darkoshi

I got a flu shot and a Covid booster shot last weekend.

Previous times, they applied a regular bandage over the injection site. This time they used a different kind:
Inject-Safe™ Barrier Bandages

These are round and are stuck onto the skin before the injection. The adhesive is only on the white foam part around the edge of the circle. The needle goes through the center.

I liked that it let me see where the needle would be going in beforehand.

Today I wondered if the needle piercing thru the bandage could result in a tiny circle of bandage material getting injected along with the vaccine. But I learned the word "non-coring" which means that isn't supposed to happen with these.

http://injectsafebandages.com/ has a video showing a needle piercing one of these bandages on a balloon without the balloon breaking.

I'd like to someday finish recording my and my mom's audio cassettes to MP3 files. But all my cassette players have encountered problems. The last one I used for the task still works, but started making a rattling noise while playing which gets carried over into the MP3 recordings too. Another boombox with dual cassettes has that same rattling noise problem, as well as its speakers not working.

I watched some videos of people replacing the rubber belts in their cassette players. In one video, after the belt was replaced and the cassette deck was being tested, I heard it making the same sound as mine! So even replacing the belts might not help with that problem.

Each time I go looking online for a new cassette player to buy, however, I am scared off by reviewers who say NOT to get this one, because it eats tapes. Every single one I look at has at least one, if not several reviews like that. Or other deal-breakers are mentioned, like the player being mono rather than stereo.

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I got my 2nd Shingrix (Shingles) vaccine shot.

A bit of my rear molar chipped off. I went to the dentist and had the edges smoothed.

My thumb still does not bend.

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A section of the garage ceiling panels, which I had lately noticed was sagging, broke and fell down before I could reinforce it. Luckily there was nothing underneath that area, so no collateral damage. But the cellulose insulation on top of the panel came down with it, making a big mess. I cleaned it up.

Did I ever mention the reinforcements I added to the other garage ceiling panels which had been sagging? That was 5 years ago. I attached wood boards along the seams of the panels. I still remember it feeling like quite an accomplishment. It was tricky, bracing the boards against the ceiling on both sides, while I screwed the screws in. Those sagging panels were a problem that I'd noticed and worried about for quite a while, and I couldn't find anyone to fix it, and then I figured out how to fix it myself!

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Today it was very rainy. Happy Lunar New Year!
I succeeded in getting the new mailbox post in the ground. Perhaps tomorrow I'll get the mailbox transferred over to the new post, in between working for work.

One of the gateposts on the gate that got knocked down last summer has concrete anchoring it. If it weren't for that, I'd probably have been able to get it out and replace it myself by now. I keep going back and forth between thinking I can do it myself, and thinking I will hire someone to do it. Then other things take precedence for a while. Now I'm wavering again, because I was able to rock the post back and forth a bit. Maybe if I can just get leverage... I had a couple ideas to try... I could get it out of the ground. But I really ought to just hire someone. Yeah. I really should.

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In the past, I used a product called Tub Grip to add traction to the bottom of my tub, to make it less slippery. It works very well, but it seems to capture dirt and makes the tub harder to get clean-looking. It also wears away over time.

Before applying a new coating of it, it's best to remove the rest of the old layer.
This time I used a product called "Citristrip" to remove it. It got the residue off, but also etched up the tub surface. Oops. It's a synthetic tub, fiberglass, I think. All the comments I found indicated this Citristrip works fine on fiberglass without damaging it, but no, not in my case it didn't.

The tub being etched makes it less slippery now even without applying new Tub Grip. But in some directions it still feels slippery so I probably still should apply new Tub Grip on top.

August:
I took a week of vacation.
I watched the Peacemaker series on HBO Max, and enjoyed it. That show has the best title sequence / music.

September:
I got a new phone.
I drove to Myrtle Beach with my mom, for a half-vacation half-work week.

October:
I visited an Arts & Music festival and browsed the art.

I went to the SC Pride Festival and got to see a performance by Sheila E.. A nice thing about these public outdoor events here is how close up you can get to the stage and performers, if you want, compared to a concert with assigned seating.

I got my flu shot and bivalent Covid booster on the same day, one in each arm.

Wyze treasure hunt! It affected me, oddly, remotely. I wish I had time to describe the feels.

Halloween: I put up decorations and lights. I replaced the net fabric from my ghosties with a different fabric less likely to entrap flying insects. The new fabric is thicker and heavier, so I cut it into strips to make it look better. Turned out quite well; I was very pleased. I gave out treats. There were 13 trick-or-treaters.

November:
I early-voted the Friday before; stood in line for an hour. But I was relieved to get it done with.

I got my 2nd COVID-19 booster shot on Tuesday. I decided to get it now as there is a get-together with some of Qiao's family in a few weeks. There will be another get-together with various people this weekend, too, which I wasn't expecting. Browsing Dreamwidth, lately I keep coming across people posting that they have caught COVID. So I'm thinking it's probably good for me not to have waited longer.

