Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (nCoV-2019)

[toast_and_tea]

Success, in and out of the Wellesley community centre in 20 mins. Got the Moderna shot, next one in 16 weeks. Didn‘t feel a thing, and feel fine now two hours later. My 48 y/o wife goes to get hers this afternoon. So far so good.

Was your wife successful in the end? My wife and I were wondering about that wording too.

 

[Jonny5]

LOL

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-snowbirds-hotel-quarantine-land-border-travel-1.5980913

I have heard that the Buffalo-Niagara airport has been very busy lately. This is why. Skip quarantine completely!

CBC News interviewed three airport transport services based in Buffalo and one in Burlington, Vt., which is about 70 kilometres from the Quebec border. The companies said they'll drive Canadians to or across the Canadian border for around $100 US and, for an added fee, the Buffalo companies will drive passengers directly to their homes in Ontario. Each company said it has seen a boost in business after Canada introduced the hotel quarantine requirement.

Since late February, Buffalo Limousine has, on average, transported 50 customers a day across the Canadian border, increasing its lagging business by around 50 per cent, Boccio said.
Buffalo Limousine charges about $120 US to drive a couple from the Buffalo airport across the border to neighbouring Fort Erie, Ont., or Niagara Falls, said Boccio. A trip to downtown Toronto costs around $300 US.

With certainty this is happening at the Detroit crossing too.

 

[Johnny Au]

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Teoscar Hernandez tested positive for COVID-19:

Hernández, Borucki placed on COVID-19 IL

Outfielder Teoscar Hernández has been placed on the COVID-19 injured list following exposure to a positive COVID-19 case with a close contact outside of the organization, the Blue Jays announced Friday. It was one of several roster moves made prior to their 7-1 loss to the Angels. The Blue Jays

www.mlb.com

Two other Blue Jays players have vaccine-related complications.

 

[Northern Light]

LOL

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-snowbirds-hotel-quarantine-land-border-travel-1.5980913

I have heard that the Buffalo-Niagara airport has been very busy lately. This is why. Skip quarantine completely!


With certainty this is happening at the Detroit crossing too.

Predictable.

Government has consistently employed 'loopholes' to ensure that (some) people don't have to comply w/the superficial rules.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Was your wife successful in the end? My wife and I were wondering about that wording too.

Yes. We’re now both vaccinated, round one.

I asked the staff and they said anyone 18 or older could come. I saw lots of young people getting the jab today.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Teoscar Hernandez tested positive for COVID-19:

Hernández, Borucki placed on COVID-19 IL

Outfielder Teoscar Hernández has been placed on the COVID-19 injured list following exposure to a positive COVID-19 case with a close contact outside of the organization, the Blue Jays announced Friday. It was one of several roster moves made prior to their 7-1 loss to the Angels. The Blue Jays

www.mlb.com

Two other Blue Jays players have vaccine-related complications.

All Florida residents 18 years of age and older are now eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Do Toronto Blue Jays' players, coaches, and staff qualify as residents?

 

[PinkLucy]

It sounds like the Jays are vaccinating everyone, just not all at once so that they don't end up with a bunch of players on the DL.

 

[PinkLucy]

Meanwhile, in Quebec. https://montrealgazette.com/news/lo...kKzzJiP34aWgP1yfAJP9EtHmbz5o3VKeQyBCk7asi_BQs

 

[W. K. Lis]

P.E.I. woman hospitalized over 'extremely rare' COVID-19 vaccine allergy shares her story​

From link.

Expert says getting COVID-19 itself is much worse than very low risk from vaccination​

Last week, Toni Lannigan's excitement over getting her COVID-19 vaccination quickly turned into panic.

The 32-year-old had no known allergies, but sometimes felt slightly unwell after annual flu shots, so staff at the King's County Memorial Hospital in Montague, P.E.I., flagged her to wait 30 minutes after her Pfizer-BioNTech shot instead of the usual 15, to make sure she would be all right.

It didn't take that long before she became very ill. The roof of her mouth itched, her tongue swelled and she became confused.

"I don't remember everything, but I remember looking around and seeing the nurses so concerned," she said.

Luckily, the emergency department was just steps away and staff rushed her there, where she said her heart began to race, her blood pressure dropped dramatically and she began having sharp pelvic pains.

Treated with epinephrine​

She remembers being treated with epinephrine, a drug used to treat severe allergic reactions, and starting to shake uncontrollably. An ambulance took her to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, where she was admitted to intensive care.

"I felt like I was running a marathon," she said. "It was a really traumatic thing."

Lannigan was released after two days, when her blood results improved, her heart returned to normal and she began to feel better.

Back home in rural Montague, she said the vision in one eye is still severely blurred — her doctor is keeping an eye on that — and she is weak, extremely nervous and jumpy. Her head aches, she has no appetite and she isn't sleeping well.

"Do I feel like myself? Absolutely not. I'm a very bubbly kind of girl — I don't feel that. I feel very nervous or on edge, and I don't know why," she said. "My nerves are shot."

She's been thinking about the last text she sent to her daughter right before her vaccination, telling her she loved her.

"Could that have been the last thing I said to my daughter?" she said.

Still supports vaccination​

Lannigan herself works in the health-care system, and knows anaphylactic reactions to medications, vaccines or foods are not uncommon. She said she still trusts the health-care system in Canada.

Lannigan says she didn't know she had any allergies at all before getting the vaccine. (Toni Lannigan)

"Just because it happened to me doesn't ... mean that it's going to happen to you or a person you love," she said.

She urges people to receive COVID-19 vaccines, but to also educate themselves about what's in the shot they are receiving and whether they might be allergic to it.

Lannigan is glad her vaccine was administered at a hospital, not one of P.E.I.'s mass clinics. "Would I have made it to where I needed to be?" she wondered, if she had gotten the needle somewhere else.

