I did hear talk that the governors might be the ones making the determination in each state. Seeing that this is Illinois, the who goes first will likely be based on ethnicity, income, gender, voter registration, how many ballots you cast in the last election, sexual preference, gender identity and social behavior scores provided on you by both facebook and google based on all you've permitted them to collect on you. How many times you've purchased legal marijuana would help, but FOID or conceal carry registrations could set you back. Further down the list, they could consider age, health, occupation and if you're in a nursing home. It's a very complicated, but fair, calculation.

And NO amount of money will get you moved up in line unless it's paid directly to a high ranking Illinois politician. So the little online calculator is telling me to anticipate my vaccination between Dec. 2021 and Jan. 2022 but says that I'm eligible for an injection of straight up Covid-19 at any time.

 

Ron - reminds me of when I worked for a small software company & was working to get into a state agency in Springfield.

My boss (he was from Phillie) asked what we could do to speed things up. I said a $10k contribution to the governor's (Blago) campaign would be a big help. He said, "Come on - I'm serious". I said, "So am I".

 

Hopefully it's not another Cutter or Thalidomide incident with the hard push for this vaccine.

Ron,

Thanks for your concern. Wuhan is hitting hard now, basically it's gone up three fold since labor day would be my guess looking at the stats casually. We have at least 10% callouts in our plant despite mandatory overtime for some areas and generous offerings of overtime for others. My boss had 50% of his reports called out last week, I had one of my reports called out as well. Now my fellow office, more serious coworkers and some executives are are calling out, our division president is still showing up though. I wear a cheesy cloth mask but I need to throw on my n95s again. My company has people running around daily, going building to building spraying contact points with disinfectant but I don't know how much it's helping as we've had concentrations of people calling out from some buildings. It's funny you can tell the welding cells that I and a few others worked in as a fine layer off rust now exists as we were paranoid and spraying our metal tools and other equipment down with bleach water (initially provided by the company) as other shifts use our cells. There's a welder I know in his 40s, an affable person who's been welding all year with a n95 under his $2500 respirator welding hood even when it was 102f in some cells during the summer. As he now takes breaks separated from his coworkers, I asked him if he has special health issues and he mentioned he's trying to protect his diabetic daughter so it's hitting home the seriousness some people are taking to try to protect their family. Being a squeaky wheel when I was a welder with a email I sent to senior management of my division likely got a bunch of temperature stations and hand held temperature guns distributed earlier throughout our campus, who knows how much its helping as 100% compliance isn't happening.

Wisconsin is a joke with social distancing, we went down to the 'big' city of Green Bay a few weeks and its like nothing is happening at all if you want to visit a restaurant. I think many cheeseheads here will die of if Wisconsin ever closed down the bars, now yoops are packing bars and restaurants near the border, it's a viscous cycle. Packs well heeled but still ignorant out of town of side-by-side owners are still doing poker runs to the bars on weekends. Not nearly as deadly as the Spanish flu but it's still disconcerting. Deer harvest numbers might be down this rifle season, not sure if that's due to sales of tags are down this year.

I didn't post much this year as I had a poor, lazy year but I did discover a few new places to fish. Owning a home, dealing with family has impacted my FPH metrics.

On an amusing note in 2020 the current pipe barricade at top of Mount Suribachi that has that road leads down to your fishing spot below Vicky is passable with a narrow vehicle as we saw two crusty, old fishing bums pass through with their hooptie. We then took our skinny, old forester through the pipe barricade all the way to the water pipe bridge. I walked down that MF early in the season only to be told by a local it was closed due to sturgeon regs but he said I could fish his camp below your spot which I did but you know that shitty, skinny that fast, milk chocolate stretch.

Best fish fry ever in the universe is closed forever in that town that leads to Vicky. I'm glad I could say I was there a few times. Henry's was a place waiting for a fire or food poisoning outbreak fit for a 1970s catastrophe movie but it still rocked.

