How has the Pandemic affected you as a cancer patient/survivor
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Perhaps people should read up on the topics on which they post prior to posting.1) Most of the vaccines going to underdeveloped nations do not require freezing temps but require normal refrigeration - AstraZeneca, J&J, Sinova. Click on some of the country links on the Gavi site that I posted to see which vaccines have been distributed.
2) The WHO has been working with African nations for decades to improve their vaccination distribution process and to ensure the stability of vaccines through refrigeration. In the past this was needed for polio and measles, HPV, Ebola, etc.. Are the necessary systems in place everywhere? Of course not, but this is not something that has to be started up fresh for COVID. Population-based vaccines programs are not new to any of these countries.
3) Have vaccines sent to Africa been destroyed? Yes, some have, but in most cases this is because early on, many of the vaccines sent to COVAX or donated to African nations through other means were about-to-expire vaccines, which they were not able to distribute within the very short windows that they had. Getting fresh vaccines with 6 month expiry dates makes quite a difference vs. getting vaccines that are due to expire in 2 weeks.
4) Is there corruption and graft within the governments of many undeveloped countries? Absolutely. Do leaders of these countries want their citizens to perish in a pandemic? Of course not, if for no other reason than it's not good politics. That said, are some vaccines being diverted to wealthier citizens in these countries? Of course, so vaccine inequity continues, but even wealthy people in Africa need to be vaccinated too so while that's not ideal, it's not wasted vaccines.
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Yay?
"Congratulations! You have earned the ability to report posts that violate the Community Guidelines. Posts that are reported will be reviewed by a moderator, who will decide whether or not they should be removed.
You can now also send unlimited private messages to other users."
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The ombudsman is very quick to reply by email. Their answer to my complaint will arrive within 45 days. 😟
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Thank you, Beesie for being your helpful self and giving us facts, not feelings. It is the best way to challenge our assumptions while still being respectful.
I said early on I won't police this thread, but I will reiterate my request to keep it focused on verifiable information, rather than what we believe to be true. It makes for far fewer misunderstandings.
I want to thank everyone who posts here. I have learned so much from you regarding what's happening outside my little corner of the world. I think wrenn is right; we all need to broaden our horizons and view our increasingly interconnected world as a whole. It's the only way we'll get past this.
Trish
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I will try not to post my feelings.
At the hospital. I spoke to the charge nurse who was glad I filed a complaint. He had assured her that he was wearing a mask when with patients. We looked right then, and he was not. There have been other complaints. When I first arrived the station was empty. I took a picture to show the partial wall. This Plexiglass was in place before COVID. It is a relatively big space, but this is the waiting area for just chemo and medical oncology patients. I'm in a completely different waiting area near radiation oncology. At least our cases have been dropping in the past few days but still much higher than summer lows.
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Ack, I was just scrolling and accidentally dragged a misfunctioning pinkie over a "report this post" button on SerenitySTAT's latest post! I didn't mean it, Mods!
Beesie, thank you for the global perspective. This reluctance to share resources is a variant of NIMBY, but more of a "stay in your own back yard and I don't care if it's full of wolves."
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Et tu, Alice? 😓
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SerenitySTAT
No, it was an accident on my phone, that's what I was trying to explain! I don't know how to contact the Mods asking them to disregard it.
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Alice - I understood from your first post! I was teasing. I'm terrible. Sorry. ☹️
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Me too - Glad it got fixed Serenity.
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speaking of reporting posts, there r multiple posts in my local social media group complaining about masks, like literally everyday in the past 2 days. I finally had enough and even got tired of reporting these posts. I wrote to the mods and told them something is going on if we r seeing similar posts complaining about masks and how comments will eventually lead to misinformation. They replied saying they won’t remove posts complaining masks but told me to keep reporting misinformation. Urggg…
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The "Report this Post" button is poorly placed. I've hit it numerous times by accident (either just a random finger movement on my iPad or mistaking it for the "Back to the Top" button). Thankfully, it seems to be a two step process - you have to confirm that you intend to flag the post.
In a similar vein to your issue with the dangling mask, I had to laugh today trying to get bloodwork done. Here we have a private company that typically does a pretty good job of managing large volumes of lab tests. You can make appointments but they fill up a few weeks in advance which doesn't work well when things crop up and your MO wants blood (I've joked that oncologists are secretly vampires... they love blood!). Another option if there are no appointments is called "Save My Spot" which enables you to check in from home and arrive close to the time of your test. Love this app but this morning it wasn't working at my local lab. Arrived to find a number of people waiting. With COVID they are only allowing six people to sit in their large waiting area so once those seats are full they send folks out to the narrow hallway to wait. Okay... let's think about this boys and girls... we only allow six patients in the waiting room but it's perfectly acceptable to have 20 people waiting in a hallway... Ummm...
