kestrell | Entries tagged with covid-19

Jessica Rendall
Dec. 9, 2022 7:01 a.m. PT
Originally posted at: https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/walgreens-announces-free-paxlovid-delivery/

COVID cases are rising again, but deaths have remained low compared to earlier seasons, thanks in part to treatments like Paxlovid.

If you have a prescription for Paxlovid, you can get it delivered right to your door for free through a Walgreens partnership with DoorDash and Uber, the pharmacy giant announced Thursday.
Anyone who lives within 15 miles of a Walgreens location (there are 8,000 stores participating in the US) will be able to get Paxlovid delivered on the same day,
Walgreens said,
https://news.walgreens.com/press-center/news/walgreens-launches-free-paxlovid-delivery-services-with-doordash-and-uber.htm
which covers about 92% of the population. Those who live more than 15 miles out might be able to use the 1- to 2-day delivery service to fill their prescription, also for free.

Walgreens said the Paxlovid program is meant to increase access to the antiviral that treats COVID-19 in higher-risk patients during the first few days of their illness. A speedy delivery and medication start is important for Paxlovid because the pills need to be taken within the first few days of someone's illness to work.
The partnership is also a direct response to the White House's call to pharmacies to
get Paxlovid in the hands of people living in underserved communities,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/25/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-announce-additional-efforts-to-help-americans-get-their-free-updated-covid-19-vaccine-this-fall/
who may not have an easy time filling a prescription.
Paxlovid is
expected to remain effective at treating COVID-19
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-updates-bebtelovimab#:~:text=1%20and%20BQ.-,1.1.,19%2C%20including%20hospitalization%20or%20death.
even as new versions of the virus,
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1,
https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/theres-finally-an-ample-supply-of-paxlovid-so-why-arent-more-people-taking-the-covid-antiviral-pill/

The antiviral is a short series of pills that needs to be started within five days of someone developing COVID-19 symptoms, or as soon as possible after a positive test. It's been
underused in the US,
https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/theres-finally-an-ample-supply-of-paxlovid-so-why-arent-more-people-taking-the-covid-antiviral-pill/
where a large number of people who come down with COVID-19 would be eligible for a prescription because they have a preexisting medical condition. Some medical conditions or factors that make someone eligible include
being older than 65, having diabetes, having moderate asthma and being overweight.

To use the Walgreens free delivery program for Paxlovid, you first need a prescription from a medical provider. The antiviral requires a prescription, in part, because there is a
list of medications that may interfere
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/13-things-to-know-paxlovid-covid-19#:~:text=How%20does%20Paxlovid%20work%3F,to%20make%20functional%20virus%20particles.
with it
( more information below cut )

From The Atlantic

The COVID Data That Are Actually Useful Now
Move over, case rates and hospitalizations. The next generation of COVID tracking is here.
By Betsy Ladyzhets
OCTOBER 17, 2022
URL:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/10/fall-winter-covid-cases-wave-data-predictions/671768/

It is a truth universally acknowledged among health experts that official COVID-19 data are a mess right now. Since the Omicron surge last winter, case counts from public-health agencies have become less reliable. PCR tests have become harder to access and at-home tests are typically not counted.

Official case numbers now represent “the tip of the iceberg” of actual infections, Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, told me. Although case rates may seem low now, true infections may be
up to 20 times higher.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/covid-testing-providers-scale-back-worries-another-winter-surge-rcna47777
And even those case numbers are no longer available on a daily basis in many places, as the CDC and
most state agencies
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-reporting-frequencies
have switched to updating their data once a week
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html#Surveillance-4-answer
instead of every day.

How, then, is anyone supposed to actually keep track of the COVID-19 risk in their area—especially when cases are expected to increase this fall and winter? Using newer data sources, such as wastewater surveillance and population surveys, experts have already noticed potential signals of a fall surge: Official case counts are trending down across the U.S., but
Northeast cities such as Boston
https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
are seeing more coronavirus in their wastewater, and
the CDC reports that this region is a hot spot
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions
for further-mutated versions of the Omicron variant. Even if you’re not an expert, you can still get a clearer picture of how COVID-19 is hitting your community in the weeks ahead. You’ll simply need to understand how to interpret these alternate data sources.

Betsy Ladyzhets is a science, health, and data journalist. She writes the
COVID-19 Data Dispatch
https://coviddatadispatch.com/
blog and newsletter.

Alexx and I received our third booster yesterday at BMC while I was there for an unrelated medical appt. The entire process was calm and well-organized, and completely lack the stress that trying to get a vaccine from Walgreen's has been.

