Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Weather_Lady]

Sorry, but not everyone can take a leave of absence. People refusing to mask and distance and vaccinate (save a medical reason not to) are just being ignorant, selfish jack-knobs.

The cashier has a right to support himself/herself without having to fear that an anti-masking, anti-vaxxing, self-centered jerk is going to put her/him in jeopardy.

Agreed. A 44-year-old man in my area (my friend's cousin) was careful and followed the rules -- in fact, he went beyond them, going nowhere outside the house except to work. A a coworker assigned to sit near him decided to "make a statement" by flouting the rules and refusing to wear a mask. That coworker turned out to have COVID and gave it to several other coworkers including my friend's cousin, who died from it in January, leaving behind a wife and three young children. The only "statement" that coworker ultimately made is that he had no qualms about murdering other people.

Hopefully this scenario will play out less and less now that those eligible for the vaccine have some way of protecting themselves. Still, that's small comfort to those who have already lost loved ones because of others' carelessness and ignorance.

 

[seascape]

Today has more good news. Michigan is out of the 70's and down to 69 cases per 100,000. The entire US is down to 19, with NJ now below 40 at 39, NY at 30 and Florida at 29. I expect continued decreaes as more and more people get vaccinated. We currently have more vaccine than demand. We are winning the war and the end is near. Even better we will be at The Grand Floridian tonight.

 

[Jrb1979]

See the question in my post #63483 above. The answer (if the answer is what I think it is) may assuage some of your concern.

That's part of it but also many cities and counties have dropped mask mandates and social distancing already. IMO they should be in place along with vaccines til cases drop. I'm not one who wants this to last forever or fail but to drop restrictions cause they vaccine is here is not good. Vaccines won't bring the numbers down on their own. Unfortunately many here think the vaccine is end all be all.

 

[Heppenheimer]

Nobody is directly saying it. For me it is a "reading between the lines" feeling. When a poster frequently posts negatively about vaccination rates and also about the importance of maintaining mitigation until cases are "low enough" (however you define that), it seems like they are almost rooting for the former so that the latter doesn't happen. For the record, I don't think you are one of these posters.

See the question in my post #63483 above. The answer (if the answer is what I think it is) may assuage some of your concern.

Wanting limitations to stay a little longer is not because people like these measures, its just because we've seen the worst of the pandemic prolonged again and again by loosening restrictions too early.

We ALL want this demon to go away, but a highly contagious disease doesn't go away because we want it to, it goes away because we fight it until the damn thing is defeated.

 

[GoofGoof]

Your math is slightly off.
Israel is at 59% of total population. US is at 41% of the population.
another 18% = 59,400,000 more people. If we do 1 million per day, without any further slow down, that would be 59 more days = June 19, best case scenario of reaching Israel’s current level. Problem is, if it keeps slowing even more.

My remaining hope is that maybe we can reach herd immunity at a lower level.. maybe reach it with 50% vaccination instead of 59%.

I guess we will see. If the US tops out at 50% of the population vaccinated I would call that an epic failure of the vaccine rollout. Just a little math here. 50% would be 165M people. 133M have already started. We would only need 32M more people to agree to be vaccinated to reach 50% with 1 shot. 30M additional kids will become eligible any day now. Even if only half got the vaccine that would absorb 15M of the 32M needed and I think we will see more than 50% of teens get the vaccine. So that would mean only 17M additional adults would be vaccinated. Even at your 900K a day pace we would reach that by May 8. So then what? It just goes to zero? Literally tens of millions of people just became eligible for the vaccine on Monday or a few weeks earlier. Can’t you see why I’m saying your opinions seem to be overly negative?

 

[LaughingGravy]

... because you've got the shots, you know you'll be safe.

Just emphasizing, people who have had the complete vaccination and full immunization 2 week after waiting process will be safer. It's still not the same as being safe. There are "breakthrough" cases.
There are variants out there and all the science still isn't in on those, plus there are indications the UK is the dominant one now.
We're getting there, and I am hopeful. I have work to do out on the west coast, and there's still no way I'm sitting on a commercial flight, since they only require that people wear masks.
Even then, there are those who will only comply when pressured.
I know someone who is reluctant to get any vaccine for this since it's still experimental and not guaranteed to be free of any side effects in the future. I don't think that will ever happen, by the way. It's the nature of vaccines. I don't know where that idea came from.
Hmm...huge decrease in likelihood of serious illness or death from Covid? Yes, please.
They are even checking to see if an antibody test can be substituted for being vaccinated at work or for their kid going into college in the fall, since they think they had it in early 2020 and therefore if they had it, they now have antibodies and that their family is now likely immune, since nobody got sick. Oh, no word that they have antibodies or even had a test for such done, yet. I don't know how far that will fly.
I will treat any interaction with them with precautions as if we are not vaccinated at all, which is what the personal plan is unless only dealing with fully immunized people outside our immediate family circle.