God knows how bad it got today. I checked in and then bailed when I realized the wait was going to be close to two hours and looked at how many were standing in the hallway. Social distancing was impossible. Later they indicated the walk-in wait time was approximately 359 minutes (seems a bit precise for "approximately" LOL). It's unclear what they were doing with the estimated 70 people waiting in the queue - 66 of them in the hallway... as without the app it would be more difficult to track times, sending people away to come back later. Masks or no masks, that's a few too many bodies for my liking.
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Wow, is that the only lab in the whole province? That's a lot of people! I am so happy that my PCP and MO both have their own labs. I get half my results right away during the MO visit about 15 minutes after the blood draw. With the other half and the PCP, I get the results the next day.
I hope that pesky report button can get moved since I'm not the only one having a problem with it.
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Alice: Ah, the fickle finger of fate or could it be a Freudian finger? LOL Were you able to get the mods to respond?
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Love the alliteration. Poetry in motion? Better not use any more "F" words.
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in BC we can also use the hospital labs. I never use the private company anymore, just my local hospital lab. Mine takes appointments & they're super organized, no waits, no crowds
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Good reminder Moth. I forgot that they do appointments now. In the past it was hit and miss. Sometimes the wait was horrendous. Now that they post the bloodwork you the portal it’s not as much of an advantage to go to the private lab. (I like my results right away!)
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Depends on where you are Wrenn. Island Health and Interior Health seem to have embraced this. Like you, I really dislike having the slow drip of info through the docs. I’m not 10…
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all of lower mainland can get lab results online http://lmlabs.phsa.ca/patients/get-test-results
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I get my labs done at the hospital too because can do an ankle draw & leave my arms alone. It is a special concession. Yes, they post almost immediately to "My Chart", except for the cancer antigen test. I always have to call to get that released - even if there's no change.
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Can we agree that the North Americans at whom to direct our (and your) indignation are not those of us senior citizen cancer patients trying to make sure we live as long as our oncology teams have dedicated themselves to trying to help ensure we do, but rather the social-media-addled anti-mask, anti-vax COVID-deniers endangering us all with their insistence that their (nonexistent) "Constitutional" and "God-given" rights and freedoms are more important than the lives of others? (I include health care workers walking off the job rather than get vaccinated, as well as "maskholes" like the one Serenity is encountering). We would not be having this argument were they not causing precious doses to be wasted and overwhelming our hospitals on both sides of the border.
Alabama today reported that for the first time in their history, 2020 saw more deaths than births. In all of southern IL (region 5, 22 counties), there are a whopping TWO ICU beds available as of 6pm tonight. (Up from "zero," but that's not the point). It has by far the lowest percentage of people in the state who've gotten even one shot. Downstate IDPH officials and critical care docs were interviewed by our local PBS station tonight, and brought up another point: when there is no available ICU bed (nor a med-surg bed that can be temporarily converted) for a critically ill patient (not just a COVID patient), that patient needs to be transported hundreds of miles away--one official said "as far as Indianapolis or Nashville." That means tying up an ambulance for the 4-5 hrs. it takes to transfer the patient, then disinfecting the rig, and another 4-5 hrs. driving back to "home base." Region 5 (except for a couple of college towns and the St. Louis suburbs) is overwhelmingly rural. (Their words, not mine). The official interviewed said that most of the counties in the region have only one or two ambulances--which was the case even pre-pandemic. When an ICU-eligible patient has to be transferred such a long distance due to COVID patients taking up local ICU beds, that deprives an entire county of half or even its only ambulance for the better part of a day. Good luck if you have a heart attack, stroke, car crash, gunshot wound, or labor & delivery complication in the interim. Not only won't there be a hospital bed for you, there won't even be a way to get there unless you have a good Samaritan or family member to drive you.
And the reach of COVIDiots extends to the business & economic community as well. Another segment of the program addressed shortages of everything from school-bus drivers to appliances to cars to coffee. Shortages due to supply-chain issues that used to be "self-healing" during prior crises are likely to be longer-lasting now. Two economists interviewed blamed the global reach of the pandemic impacting what has become an interconnected global economy. But one COVIDiot economist showed his true right-wing colors by blaming "government overreaction and interference." Pressed by the host as to what he meant, he replied that it's due to a labor shortage, which he blamed on stimulus payments and unemployment compensation. "If only they stood back and let the free market do what it does best.." He even went on to blame the public health response: "The government overreacted to the pandemic--in years past, when we had flu epidemics..." Fortunately, the host cut him off, saying that segment had run out of time. If I hear one more moron compare this to "the flu," I'm tempted to ask about his experiences back in 1918-20.
