Half of Public Has Heard Little or Nothing About the New COVID-19 Booster Aimed at Omicron

[kestrell]

Kes: For the past two years, I've received text notifications from the local health center where I receive my primary care and the local Walgreen's where I receive my vaccinations regarding Covid-19 vaccinations but, this year, radio silence. In past years, I could walk in to the local Walgreen's for my vaccinations, which I thought would be the same procedure this year, since I didn't receive any notifications that it would be different, but when Alexx and I went in last week, we were told we had to make an appointment online or by phone. We tried sitting down right there and making an appt., but would have had to wait around for over two hours, or go home and come back, and by then it would have been the crowded rush hour, so we made an appt. for the next day. By the next day, Walgreen's had run out of the booster vaccine, so now we have an appt. for Monday.

My point is, the places dispensing the vaccine seem to be making both the information and the vaccine a lot less available this year, at least in the public health sector.

KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: September 2022
Grace Sparks
excerpt from article at
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-moderna-pfizer-biontech-bivalent-covid-19-vaccines-use

Key Findings
The new, updated, bivalent COVID-19 boosters are now available for use, but the latest KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey finds that awareness of the updated boosters is relatively modest, with about half of adults saying they’ve heard “a lot” (17%) or “some” (33%) about the new shots. About a third of all adults (32%) say they’ve already gotten a new booster dose or intend to get one “as soon as possible.”
Intention is somewhat higher among older adults, one of the groups most at risk for serious complications of a coronavirus infection. Almost half (45%) of adults ages 65 and older say they have gotten the bivalent booster or intend to get it “as soon as possible.”


In late August, the
Food and Drug Administration authorized
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-moderna-pfizer-biontech-bivalent-covid-19-vaccines-use
the use of new, updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters that target both the new omicron variants and the original strain of the virus. The bivalent boosters
(one by Moderna and one by Pfizer) are now authorized for use by those ages 12 and older who have gotten an initial series of a COVID-19 vaccine, including
those who have already received one or more boosters.

Awareness of the new boosters is modest, with about half of adults saying they have heard “a lot” (17%) or “some” (33%) about updated booster, 31% saying
they have heard “a little,” and one in five saying they have heard “nothing at all” about the new booster doses.

Older adults and Democrats are somewhat more likely than their counterparts to say they have heard at least “some” about the new boosters, but fewer than
a quarter across these groups report hearing “a lot” about the new shots.

Half Of Adults Have Heard "A Lot" Or "Some" About New, Updated COVID-19 Booster Dose frame

Comments

[dewline]

That lack of awareness is terrifying.

I am looking forward to my next booster. I expect it to be in December or next January. I hope it will be such a vaccine as this bivalent edition.

[oracne]

I had the bivalent a week ago, and have been spreading the word among my work colleagues; a couple have signed up already! Another one, alas, caught covid from their child so will have to wait.

[duskpeterson]

And then there's a friend of mine, who said, "The President saying the pandemic is over doesn't make me very eager to get the booster."

(Yes, I had a talk with him about that.)

[kestrell]

Some days I feel as if I am surrounded by way too many people who have read those fantasy novels where the magic only needs people to believe something for it to become real because, obviously, a solid majority of the people walking around believe the pandemic is over. Meanwhile, I am reading about researchers styding long Covid and people talking about how it is affecting them, which sounds very similar to how having an autoimmune disease affects me on a daily basis, and I feel like giving healthy people a mass smack in the back of the head saying, Don't take chances fucking up your body for the rest of yoru life.

[duskpeterson]

I am so glad you said that, because I feel insane these days. I haven't seen anyone wear a mask in ages, except where it's still required, and sometimes not even there. A friend, normally very risk-adverse, scolded me for not wanting to go to indoor events. That shook me; we'd been hand-in-hand in COVID prevention measures till last spring, when our state rolled back all its COVID prevention measures except vaccines. (Thank you, CDC.) And then I watched on TV the events connected with Queen Elizabeth's death, and I could see thousands of people crowded together, with no masks on. That's the point at which I began to wonder whether I was a hypochondriac.

So I really appreciate your reality check.