Rutgers in NJ and at least some other colleges are requiring proof of vaccination for any students to attend in person class in the fall.

I saw a recent article on Ted Nugent who claimed it was all a hoax, recently caught it, of course, got pretty sick for a week,not hospitalized, but is still not getting a vaccine because "nobody knows what's in it." Sadly, there are a lot of people with that opinion and are a large part of what is holding us back.

 

[Tom P.]

Yes, we are now getting 28M doses a week delivered from Pfizer and Moderna which is enough doses to do 4M shots a day. We only exceeded 4M doses on a handful of days. The people desperate to be vaccinated have gone already. I saw a recent article which said in polling 1 in 3 Americans say they know at least 1 person who “cut the line” and got vaccinated before they were eligible. There are plenty of people left that want to be vaccinated but they aren’t desperate enough to cut the line or spend hours online searching for an appointment. In 7 states eligibility just opened for the general public and people are signing up but haven’t gone yet. There is going to be a decrease in pace of vaccinations which is not the doom and gloom that people here love to predict. Having appointments available doesn’t mean that nobody is signed up. If we have 4M appointments available a day and only 3M people sign up we still vaccinate 3M people a day. It doesn’t go to zero. Even if the pace drops to 2M a day that’s still not nothing.

Not sure why people are so desperate to see vaccines stall. Really bizarre to me. I want to believe that we are all in this together and that everyone wants this pandemic to end but I’m starting to think maybe some people are actually desperately hoping that it doesn’t. What a strange world we live in.

Wanting limitations to stay a little longer is not because people like these measures, its just because we've seen the worst of the pandemic prolonged again and again by loosening restrictions too early.

We ALL want this demon to go away, but a highly contagious disease doesn't go away because we want it to, it goes away because we fight it until the damn thing is defeated.

Here's the thing. I don't believe everyone wants this thing to go away. I really don't.

First off, I think a lot of the fear about where we are is being driven by the media. The media has a vested interest in keeping this thing going as long as possible. They really do. 2020 was a banner year for the news media. The ratings that they scored from Covid news were through the roof. (Yes, there was a healthy amount of presidential politics mixed in to, but Covid was clearly the defining story of the year.) They don't want to lose that. And they already see it slipping away. They are trying to prolong this as much as they possibly can. And that is influencing how lots of people view where we are.

I think there are also political motivations behind some of the doom-and-gloom, but I won't go farther than to say that I think they exist because of the no politics rule.

Suffice it to say, no, I don't believe everyone wants it to go away. Not by a long shot.

 

[DisneyCane]

That's part of it but also many cities and counties have dropped mask mandates and social distancing already. IMO they should be in place along with vaccines til cases drop. I'm not one who wants this to last forever or fail but to drop restrictions cause they vaccine is here is not good. Vaccines won't bring the numbers down on their own. Unfortunately many here think the vaccine is end all be all.

The reason for my question about airline pilots in that post is to determine if you really need to worry much about the dropping of those measures.

 

[DisneyCane]

Just emphasizing, people who have had the complete vaccination and full immunization 2 week after waiting process will be safer. It's still not the same as being safe. There are "breakthrough" cases.
There are variants out there and all the science still isn't in on those, plus there are indications the UK is the dominant one now.
We're getting there, and I am hopeful. I have work to do out on the west coast, and there's still no way I'm sitting on a commercial flight, since they only require that people wear masks.
Even then, there are those who will only comply when pressured.
I know someone who is reluctant to get any vaccine for this since it's still experimental and not guaranteed to not be free of any side effects in the future. I don't think that will ever happen, by the way. It's the nature of vaccines. I don't know where that idea came from.
Hmm...huge decrease in likelihood of serious illness or death from Covid? Yes, please.
They are even checking to see if an antibody test can be substituted for being vaccinated, since they think they had it in early 2020. Oh, no word that they have antibodies or even had a test for such done, yet. I don't know how far that will fly.

