Nice Time! Nearly A Quarter Of American Adults Have Had At Least One Rona Shot. Hugs To Come.
We interrupt your scheduled Existential Dread with a bit of good news from the White House's senior adviser for COVID response, Andy Slavitt: As of Monday, nearly a quarter (24 percent) of US adults have had at least one coronavirus vaccine shot. That's 60 million of us! And for older Americans, who are the most vulnerable part of the population, the numbers are even better: 60 percent of folks over the age of 65 have gotten at least one shot, and 70 percent of those over 75 have.
The numbers for those who've gotten both shots of the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines, and are fully protected, are lower, as you'd expect with what has until recently been a regimen requiring two injections several weeks apart: 12 percent of all adults, 30 percent for over-65s, and 39 percent for over-75s.
Yahoo News notes that as of Saturday night, the CDC's numbers don't yet include any totals for those who have received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. As that one starts becoming a more prominent part of the country's vaccine mix, we'll see how the CDC changes its verbiage, maybe to "at least one shot" and "fully vaccinated." There's undoubtedly a committee.
The CDC has also released its guidelines for what fully vaccinated people can feel safe doing again, explaining that "fully vaccinated" means two weeks after the second dose of the two-shot vaccines, or after the single J&J injection. It's now OK for them to gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people, without even wearing masks, and to gather indoors (without a mask) with folks from a single household who haven't been vaccinated, as long as nobody in either group is in a high-risk group, or lives with someone who is.
That means it's OK for vaccinated grandparents to hug the grandbabies again.
Still not a good idea to travel long distances, and in public, masks are still recommended, since you don't know who's been licking doorknobs to prove they're invulnerable. Large and medium-sized gatherings of any type should still be avoided, too. And if you're getting together with people from more than one unvaccinated household, best to stay wearing a mask. For workplaces, keep following whatever guidance comes from management, unless you work for a Fox News viewer, in which case we are sorry.
Go read the full recommendations here; HuffPost also has some elaboration on what the new guidelines suggest for play-dates and other kid-related activities. As the weather warms up, outdoor play will of course be a better choice than indoor for a while, at least until vaccines are approved for the kids.
In the meantime, Fox News is doing all it can to tell people to fear or ignore the vaccines, which is just fucking stupid, especially since that's likely to delay the point at which we can start talking about easing restrictions. You really won't end the pandemic by burning all the masks, you dopes.
[Yahoo News / HuffPo / Photo: Quinn Dombrowski, Creative Commons license 2.0]
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Doktor Zoom's real name is Marty Kelley, and he lives in the wilds of Boise, Idaho. He is not a medical doctor, but does have a real PhD in Rhetoric. You should definitely donate some money to this little mommyblog where he has finally found acceptance and cat pictures. He is on maternity leave until 2033. Here is his Twitter, also. His quest to avoid prolixity is not going so great.
