IseWolf22 said:

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packofwolves said:

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For those who got vaccines, what process did you use? We are on a couple wait lists to be able to schedule an appointment (Wake, Durham). I have been looking at locations where you can get pfizer or moderna.

Also have been periodically checking for appointment openings in UNC/Rex locations, WakeMed locations and Capefear (Fayetteville) locations. I don't see a way to waitlist for these appointments.

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My wife and I have had no luck so far in Wake county. On several wait lists hoping to hear something soon.
I've found openings outside Wake county, but the closest is over an hour of driving each way. Since we are pretty low risk, we have not pursued those.

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My wife ended up finding a CVS in Rocky Mount on Saturday, so she is heading out there this weekend. About an hour, best she could do.

Since I am still in the 'pretty sure I had it before we could test' category, I'll wait until things open locally and let people who have enough concern to be motivated to take it, take the spots.

wilmwolf80 said:

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So I was standing in my driveway this morning and sneezed, into my shirt as I've always done because I'm not a heathen. A guy happened to be walking by on the sidewalk, probably 150 feet from me, at that exact moment. He looked at me in horror and let out a noise like he was disgusted as he pulled up his mask that he had around his neck. SMH. Such an awful job has been done in making the average person understand how the Rona is transmitted and where you are at risk.

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Round where I'm at you get your ass kicked acting like that.

Wake County has been extremely difficult for me also. I did find an appointment near my parents in Brunswick County, so taking the day off for my first dose tomorrow.

My daughter came home to get her first shot yesterday. A couple of swimmers went to fayettenom and maybe some to wilson? Not sure. But the team is trying to get vaccinated and since it's not yet available at State, they're doing their best to go where they can.

Daviewolf83 said:

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My son texted me this morning to let me know he is getting his vaccination on Monday. He is getting the J&J vaccine, so he will be done after one dose. His university is currently vaccinating students daily.

He is very excited, since once he is vaccinated, it means his days of contact trace quarantining (and quarantining in general) are over. He had to contact trace quarantine a couple of times last semester, during Fall Camp and at the end of the season, before his bowl game. The first time was 14 days and the second was 7 days. This was in addition to the 7 days of quarantine he had to do when he arrived on campus last Summer for workouts and when he arrived back to school this semester. This should give you an idea of how excited he is to be getting his vaccination.

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How do I find out where the J&J vaccine is going to be available? I'm probably in the minority with this, but, I want the more standard vaccine; rather, than the MRNA variants...

https://www.vaccinespotter.org/NC/

This might help. It searches pharmacy locations and many of them identify which vaccine is available.

Glasswolf said:

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Wife and I had our 1st dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Didn't even feel it. No side effects at all

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Yep. Wife and I got our first round of Pfizer this morning in Jacksonville and three minutes after the shot there was no sensation whatsoever...

Gotta say though... what an incredibly inefficient way of getting people vaccinated during a pandemic... surely there has to be a better way than this?

wilmwolf80 said:

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So I was standing in my driveway this morning and sneezed, into my shirt as I've always done because I'm not a heathen. A guy happened to be walking by on the sidewalk, probably 150 feet from me, at that exact moment. He looked at me in horror and let out a noise like he was disgusted as he pulled up his mask that he had around his neck. SMH. Such an awful job has been done in making the average person understand how the Rona is transmitted and where you are at risk.

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You should have pounded the idiot into the concrete... I can't stand people like that.

pineknollshoresking said:

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Daviewolf83 said:

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My son texted me this morning to let me know he is getting his vaccination on Monday. He is getting the J&J vaccine, so he will be done after one dose. His university is currently vaccinating students daily.

He is very excited, since once he is vaccinated, it means his days of contact trace quarantining (and quarantining in general) are over. He had to contact trace quarantine a couple of times last semester, during Fall Camp and at the end of the season, before his bowl game. The first time was 14 days and the second was 7 days. This was in addition to the 7 days of quarantine he had to do when he arrived on campus last Summer for workouts and when he arrived back to school this semester. This should give you an idea of how excited he is to be getting his vaccination.

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How do I find out where the J&J vaccine is going to be available? I'm probably in the minority with this, but, I want the more standard vaccine; rather, than the MRNA variants...

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No way to really know. The J&J vaccine supply is still constrained and will be into April, so it will be hit or miss. I suspect a lot of J&J supply will be allocated to those communities that are underserved and to college campuses.

TheStorm said:

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Glasswolf said:

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Wife and I had our 1st dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Didn't even feel it. No side effects at all

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Yep. Wife and I got our first round of Pfizer this morning in Jacksonville and three minutes after the shot there was no sensation whatsoever...

Gotta say though... what an incredibly inefficient way of getting people vaccinated during a pandemic... surely there has to be a better way than this?

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Mass vaccination sites are the best approach, but can be hard to reach some communities. You also have to go to where the people are, when they have trouble reaching you. Drug stores and grocery stores are best for reaching more isolate populations, but many grocery store chains (Food Lion, Lowes) do not have pharmacies.