Rutgers in NJ and at least some other colleges are requiring proof of vaccination for any students to attend in person class in the fall.
I will treat any interaction with them with precautions as if we are not vaccinated at all, which is what the personal plan is unless only dealing with fully immunized people outside our immediate family circle.

I saw a recent article on Ted Nugent who claimed it was all a hoax, recently caught it, of course, got pretty sick for a week,not hospitalized, but is still not getting a vaccine because "nobody knows what's in it." Sadly, there are a lot of people with that opinion and are a large part of what is holding us back.

Please stop with the "breakthrough cases" narrative and focusing on the tiny remaining risk after you are fully vaccinated. This narrative does not encourage people to get vaccinated.

You are orders of magnitude more likely to die of some random cause than you are to experience a breakthrough case and die of COVID after being vaccinated.

If you are worried about being a breakthrough case and ending up dead or with long term effects then you seriously need to have your house upgraded to the level of a CDC facility and never leave again. I'm not being sarcastic.

 

[JD80]

Here's the thing. I don't believe everyone wants this thing to go away. I really don't.

First off, I think a lot of the fear about where we are is being driven by the media. The media has a vested interest in keeping this thing going as long as possible. They really do. 2020 was a banner year for the news media. The ratings that they scored from Covid news were through the roof. (Yes, there was a healthy amount of presidential politics mixed in to, but Covid was clearly the defining story of the year.) They don't want to lose that. And they already see it slipping away. They are trying to prolong this as much as they possibly can. And that is influencing how lots of people view where we are.

I think there are also political motivations behind some of the doom-and-gloom, but I won't go farther than to say that I think they exist because of the no politics rule.

Suffice it to say, no, I don't believe everyone wants it to go away. Not by a long shot.

I don't agree with any of your media statements. COVID has basically disappeared from the major cable news channels except for updates on vaccines, J&J stuff or if members of congress start fighting.

COVID was the defining story of the year obviously, but politics drove the nightly narrative with the election.

 

[JD80]

Please stop with the "breakthrough cases" narrative and focusing on the tiny remaining risk after you are fully vaccinated. This narrative does not encourage people to get vaccinated.

You are orders of magnitude more likely to die of some random cause than you are to experience a breakthrough case and die of COVID after being vaccinated.

If you are worried about being a breakthrough case and ending up dead or with long term effects then you seriously need to have your house upgraded to the level of a CDC facility and never leave again. I'm not being sarcastic.

Obviously you're never "safe" from COVID, but having two shots of Moderna and my second shot being more than 2 weeks ago tells me There is an incredibly small chance of getting COVID, and then if I were to get it, it's incredibly more likely that I won't even know I have it. slightly less likely chance that I'll get a mild reaction and nearly 100% chance I won't have to go to the hospital.

In any case, good post.

 

[Tom P.]

I don't agree with any of your media statements. COVID has basically disappeared from the major cable news channels except for updates on vaccines, J&J stuff or if members of congress start fighting.

COVID was the defining story of the year obviously, but politics drove the nightly narrative with the election.

Ever visit CNN's Web site? Today is an exception, of course, because of the Chauvin verdict from yesterday, but on an average day, I mean. You are likely to find about half the "above the fold" area littered with stories about how the latest Covid news is bad and how we're nowhere close to ending this thing.

 

[JD80]

Ever visit CNN's Web site? Today is an exception, of course, because of the Chauvin verdict from yesterday, but on an average day, I mean. You are likely to find about half the "above the fold" area littered with stories about how the latest Covid news is bad and how we're nowhere close to ending this thing.

Yes, I notice the clickbait articles. But if the media was conspiring to keep it going for ratings and money it would be on TV not their website.

 

[HarperRose]

Yes, we are now getting 28M doses a week delivered from Pfizer and Moderna which is enough doses to do 4M shots a day. We only exceeded 4M doses on a handful of days. The people desperate to be vaccinated have gone already. I saw a recent article which said in polling 1 in 3 Americans say they know at least 1 person who “cut the line” and got vaccinated before they were eligible. There are plenty of people left that want to be vaccinated but they aren’t desperate enough to cut the line or spend hours online searching for an appointment. In 7 states eligibility just opened for the general public and people are signing up but haven’t gone yet. There is going to be a decrease in pace of vaccinations which is not the doom and gloom that people here love to predict. Having appointments available doesn’t mean that nobody is signed up. If we have 4M appointments available a day and only 3M people sign up we still vaccinate 3M people a day. It doesn’t go to zero. Even if the pace drops to 2M a day that’s still not nothing.

