like vaccinehunter.org and Facebook groups like New Jersey Covid Vaccine Sites and Minneapolis Vaccine Hunters have popped up to assist people looking for leftover doses.

“There’s no downside to what we’re doing here,” vaccinehunter.org website founder Brad Johnson told “NBC Nightly News.” “Any arm is better than the trash.”

No, there is no downside. Except it is mean, according to NBC News. And, apparently, raaaaacist

The vaccine chasers who are mostly white and well-to do are turning up at community centers that serve mostly minority constituencies, as has happened everywhere from Florida to California. But doctors still say it’s better not to waste the doses — just as long as the vaccine chasers don’t try to cut the line.

So what? If blacks, Asians, Latinos, etc, don’t want to do it, that’s on them.

Some state and county health departments and even hospitals, all determined not to waste the scarce vaccine doses, have created sign-up sheets where people willing to race over to a vaccination center to get a shot at a moment’s notice can register.

I’d sign up if I could find a list around here. I’ve tried, no luck.

Read: COVID Today: Opening Schools Without Vaccines, Shaming People Who Chase Vaccines »

All the employees at the Washington Post are willing to forgo their own doses of vaccine, right, so they can be sent to poor nations? And since Biden voters tend to believe this garbage, they’ll be willing to forgo their own doses, right?

The zero-sum vaccine game: How a dose in the U.S. takes a dose away from a poorer country

The swift development of effective coronavirus vaccines has been one of the few bright points of the pandemic. Since Britain administered the first fully tested vaccine in December, well over 130 million doses have been delivered around the world — 44 million in the United States alone.

But most countries have yet to see the benefits of this accomplishment. Months into the global vaccine rollout, the pace remains staggeringly unequal, with wealthy countries leaving poorer ones in the dust. And they aren’t competing in a vacuum: The success of the former has come very much at the expense of the latter.

“It remains to a large degree a zero-sum game, which means that every dose that goes to the U.S. or the U.K. or an E.U. country is a dose that’s off the shelves,” said Andrea Taylor, a researcher at Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center who tracks vaccines. “And the shelves aren’t going to be restocked for a while.”

The zero-sum nature of vaccine supply is rooted in a wide variety of factors, but boils down to the simple fact that manufacturers cannot yet meet demand. The potential consequences are wide-ranging. Unmitigated spread in any country, rich or poor, can lead to variants that may be more virulent or resistant to vaccines.

OK, what Democrat is willing to give up their dose? Who’s willing to send dose for Americans to poor nations? Anyone? Sure, some Modern Socialist SJWs might be willing to send Other People’s doses, but, not their own.

Some experts have urged wealthy nations to address the situation head-on, through a policy likely to find little domestic support: the donation of doses to other countries that need them, before fully vaccinating at home.

I wonder if those anonymous experts are willing to give up the doses for themselves, their family, and their close friends and coworkers. That would be an important question to ask, eh?

So far, buy-in to this way of thinking remains limited. Norway has offered a plan to donate excess vaccine doses. Mexico, despite recording the third-worst death toll globally, has limited its purchases of the Pfizer vaccine after a U.N. request. Most other nations have not detailed such plans.

The Biden administration has pledged to pursue the idea of donating vials, but has not offered a timeline or other specifics.

The United States would “develop a framework for providing surplus U.S. government vaccine doses to countries in need, once there is sufficient supply in the United States,” a State Department spokesperson said. The government has not said how it would define surplus in light of vaccine hesitancy.

Joe already got his doses, along with his family and people, so, he wouldn’t be worried. Of course, he can’t be so dumb as to put other nations ahead of the U.S., right? He’d get eviscerated. Even the compliant Dem voting media would take issue, wouldn’t they?

The spokesperson said the United States might consider donating excess doses through Covax Facility, a program backed by the World Health Organization that is designed to ensure global access to vaccines. The Biden administration has pledged to support the program, in which the Trump administration did not participate.

What excess doses? California is temporarily closing sites because of vaccine shortages (mostly because the doses have been given).

It may well be shifting under our feet. WHO officials suggested this week that the prevalence of virus variants may necessitate annual vaccinations or booster shots. “That would completely change the picture. It blows everything out of the water,” said Taylor. “And I think it’s where we’re heading.”

Well, that’s a new one. Being the WHO, and all their issues with protecting China, you have to wonder what the agenda is.

Read: Washington Post: All You Selfish Americans Are Taking COVID Doses Away From Poor Countries »