She has other questions too.

"I couldn't really get any answers as to why that happened. And I still don't have any answers," Lannigan said. She would like to know what vaccine ingredient caused her reaction, and why.

Reactions 'extremely rare'​

Fatima Tokhmafshan is a Montreal-based geneticist and bioethicist who has been combating misinformation about COVID-19 on social media platforms including TikTok. She helped launch COVID-19 Resources Canada, a group that started a website and holds video meetings to let experts answer people's questions about COVID-19.
She said it is normal and valid to be anxious and have questions about the vaccines, adding that adverse effects are "extremely rare."

Tokhmafshan said it's important to stay on top of your own health and share all your medical history with those administering any vaccine.

"Vaccines are safe. They work, They've been vigorously tested," she said. "They are the silver bullet that we have in this battle against the pandemic."

Tokhmafshan urges everyone who is offered a vaccine to get it. That's what she herself intends to do, when her turn comes.

"Take heart in knowing that people are monitoring every single adverse reaction that is reported all across the world," she said.

"The various experts group, they meet very frequently, we discuss this, we discuss what could be the mechanism of this kind of reaction. So there are some unanswered questions for us as well, but we are working together to find answers."

Side-effects being tracked​

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved for use in Canada on Dec. 9, 2020, after scientists finished a two-month review of the company's clinical trial data and concluded there were no important safety concerns.

The public first began to hear about allergic reactions to the vaccine in early December, when a health care worker in Alaska suffered one. Later in the month, a health worker in Hamilton, Ont., went public about her severe reaction.

On Dec. 12, Health Canada issued a safety alert warning, saying that people with allergies to any of the ingredients in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine should not receive it.

Health Canada has been tracking reported side-effects following COVID-19 vaccinations since early January. It notes that serious side-effects such as allergic reactions are rare, and says the benefits of the approved vaccines continue to outweigh the risks.

Up to March 19, 2021, Health Canada said there had been 2,530 reports of side-effects after COVID-19 vaccinations — that's just under 68 reports per 100,000 doses administered. Of those side-effects, 320 were considered serious.

Slightly more of those adverse effects (1,444 with 263 serious ones) were reported from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine than from Moderna (1,079 with 54 serious). The Covishield vaccine (the Serum Institute of India's version of AstraZeneca) had five total reported adverse effects, one of which was serious.

The most frequently reported serious adverse event was anaphylaxis, which happened in 59 cases, Health Canada said. There have been 24 post-vaccine deaths reported; 13 of them have been deemed unrelated to a vaccine, while 11 remain under investigation.

COVID-19 more serious than vaccines​

Tokhmafshan encourages everyone to go through the ingredient lists for the vaccine varieties on Health Canada's website, and share anything that stands out with their health care provider.

She said the ingredient that has been causing more frequent allergic reactions is polyethylene glycol, or PEG, a filler used in this vaccine and many other drugs. Researchers say they don't yet understand why this may happen.

She said some reports of serious adverse events include rashes or long-lasting fevers, and those are not that serious when considered next to what they are designed to prevent.

"You look at the rate at which these adverse effects are occurring and their nature, and you compare it with COVID-19, the disease," she said. "The risk of experiencing much more unpleasantness and sickness and disease because of the virus is a lot higher than from the vaccine."...

If you get "strange" reactions with flu vaccines, or other medical procedures, best to stay 30 minutes, just in case.

 

[Bayer]

This morning, I was able to book an appointment for Tuesday at St. Michael's. I had tried repeatedly and that date was always unavailable, but I see now that it must have been a vaccine availability issue.

My eligibility is based on the fact that I'm 50+ and living in the M4Y postal code. This code isn't among the hot zones; St. Michael's decided to include it.

 

[tiffer24]

Everything is FINE.

#BREAKING: For the second time this week, Ontario has set a new record for the number of COVID-19 cases recorded in a single day as the province surpasses 600 COVID-19 patients in intensive care.

 

[afransen]

Not immediately COVID related, but Evan Hadfield makes very good video essays. He's been on hiatus for most of COVID, but just published one trying to understand the anger and alienation behind things like MAGA, antifa, anti-maskers, etc. I thought it was very good. He's worth a follow.

 

[MisterF]

Not immediately COVID related, but Evan Hadfield makes very good video essays. He's been on hiatus for most of COVID, but just published one trying to understand the anger and alienation behind things like MAGA, antifa, anti-maskers, etc. I thought it was very good. He's worth a follow.

Rare Earth is one of my favourite Youtube channels. Evan does great work.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

I’m in one of York Region’s hotspots postal codes, despite that York Region isn’t offering vaccines to anyone in the 18-40 category yet. It’s bewildering that it hasn’t happened even when Toronto has started doing so. Also I personally think that York Region needs to open up more mass vaccine locations instead of relying on pharmacies. There’s literally no large vaccine sites south of Hwy 7 and the ones that are available literally requires one to have access to a car.

-venting here a bit as some of my friends have already been vaccinated since the opening up of appointments in hotspots in Toronto.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Everything is FINE.

#BREAKING: For the second time this week, Ontario has set a new record for the number of COVID-19 cases recorded in a single day as the province surpasses 600 COVID-19 patients in intensive care.

From link.

For the second time this week, Ontario has set a new record for the number of COVID-19 cases reported in a single day as the province sees more than 600 coronavirus patients in intensive care for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Provincial health officials logged 4,456 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus today, surpassing the previous record of 4,227 set just two days ago. In January, the province recorded 4,249 cases in a 24-hour period but at the time, officials suggested that the case count was inflated that day due to a data cleaup.

The rolling seven-day average of new cases in Ontario is now 3,573, up from 2,637 last Sunday...