Mormad said:

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My daughter came home to get her first shot yesterday. A couple of swimmers went to fayettenom and maybe some to wilson? Not sure. But the team is trying to get vaccinated and since it's not yet available at State, they're doing their best to go where they can.

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Interesting it is not available at State yet. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my son said Wake Forest has been vaccinating students all this week and he was able to get his slot for Monday. I think they are getting their supply through Baptist Health, due to their relationship with them. My son is in the middle of Spring camp, so he is letting his trainers know he is getting vaccinated on Monday, since he has a practice on Tuesday morning. My son believes a few of his teammates will not get vaccinated, for various reasons. We were told colleges and teams can not require vaccination, since the vaccines were not fully approved by FDA (approved under EUA only).

What do you mean by no sensation?

Davie, PackPA or someone posted a few days ago about the side affect comparisons between Moderna and Pfizer. I can't seem to find it. Is the Pfizer considered the less side affects shot or am I misrembering that?

RunsWithWolves26 said:

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Davie, PackPA or someone posted a few days ago about the side affect comparisons between Moderna and Pfizer. I can't seem to find it. Is the Pfizer considered the less side affects shot or am I misrembering that?

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I had the Pfizer vccine and other than my arm being tender at the injection site I've had no side effects

The side effects are typically after the second shot for most people.

Mormad or others, have you all seen a small increase in positive cases/inpatient numbers within the last week? Not trying to spread fear or anything like that, but our county has had an increase of 1% to our positivity rate (still low) and our hospital system has increased from 30 inpatient to 60 within the last few days. Just wondering if this is just a random string of clusters or if this was the start of a trend.

PackPA2015 said:

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Mormad or others, have you all seen a small increase in positive cases/inpatient numbers within the last week? Not trying to spread fear or anything like that, but our county has had an increase of 1% to our positivity rate (still low) and our hospital system has increased from 30 inpatient to 60 within the last few days. Just wondering if this is just a random string of clusters or if this was the start of a trend.

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For NC, hospitalization tracking is tricky, since the percentage of hospitals reporting daily is not consistent. So, what looks like a rise can sometimes be just an increase in hospitals reporting and a drop can be a decrease. On average, I would say hospitalizations are flat, to maybe slightly up.

As I showed yesterday, the 70+ age group no longer appears to be a key driver to hospitalizations. While the 60-69 age group has also seen significant drops in the number of people hospitalized, it does appear to be flattening. In fact, the 70+ age group numbers declined much more quickly than the 60-69 age group and I would attribute this to the vaccine push for the 65+ age group and those in LTC facilities. The tricky thing with this reporting is that the data NCDHHS report lags by approximately 7 days. I have not looked at the other age groups more closely, but I suspect they are now becoming the key drivers to any increases in hospitalizations and it is why getting vaccine doses to more age groups is starting to become important.

As far as percent positives are concerned, they have ticked up by about 1% on average. This is also lumpy data, since it can be affected by the testing levels, particularly on weekends. It had been below 5% for over a week, but has headed back up recently.

As far as the CLI reported for ED, the last report from NCDHHS continued to show significant drops and it is now at the lowest level it has been, since back in July. We should get an update on this in the weekly report update.

Daviewolf83 said:

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PackPA2015 said:

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Mormad or others, have you all seen a small increase in positive cases/inpatient numbers within the last week? Not trying to spread fear or anything like that, but our county has had an increase of 1% to our positivity rate (still low) and our hospital system has increased from 30 inpatient to 60 within the last few days. Just wondering if this is just a random string of clusters or if this was the start of a trend.

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For NC, hospitalization tracking is tricky, since the percentage of hospitals reporting daily is not consistent. So, what looks like a rise can sometimes be just an increase in hospitals reporting and a drop can be a decrease. On average, I would say hospitalizations are flat, to maybe slightly up.

As I showed yesterday, the 70+ age group no longer appears to be a key driver to hospitalizations. While the 60-69 age group has also seen significant drops in the number of people hospitalized, it does appear to be flattening. In fact, the 70+ age group numbers declined much more quickly than the 60-69 age group and I would attribute this to the vaccine push for the 65+ age group and those in LTC facilities. The tricky thing with this reporting is that the data NCDHHS reports lags by approximately 7 days. I have not looked at the other age groups more closely, but I suspect they are now becoming the key drivers to any increases in hospitalizations and it is why getting vaccine doses to more age groups is starting to become important.

As far as percent positives are concerned, they have ticked up by about 1% on average. This is also lumpy data, since it can be affected by the testing levels, particularly on weekends. It had been below 5% for over a week, but has headed back up recently.

As far as the CLI reported for ED, the last report from NCDHHS continued to show significant drops and it is now at the lowest level it has been, since back in July. We should get an update on this in the weekly report update.

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Mandy previewed CLI ED % on Tuesday I believe and it was still heading down. (Unless I am misremembering).

