Covid

They're saying the mutation is here. : (

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/26/variant-coronavirus-spreading-beyond-uk/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_me

It's possible that we're failing some kind of collective intelligence test. Hang in there; looks like the JNJ vaccine will show up in eight weeks or so.

Ali, Glad you have positive mindset. For now, we have more vaccines than the healthcare system is able to actually inject and the speed of injecting is going to go up dramatically as the system starts to ramp up.

Yesterday I went to the city clinic at 125 Worth. They are using the west entrance on Lafayette. I got there at 1 PM. I am 66 yrs old. They have a line for people with no appointment but are willing to wait on standby in case someone does not keep their appointment. I was on this line for two hours, then got inside the building and was vaccinated and on my way home at 4 PM. They're using Moderna. Because I have my first shot, they told me I am priority for the second shot and will send me an email for that appointment.
The guy behind me appeared to be early twenties and they told him he does not qualify at this time. A young lady in front of me was approved and she appeared about 30 years old. They ask everyone's name and age but do not check ID. It's a good idea to bring it just in case. They are open 24/7.

Stache, Nice. Glad you got the vaccine. I am of the opinion is that we will ramp up further after the slow start. We already did 1mm per day nationally in the last few days and I wouldn’t be surprised if we do 1.5mm per day in 2 weeks.

Congratulations Stache and thanks for sharing your experience and information.

You should all get vaccinated as soon as soon as you can.
Its not worth the chance of winning the "wrong"lottery.
I had my first symptom on sunday dec.20, considered Day1. Got tested the 21st and found out the 23rd I was positive.
Aside from a scratchy throat, dull headache and incredible body aches, particularly from the trunk down, I thought I was getting away with the light version, a relief for someone with asthma.
I was running fever, ranging 100 to 103.5, but it strangely didnt "hurt."
Day 4 I was actually starting to feel better, "wow, Im getting off real lucky."
Then Day 5 getting a little bit of phlegm, progressing each day, breathing seemingly lightly diminished.
By Day 8, I had some blood in my sputum and decided time to get in touch with the doc.
Oximeter readings now ranging between 94 and 88. I normally range between 96 and 99.
Doc prescribes dexamethasone, a steroid used for those who get mountain climbing sickness and an antibiotic for bloody sputum which was attributed to bacterial pneumonia.
Day 9 I labor greatly to get to the pharmacy for my scripts and am unable to make it to the blood lab at Lenox Hill for a blood test from overwhelming fatigue. I realize if I make the trip it will be one way.
I tell the doc I just couldnt do it and will check into the hospital.
He tells me NO, dont do that. Im sending a home nurse to check you, Im sending a blood lab tech to draw your blood, and Im sending oxygen.
Blood tests showed kidneys badly trashed, and test for risk of blood clots triple normal.
prescribed Xeralto.
There were some really rough nights, I just could not get to sleep. No pain in my head from the fever, it seemed to transfer to my body, and just the soft pressure from my very comfortable mattress hurt all over.
But the fever did its work too. The mind is an amazing thing. Laying in bed starring at the ceiling in fever delirium, I convinced myself that the more I solved a sudoku puzzle, in my head mind you, the more the pain would subside and I'd be able to fall asleep. As if that wasnt impossible enough (for someone without a photographic memory or able to play chess in the mind), the sudoku puzzle had to be solved for a word and not numbers!!!
The word was trambones, yes spelled incorrectly, apparently my mind correctly ascertained that the word had to be 9 letters and no repeating letters.
So there I am laying in bed, 8 hours a night solving and maintaining (at least believing so) a sudoku board in my mind, solving for a word.
By the 3rd night I had solved (unlikely) about 66% of the puzzle and was able to fall asleep.
Honestly, this was the period where I thought I was likely heading for a pine box.
Around Day 16 is where the tide seemed to shift in a positive direction, albeit quite slow.

Complications;
Still short of breath, but it does feel a little better every morning.
My oximeter readings are much better but occasionally tank seemingly for no reason at all.
My kidney numbers really got trashed, but latest tests show them rebounding.
Clot risk still there for now, numbers came down from triple to double, and after doc saw my lung xray, he says for sure I would have had a clot in my lungs without the script.

At this stage, all I care about is all damage(s) being temporary and not permanent.