I use hand sanitizer frequently, avoid bars but I'm I'm resigned to eventually getting it. Per my doctors approval I'm taking elevated levels of C, zinc and selenium but who knows if it will make any difference.

Well that's latest update from The Red Green Show.

 

Ron - reminds me of when I worked for a small software company & was working to get into a state agency in Springfield.

My boss (he was from Phillie) asked what we could do to speed things up. I said a $10k contribution to the governor's (Blago) campaign would be a big help. He said, "Come on - I'm serious". I said, "So am I".
Keep calm and fish on...

I had a customer with a NON-UNION plumbing business for many years in Chicago during the Daley II years. Likely was the only non-union plumbing company. They made it miserable for him with near-daily unannounced inspections on jobsites whereas the union plumbers barely got checked throughout the year. The jack booted thugs were sniffing for code violations, but mainly making them cough up papers that the workers were licensed journeymen, the ratios were in bounds and that apprentices weren't working alone. Bringing a few guys to an annual 300 a plate dinner Daley dinner each year was the only thing keeping the city from shutting down an honest hardworking company. After a couple of decades of that, he caved and became union.

Hopefully it's not another Cutter or Thalidomide incident with the hard push for this vaccine.

Could have been me. In her wisdom as a 19 year old, my mom turned down the Thalidomide her doctor was pushing on her. I popped out fresh, clean and with all my parts intact and got named after Ronald Reagan (the actor).

Ron,

Thanks for your concern. Wuhan is hitting hard now, basically it's gone up three fold since labor day

I was thinking of that yesterday, trying to remember how many died on that atrocity we were told "we'll never forget!" of 911. So when you see more 3000 death days, each of those is surpassing 911. :shock:

Wisconsin is a joke with social distancing, we went down to the 'big' city of Green Bay a few weeks and its like nothing is happening at all if you want to visit a restaurant.

It's crazy up there. We have a Green Bay friend who is non-stop ragging about the inconvenience of schooling from home, yet all she posts on media is her, her overweight diabetic husband and kids eating out in Green Bay and area restaurants. A stubborn bunch up there!

On an amusing note in 2020 the current pipe barricade at top of Mount Suribachi that has that road leads down to your fishing spot below Vicky is passable with a narrow vehicle as we saw two crusty, old fishing bums pass through with their hooptie. We then took our skinny, old forester through the pipe barricade all the way to the water pipe bridge.

As far as I know, the owners still don't allow that, only 3 and 4 wheelers can pass. I don't think they'd shoot you or call the cops, but probably would make you drive and park back up above the gate. I've contemplated it, but always was afraid they'd lock the gate with a chain. Then I'd be locked in and stuck there with the bears and mosquitoes. Cell phones rarely can find a signal.

I walked down that MF early in the season only to be told by a local it was closed

It might not have been. Locals :crazy: don't always know what they are talking about. Yes, there is a early season closure down there to allow for spawning. It is confusingly worded in the regs, something like "closed from the tailrace to the the confluence." Never understood it so I called the DNR. From what they explained the closed section starts where the main dam flow meets the flow coming from the generator. Then the closed section is from there back to the main dam, but you should be allowed to fish the powerhouse section and the chocolate water below that confluence.

Best fish fry ever in the universe is closed forever in that town that leads to Vicky. I'm glad I could say I was there a few times. Henry's was a place waiting for a fire or food poisoning outbreak fit for a 1970s catastrophe movie but it still rocked.

Yum! Henry's. So sad... You'll have to drive a few miles to Syl's Cafe and buy yourself a couple of pasties and a 5 gallon tub of ketchup.

Per my doctors approval I'm taking elevated levels of C, zinc and selenium

:thumbup: Gotta add vitamin D for sure and now word on the street is that melatonin is the bomb. They also say having asthma helps and/or smoking, but I don't want either of those.

 

I just hollered up to my wife about Henry's being gone and she was shocked and devasted. She grew up on that very same highway just a few miles away.

