Three things for Sunday
19 Dec 2021 13:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhiker1. So yeah, sis and BIL aren't coming for the holidays. As I expected her fallback plan after my brother and family couldn't make it was to go to Austin with her dh (to see his kids) and drive to Baton Rouge to see bro etc. Then flying became iffy (long story) so they're staying home. Sob. I'd be fine with nobody here, just my family, but since we are here, I'll have to make Christmas dinner for my MIL and the bitch, aka my sister-in-law. Ugh. MIL will complain incessantly about her neighbors, who are objectively awful, but when we found her a place she could afford in the brand new apartments AC is living at, she declined, because it wasn't enough square footage. OK, but the neighbors aren't drug dealing scum. Just ugh. I wish I could just cancel, but not gonna happen.
2. Not having a good morning here. Dh wanted to go walk the dog earlier, but I was still drinking my tea, so I said fine go by yourself, but he said he'd wait. Eventually I got ready, but he decided to clear off his work desk (so we can put up the tree) and now he has to eat lunch. I can't eat if I'm going to do any kind of exercise, and it's 2pm, and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm being snippy and bitchy because I'm sad and frustrated.
3. The Biden admin has handled Covid... poorly. Yes on getting people access to vaccines. But hello? Where are the rapid tests at an affordable price? Heck, where are they, even expensive, LOL? I tried to buy some earlier this week but no dice at three places and I got sick of looking. The clinic at dh's work gives them out (two tests per person per week, apparently) but I didn't know that until last week and they were out for the week by the time I got there. Anyhow, the CDC director Walensky is, educated MD or not, a total and utter blathering idiot. First it was the profoundly stupid "Go ahead and take off your mask if you are vaccinated", which worked so well, yeah, oh hai Delta and fucking lying Republicans, now it's take a rapid test if you are gathering with family. That's nice dumbass. Need to test at least 2-3 times per person to be safe-ish, tests are expensive ($12 each, $7 at WalMart), if you can even find them. The whole admin "Insurance will pay for it!" BS is just that. Is that before or after my deductible? And oh, what about the people who don't fucking have insurance? Everyone talks about 'free covid tests' but it's not for everyone.
FWIW, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a test, but I think we're being ripped off right now, and the Administration isn't doing what it can to mitigate any of this. They should have had a plan in place, yes, even pre-Omicron, to get tests to everyone. I don't know why they didn't bother.
The thing is, what is making all this difficult is that we're relying on the scummy for-profit private sector for public health things. I'd been trying to get a booster. For each place I tried -some of them for each branch I tried, I had to enter sensitive personal information, which they saved, before I could even find out IF there were appointments (note: there never were, at least not before late Dec/early Jan). We ended up getting our boosters from the Snohomish County public health corps. King County has been useless: they've needed to focus on equity, so a lot of stuff available in South King County, nothing near me, and even those appointments were difficult to come by. I signed up with them a month ago to get in line for a booster, right after the state opened it to everyone and... still waiting. We got our initial shots from the National Guard (or Army?) at the FEMA site halfway across the state in Yakima. Both government sites made it easy to sign up, gave me the info I needed before I divulged a lot of personal information, and didn't ask for much to begin with.
Public health needs to be handled by public entities. Not private.
I was going to suggest to my sister that we all get PCR tests 2-3 days before the holidays and then just the rapid tests, but obviously no dice on that. They've wound down many of the gov sites for testing, that I can tell, and now we're at the mercy of Walgreens and its ilk. Your data for a chance to look at the schedule and see if there an appointment within 100 miles. Or you can go to Urgent Care and pay $300 per person, not sure if this is reimbursed. This is just non-tenable.
Anyhow. Trump caused a lot of these problems, but Biden and his incomp CDC director haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped they would.
2. Not having a good morning here. Dh wanted to go walk the dog earlier, but I was still drinking my tea, so I said fine go by yourself, but he said he'd wait. Eventually I got ready, but he decided to clear off his work desk (so we can put up the tree) and now he has to eat lunch. I can't eat if I'm going to do any kind of exercise, and it's 2pm, and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm being snippy and bitchy because I'm sad and frustrated.
