What would Saturday night be like without the great Kate McKinnon? This time, she was Dr. Fauci, demonstrating the national/worldwide roll-em aspect of getting a vaccination. However, to our surprise, in recent days, my wife and I got lucky. This is our updated story: Until a few days ago, my wife and I were preoccupied with trying to stay alive, with no coherent program from national or local governments. Every morning, millions of Americans play the game of going online and pretending we have a chance for a Covid shot. It kills the time, what with the wintry weather. I know things would be better organized if the cretini who were in charge of the country for four years had any ability to organize, or even read the playbooks left them by the Obama regime. But grifters operate outside rules, outside structure. Then our luck changed. I got an email -- a "random call" -- from the health powerhouse in our area, saying I was qualified for a shot. Bingo. On Tuesday I got my first jab. But my wife could not find anything even though she has had more contact with that regional mega-chain in recent years. Then on Friday afternoon, our dear friend Marie called and told us of a program run by the great heart hospital, St. Francis, at a public park only 20 minutes from our house, and after a few clicks with the phone my wife had an appointment for Sunday-- earlier today, as I type this. Until our double strokes of luck, I would go on line every day and play tic-tac-toe with the local hospital chain and the drugstore chains, and eventually all efforts are funneled into the “system” of Gov. Cuomo. Once in a while, the site says there just might be appointments within the state, like Potsdam or Plattsburgh. (In other words, Canada South.) What makes it worse is that the New York Times issues a daily advisory that the county where I live has a high infection rate. Gee, do you think it has anything to do with superspreader parties that self-indulgent suburbanites tossed during the holidays? So we wear double masks and I make quickie runs to the grocery store – people are uniformly masked and polite at the Target Market I frequent. My wife and I get furtive glimpses of our loved ones. You know the drill. Meanwhile friends my age in the city tell me tales of getting shots at their hospital or the Javits Center. One pal was visiting a medical building and the elevator stopped at a different floor and he saw a sign: “Covid Vaccinations Available.” He doubled back and the lady with the clipboard said they did indeed have vaccine. (It was 3:15 PM.) “How would 3:20 be?” she asked. He said, he thought he could make it. He tells me that every time we talk, the smartass. On Thursday, President Biden noted the country had given 50-millon inoculations in his first 37 days, but that progress does not help those with no way to register as seniors, entitled to the drug. I credit the governor and the mayor -- the odd couple -- for the state’s placement of vaccination centers only for residents of urban centers, including Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn (right where Ebbets Field used to be) and York College in South Jamaica, Queens (where Mario Cuomo’s dad ran a grocery store.) This is called doing the right thing. * * * Now I have my own strange little tale of how we lucked into our shots: Last Sunday, around 4:45 PM, the following message popped onto my phone: Dear George, We’re happy to let you know that we have recently received a small quantity of COVID-19 vaccines for eligible Northwell patients. You are currently eligible to be vaccinated, according to New York State guidance. To book your COVID-19 vaccine appointment, call…. Next morning at 8 AM, I got right through and signed up for a shot. Amazing. Then I inquired for a shot for my wife, saying that nearly two months ago we both filled out forms for appointments with New York State; we have the printouts, with our serial numbers and all. “It is strictly a random call,” the lady said. Could my wife get a random call? “She might get one at any time.” Never happened Last Tuesday, I went to a large, clean, brightly-lit room in the Northwell complex in New Hyde Park, where a couple of dozen workers were wielding needles or pens. In 20 minutes, I was out the door. ![]() I felt a surge--not of medication but of love and respect, first for the scientists who jumped into battle while the previous “president” was lying to his country. I was thankful for all the medical workers who have saved lives and comforted family members; those workers deserved first crack at the vaccination. The first nurse to get inoculated was an administrator, Sandra Lindsay, who lives in the same town we do. My left arm ached a bit for a day, but according to the experts, one shot of Pfizer means even if you pick up a stray bit of Covid, you will not go to the hospital, you will not die, particularly if you wear double masks and minimize contacts. My wife got her shot of Moderna on Sunday; you take whatever they are giving. We are sad for the people without computer skills, without friends who know somebody. The whole thing sounds like the eminent scientist – Dr. Wenowdis -- on “Saturday Night Live,” last week, played by the brilliant Kate McKinnon, who summed up national vaccination procedure: “Dis we don’t know.”
Andy Tansey
2/25/2021 09:02:29 pm
Two questions, please, George:
George
2/25/2021 09:57:14 pm
Andy: before and after I got my shot (needle, not pen), i was being shunted off Northwell site to the NYS site, which delivers a thrice-daily verdict of “You have got to be kidding.”
