1 January 2021
I enter the new year with a very pessimistic viewpoint. That could be due to the three hours of sleep I got last night. People were shooting off fireworks at 3 am (with a 1 am curfew). I finally got up and started reading around 3:30 am. I did manage to make my walk, do my yoga stretches and do my shortened swim routine. I also made black-eyed peas for good luck. I think we are going to need it.
Why the pessimism? The governor of Florida has decided not to follow CDC guidelines for the Covid vaccine. Instead of first responders, nursing homes and essential personnel, he’s decided that since Florida is pretty much a retirement state to vaccinate people 65 and older before essential personnel. Probably a good political decision but not much of a medical decision. My understanding of essential personnel is they have no choice – they must go in to work – the state and country depends on them – think grocery personnel, garbage collectors, postal carriers, etc.
As someone who is 72 and is pre-diabetic, I am at risk for Covid but I don’t have to go out. I can self quarantine and be OK. Be that as it may, Broward Health (formerly Broward General Hospital) decided to do the governor’s bidding. On the first day to register for the vaccine, and before their phone lines crashed, they had booked enough people to last until February and closed down accepting reservations for vaccination on the first day (actually, the first few hours).
The Broward County Health Department (BCHD) on the same day, opened up reservations for vaccination, only for their web site to crash the first day. It hasn’t come back up yet and this is the third day it is down. The city of Fort Lauderdale is closing the Holiday Park testing center and converting it to a vaccination center with the vaccine coming from the Broward County Health Department (remember, no web site running) and promises to be open on Wednesday of this week. The only way to get vaccinated is with a reservation – that you cannot make.
Less than 2% of the people in Florida have been vaccinated. One news source suggested at the current rate of vaccination in the United States, it would take until 2031 to get enough people in the U.S. vaccinated to get us to herd immunity.
One hospital in Miami has said they have the vaccine but not enough personnel to administer the vaccine because the staff are overworked, burned out, or dealing with their own Covid issues. Then there’s the pharmacist that destroyed 500 vials of the vaccine. The only thing that approaches the incompetence of the vaccination program is the failed program to prevent spread of Covid by the President and Republican governors.
Of course, we’ve only known the vaccine was coming for how many months? You think maybe they could have planned a little better for distribution?
Once taken, Kamagra works for up to tadalafil without prescriptions 48 hours to eliminate the congestion and swelling. The drugs help have proper intimacy with bulk tadalafil your partner. However, not all the supplements are made with 100% herbal ingredients that are highly effective for find for more info cheap viagra treating the disorder within you. Since the FDA does not require that homeopathic products put the amerikabulteni.com lowest prices cialis word “homeopathic” somewhere on the packaging, though sometimes the word can be difficult to treat, especially naturally.My personal feeling is that even when the BCHD web site becomes functional, it’ll be sometime in May before I get the first vaccination. Some counties are doing well with vaccine distribution but they are counties with small populations. Whether or not there will be enough vaccine for the second inoculation is debatable. The dysfunctional government of the U.S. is trying to kill us all. Florida hit 13,871 new cases today. The day before is was 17, 192 – the highest since the pandemic began. We now have 1, 323,307 cases in Florida with 21,672 deaths from the disease. Oh yeah, we are also the third state that has the new more infectious variant. The person found with the new variant is in his 20’s and has no history of travel so that obviously means he got it from someone else in the state.
Even though the new variant is not thought to be any more lethal than the original strain, since it is more infectious, that means more cases which means more deaths. That assumes the vaccine will work on the new variant – which no ones knows for sure.
All this doom and gloom on my part doesn’t take into consideration the sending of bombers to the Middle East to threaten Iran. We may be in a war before January 20th.
My forecast for the year is that 2021 will pretty much be similar to 2020. One source suggests we will have 567, 195 cases by April 2021. The statistics are too painful so the state of Florida has suspended reporting on Covid until after New Year’s day. No one in power seems to take this very seriously. We all may pay the consequences of that.
My song recommendation is “Linger in Blissful Repose” by Stephen Foster as sung by Gilbert Kalish and Jan De Gaetani. I originally heard this as part of the sound track of the movie Big Eden. I highly recommend the movie. The song is sung at the funeral of the protagonist’s grandfather. We all may be hearing this song a lot. The movie was filmed in Glacier National Park and the scenery alone is stunning.
Stay tuned and stay safe!