 

^^^ Well Henry's is still open but there famous Friday fish fry is gone. My understanding is the owners are in their 80s and his wife passed after a long battle with cancer. The huge spread they put together on Friday was quite an ordeal to make happen. Still a cool old 120yo+ bar but it's a shadow of itself and is depressingly lame and quiet on a Friday. Don't get the frozen fish they now offer from their deep fryer, it's terrible, but I was a nostalgic fool and didn't heed the bartender's warning.

 

The wife is relieved and says we definitely have to make a stop there next time we make a trip.

I had a friend from my days in Marinette that moved and I believe lived up above Henry's. Such a small world. She became friends with my pre-wife and played her a demo tape I recorded in a small studio in St Paul. She liked it, not knowing that the guy who wrote and played on all that music would someday become her husband. We met and got married, but our meeting each other had nothing to do with the Marinette girl who moved into Henry's building. So weird.
.

 

Ron - you forgot about the video gamblers. surely they're high up on the list.

According to the NYT there's between 5 and 10 million Illinoisans ahead of me. my job is "essential" but I also work from home full time.

I can attest to northern Wisconsin not taking precautions this summer. Other than Walmart and Menards, face coverings were pretty much optional. The local Ace hardware was openly defying the governor's orders and you'd get a crazy look if you walked into a restaurant with a mask to pickup food.

 

I checked my spot. It's all the way at the bottom. Not really the bottom. The chart shows one person behind me. Something like 246 million in front of me. I'm fine with my spot. The county where I live has had 2253 reported cases and out of that 98.5% survived. Pretty good odds in my book.

~JOE~

 

I can attest to northern Wisconsin not taking precautions this summer. Other than Walmart and Menards, face coverings were pretty much optional. The local Ace hardware was openly defying the governor's orders and you'd get a crazy look if you walked into a restaurant with a mask to pickup food.

Guess we need to change it from the "cheddar curtain" to the "stupid curtain".

 

I did hear talk that the governors might be the ones making the determination in each state. Seeing that this is Illinois, the who goes first will likely be based on ethnicity, income, gender, voter registration, how many ballots you cast in the last election, sexual preference, gender identity and social behavior scores provided on you by both facebook and google based on all you've permitted them to collect on you. How many times you've purchased legal marijuana would help, but FOID or conceal carry registrations could set you back. Further down the list, they could consider age, health, occupation and if you're in a nursing home. It's a very complicated, but fair, calculation.

OMG! I'm a total visionary. I can see the future. Remember, you read it here first. This article came out today:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists ... ens-pfizer

Distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine: Let's stop inequality before it happens. Again.
"The state has not undertaken anything of this scale, ever," Jordan Abudayyeh, Gov. J.B. Pritzker's press secretary, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

By Lynn Sweet Dec 7, 2020, 8:31pm CST

WASHINGTON - When it comes to distributing the COVID-19 vaccine - with initial doses to be in short supply - the monumental challenge will be to not increase the gaping inequality gaps the pandemic exposed.

The existing disparities in health care - access, quality, affordability - guaranteed low-income Black and Brown communities with high numbers of frontline essential workers would be hit the hardest when coronavirus cases started to climb in the spring.

As COVID-19 cases soar to record numbers in Illinois and the rest of the nation, the task now is turning vaccines into vaccinations.

The federal government, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago are organizing massive campaigns involving everything from figuring out who gets the initial limited number of doses, to training an army of people to give the shots, to insuring that cold and ultra-cold storage standards are met, to keeping tracking records.

And once this is done - everything has to be repeated if it's a two-dose vaccine a person gets. That's right. Twice.

That's because two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, taken a few weeks apart, are needed for immunity.

"The state has not undertaken anything of this scale, ever," Jordan Abudayyeh, Gov. J.B. Pritzker's press secretary told me Monday.

"It is a Herculean task, and it is especially challenging, given that we're still in the middle of a pandemic," Katherine Baicker, the dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy said when we talked Monday.

Baicker, a health economist, added, "The same health care system that needs to be treating people and helping to prevent the spread of the disease is also supposed to be tracking the distribution of this logistically challenging set of vaccines."