Not sure why people are so desperate to see vaccines stall. Really bizarre to me. I want to believe that we are all in this together and that everyone wants this pandemic to end but I’m starting to think maybe some people are actually desperately hoping that it doesn’t. What a strange world we live in.

There is no more 'cutting the line'. The vaccine is available to everyone over the age of 16 country-wide.

ETA: I mean in the US.

 

[havoc315]

I guess we will see. If the US tops out at 50% of the population vaccinated I would call that an epic failure of the vaccine rollout. Just a little math here. 50% would be 165M people. 133M have already started. We would only need 32M more people to agree to be vaccinated to reach 50% with 1 shot. 30M additional kids will become eligible any day now. Even if only half got the vaccine that would absorb 15M of the 32M needed and I think we will see more than 50% of teens get the vaccine. So that would mean only 17M additional adults would be vaccinated. Even at your 900K a day pace we would reach that by May 8. So then what? It just goes to zero? Literally tens of millions of people just became eligible for the vaccine on Monday or a few weeks earlier. Can’t you see why I’m saying your opinions seem to be overly negative?

lol.... Yes, and can you see why I'm saying you're a little overly optimistic?
I do suspect we will go above 50% of total population. Certainly with the addition of kids, but in the chase for herd immunity, vaccinating a child (who already is less likely to transmit the disease) doesn't actually fully substitute for vaccinating an adult.

I've been saying for a while, I expect around 70% of adults to get vaccinated. But that could easily fall in a range of 65-75%.

Whether it's a success or failure will depend on whether it's enough to reach herd immunity. Proof will be in the numbers. If we vaccinate 65% of the population and we are down to under 3,000 cases per day by July 1, then it's a huge success.
If we vaccinate 75% of the population and we still have 15,000-30,000 cases per day by July 1, then it's a failure.

 

[Heppenheimer]

Here's the thing. I don't believe everyone wants this thing to go away. I really don't.

First off, I think a lot of the fear about where we are is being driven by the media. The media has a vested interest in keeping this thing going as long as possible. They really do. 2020 was a banner year for the news media. The ratings that they scored from Covid news were through the roof. (Yes, there was a healthy amount of presidential politics mixed in to, but Covid was clearly the defining story of the year.) They don't want to lose that. And they already see it slipping away. They are trying to prolong this as much as they possibly can. And that is influencing how lots of people view where we are.

I think there are also political motivations behind some of the doom-and-gloom, but I won't go farther than to say that I think they exist because of the no politics rule.

Suffice it to say, no, I don't believe everyone wants it to go away. Not by a long shot.

Believe it or not, people in the media and government are just... people. They like going on vacation, they like meeting with friends and families, they like going out to eat, they like going to the theater, to amusement parks, to zoos, to concerts, to interacting with people in public.

Now, will the media use COVID to direct eyes towards their content? Of course! But that's the nature of the media, anything happening in the world they will try to spin to attract eyes (and clicks). If COVID disappears tomorrow, they'll move on to the next attention-grabbing headline. And thus the world turns.. The media existed without COVID before, and they will continue to do so when this disease fades.

We can imagine nefarious motivations all day by various individuals, but at the end of the day, they are still people and their lives have also been disrupted. Hardly anyone wants this to continue.

 

[Kevin_W]

Now I need to find a trip that involves less eating out and something like mountain hikes for 2021.

I highly recommend the Grand Tetons! Spectacular hiking there last summer.

 

[LaughingGravy]

Please stop with the "breakthrough cases" narrative and focusing on the tiny remaining risk after you are fully vaccinated. This narrative does not encourage people to get vaccinated.

You are orders of magnitude more likely to die of some random cause than you are to experience a breakthrough case and die of COVID after being vaccinated.

If you are worried about being a breakthrough case and ending up dead or with long term effects then you seriously need to have your house upgraded to the level of a CDC facility and never leave again. I'm not being sarcastic.