[kestrell]

I have another friend who said a similar thing to me recently so, no, you are not alone and no, you are not a hypochondriac. I've read a few articles about all the people who spent their summer going back to doing the things they did "before the pandemic," and a lot of them got Covid, and seemed surprised that they got it. In addition, some people are getting sick withh colds and flu, but they are getting *more* sick by these illnesses than they did before the pandemic, and researchers are beginning to theorize that Covid weakens your immune system, possibly for the long term, or life.

So, any time you feel that someone else is minimizing your perfectly reasonable precautions, feel free to check in with me, and I will be glad to remind you that you are a sane and intelligent person for guarding your present and future health.

[duskpeterson]

You're wonderful. Thank you.

[kestrell]

Also re: Queen Elizabeth's funeral and magic systems: One keeps hearing how having a king/queen and a royal family in England has become unnecessay, and how the system should be done away with, how many people don't "believe in it" anymore.

Then they stage this big public ritual, and let the world view it on every kind of media, and not only do thousands of Brits bend the knee, so to speak, in a very public ritual, but millions of people tune it to pay homage.

What a fantastic ritual the royal family organized, and how much belief they just fueled up the magic machine with!

[duskpeterson]

There are plenty of Britons and Commonwealth folks who were angry about the celebrations. My Twitter feed was about 10 to 1 against the Queen.

My feeling is that, whether we like it or not, big nations always hold massive ceremonies over major events. The USA certainly does. We even had a memorial service for the Queen at Washington National Cathedral. I assume the Episcopal Church paid for that - the advantage of not having a state religion. But our Vice President, Speaker of the House, and other US representatives showed up for the memorial service, in the middle of their work days. And of course the President and the First Lady attended the funeral; that trip definitely was paid for by the American government, i.e. the American taxpayers. So all of us in the USA supported the ritual of the Queen's death, willingly or not. That's one reason why I feel the need to speak softly on this topic.

I watched the events on both sides of the Atlantic, being English American, raised Episcopalian, and fascinated with British history. I'm not keen on monarchies (we Americans fought a war over that), much less multi-million-dollar taxpayer-funded ceremonies at a time when the hosting nation is undergoing an economic crisis that could lead to the deaths of many of its people. But it was a deeply impressive set of ceremonies, and so I'm inclined to agree with those who say that, in the long run, this ritual is likely to pay for itself in increased tourism. My companion Joe (Scottish American and very fond of the monarchy) would have flown over to Britain for the funeral if his health and finances had permitted it.

[kestrell]

I mostly was speaking from a magic systems perspective when I made this comment, so I didn't intend to step on anyone's toes.

I'm fascinated by Alan Moore's work concerned with magic, and I just finished reading the final book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy, _The Golden Enclaves_, which my husband and my housemate and I have been obsessed with for the past couple of years. I highly recommend the trilogy. The audiobooks have a *fantastic* narrator. Bard has the first two audiobooks, but I purchased the third in the trilogy, which just came out.

[duskpeterson]

Oops, I didn't mean to go off-topic. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I mistakenly thought you were too. :)

I tried the first of the Scholomance novels - I love her Temeraire series - but it was just dark for me, I'm afraid. I tend to be seeking out lighter fare these days, thank you pandemic. ("Lighter," of course, being a relative term for a hurt/comfort reader.)

[kestrell]

I get going for the lighter reading: I mostly read mysteries, and alot of them are even older mysteries. I recently blew through a bunch of Charlotte MacLeod mysteries, the ones which feature a broke Boston widow who turns her townhouse into a boarding house, and then she gets involved with a man who tracks down stolen art. It has a lot of descriptions of old Boston, and what it was like in the 1970s. Also, there are a lot of characters who are over fifty in it, which is really refreshing.

[duskpeterson]

"Also, there are a lot of characters who are over fifty in it, which is really refreshing."

That is refreshing.

[elusiveat]

Amusingly, earlier this week I got a text message from Walgreens saying that my flu vaccine was waiting for me and that I could get my COVID booster at the same time. Dudes, I got both vaccines on September 9th. At Walgreens, no less >_<

In fact, I suspect it is *because* of that vaccine appointment that I'm in their text message bank in the first place. Good job, Walgreens.