Is it possible to install a vaccination distribution system to stop more inequality from taking place?

"There are so many different dimensions of 'inequality,' Baicker said. "When you say, 'Let's stop inequality before it starts in access to care' … in some ways, we're not going to be able to undo all of the inequalities that are already so tragically manifested in who's bearing the burden of this disease."

Equity is of vital importance.

"But does that mean starting with underserved communities? Does it mean starting with the people who are at the greatest health risk? Does it mean starting with the health care workers who are taking care of those people?" Baicker said.

"Does it mean starting with the teachers who would be able to keep kids in school for people who can't work at home?

"There are all these economic inequalities too. And so the pandemic has laid bare inequalities on multiple dimensions," said Baicker.

The state at first will get about 109,000 doses; about 23,000 will go directly to Chicago with some 86,000 doses for the rest of Illinois. The state and city will each develop its own plans.

If the federal Food and Drug Administration grants emergency use authorization for vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna at its Thursday meeting, the first shipment of the drug could arrive in Illinois in a matter of days.

Based on federal guidelines from the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, in Illinois, frontline health care workers and long-term care facility residents will be at the front of the line in "phase 1a." The populations next in line in subsequent phases have not been decided.

It's likely essential frontline workers will be in the second phase; that will address, in an indirect way, equity issues since so many of those workers are Black or Brown.

A Trump administration official at a Monday briefing said, "No American will have to pay a penny out of his or her pocket to get vaccinated. There will be absolutely no co-pays, deductibles, or coinsurance associated with this." The official also said, "We'll have sufficient number of doses to vaccinate all Americans who desire one before the end of the second quarter of 2021."

President-elect Joe Biden is going to have a COVID-19 Equity Task Force, and on Monday he named its chair, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the founding director of Yale's Equity Research and Innovation Center. She is a specialist in health equity issues.

The COVID-19 baton will soon be passed to the Biden White House - and a president who will be making equity a priority, with vaccine distribution the first test.

 

It told me "You should have voted for Harris".

 

Pander to your base and expanding it with others. Guise it with altruistic ideas.

Nothing is new under the son.

 

This is going to get interesting. I've dealt with Covid positive citizens since March, and continue to go into situations were the subjects ultimately end up being positive. Based on these ever evolving metrics, I guess I would fall in line somewhere between Drew Peterson and Satan himself. Stay tuned for updates.

 

^^^ Matt, Thanks for serving as a LEO.

Anecdotal but I've known 3 cops, one killed himself and left his hs sweetheart of 25yo and 2 kids behind, another a Wheaton cop back in the 90s on his first day on the job got to find out what a self-inflicted headshot looks like from a. 357, a buddy of mine on his first day had to draw his pistol with his senior partner in Gurnee on a call.

I understand we might have lost a wcf member who was a LEO due to suicide.

Years ago I knew a bunch of paramedics from Chicago and the burbs the stories they casually told without bravado would mess with your head.

I don't think I'd have the temperament to properly deal with all the depressing, aggravating, dysfunctional repetitive shit and not let it affect my life and family and now you're dealing with covid positive people.

Stay healthy, safe and merry Christmas to you and your family.

 

Aw man, I hadn't even considered your profession in all of this. Yes we know your place.

I guess I would fall in line somewhere between Drew Peterson and Satan himself.

Stay safe!

 

Thanks guys. Mostly I have grown numb to that kind of stuff. I've seen just about every type of suicide by now. Gunshot, slit wrists, carbon monoxide, hangings, trains, OD drugs. They don't bother me as much as the unexpected deaths through things like cardiac arrest or freak accidents, especially when I try my ass off through CPR/AED/First Aid etc and can't bring them back. Worst is kids. I don't think I will ever know how to deal with that properly. Thankfully I have only been on a few of those and have missed being on all of the really bad ones during my career.

 

My understanding is the owners are in their 80s and his wife passed after a long battle with cancer.

