I was in Costco today, wore a mask, only one other person I saw. And it was packed, people were parking in the fields nearby.
Sure enough someone starts sneezing, excessively loudly, in the same aisle. Loud enough everyone turned and looked. He says ‘sorry’. Yeah, idiot don’t say sorry for spreading your germs. Try not doing it.
I went to the store to day to pick up a prescription and the pharmacist asked me if I wanted to get my flu and covid shots while I was there. I had no reason to say no. And I got $20 store credit too.
How much did they charge? Thankfully COVID and flu shots here are free for all seniors so cost is not a disincentive. Shots like shingles though are not free
The cost of the COVID vaccine was $185 and the flu was $100. But they were both covered in full by my health plan. And the pharmacy gave me $20 of store credit.
The pricing of vaccines and rx is wild. I’ve worked at health plans and as a H&W consultant for over 15 years and I still don’t really understand how rx pricing works.
I take two drugs every 4 and 8 weeks that cost approximately $1,000-1,500 and $52,000 per dose.
Through a patient assistance program, I spend $10 and $5 on them. The insurer pays about $1000-50000, and the $1000/2500 that I would have paid without the assistance goes toward my deductible & max out-of-pocket. Then depending on timing, no later than end of April if not February I’ve hit my max OOP.
The one drug costs $52k, I pay $5, they pay my OOP amount and I get free healthcare. I don’t understand. Yes I have insurance, but if I didn’t sign up for the co-pay assistance program I would pay a lot. The existence of my expensive drugs makes my other healthcare cheaper/free.
Based on more up to date health studies, the incidence of long covid ranges from 5-15% of infections, so getting your booster done annually is critical at this stage.
Is it still critical? The 5.5% study cited was from 2022, so primarily first infections and many that happened prior to the first vaccination.
I am still waiting for more useful recent studies on the effectiveness of getting annual boosters post initial infection. Do they not exist because they are not worth funding? Or do they not show anything worth reporting?
Wife and I each got flu shots yesterday at CVS. Mine totally routine. Fine at time, only thing since was removing the bandaid. (Slight oddity: mild surprise at the moment the shot went in, because they usually say “little pinch” but he said nothing. Max 1 second of surprise: I knew he was making preparations for the shot.
Quite different for wife. He must have hit a nerve with the needle. Immediate pain. Arm hurt the rest of the day. Still bothering her this morning, not as much. She still attributes it 100% to the needle, 0% to the vaccine.
Wife and I each got COVID shots about 2 1/2 hours. Same CVS; wife chose a different day of the week in hopes of getting a different person administering the shot, even though I suspect she just thinks it’s a fluke (and certainly would have gotten the shot today had it been the same tech.)
So far, both of us fine, but neither of us has had any real problems with Covid shots in the past.
Realized after getting home that they didn’t sign our vaccine card. I remember last time it was signed only because I asked, and the tech then said they normally don’t sign any more.
Yeah…nobody cares about your vaccine card anymore.
I’m booking international travel right now and one of the hotels in Lisbon still requires proof of vaxx. I assume a digital copy will be good enough but I didn’t even think about my vaxx card, which I haven’t updated since 2021 despite getting the yearly boosters.
This sounds reslly odd. Portugal doesn’t require it anymore.
Holdover policy maybe? (I have seen this in both Brazil and Portugal: they don’t update their policies and procedures so it becomes a box-ticking exercise by whomever is checking you in/responding to questions).
When driving south on I-5 between Seattle and Portland, there is a billboard with Uncle Sam that says, paraphrasing, “Brave soldiers didn’t fight in WWII so you would have to show papers to buy groceries” Like, first of all, vaccine requirements haven’t been a thing for a long while and second, throughout the entire pandemic, the only restriction to buying groceries was wearing a mask.
Ending it with “… to go out to dinner” would be equally stupid, but at least factually accurate.
Get the vaccine while you can.
Not Trump, not Musk, House Republicans looking to create a national ban on a type of vaccine.
WTF?!?
The bill was amended to specify that the legislation would ban mRNA vaccines “for infectious diseases" and not “gene therapy products used to treat cancers or genetic disorders.”
“[mRNA vaccines are] the most destructive and lethal medical products that have ever been used in medical history,” Dr. Christine Drivdahl-Smith, a family physician in Miles City, told the committee earlier this month.
Yeah, I remember the stacks of bodies from the covid vaccine. And I guess it’s fine for disposable/vulnerable people but not for healthy ones. Got it.
What I don’t understand in the US…
Why doesn’t the medical board pull the certifications of these quack doctors. Expel them from their rolls so they cannot practice medicine anymore.
Its no different than a lawyer lying about a case (think Giuliani)
State Bar can eject him (and they have).
Should pass a law making it illegal to get sick next