Whatcom County Case and Vaccination Rates
More News, and Links to Current Information
Los Angeles shutting back down again with mandating mask for everyone indoors. We will see what happens in the rest of the state. There are concerns about variances due to too many people unvaccinated. Look for Washington to follow what California does.
Walla Walla Washington, (east of the Cascades) only has a 45% vaccination rate. All of the people being admitted into their hospital with COVID 19 are unvaccinated people.
Inverdectin has been proven to not be affective in the treatment of COVID 19.
Link: (The Guardian, July 2021)
Update Regarding Pfizer and Moderna’s Application for Final Approval
FDA approval of Pfizer could be as soon as two months. It is on the front burner.
To review: The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have completed full Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III trials for safety and efficacy with 30-46,000 participants, each. (from the Facebook Coronavirus Discussion Group: a post by an epidemiologist)
Pfizer filed for full approval from the FDA on May 7, 2021. Moderna did the same on June 1, 2021.
This is the standard process for full FDA approval. These vaccines are on track to be fully approved and licensed by the FDA within 2021, probably within the next 2 months.
Safety monitoring of the phase 3 trial participants will continue for two more years. This is called “post-marketing surveillance.” Also standard procedure for Final FDA approval.
U.S. News article regarding Pfizer application
Reopening of Canada (In and Out)
On August 9, fully vaccinated citizens and permanent residents of the United States (U.S.), currently residing in the U.S., will be permitted to enter Canada for discretionary (non-essential) travel.
The U.S. has made it clear that they will continue to maintain their own timeline for allowing Canadians to cross the border into the U.S. As of the end of July, the U.S. has extended the date to allow travel from Canada or Mexico into the U.S. to August 21.
Cases Have Suddenly Increased
(As of the third week in July) cases and hospitalizations have increased dramatically since 1 July. The argument of personal freedom does not apply to this pandemic! Every decision that everybody makes affects everyone else. But the resistors can’t see that. Some states, such as Mississippi, have less than a 50% vaccination rate and they have the highest number of infected children. Mississippi is a state that requires vaccination for students entering school and there’s no religious exemption. So one needs to conclude that the kids are getting sick from the unvaccinated adults.
You’re more likely to get the virus if you’re vaccinated and surrounded by unvaccinated people, then if you are unvaccinated and surrounded by vaccinated people. This is why in countries like Afghanistan they are experiencing occasional polio outbreaks, so we are still giving our kids the polio vaccine. It has not been completely eradicated ….. all these years later.
Our Trip to Oklahoma City and Texas?
I’m hoping that we won’t have to cancel Lynn’s reunion and our travel plans into Texas, which are scheduled beginning in mid-September. The COVID 19 cases are spreading rapidly … some reports compare it to the surge of last October … and it’s summer! People are outside and many are vaccinated! What will happen between now and our trip … will cases continue to rise, which will necessitate measures to control the virus (other than the vaccine) … my thought right now is to reconsider after I get back from California on August 3. If things are still tentative, we won’t financially commit to anything more.
As We Approach the End of the Month: My Take
To the Antivaxxer
This is a comment by a health provider that was posted in a Facebook COVID 19 Discussion Group. It’s the answer to someone that had Covid and therefore doesn’t think he needs the vaccination. I thought it was worth saving … because it outlines my beliefs at this time.
I’ll address some of your points for not getting the vaccine. Keep in mind I work in healthcare. I’ve cared for dozens of covid patients. I had early concerns with how quickly the vaccines were becoming available and I looked at the data and methodologies to make the vaccines public.
Your being healthy and under 60 is no guarantee of a positive outcome. The majority of covid patients I’ve cared for in the last couple months have ranged in age from 22 to 55. There have been only a few over that range, because most in that group have been vaccinated.
Of those that I’ve cared for all but two were unvaccinated. This is supported by current data that rate for reinfection after having covid is higher than if the person has been vaccinated. For those that have actually had the virus then got vaccinated the immunity rate may be better still. The big hole in your theory is that you are assuming you had covid. You had no positive test so you may have just had a bad cold. My wife twice had nasty colds this year we were sure was covid. After three tests none of them were covid positive. There is also data showing that mRNA vaccines are providing better protection against variants than natural immunity.
As for your thoughts of risks/rewards and being selfish not getting the vaccine I’ll agree if you are still taking basic precautions like wearing a mask in public, maintaining social distancing, not congregating in groups indoors. However if you are like most people I see in public, I doubt it. I’m not worried so much about those that put themselves at risk by not getting vaccinated but about those that unknowingly may be exposed by them.
As for the vaccine risks. All the vaccine ingredients are available online, in the packaging, from the health department and probably from any pharmacy. None of them are real hazardous ingredients. Many of them are common in the environment and we get equal or higher doses in our foods. The active ingredients in the mRNA vaccines are mRNA code for the spike proteins on the surface of the virus. Our body breaks down our own mRNA every couple weeks. This means that the ones in the vaccines is broken down after a couple weeks. This leaves nothing else behind in our body to cause long term adverse effects if it hadn’t happened already. In that sense the rate of adverse effects that have actually been found to occur due to the vaccines is incredibly low. The shingles vaccine, which no one gets too excited about, has a higher rate of issues.
Finally my final reason for encouraging others to get vaccinated is I saw firsthand how overwhelmed our ICUs were from covid this past fall. I made decisions on whether we could accept patients from outlying facilities because of how full we were. In some cases we said we would be able to accept them because another was dying and we expected their room to be empty before the new patient arrived. I saw a coworker get covid twice in less than a year. The second time it went through her family it killed her mother. A couple other coworkers were out of work for weeks, one over a month, because of this disease. I don’t ever want to have to go through that again. I’ve worked ICU for almost twenty years and nothing I’ve seen during that time has been like this past year. Now we are seeing our numbers slowly climb again. I just hope enough people will choose differently than you and get vaccinated so we don’t do it all over again with these new variants.
Reply by a health provider to a post in Facebook “COVID 19 Discussion Group.“
I Wonder?
Since the whole thing started, SARS-CoV2 has always had the upper hand. For a few months this year, infections bottomed out here and in some other well-vaccinated countries. All the signs pointed to a substantial ability of the vaccine to prevent infections and transmission. It was so good that the CDC dropped masking and distancing guidance for the fully vaccinated. Some said this was premature, and it turns out they were right. Once again, Covid is saying, “Nope, fooled you!” Now it’s spreading with surprising ease among vaccinated populations. How much ease? I’ll wait for the experts to try and figure it out. But as we face a big new wave entering August, the false hopes and false sense of security have been shattered. Talk about having the rug pulled from under you.
Just my opinion at this time …. Robin
So the Bottom Line Is …
There is a LOT of press and concern regarding how antivaxxers might be encouraged to change their minds. There are two types of antivaxxers at this time …. (1) those that want to wait for more information, and for FDA final approval, before considering it and (2) those that will NEVER change their minds no matter what information comes their way.
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