There is a high incidence of cancer there with many blaming the Stone Container cardboard factory for what blew out of that big smokestack. Stone called it, pure clean steam, but many suspect otherwise. A friend of mine was a forestry expert (biologist) who worked to acquire trees for Stone there, then replant to make it a renewable resource. I should ask him what was in that smokestack "steam/"

 

I think cops & fire fighters should come after healthcare workers & before people in old folks homes. Just sayin'.

 

I appreciate the nice place in line, but I would rather see the elderly in long term care facilities be prioritized. I have not seen the stats in a month or so, but people in those facilities nationwide were accounting for close to 50% of Covid deaths. If the opportunity is there to almost cut the national death rate in half I think they should be done first along with front line health care workers. After that I would go with teachers so the kids can get back in school. After that cops and firefighters. I still have not decided what I want to do. I am not anti Vax by any means. The military has injected more stuff in me then I probably know about, but I am a little tepid about the long term effects of these rushed vaccines. If I was older and more susceptible, I would roll the dice on it without much thought. But, still being a relatively young guy, who may have already had it, I'm not so sure what I will do yet.

 

But, still being a relatively young guy, who may have already had it, I'm not so sure what I will do yet.

You might consider an antibody test. If you've had it already, your antibodies could take the place of the vaccine.

 

I appreciate the nice place in line, but I would rather see the elderly in long term care facilities be prioritized. I have not seen the stats in a month or so, but people in those facilities nationwide were accounting for close to 50% of Covid deaths. If the opportunity is there to almost cut the national death rate in half I think they should be done first along with front line health care workers. After that I would go with teachers so the kids can get back in school. After that cops and firefighters. I still have not decided what I want to do. I am not anti Vax by any means. The military has injected more stuff in me then I probably know about, but I am a little tepid about the long term effects of these rushed vaccines.

Oops - forgot about teachers - shame on me - they belong after healthcare workers & before cops.

And perhaps I should explain my stance on old folks. Sure vaccinating them would eliminate at least 50% of infections but at what cost? When this crap started I told my wife that if I caught it & wound up in the ICU needing a respirator but there was a younger person also needing one they should be sure to put the kid on the respirator & let me take my chances. Old folks (I'm 71 with at least 1 comorbidity) should be willing to take their chances & let younger, more productive people get ahead of them in line. It only makes sense from a societal perspective. And if you haven't lived a full life with few, if any regrets all I can say is it sucks to be you.

As for "rushed vaccines" - these aren't rushed. Scientists started working on the corona virus problem years ago - just after the SAARS thing. What they've been doing the past 9 months or so is tailoring what they know to attack this particular bug. If my turn comes up I'll gladly get the shot & not look back.

 

My ticket shows me 333 millionth in line. I'm not the correct color or race (as some have indicated it should be dispensed by) nor did I support or vote for the current pre elect ideologue party to qualify anyway.

No matter. Since this shit show started I've said that if I contract this wuhan flu, so be it. If I die, so be it. I don't wish for either, but if that's the way to rolls, then that's the way it rolls.

I also suspect I may have had it already, as at the end of January, started on a Wednesday with a sore throat, by Friday night had a fever of 104/105* for a couple days, heavy cough/congestion for a week... then a lingering cough for at least 6-7 weeks after. Medical "experts" claimed serious sinus infection and the antibiotics they prescribed did nothing to help the situation.

Also heard this morning a few people in the UK showed allergic reactions to the (Pfizer) vaccine already. So some of us have that to look forward to maybe also should we elect to have the shot.

Who knows. In the end, none of us are getting out of this any other way than dead eventually. Make every day count until then.

.

 

Rambler, I am thinking long term side effects. I'm not promoting any conspiracy theories, but what are the effects on a person after 1 year, 5 years, etc. That will be an unknown until we reach that point in time.

 

Old folks ... should be willing to take their chances & let younger, more productive people get ahead of them in line. It only makes sense from a societal perspective. And if you haven't lived a full life with few, if any regrets all I can say is it sucks to be you.

It's a good thing then that Biden's COVID people think the same way.