My BFF, from NS' Annapolis Valley, is heading to Canada next week for the first time since 2016. (She hasn't seen her brother, a retired Mountie in Halifax, since he came in to Chicago for her son's wedding in 2018). When she described the red tape that she--still a Canadian citizen--is going through in terms of COVID-testing and filing a "quarantine plan" with the Canadian gov't, I shelved my wish for a getaway weekend in Toronto. (No way I'm gonna spring a "quarantine plan" on my second cousins in Toronto whom I've never met). As a progressive, she was opposed to third shots...until her primary care doc reminded her she's 66, has two autoimmune diseases and is on two immunosuppressant drugs. She got that booster today.
As of today, 675,000 Americans have died of COVID--more than in the three years of the entire "Spanish" (actually, "Ft. Riley, Kansas") flu pandemic. That's 1 out of every 476 Americans, up from 1 in 500 earlier this week. (The number of COVID-felled Canadians is smaller, but the proportion is likely similar). Conservatives who yammer "blue lives matter!" fall strangely silent when confronted with the news that COVID has killed more police officers since March 2020 than accidents, shootings, and job-related illnesses & injuries combined.
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According to this "live", updated every 15 minutes CNN site, the U.S. rate of death from Covid is currently 207 deaths per 100,000 population, which is 1 in every 483 people.
In Canada the rate of death is 73 deaths per 100,000 population, which is 1 in every 1,370 people. So no, the proportion is not similar, but it still represents a devastating loss.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/
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It's interesting that some people are willing to skip the Covid vaccines in favor of monoclonal antibodies, but I wonder how many of those people know it's derived from a mouse or hamster cell line, similar to HER2 therapies? I remember thinking, whoa wait a minute, when I was doing research before starting treatment. I am just hoping that people start doing real research so we can get back close to normal soon.
Our local paper just published a second story about a pregnant woman succumbing to Covid. It's so tragic that it happened, and the majority in comments are people telling pregnant women to stay home, or why weren't monoclonal antibodies given? We don't even know if the Covid monoclonal antibodies are safe for pregnant women. It's so frustrating and depressing. Thank goodness I am able to remind myself that those commenters are usually trolls who are bored.
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just saw this today
She wasn't pregnant but thought vaccine would cause infertility.
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Chowdog - When names and faces are put to these stories it makes me feel so upset with those anti mandate protesters who reduce these people to a numerical value - part of their made up one percent.
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It's mind boggling. It puts me in the mind somehow of Jim Jones followers. Many antivaxxers cannot be persuaded to change their minds, even after they lose unvaccinated loved ones to Covid. That's the cult-like mentality we're dealing with. Antivaxxers literally dying for their beliefs. Do they go to their death thinking it was worth it? Did they have some kind of latent death wish? Or did they arrogantly think they knew so much more than the experts? The website https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/ is listing deaths of publicly professed antivaxxers, some quite outspoken about it, (the site documents the findings) many of whom leave children behind. I know what it's like to have death staring me in the face. I got a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer when my son was a senior in high school. It gutted me that he had to deal with this life-changing news of his mother. I'm beyond grateful to still be here ten years later, a decade to continue our close bond and for the time being, still going. My diagnosis affected all my loved ones. I had mammograms annually for at least a decade then bam. Straight to stage iv. It's not like a vaccine was available to me to protect me from this fate.
Antivaxxers dying within weeks or months of getting Covid when it could have almost always been averted by getting the vaccine is jolting the lives of their loved ones and life altering for their dependents. Yet the selfish, thinking only of themselves behavior continues. Are they not seeing the tragic and preventable stories of others?
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You're right, Divine. It is a cult. An anti-reason, anti-science, anti-democratic cult. You can't reason them out of their beliefs because reason has nothing to do with it. It is all based on propaganda that preys on their most primal emotions.
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As part of our Public Health Officer's press conference yesterday, she mentioned the misconception around vaccines and fertility, advising that it is not possible for the vaccine to have that effect. She was also pleading with pregnant women and those considering getting pregnant to get the vaccine as apparently there is a high risk of complications for unvaccinated pregnant women who contract COVID. A high number of the unvaccinated in ICUs have been pregnant women...
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Vaccine mandates are working! The few HCWs who quit are in the wrong profession. There were no protesters at my hospital this week like there was last week (<10 on Monday).
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Sadie, our public health officials have also debunked the link between vaccine and infertility, but there is so much mistrust in the us. It's just so painful that in her case, she didn't have someone to help her dissect the misinformation.
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