To be clear, I'm not worried about breakthrough cases, but I also don't want people to think they are absolutely safe, and especially not until more are fully vaccinated and not traveling or normally interacting with others unless fully immunized.
Regarding the media keeping this up, I think it is still their responsibility to do that until we are at a point where the numbers are significantly down. Not there yet. We're there with measles, polio, chicken pox, mumps, and rubella.
I am pretty sure the moment there is a newscast where it's not reported, some will jump on it to say there was never anything to this, that since it dropped off the news cycle, it was all a hoax for ratings.

 

[pixie225]

I hope that’s not the case. If it is the reason they should immediately stop shipping doses to Long Island. There are plenty of places where people still want the vaccines.

I think it’s more likely you are just seeing a natural slow down. Assuming NY has roughly the same number of adults as the national average roughly 75% of the population is 18+ then roughly 60% of that group in NY has gotten at least 1 shot. If the polling is correct and roughly 71% of adults will eventually get the vaccine there are only a little over 10% of adults left to go. Once you get to that final 10% it’s not people who said they would get the vaccine as soon as available, they are the people who were on the fence 2 months ago. They will get a vaccine but they aren’t in a rush. There may be appointments available a lot of places, but they are waiting to book one on a Friday at the Rite Aid down the street vs driving to Aqueduct Racetrack on a Tuesday. My MIL drove over an hour to Brooklyn and payed to park in a garage (twice) to get her vaccine because she really wanted it. Many of the people left aren’t going to do something like that. During flu shot season you can pretty much go in to any pharmacy and get a flu shot and it seems like we are soon going to be at that level with Covid shots in a lot of places.

Everyday I get an email from Gov. Cuomo giving statistics for the previous day - number inoculated, hospitalized, passed away, etc. This is from yesterday:
Here's what else you need to know tonight:

1. COVID hospitalizations rose to 3,873. Of the 116,483 tests reported yesterday, 3,922, or 3.37 percent, were positive. The 7-day average positivity rate was 2.80 percent. There were 823 patients in ICU yesterday, down 13 from the previous day. Of them, 504 are intubated. Sadly, we lost 45 New Yorkers to the virus.

2. As of 11am this morning, 42.1 percent of New Yorkers have completed at least one vaccine dose. Over the past 24 hours, 154,049 total doses have been administered. To date, New York has administered 13,582,969 total doses with 28.8 percent of New Yorkers completing their vaccine series. See data by region and county on the State's Vaccine Tracker: ny.gov/vaccinetracker.

On the local news this a.m. was this report: https://longisland.news12.com/long-islands-largest-health-system-touts-surplus-of-covid-19-vaccines

I do think that this is just a natural slow-down. I myself drove 22 miles - 40 minutes- to Aqueduct when I got the first available appt., as did my husband and daughter- when they opened to 60+ and/or co-morbitities, and will gladly do it again if a booster is needed. I think those who really, really wanted the vaccine went wherever they could to get it as soon as they could get it. I also think that the next group to get it are those who were waiting to see if we grew a third eye or arm after the vaccine, developed a superpower, or are waiting until their local pharmacy gets them in. I applaud Nassau County for having mobile vaccination trucks going to underserved communities and searching out home-bound people to administer vaccines to.

 

[GoofGoof]

lol.... Yes, and can you see why I'm saying you're a little overly optimistic?
I do suspect we will go above 50% of total population. Certainly with the addition of kids, but in the chase for herd immunity, vaccinating a child (who already is less likely to transmit the disease) doesn't actually fully substitute for vaccinating an adult.

I've been saying for a while, I expect around 70% of adults to get vaccinated. But that could easily fall in a range of 65-75%.

Whether it's a success or failure will depend on whether it's enough to reach herd immunity. Proof will be in the numbers. If we vaccinate 65% of the population and we are down to under 3,000 cases per day by July 1, then it's a huge success.
If we vaccinate 75% of the population and we still have 15,000-30,000 cases per day by July 1, then it's a failure.

I give up. Based on polling 71% of Americans want to get the vaccine. When I said that you said the polls were wrong and the number would be lower. In your previous post you said we would have to hope for herd immunity at 50% vaccinated. Now you are saying you have been saying all along 70% of adults will get vaccinated. If that’s the case we would have been in agreement.

...and for the record 71% of eligible people vaccinated will equal 60% of the population until kids under 12 are approved.