I guess we see this afternoon.

Wondering if they'll open to 4b or all groups for vaccine eligibility

I added the 40-49 and 50-59 age groups to the hospitalizations curve I posted yesterday and attached it below. As I mentioned, there is approximately a 7 day lag in the reporting of the demographic data, but it does provide some insight. If we are seeing a slight increase in hospitalizations, it is likely coming from the 40-59 aged populations and maybe a little of the 60-65.

As I told my wife last night, I think we are at a point where we need to open vaccinations up to anyone who is 40+. I believe it is very clear from the graph that the vaccines are having a definite effect on hospitalizations for the 70+ age group and now we need to get this effect spread to the lower age groups that are still at higher risk.

By the way, I saw some Tweets last night from a couple of doctor/epidemiologists I follow that indicate herd immunity may be kicking in at a lower percentage of vaccination levels than anticipated. The view is we may be seeing herd immunity and its effects on hospitalizations and deaths at the 50% level of vaccination. They theory is that the percentage of those that have prior infection immunity (antibodies and more importantly, T-Cells) is helping to lower the percentage of overall population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve meaningful reductions in infection, hospitalizations, and deaths. Based on the data I reported yesterday regarding the percentage of people vaccinated by age group (reposted below) and the hospitalization curves shown below, there seems to be some validity to this theory.

wilmwolf80 said:

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The side effects are typically after the second shot for most people.

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My wife had her 2nd Pfizer shot yesterday. We had heard to drink a lot of water, gatorade (electrolytes), and Vitamin D in the days leading up to it to limit the side effects. She started on Monday really pumping the water and Gatorade along with the Vitamin D and she has felt completely normal. Slight soreness in her arm and a little fatigue, but if that's all, she'll be thrilled.

Obviously this could be that she just didn't have side effects, but I'm going to be doing the same leading up to my 2nd shot on 4/6.

Some vaccine updates for this morning:

1. As soon as I posted my thoughts about opening up vaccinations to those aged 40+, I saw a report out of Florida that the governor is opening up vaccines in his state to all those aged 40+ this coming Monday and to anyone aged 18+ on April 5. This is in reaction to significant increases in supply. Florida is expecting to receive approximately 700,000 doses early next week, including a large increase of the J&J one dose vaccine. For example, Florida is expected to receive 80% more of the J&J vaccine than they received this week.

2. The US government will be delivering 27 million doses of vaccines to states next week. This includes a large increase in the J&J vaccine.

That's basically my daily routine anyway, so if that works, I should be good.

Public Tableau is down this morning so stats might be delayed, but Wake might be pushing out a massive death backlog. In the neighborhood of 50 from pre-March.

Wayland said:

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Public Tableau is down this morning so stats might be delayed, but Wake might be pushing out a massive death backlog. In the neighborhood of 50 from pre-March.

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I agree. Usually when they have these Tableau issues, it is due to a big backlog/data dump that is about to hit. I looked at the latest Wake County numbers and it does appear a big drop of data is coming for this county. They are showing 646 Covid deaths on their website, but through yesterday NCDHHS is only showing 589. Based on this, Wake County is about to report 57 new deaths.

I can only imagine the Twitter headline from WRAL.

Daviewolf83 said:

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Wayland said:

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Public Tableau is down this morning so stats might be delayed, but Wake might be pushing out a massive death backlog. In the neighborhood of 50 from pre-March.

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I agree. Usually when they have these Tableau issues, it is due to a big backlog/data dump that is about to hit. I looked at the latest Wake County numbers and it does appear a big drop of data is coming for this county. They are showing 646 Covid deaths on their website, but through yesterday NCDHHS is only showing 589. Based on this, Wake County is about to report 57 new deaths.

I can only imagine the Twitter headline from WRAL.

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I hadn't been keeping up with my Wake specific tracking on DoDs, but like I said, just eyeballing it (since I peak at the chart daily), it looks like this will primarily feed the previous peak. Wake only shows 2 deaths (by date of death) in the last 2+ weeks, even with the dump.

And Wake is death cert matching... "review of vital records"

Wayland said:

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And Wake is death cert matching... "review of vital records"

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Going all the way back to June 1, even though they have already reported deaths to the CDC for this time period. Simply stunning.

CLI surveillance out today.

25-49, 50-64, and 65+ all with about the same number of admits for C19. Slight increase overall due to the small uptick in 25-49s.

50-64 showing slightly higher than the other 2.

Wayland said:

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CLI surveillance out today.

25-49, 50-64, and 65+ all with about the same number of admits for C19. Slight increase overall due to the small uptick in 25-49s.

50-64 showing slightly higher than the other 2.

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A little concerning to me with cases and hospitalizations slightly increasing. We have seen that locally as well. Could be just a small bump and not matter in the long run, but really shows that we need to continue to increase vaccination rates in new age groups. I would also recommend continuing our masking (I know, some will disagree).