Truth, So sorry to hear about you getting a bad case of Covid. I hope all the damages are temporary. Wish you all the best.

Glad you made it out the other side Truth! I have a friend that had similar experiences, however he got really sick right out of the gate. 42 years old, very fit. It's still just such a puzzle... Friends mother got it in a nursing home and she's on oxygen and has emphysema, got through it with relative ease. Couple of other friends just had low grade fevers and severe body aches for a few days..

Regardless, as soon as I can get this vaccine, I will!

Thank you, Truth for sharing your experience with us, so sorry to hear this and do wish you the best for a complete recovery.

When Trump got the COVID-19, he made a remarkable recovery. And that is truly amazing for a fat person with morbidities. I read he was given the Regeneron cocktail which consisted of monoclonal antibody therapies. Also Giuliani contacted it as did Chris Christie. They all made a complete recovery very quickly and many more also connected to Trump. I find it very questionable that this therapy has not been used for us 99 percenters. Not too long ago I read in the Wall Street Journal that the monoclonal antibody therapies sit unused in the hospitals, just a fraction is being used. The article indicates that infectious disease specialists want more clinal trial data. But Trump got it without the data.
No one seems to question any of this.

Thank you all for the good wishes.

Streetsmart
I think what everyone forgets that with the exception of the chinese government, everyone has less than a year's experience with this virus.
My doc himself is a total data whore, data dictates and drives all his decisions.

Last april when a friend posted on facebook a video of an emergency room doctor saying ventilators aren't really helping , it affects the lung similarly to high altitude pulmonary edema. I posted "why dont they try using that drug dex."
Little did I know 8 months later Id be on dexamethasone.
I have no medical education, I only watched the 20 year old movie Vertical Limit over a dozen times and remembered Bill Paxton's character hoarding all the dex when they were trapped on the mountain.
They needed several months of data for docs to have confidence to prescribe.
The fact is, with Covid, we are all snowflakes, no 2 reactions are exactly the same which makes data even harder to derive.

With Regeneron in particular, you cant take it too early or too late. But just at the right time and before you know it will progress worse for you.
99% of people dont have the luxury of having doctors on call daily for people in the early stages of Covid who might get worse later. A drug in experimental phase for treating this no less.

There are promising new treatments, I recently read an article on 2 steroids for arthritis that target more specifically than dexamethasone does.

There will be more.

@truthskr10
Thanks for your reply. I have been reading about COVID-19 attempting to get some idea as to what we are up against. Trump tested positive in October along with his wife and then subsequently many other people connected to the White House. And yes while I do realize that each case is different and of course am aware of the issues on clinical trials and data, nevertheless I was very surprised to learn that so many vulnerable people survived so quickly, and I have read in administering the drug there are many requirements along with many risks. But there have been really no comments on this issue, that is that these people survived so quickly. Of course Trump attributed it to the fact that he was some kind of Superman and of course never suggested that maybe other sick people could get his treatment. It was my interest in Covid-19 that led me to question just what kind of treatment these people got. I do recall hearing somewhere that Trump’s treatment cost $650K. That may have something to do with no one getting it.
I do realize that many people unfortunately do not have the same kind of access to medical treatment as many others do. I have thought about this too over the years. But as someone who does not like doctors all that much even though I have a brother who is a very accomplished doctor, medicine as practiced in America is not all that good; even the very rich do not get very good care, and one reason being is that doctors are narrow minded and never address the fact of just how important healthy food is. Actually most don’t even know what foods are healthy. But I do like Andrew Weil to some extent, at least he is not pill crazy.
But I will try to catch this movie, Vertical Limit; I have already googled it.
Here is the link to the Wall Street Journal article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/highly-touted-monoclonal-antibody-therapies-sit-unused-in-hospitals-11609087364

Truth, sorry to hear about your ordeal but glad you made it to the other side. And hoping for a recovery on the remaining effects.

Regeneron requires infusion which means you need an RN infusion specialist plus it has to be in an isolated setting. There are infusion clinics but they don't have the negative pressure rooms for this treatment. While the government has stockpiled Regeneron, we don't have the infrastructure to administer this on a mass basis. I think in the future this will become more available. As truthskr said, we are still in early days here. If you don't have a blood pulse oximeter now is the time to get one. It can tell you when it's time to speak to your doctor or go to ER.

Thanks Nada, I appreciate it

I didnt really post my story for sympathy, just an anecdotal accounting to nudge people to make the vaccine more a priority and not to give up when early attempts to get a location or make an appointment hit a wall.

Stache
Have a real love hate relationship with my oximeter. The problem is Ive never had it on my finger for prolonged periods of time before and it occasionally does weird things that I dont know if its something that happens in normal times or Covid related.

Example , I can get on a stationary bike now for 30 mins and not have my o2 go lower than 94 at any point. But walking in the city by block 6 my o2 will tank to 90.
So I wonder is it the cold air?
And if so how?
a) is breathing in cold air causing my o2 to drop or
b) the cold air is affecting the oximeter accuracy
I eliminated c) a bad oximeter by using 3 different ones with similar results.

But as you say Stache its time for everyone to have an oximeter.
This way people can get a baseline of their o2 while they are healthy so they know what numbers are normal for them.

@stache
According to the WSJ article dated Dec. 27 in which I provided the link, it states that Northwell Health in New York is moving ahead with its monoclonal antibody rollouts setting up five sites to administer. Also Northwell hopes to open more sites including skilled nursing facilities in the rollout even in people’s homes. Also in the future it could be administered in doctor’s offices.
In view of the above one would think that there is reason to believe that this approach in treating COVID-19 could very well be helpful to combat the illness.

It would be interesting to know what the cost is to the insurance companies for the monoclonal therapy. I know the evidence is still pretty anecdotal, we're all taking vitamin d, zinc and vitamin C daily. My feeling is it's cheap and it can't hurt...

Street, all of this is good news. I couldn't get past the Journal paywall.

https://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODN/PhiladelphiaInquirer/Default.aspx

It seems great progress has been made in last week in the speed of vaccination after the eligibility requirements have been widened and local healthcare systems have had time to work out the kinks. 1.5mm daily vaccinations nationally next week showing up in statistics!! Within a month, we will see the fear recede and life will start to normalize.

I'm reading about second appointments being canceled. : (

Indeed. They will be remade and supply chain and actual administration kinks resolved fast. Things are finally in motion and initial hurdles have been overcome.

Remember in early October, no one even believed that there will be vaccine before early 2021.

Good news -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/25/covid-vaccine-virus-variant/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2ee3eab%2F600ef6659d2fda0efbc03a65%2F5fd466bfae7e8a2a7405306e%2F15%2F68%2F600ef6659d2fda0efbc03a65

Here's my update. I got my second shot yesterday : ). I had not received an appointment email so I went to the Fort Washington armory to see about making a second appointment in person. It turns out they really want you to get both shots in the same location. So I went back to the Worth St. clinic and since I had my vaccination card they let me in without a second appointment.
Things have changed at Worth St. From what I can tell, you need a booked appointment for your first shot in order to get vaccinated.
The good thing about the Fort Washington armory is the ability to have a human help you make an appointment. They have both Pfizer and Moderna. The clinic entrance is on 169th St. I knew from the start I did not want to try to deal with an online booking.
The other thing I'm reading is they are discovering immunocompromised people that get infected give fertile ground for the virus to mutate. There's a long article about this in the Philly Inquirer. If there is any interest I can try to do a cut and paste of it as it is behind a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731?mod=mhp

300, I trust Yellen and Powell both read the article this morning.

Ha. I usually tend to be glass half-full guy with no medical expertise but I am not as optimistic as the WSJ author who has top credentials. My wild guess is by June/July we would have adequate level of vaccination to get the death rate to perhaps under 250 per day (call it herd immunity as some people will choose not to get the vaccine). Of course that assumes JNJ approval and that we do not get new strains which can't be addressed by current vaccines.

"The other thing I'm reading is they are discovering immunocompromised people that get infected give fertile ground for the virus to mutate. "

Stache if your talking about the guy who died after having the virus for 5 months, I saw that story and it was disturbing.

Basically, this man was immunocompromised and had living virus cohabitating his body the entire time, not to be confused with a long hauler. He would "get better" and then get ill every few weeks and they would analyze the virus genome to note the changes. To their shock the virus would dump like 2 dozen mutations at a time instead of 1 or 2! At the end, they gave him the monoclonal antibodies and the virus seemed to develop resistance to them as well. Though Im pretty sure Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury wrote a version of this story already.

Covid update.
My doc didnt/doesnt want me taking the vaccine for 90 days post my positive test date and wants me to take one shot only instead of the two. He says the shot will function as a booster to my already being positive.

Sounds good to me.

Did anyone notice that last 7 days average of jabs hit 2mm? Huge progress being made at all levels. 2.5mm jabs per day by end of March as JNJ starts to deliver vaccines and mass vaccination sites get set up!! I am hopeful.

Equity markets and 10 year both noticed, not sure if Powell did

His focus is getting people jobs - which I believe is right. It will take a while for that (at least 1 year) - it would take a while for inflation to be persistently above 2%. In the meantime, if the 10y rates are too high, there will be more QE. Equity markets seems to be having a garden variety periodic sell-off. Once the markets are overbought, they find some excuse to have a correction.

But more than anything else, I am thankful to all involved with the vaccine effort. It is a major human achievement to get to this level so fast.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompromised-patients-covid-variants/

Stache, How about a positive post about all the vaccinations happening right now?

I'm seeing this as the balance on a scale. You have the immunizations on one side and the variants on the other. For example I find the reopening of interior dining at 50% to be dangerous and ill advised. Large parts of Italy have gone back to lockdown recently. Wishing things were better doesn't relieve anything.

I am not just wishing, vaccinations rates per day are far better than I was estimating per day. I think we just touched 2.5mm daily one week average. For some people no improvement is ever good enough.

The Bloomberg numbers are a drop lower than that ...2.39mm is the number I see right now ... but yes, vaxx pace is increasing. 17.6 percent of NYC has had at least one dose, and the pace is up to 67,500 doses per day.

OTOH, numbers are not decreasing as much as one would "like" -- the number of patients in the ICU is about where it was for the Christmas spike. So I think the vaccine is buying QOL for some people, in the form of more freedom of movement and more travel, while the load on our healthcare workers remains the same.

I have high hopes for summer (and its attendant humidity) but IA with stache that we are jumping into spring a little too fast. To tie this back to real estate, I'm getting pressure from sellers to hold open houses in buildings that aren't allowing open houses yet.

And I fear that there will be an s-ton of travel over spring break, which is only two weeks from now.

Ali,

The data you quote is factual. I remember when NYC was doing 10k per day and people here were projecting substantial vaccinations will take into 2022 and my projections (you were hopeful as well) were open to all vaccine season in June or so as I really do believe in the great efforts being made by every one included in the vaccination process. With JNJ supple yet to pick up speed, we will get there easily.

The challenge now is to facilitate vaccination of lower income / less educated people as the supply increased further. I recognize the risk with spring breakers but they are not going to behave. Immune compromised people will have to lead a different life for now but that doesn't mean that they should be fearmongers.

ICU is actually much lower and daily deaths are about half of the recent peak (both 3-4 weeks lagging; death rate still pretty scary). Look at additional ICU bed capacity needed in the attached link.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=resource-use&tab=trend&resource=icu_beds

@300 - I think Biden has really put focus into the logistics here and we have a competent response. By the end of summer we will be looking at when offices are going to reopen and all the related HR push&pull around that. I wouldn’t go as far as to say June, but I am no longer worried about us missing the end of summer/start of school year milestone.

Still a long way to go though. Personally, my (New England, not NY) parents straddle the 65 year old cutoff, the 65+ has an end of March appointment with the under-65 being end of May..

In NYC at this point if you want to finagle an appointment, there are ample pre existing conditions you can feign your way into an appointment. My doorman was offering me his “connect” to what is clearly some sort of service to click through the websites for you daily until they find you an appointment.

May 1 the floodgates open for all adults.
At that point with us doing say 3M doses/day with 2M being the 2-shot and 1M being the 1-shot J&J, we will have on average 2M people fully vaccinated per day.. so lets say 180-240M by end of summer.

I do worry about individual behaviors managing to screw things up and have one last huge wave going into the finish line, from the personal behavior I’m seeing of my unvaccinated friends&family, but at this point August/September seem pretty safe.

There’s some wildcards about the 12-18 year olds joining the queue as soon as pediatric trials end, and how that interacts with Middle/High schools going fully in person, but time will tell.

Steve,

Seems about right. Every one is doing all they can to increase the vaccinations and it is working.

I think by May 15, we will be doing 3.5mm+ doses per day (I know that I am on the optimistic side) as JNJ supply picks up vs doing appx 2.5mm per day already without much supply so far from JNJ. That will address 12-18 year old joining which is a good thing.

Key point is that offices will open safely and schools can open in September 2021. I would think the offices may open even earlier for any one who got vaccinated.

The real challenge remains getting wide spread vaccination in low-income communities and behavior of unvaccinated people. Hopefully JNJ will make it easier to address the former.

Mutations are a risk but that is the next phase of booster shots after people get initial vaccinations.

Yes boosters and to make you happy, they think they may be seeing the limitations on how far this virus can mutate. So there's your silver lining.

It is a fact that covid and it is variants are here to stay for a while. They can only be controlled with initial and booster vaccines. But we are much-much better off than October/early November before any of the vaccine news came out.

I imagine that we'll be seeing things like the situation in HK for the next year or so, until the immunization and immunity levels cover a significant (+90%) part of the population. (nominally equating 'the expat community' with 'not terribly smart americans & brits')

Per the news over there:

"A coronavirus outbreak at a Hong Kong gym popular among expatriates has spread, with positive cases appearing in the banking community, just as the city was emerging from a prolonged round of social restrictions and venue closures. The outbreak has prompted banks to tell their employees to work from home."

Yes. Without being a doctor, I think these outbreaks will be a part of life before Covid is reduce to the severity of flu which is probably the best we do.

Even though I'm vaccinated I'm staying inside for the most part. Sad to say I've gotten used to it. I'm not afraid to go outside but it just doesn't seem worth the risk. I have a nice big window to look out of so that helps.

Just got first shot!

Congrats Ali.

Just read Stache's comment. That explains all his previous fearful posts. He is looking for people to share his fear.

I got my first shot about ten days ago.
Second shot will be April 7th.
I read I already have a lot of immunity since ten days have passed.
Feels good.

Streetsmart - you and I are on the same vaccination schedule! Looking forward to re-engaging in risky activities after April 7, such as going to the supermarket :)

300 you're incredibly rude.

I remain very thankful to all the medical/govt/logistic leaders/professionals who have made vaccines happen so fast. JNJ supplies finally coming in early April and we will pick up more speed.

I agree with stache, your dismissive attitude towards anyone with concerns about Covid is highly misplaced.

The way that stache is allegedly looking for people to "share his fear," is the same way you're looking for people to get on board with your overzealous belief that any level of concern should just be ignored in favor of getting the machine going again so that everything can magically immediately go back to normal (aka so you can go back to collecting 2019 rent).

Don't act like your point of view isn't also highly distorted by personal interests.

I find the perspective of landlords and realtors that everything's coming back and that everything must re-open ASAP, concern be damned, incredibly frustrating. They paint the nay-sayers as people blinded by selfishness when it's their own selfishness that makes them demonize anyone with even a sliver of hesitance about how fast we're moving to re-open.

There's a lot of ways one can go about normalizing a re-opening of the city, and just framing anyone that isn't 100% immediately on board as a fear mongerer is not the way to do it.

You can quarantine yourself too. I know you are always looking to pick a fight.

I will just have to ignore you if all you want to do it pick up fight just like you have tried to do in some other threads like with NYHH or whatever the tradejoe LIC thread was.

@stache and @lrschober: I found 300_mercer's comment offensive as well. Thank you pushing back against it. I generally ignore him except when he makes comments that I find offensive, and the one above certainly falls into that category for me.

300, you need to keep in mind that COVID risk is a combination of risk tolerance and underlying risk.

The risk tolerance aspect is a smaller factor, one up for debate & preferences. E.g., how much benefit is there to you personally to eat out vs at home? With a 1-in-1000 chance of death, most reasonable people wouldn’t. With a 1-in-trillion, most reasonable people would. With a 1-in-million, reasonable people can debate. Maybe it’s worth it to you, but not someone else, because they just don’t give a shit about eating out that much, or because they don’t place much disutility on waiting a few months, or because the prospect of eating on a cold sidewalk / sparse restaurant is not that appealing.

Sorta like certain people like to buy, and I like to spend the same money and get a 2-4x nicer place renting.

On the other side, the risks to individuals vary widely. Age alone creates up to a 7900x increase in risk. Comorbidities each create 1.5x-7x increases in risk.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html

https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fairhealth.org/whitepaper/asset/Risk%20Factors%20for%20COVID-19%20Mortality%20among%20Privately%20Insured%20Patients%20-%20A%20Claims%20Data%20Analysis%20-%20A%20FAIR%20Health%20White%20Paper.pdf

The vaccine reduces risk by (say) 20x. We don’t know where stache falls in terms of underlying risk. He/she might be at 10,000x, and the vaccine reduces him/her to 500x risk. That’s great, but it is still 4x the risk of death compared to an unvaccinated 40-49 year old. Or 40x the risk of death compared to an unvaccinated 18-29 year old. Your comment is insensitive to the underlying risk stache is exposed to, which may be vastly different than what you & your family might be experiencing. E.g., even vaccinated his/her risk may be many multiples higher than what you were exposed to at the peak last year.

Nada, I completely understand why some people are at much higher risk and have to live in fear. Does not mean they can't applaud human achievement in terms of how far we have gotten in treatment.

Vaccinations going well, so I remain cautiously optimistic.

America has done an awesome job on the part you can throw money&science at private industry for - vaccine dev/production/logistics.

Science has done an amazing job.

We continue to fail the marshmallow test otherwise.

When I see friends posting IG photos out to indoor brunch .. including pregnant women, with a mix of vaccinated & unvaccinated people it boggles my mind.

I had a friend practically going over his last will&testament and what he was going to ask me to take care of if the worst happened, sick in bed for a week.. unable to taste anything for a month.
One month later he’s out living the Peter Pan lifestyle all over again.

Daily case rates are still extremely high, and from the amount of airtravel I am hearing about from coworkers.. we re going to seemingly ride it all the way into herd immunity in late summer/early fall.

That is just crazy!! They are undoing all the hard work being done by every one on vaccines.

"When I see friends posting IG photos out to indoor brunch .. including pregnant women, with a mix of vaccinated & unvaccinated people it boggles my mind."

I can't help you if you're not interested in science. I didn't drink the Orange koolaid "It will be gone LIKE MAGIC by Easter/everybody pack into churches" spiel. I was excited after my first shot, thinking about more I could do outside but then they started talking about variants. NYC is still at a 6% positivity plateau. I also can't help you as it appears that you were not brought up well.

There's really no reason for nastiness and animosity here. Buying (renting) a home should be a celebration. In my opinion it's extremely rude to attack someone's choice with negativity or an attitude to make them feel stupid. In the music business we have the saying "s*** in s*** out"... Some people are just bitter and angry, and they want to make others feel the same way.

We certainly need to keep our hearts open regarding covid, everyone is going to be affected with this differently. And unfortunately there are many people suffering with long-term side effects, even those that were not initially very sick. There was a lot of confusion early on, but now I think we understand what we're dealing with and have precedent, even if it's relatively short.

@stache I hope you get better clarity from your doctors on what you can and cannot do safely. Speaking as someone who was mostly indoors due to illness for about 4 months, it's no way to have to live. I hope you have a good support group of friends. Maybe you can double mask, get out there and walk around a little bit taking in the fresh air and the sunshine. Have to look after that mental health!

Thanks. I'm doing dental work again and other things. Right now I'm following CDC guidelines 'avoid unnecessary trips'.

I'm not a frequent poster, but I have a lot of sympathy for people who have lost loved ones to COVID. All medical workers who lost their lives are heroes. And those who worked on the vaccine have provided a great gift to humanity. If you get your vaccine, you should be thankful.

NYC property, Well said!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/opinion/covid-monoclonal-antibodies-treatment.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

As George and other posters have noted, the teachers' union decisions not to open the schools have been terribly detrimental to the children of NYC. All teachers have gotten their shots (or had the opportunity to do so). Of course many NYers have autoimmune issues, or other preexisting conditions.
And those individuals have to take special care. But they need to take special care under any scenario, regardless of COVID or not. Live a healthy life the best you can. That is our greatest defense. Age will catch us all indeed. Until then, we need need to open NYC to enjoy our great city. The fear mongering hyper anxiety ridden among us (a.k.a. mentally ill), or self interested (i.e., teachers union), should not be the ones making these decisions.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .....

Isn't that a good thing?