3. The Biden admin has handled Covid... poorly. Yes on getting people access to vaccines. But hello? Where are the rapid tests at an affordable price? Heck, where are they, even expensive, LOL? I tried to buy some earlier this week but no dice at three places and I got sick of looking. The clinic at dh's work gives them out (two tests per person per week, apparently) but I didn't know that until last week and they were out for the week by the time I got there. Anyhow, the CDC director Walensky is, educated MD or not, a total and utter blathering idiot. First it was the profoundly stupid "Go ahead and take off your mask if you are vaccinated", which worked so well, yeah, oh hai Delta and fucking lying Republicans, now it's take a rapid test if you are gathering with family. That's nice dumbass. Need to test at least 2-3 times per person to be safe-ish, tests are expensive ($12 each, $7 at WalMart), if you can even find them. The whole admin "Insurance will pay for it!" BS is just that. Is that before or after my deductible? And oh, what about the people who don't fucking have insurance? Everyone talks about 'free covid tests' but it's not for everyone.
FWIW, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a test, but I think we're being ripped off right now, and the Administration isn't doing what it can to mitigate any of this. They should have had a plan in place, yes, even pre-Omicron, to get tests to everyone. I don't know why they didn't bother.
The thing is, what is making all this difficult is that we're relying on the scummy for-profit private sector for public health things. I'd been trying to get a booster. For each place I tried -some of them for each branch I tried, I had to enter sensitive personal information, which they saved, before I could even find out IF there were appointments (note: there never were, at least not before late Dec/early Jan). We ended up getting our boosters from the Snohomish County public health corps. King County has been useless: they've needed to focus on equity, so a lot of stuff available in South King County, nothing near me, and even those appointments were difficult to come by. I signed up with them a month ago to get in line for a booster, right after the state opened it to everyone and... still waiting. We got our initial shots from the National Guard (or Army?) at the FEMA site halfway across the state in Yakima. Both government sites made it easy to sign up, gave me the info I needed before I divulged a lot of personal information, and didn't ask for much to begin with.
Public health needs to be handled by public entities. Not private.
I was going to suggest to my sister that we all get PCR tests 2-3 days before the holidays and then just the rapid tests, but obviously no dice on that. They've wound down many of the gov sites for testing, that I can tell, and now we're at the mercy of Walgreens and its ilk. Your data for a chance to look at the schedule and see if there an appointment within 100 miles. Or you can go to Urgent Care and pay $300 per person, not sure if this is reimbursed. This is just non-tenable.
Anyhow. Trump caused a lot of these problems, but Biden and his incomp CDC director haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped they would.
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no subject
Date: 20 Dec 2021 21:56 (UTC)A few months ago I was talking to someone from WA who was saying how y'all did so much better with vaccines and masking and stuff than MI and all I could think about what your struggles to find any place to get your shots. He seemed like a reasonable guy but I got the impression that maybe his dad (the MI resident he was visiting) was not, and maybe he wasn't hearing a fully balanced story.
no subject
Date: 21 Dec 2021 00:09 (UTC)It's a combination of stuff with King County. We did, to be fair, pretty damn well with vaccines: over 90% of people 12 and over have started on being vaccinated, 86% are fully done. So eh, not too shabby. In my area of NE King County, it's over 94% fully vaccinated. Most people wear masks. So we're doing ok on that front.
The issues I'm having/had are because, I think, of two things:
1. Washington in general, and King County in particular, focused on equity for vaccine distribution. WHICH IS A GOOD THING. It did create, however, an imbalance as to where easily accessible shots and testing were going to be available. Clearly, my area was managing fine on its own, so eh, we didn't get any testing or vaccination sites. Hence the trip to Yakima to get our first shots, and the trip North to Snohomish County for the booster. I'm also a snowflake when it comes to have patience: I'll spend an hour trying to find a shot, but get easily frustrated when I have to enter gobs of (often sensitive) data only to be that no, actually, there are no appointments for the next three weeks. And having to do that over and over for each branch of a given pharmacy.
2. In addition to equity, Gov Inslee was really rigid which groups got priority for vaccinations. We weren't supposed to be eligible until May initially, because not old enough or sick enough (not that this is a bad thing!), because WA pushed for the most vulnerable groups to get fully vaxxed before opening it up to the next group. It was only because Biden said oh hai, everyone go get a shot that we were able to start our series in April, and only because the CDC said everyone should get a booster that we were even eligible for one, up to that, WA state's guidelines didn't have us getting our boosters until January. For boosters, it wasn't as obvious, but last spring, pretty much everyone I knew in other states was eligible long before we were.
But let's not talk about Eastern Washington, or, really, anything right out of the immediate Puget Sound area. :(