Andy Tansey
2/26/2021 09:54:23 am
Scheduled! Walgreen's, Bronx, for Monday. Go Yankees!
bruce
2/25/2021 10:49:07 pm
george,
George Vecsey
2/26/2021 09:34:05 am
Bruce, I meant nothing malicious by my remark...just that it seems like a long haul to Potsdam to get a shot. But....they have appointments today.
bruce
2/26/2021 09:55:29 am
geoge,
PTO'N
2/26/2021 07:53:16 am
Hello George,
George
2/26/2021 09:37:11 am
Paul: thanks for the tips. I am helpless on Twitter....I occasionally send something out (to promote this site) but don't keep up. I tried the links you suggested,for a vaccine for my wife, but the sites basically guffaw back at me and say, "Suckah!"
Patrick
2/26/2021 10:31:58 am
Re: websites, refreshing / persistence is the key. This morning with that approach I have come across openings at the NYS site near me (Westchester County Center)
ED MARTIN
2/26/2021 08:45:41 pm
In the Light Marian and George!
George
2/27/2021 08:11:52 am
Ed: beware of nurse with lean and hungry look. (We recently saw a really good JC with an all-female cast on the tube, professionals mostly but some actors from a prison production in UK. It was fascinating to see how quickly they became male — or female — in our minds.) great to hear you both have overcome govt lack of organization.
ED MARTIN
2/27/2021 02:23:50 pm
Re: Lit. Ref. 2/27/2021 09:33:28 am
I received a call from are local Price Chopper pharmacy. They said that I was called at random and that my wife could also receive a shot at the same time.
bruce
2/27/2021 09:41:49 am
alan, 2/27/2021 04:11:29 pm
Although Lehigh is ranked among the elite engineering schools, it’s arts and business colleges are also excellent. I like my son Josh’s comment that NYU’s law school is among the twenty top ten U.S. law schools.
ED MARTIN
2/27/2021 04:26:22 pm
For a minute, Alan, I thought I might have hurt your feelings, teasing about Lehigh, do you think its a better university than Hofstra? (Diversion tactic). 2/27/2021 11:07:53 pm
Ed--good natured fun is never out of style.
bruce
2/27/2021 05:14:43 pm
alan,
George
2/28/2021 08:37:59 am
Dear Alan and Ed: First, thanks to Alan for your nice words about Hofstra. It was a small college then -- now a university. A mediocre student, I got a great education there -- plus a start in career, and marrying my yearbook co-editor, best of all. And the great drama department, took some courses, and met talented people like FF Coppola,who has become what we all would have predicted. As for your two schools, my freshman year, as publicist for the baseball team, spring road trip all the way to....Allentown! Team played Muhlenberg and then Lehigh...the Ed and Alan road trip, as it turned out. Craig Anderson, future original Met, still in touch with him, did not pitch that day for Lehigh. I think I recall a sign, or a reminder, of a massive home run by Walt Dropo, for Univ. of Conn,, future Red Sox 1B, a huge guy, at the Lehigh ball park. Both schools were ECAC opponents, and I think of those events every time we are driving out to Deepest Pennsylvania to visit family. GV
bruce
2/28/2021 08:46:00 am
george,
ED MARTIN
2/28/2021 01:45:07 pm
Thanks George and Alan. In Washington I learned a concept, “Lets you and him fight.” (Ergo Hofstra comment.)
bruce
2/28/2021 03:33:41 pm
ed, 2/28/2021 04:51:25 pm
I spent an enjoyable day with George at Hofstra several years ago for a soccer and sports conference. I remember it being a nice campus and much larger than expected.
ED MARTIN
2/28/2021 11:17:39 pm
It's a great day to win a championship! Three #Muhlenberg basketball teams have won historically significant titles on Feb. 28, including both 1998 squads - the only time in @CentennialConf history one school swept the titles at the same site. 🐴🏀🏆🏆🏆 bit.ly/3bOEut6 3/1/2021 10:50:02 am
Ed-a very impressive basketball history. In the years that I was there,1953-58, Lehigh's basketball program was very weak. I did not follow the team very much as I was still focused on NYC’s talented college programs.
ED MARTIN
3/1/2021 02:01:31 pm
Alan, Danny Stiles, by any chance? RADIO guy in A-town area, @50-ff.
GV
3/1/2021 03:18:01 pm
Alan: (How did we veer from vaccines to PA colleges to cursing on the air?) But while we are there, it reminds me of the day I was using a NYT car to get to a calm story in Brooklyn, 1973 or 74, and while I was on the bridge, the office called me on the car radio and said there was about to be a shootout just over the bridge between the law and some militant group. Coward that I am, I said, "Holy ---" and then made a beeline for the spot. Rumor was they had Joanne Chesimard holed up. But whoever it was went out the back fire escape, as I recall, so all was peaceful when I arrived. Not so peaceful when I got to the office and found out the FCC was mad at the NYT for language.....She got to Cuba, I was not fined or imprisoned for cursing, and life was peaceful ever afterward. Moral that story is...what? GV
ED MARTIN
3/1/2021 03:56:15 pm
GV, Perhaps the moral is, people who have had interesting lives have tales to tell, particularly as they age. The folks on this page, certainly do. I am guided by Jimmy Cannon’s opener, “Nobody asked me, but...” Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |