- Livermore cases: 5,360; eligible vaccination rate: 59.8%*
- * I'm noticing that the Livermore number in the past 2 posts must have been the "at least one shot" number; this number is the "fully vaccinated" number. The county and national numbers has been the "fully vaccinated" numbers.
- Alameda County cases: 100,343; deaths: 1,257; eligible vaccination rate: 73.7%
- U.S. cases: 37,583,000+; deaths: 625,000+; eligible vaccination rate: 60.1%
The past week or so has been filled with reports of how overwhelmed the medical facilities in several Southern states have become.
Parts of Florida are diverting oxygen supplies from their water-treatment facilities to hospitals and are asking residents to conserve water so they don't run out. Meanwhile, also in Florida, the governor is threatening to reduce funding to school districts that have enacted mask requirements in violation of his orders. Also in Florida, treatment facilities are being run out of parks and libraries, so obviously things are going very well there.
In Texas, schools are skirting around their governor's orders that prohibit mask requirements by adding face coverings to their standard dress code policies.
These two governors in particular seem hellbent on watching kids die for some reason.
Mississippi's State Health Officer issued an order requiring 10-days of isolation for anyone with COVID-19 and threatens a $500 fine or 6-months in prison for failure to comply. I doubt even a single person will be subjected to those punishments, but I guess we'll see. Things aren't any better in Mississippi than their neighboring states.
On Wednesday, Alabama was reporting a 29-person waiting list to get an ICU bed across the entire state. Hospitals throughout the country are transferring patients up to several hundred miles away to find a facility with room to take them.
In California, and other states, school employees are being required to prove vaccination or be tested weekly.
Booster shots will be available to people starting 8-months after their second shot (if they received one of the mRNA vaccines). It's expected that a booster shot will be authorized for those, like me, who received the viral vector vaccine soon.
And people continue to get caught either using or selling fake vaccination records.
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In other news, the U.S. finally pulled our military out of Afghanistan and the Afghan government promptly collapsed and was taken over by the Taliban within ~48 hours; massive fires are burning throughout the west (including California); a hurricane is hitting New England this weekend, and the first ever water-shortage declaration was made for the Colorado River.
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Finally, school starts on Tuesday. As mentioned above, our schools have mask requirements for students & staff and vaccination or testing requirements for staff. They'll be operating at normal capacity and with a normal schedule whereas at the end of last year used a hybrid schedule that kept capacity to about half and no food was eaten while on campus. Lunch is supposed to be done as distanced as possible, but that will be a challenge. They're planning on eating outside whenever possible, but the air is smokey right now and it does get hot or rain, so there will need to be fully indoor options as well. We bought new, snugger fitting, better filtering masks for the girls to wear instead of the plain cloth masks they've been wearing. Rumor has it that emergency authorization to give the vaccine to kids 6+ is coming within the next month or so.