They prefer you schedule an appt. but they will take walk ins if you are already there for a medical appt. or work. You can schedule through My Chart and you will receive a QR code. They also offer the range of Covid vaccine and boosters.
* The website info mentions "immunocompromised," and Alexx and I are both immunocompromised, but no one asked about this before offering us the vaccines.

Read details here
https://www.bmc.org/covid-19-vaccine-locations

During last week's episode, Kestrell and Alexx attempted to walk in to their local Walgreen' for their Covid booster and flu shot, as they had for the past two years, but were told (although they had received no texts or emails with this information) that they would have to make an appointment through either the website or by phone. The only appointment available for that day was in the late afternoon, when the pharmacy would become very crowded, so Alex and Kestrell made appointments for the next day and went home.

The next day, the appointments were cancelled because the drugstore had run out of Covid vaccine. Alexx and Kestrell later rescheduled their appointments for Monday.

Now it is Monday, and our appointments have been cancelled because the pharmacy is experiencing a staff shortage due to the pandemic (yes, that same pandemic which the President has declared is over).

The pharmacist said he is keeping a list for people to reschedule their appts. as walk-ins for Tuesday or Wednesday, but he suggested that I come in late in the day, around five or six, and I explained that I have rheumatoid arthritis and amd am blind, and would be exhausted and barely able to function by then, so I would prefer the earlier two o'clock block that he had mentioned first.

I understand that pharmacists are doing their best with a really messed-up situation, but my friends with the really good health insurance just quietly and calmly received their vaccines without this complete shitshow. I don't have a lot of faith that I will be receiving my vaccine on Wednesday, either.

On the other hand, I have an appt. at Boston Medical Center tomorrow, and in their reminder email, they mention that I *may* be eligible for a Covid booster while I am there, and I should make an inquiry, so that's a possible plan B. .

A scathingly detailed article countering the President's statement that the pandemic is over with numbers, studies, facts, and science, for those of us who believe in science. I suggest that you keep this article handy for anytime someone tells you that you are being paranoid for maintaining pandemic precautions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/covid-pandemic-exposes-americas-failing-systems-future-epidemics/671608/

Excerpt

block quote begin
In the late 19th century, many scholars realized that epidemics were social problems, whose spread and toll are influenced by poverty, inequality, overcrowding, hazardous working conditions, poor sanitation, and political negligence. But after the advent of germ theory, this social model was displaced by a biomedical and militaristic one, in which diseases were simple battles between hosts and pathogens, playing out within individual bodies. This paradigm conveniently allowed people to ignore the social context of disease. Instead of tackling intractable social problems, scientists focused on fighting microscopic enemies with drugs, vaccines, and other products of scientific research—an approach that sat easily with America’s abiding fixation on technology as a panacea.....

Technological solutions also tend to rise into society’s penthouses, while epidemics seep into its cracks. Cures, vaccines, and diagnostics first go to people with power, wealth, and education, who then move on, leaving the communities most affected by diseases to continue shouldering their burden. This dynamic explains why the same health inequities linger across the decades even as pathogens come and go, and why the U.S. has now normalized an appalling level of COVID death and disability. Such suffering is concentrated among elderly, immunocompromised, working-class, and minority communities—groups that are underrepresented among political decision makers and the media, who get to declare the pandemic over. Even when inequities are highlighted, knowledge seems to suppress action: In one study, white Americans felt less empathy for vulnerable communities and were less supportive of safety precautions after learning about COVID’s racial disparities. This attitude is self-destructive and limits the advantage that even the most privileged Americans enjoy. Measures that would flatten social inequities, such as universal health care and better ventilation, would benefit everyone—and their absence harms everyone, too. In 2021, young white Americans died at lower rates than Black and Indigenous Americans, but still at three times the rate of their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
block quote end

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

Kes: I've served with Crystal on a health care equity committee for three years, and listening to her speak of her experiences during the pandemic has been truly unbelievable. She spends hours every day either attempting to get the medical supplies she needs, or attempting to appeal when her requests get denied by health insurance. At one point, a request for a smart plug got denied as a luxury.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/29/pandemic-chronically-ill-disabled-supply-shortage/

Posted by Kim Charlson, the librarian of the Perkins Library.

I have available free braille copies of a new publication from the CDC entitled COVID-19 Vaccination Guidance. This one volume publication focuses on information about the vaccines and vaccine safety.

To obtain a free braille copy, please send your name and mailing address to:

Kim.charlson@perkins.org

The really amazing part of the story is how these glassblowers, in the space of one year, moved from the traditional method of glass blowing, which has been used for hundreds of years, to develop a new Covid-safe method of glass blowing, and then created 2000 glass pumpkins.
http://glasslab.scripts.mit.edu/

From the MIT weekly newsletter:

Back by popular demand, the Department of Biology is again hosting
7.00 (Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 and the Pandemic),
https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/

a special course on the latest Covid-19 science that is open to all MIT students and to the public at large via live-streamed lectures.
Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
spoke with the class on Wednesday.
http://web.mit.edu/webcast/biology/f21/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/
In following weeks, professors Facundo Batista and Richard Young will discuss the science of the pandemic with Amy Barczak, Dan Barouch, Arup Chakraborty,
Victoria Clark, Shane Crotty, Britt Glaunsinger, Salim Karim, Shiv Pillai, Rochelle Walensky, Laura Walker, and Andrew Ward. (Bruce Walker spoke last week.)
Learn more
https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/

If you haven't receive this year's flu shot yet, now is the time to plan to get it and, if you are eligible to get the third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, you can get both at the same time.

Kes: Another fantastic example of how a technology intended for people with disabilities became a major benefit to teh entire society. Note that this is even a relatively low-cost technology, because it is run by volunteers, and it's using very basic tech to operate.

Meet the man behind Tveeder, the no-frills live TV transcript that became an Australian media hero
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/21/meet-the-man-behind-tveeder-the-no-frills-live-tv-transcript-that-became-an-australian-media-hero

Alexx and I went to get our flu shot for me and the third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine for him, as he had heart surgery in 2020 and is Type 2 diabetes.

When we got to our local Walgreen's, we talked to the first pharmacist, and she said we could get both shots, so we started on the process of answering questions about birthdates and previous reactions. Then a second pharmacist came along and said Alexx didn't qualify according to the guidelines.

In a tone of complete disbelief, I asked, "How is he not qualified? What guidelines are you using?"

The pharmacist started to talk about policy, so I repeated, "Which guidelines are you using?" to which he replied "You can't argue your way into this."

I said, "I'm not trying to argue my way in. As a disability advocate, I'm asking which guidelines you're using so that when I pass this information along to other disabled people, they don't waste a trip."

At this point, both the male pharmacist and Alexx are obviously embarrassed at the out of control blind woman and the pharmacist mutters something which sounded something like he would give us the vaccines.

Ultimately, we both got vaccines, and I received a flu shot, but Alexx didn't get a flu shot because Walgreen's does not accept his version of Mass Health insurance. Also the pharmacist apologized and explained that all of this was brand new policy. He also didn't jab me hard with either needle.

Conclusion: be prepared to ask or even argue about the guidelines being used to qualify/disqualify immune compromised people for the third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and also be aware that you can get your flu shot at the same time, although different forms of health insurance pay for each one.

I just called my Walgreen's pharmacy to get a prescription mailed to me, and there was an announcement that they are providing a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to immune-compromise adults and, when I asked the pharmacist about it, she said they are taking walk-ins, and they will fill out the paperwork whenever you arrive.

Also, I asked my GP about flu shots, and yes, flu shots have begun and it is recommended that you get them.

I spent yesterday sitting under a couple of huge maple trees in my back yard, listening to the wind whispering through the trees and reading stories about castaways who had been stranded on desert islands, and I think I will do some more of that today.

Kes: Wow, so many typos! Apologies for that, I meant to proofread it and I forgot.

Today is the day my Covid vaccine immunity kicks in at full capacity, or as full as it gets, however I'm supposed to phrase that, and I am celebrating this by walking to the closest Dunkin Donuts and buying a *huge* box of donuts and then consuming *all* the donuts!

Okay, in reality, I don't eat very much, and I will probably eat two donuts before having to acknowledge that I feel very full so, realistically, I will actually be sharing these donuts with my housemates.

Dunkin Donuts glazed donuts have been the thing I have been obsessing about for the past three months, because I have not had a Dunkin Donuts donut for about a year and a half, which numerous people I have mentioned this to have agreed is inhuman, even during pandemic conditions.

Also, the second Covid vaccine shot triggered a truly miserable rheumatoid arthritis flare up, and during the same week, Siri broke, and it took most of the week for the engineers to fix it from their end, so using my iPhone was much more annoying, and Fed Ex spent five days driving my $500 patio furniture set around New England (no kidding--it toured NJ, Conn., and even Mass.) before cancelling the order, which involved making a lot of phone calls to Amazon to reorder the furniture from a different seller. And this was all in the same five-day period.

Note: For the benefit of screen reader users, this next sentence is in all caps.

BUT TODAY THERE WILL BE DONUTS!!!

I've been in contact with my care manager at the health care program I belong to and, after I mentioned the frustrations I've had using the websites to get a vaccine appointment and the relative quickness with which I got a vaccine scheduled at my PCP, she has reported having much more success scheduling appointments through clinics and PCP offices, and has stopped using the Massachusetts website.

I am emphasizing that this is just my opinion based on my experience, and I'm putting this out there as a suggestion for other people to try.

EEarly yesterday morning our PCP, the Codman Square Health Center, sent out a text with a phone number to call, which I hadn't noticed, but when Alexx woke up he called, an they were making same-day appointments, so we went right over.

I asked the woman who gave me the vaccine how many people the clinic was vaccinating that day and she said 162. Still, the clinic was not crowded at all.

Accessibility alert: I strongly suspect that the vaccine scheduling websites pose serious accessibility issues not just for visually impaired users using screen reading software, which adds additional time to page refresh times, but is broken in other ways.

My advice would be to use the phone numbers to talk to live humans who can assist in scheduling appointments rather than relying on webpages.

This is the longest blues song ever.

But it is now at the point where, like the old joke "The Aristocrats," sometimes I just start cracking up.

This morning I spent two hours in a meeting listening to my health care program talk about their great plans for getting people with disabilities vaccinated. Granted, they are now getting homebound people vaccinated, and they have prioritized twenty high-risk communities which should be getting vaccinated by, um, June.

There was no word on when any of the people with disabilities in the meeting would be able to get vaccinated. We kept hearing that they had a plan, and they were going to discuss it, but somehow they ran out of time.

None of us with disability diagnoses have any sort of priority, not even the woman who uses a respirator.

However...

I recently read that the Kindly Ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erinyes
not only pursue naughty children who have murdered their parents, but also punish naughty high-ranking civil servants who have broken their sworn oaths.

Now I know what my next tattoo will be.

I'm just irked that I have to wait for this pandemic to be over to get it.

Are there any good temporary tattoos of the Kindly Ones?

Can you pay people to create them? Surely there are out-of-work graphic artists who would be willing to help out a poor blind woman?

Kes: One of the big lessons I have learned over the past year is that one of the government's favorite ways to avoid being held accountable is to just not collect statistics, and not collecting statistics regarding people with disabilities has been used a lot as an excuse during the pandemic. As a tool for forcing transparency and accountability, I'm coming to feel about dashboards the same way Agatha felt about those little bots she makes in the Phil Folio comics.

This women-made tool could help get more disabled people vaccinated
States aren’t prioritizing the disabled community, advocates say
https://www.thelily.com/this-women-made-tool-could-help-get-more-disabled-people-vaccinated/

Excerpt

Feb. 25, 2021
In early January, while she was helping her grandfather register for a coronavirus vaccine, 21-year-old Sabrina Epstein realized that she was also eligible to be vaccinated in Texas, where her grandfather lived. But in Maryland, where she is a senior studying public health at Johns Hopkins University, she wasn’t eligible. As she started looking more closely at policies, Epstein realized that states across the country had prioritized people with chronic health conditions and disabilities, like hers, either in varied phases or not at all — and according to vastly different definitions and standards.

On Twitter, she began connecting with other people with disabilities, and she discovered that many of them were similarly frustrated, confused or discouraged by their states’ vaccine rollouts. So, Epstein approached her mentor at Johns Hopkins’s
Disability Health Research Center,
https://disabilityhealth.jhu.edu/
Director Bonnielin Swenor, about creating a resource for people with disabilities to find their state guidelines. Disability activists could also reference it as they advocated for more equitable vaccine distribution, Epstein hoped.

Swenor said she thought it was a great idea and consulted with her friend, Megan Collins, who had worked on a dashboard
tracking the vaccine rollout for educators.
https://bioethics.jhu.edu/news-events/news/how-are-teachers-prioritized-for-covid-19-vaccination-by-the-us-states/

With a plan in mind, Epstein reached out to Kara Ayers at
the Center for Dignity in Healthcare for People with Disabilities
https://www.ucucedd.org/center-for-dignity-in-healthcare-for-people-with-disabilities/
to see if her team could provide additional support. The group of seven women, most with disabilities themselves, began compiling state guidelines. On Feb. 8, they launched
the COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization Dashboard.
https://disabilityhealth.jhu.edu/vaccine/