Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I guess OAT must have been hit hard by the Pandemic. Their reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor have not been very complimentary!
Recent? I know there were a lot of people very unhappy that they had difficulties getting cash refunds after their trips were cancelled (cash rather than IOU required by Massachusetts law if customer requests it). I chose to accept a generous credit- a gamble, I know. I was really impressed when we had the trip in March cut short and their staff must have been working day and night to get everybody all over the world home as borders closed down. They did that for me even though I'd made my own flight arrangements (which I couldn't use because they were via Ecuador and Ecuador closed its borders). We got out 2 days before Bolivia, where we were at the time, closed its borders.
Err. No. The trials produced data that symptomatic infection was reduced by 95%. They didn’t test enough during the trial to distinguish between immune and infected but asymptomatic. Israel is observing 98% with Pfizer. The data about immune vs asymptomatic will be coming in over the next few months. As vaccinated people start doing international travel where they are tested, I think we will get a better sense for it. If you test hundreds of thousands of vaccinated travelers and don’t find many asymptomatic people, you can safely assume that the vaccines really do provide immunity.
M 2nd shot is on 02/24. I understand it will take 2 weeks after that for the body to build up its immunity. I expect to socialize more but still take precautions like wearing a mask, no crowds, etc.
A former girlfriend and I plan on an overnight trip together in early April. She will not have been inoculated. She would do it, but she does not meet any of the criteria yet.
I gather that is the incorrect way of reading the stats. As I've read, it means that any given vaccinated person has a a 5 percent lower chance of developing illness, not that 5 percent of vaccinated people will develop illness.
If any given vaccinated person had only 5% lower chance of developing illness compared with unvaccinated, that would be a very poor vaccine, ie, the chance of developing illness would be almost the same whether you are vaccinated or not.
With a 95% effective vaccine (where effectiveness is measured by not developing any clinical symptoms vs. developing them), an average of 5 out of 100 people will still develop illness if vaccinated. But I have not read any reports of these people developing a severe illness.
Err. No. The trials produced data that symptomatic infection was reduced by 95%. They didn’t test enough during the trial to distinguish between immune and infected but asymptomatic. Israel is observing 98% with Pfizer. The data about immune vs asymptomatic will be coming in over the next few months. As vaccinated people start doing international travel where they are tested, I think we will get a better sense for it. If you test hundreds of thousands of vaccinated travelers and don’t find many asymptomatic people, you can safely assume that the vaccines really do provide immunity.
Distinguishing between immune due to vaccine vs. vaccinated and then infected but asymptomatic would be possible but complicated. Vaccinated people will have antibodies whether they are subsequently infected with the virus or not. You would have to catch an acute infection (difficult to do if the person is asymptomatic) and test for an antiGEN (ie, not antiBODY) present during the acute infection. If you have time and money to waste, you could randomly test vaccinated asymptomatic people for an antigen (to see if they might by some chance have an acute asymptomatic infection), but it strikes me as a low yield testing without much utility.
The only travel I'm considering any time soon is to go meet potential dogs to adopt. My previous beloved dog had to be put down unexpectedly last February. There's never a good time to lose a devoted sidekick but to lose them during a time when your world has been re-focused to home base is particularly bad. By the time I was remotely prepared to adopt another the pandemic was in full roar. There's literally nothing to adopt nearby...I'll probably have to travel a significant distance. Despite what I might want there's still enough of a concern about transmission (either way) to stay home. Leaving my personal safety out of the equation, there are lots of other complications the pandemic has created to make travel more hassle than its worth.
I never started to wear a silly little cloth mask, so I'm sure as heck not going to start to "remember" to wear one now.
At some point, when do you start asking yourself what the point is... #MaskUpEveryone, and "cases" continue to shoot through the roof. "Get your rushed-through experimental shot, ignore the reports of people keeling over"... but nothing else changes.
What will be your keen advice when, a year from now, we're told COVID-21 is the next new thing, wear three masks, report for daily injections, government must retain complete control of your life?
This stupidity is never going to end until people wake up and end it, like all the restaurants in Italy rising up and defying closure orders. Result? They're still exist, people can go out and eat... and, magically, the world hasn't ended because people stopped paying attention to frightened Karens and power-hungry bureaucrats!
Who the hell is fully inoculated? I live in rural Washington state, and getting a vaccine is like everything else here, you’d better “know someone”.
I'm sorry, truly.
We live -- most of the time -- in Maricopa County, Arizona. A month or so ago the powers-that-be decided they were going to open up vaccinations to those 65 and over, no pre-existing condition necessary. Then they opened two stadium drive-thru PODs so you could get your shot without leaving your car. The one I went to operates 24/7. They inoculate about 8,000 people a day. The downside is that we have to live in or near Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the U.S. And we're subject to all the pollution, traffic, crime, etc. that that implies.
If you live in rural Washington state, you've probably got the better part of the deal.
You probably have a better chance of getting a vaccine in rural Washington than I do living on Long Island. The State appointment site has been down 99+% of the time. One of the big State vaccination sites is less than a mile from my house. It has been in operation for weeks and today they announced with pride that they had just hit 25,000 vaccinations. The State just doesn't get it. They need to do that many a day in order to make progress before 2021 ends.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