Like the other shots, this one made my arm sore. If I had any slight fever during the night, it didn't bother me. I slept well.

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I'm also eligible for the shingles vaccine now. I could have gotten it at the same time, in the other arm. But I didn't want both vaccines at once. Having both arms sore from shots would have made sleeping harder too, as I prefer to sleep on my sides. Last night I had to be careful whenever turning on my left side, not to put too much pressure on that arm.

I'm eligible for the 2nd COVID-19 booster shot, but have debated getting it now versus waiting a month or two. From what I've read, for people without risk factors, there's no urgency in getting it, and there may be benefits to waiting. (In case there's another big surge several months from now, or in case they come out with new boosters/vaccines based on the latest variants.)

In my area, the current case/hospitalization rates are very low, as low as they were in the very early days of the pandemic.

In two articles, I read something like the following, which I was curious about:

How Long Does It Take for the COVID Booster to Be Effective? (2021/12/21)

There's one other factor that can impact the effectiveness of a booster: time between doses. According to Penaloza-MacMaster, the longer the interval between your original vaccine series and the booster dose, the better antibodies your memory cells can create.

Why would the memory cells work better with a longer interval? So I tried to find an answer (I don't believe I did), and more info on these memory cells...

What to know about booster shots and third doses of the COVID-19 vaccine (2021/12/22)

COVID-19 vaccines create high levels of antibodies that can block the virus from ever infecting our cells. As time passes after your vaccination, however, you also develop memory B cells and T cell immunity and antibody levels go down. With fewer blocking antibodies, the virus might be able to start an infection. As viruses evolve, strains that can bypass those antibodies have an advantage and some people have such a high-level exposure that it can overwhelm the antibodies they do have. When this happens, we call it a “breakthrough infection,” but memory B cells and T cells are able to respond quickly and stop the infection before too much damage is done.

Breakthroughs, Boosters, and B cells … Oh My! (2021/10/12)

Over time, as the infection resolves and these antibodies fail to find virus, they will diminish in number. However, what doesn’t go away are the cells that can produce antibodies against the infecting virus. They are called memory B cells. We also have memory T cells that remain after an infection. If we are exposed to the same virus again, those B and T cells will recognize it and become activated.

The memory B cells will change into another type of B cell, called a plasma cell, and quickly start producing large quantities of antibodies. The antibodies produced by these cells are significantly more effective at stopping the virus than antibodies produced during the first encounter with a virus.

Activated memory T cells will cause the production of chemicals critical to our immune response, called cytokines.

This page has a nice simple chart:
Viral Attack: Memory Cells

Toward the end of each battle to stop an infection, some T-cells and B-cells turn into Memory T-cells and Memory B-cells. As you would expect from their names, these cells remember the virus or bacteria they just fought. These cells live in the body for a long time, even after all the viruses from the first infection have been destroyed. They stay in the ready-mode to quickly recognize and attack any returning viruses or bacteria.

Quickly making lots of antibodies can stop an infection in its tracks. The first time your body fights a virus, it can take up to 15 days to make enough antibodies to get rid of it. With the help of Memory B-cells, the second time your body sees that virus, it can do the same in thing 5 days. It also makes 100 times more antibodies than it did the first time. The faster your body makes antibodies, the quicker the virus can be destroyed. With the help of Memory B-cells, you might get rid of it before you even feel sick. This is called gaining immunity.

B cell memory: understanding COVID-19 (2021/02/09)

If the amount of Abs [antibodies] in circulation drops, or if the pathogen varies from the initial infection, the shield may not be protective, and a re-run of the response would be required. This response, triggered by re-exposure to the same or a closely related pathogen, uses the memory B and T cells, incorporating the information acquired in the first response by starting with cells that have already been selected as being strongly reactive. This head start makes memory responses faster, larger, and of higher affinity than the initial response, allowing for rapid negation of the pathogen, often before symptoms develop.
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Within GCs [germinal centers], B cells rapidly proliferate and, remarkably, deliberately mutate the DNA encoding the epitope-binding component of their antigen-binding receptor, potentially changing its affinity. This occurs as repeated cycles of proliferation, mutation, and selective survival of those B cells with improved binding affinity to antigen. This “selection of the fittest” continues for the duration of the response or until antigen receptor binding strength reaches a maximum, meaning that B cell affinity is improving as the response progresses.

Why are T cells called T cells
T cells (thymus cells) and B cells (bone marrow- or bursa-derived cells) are the major cellular components of the adaptive immune response.

I wasn't even familiar with this organ of the human body:
Thymus
The thymus is located in the upper front part of the chest, ... behind the sternum, and in front of the heart. It is made up of two lobes

Update, 2022/05/29:
Here's another article that mentions memory B and T cells benefitting from delaying the booster, if you've recently had a COVID infection:

Is a second COVID-19 booster right for me?

“An infection acts as a kind of ‘immune boost,’” Ferullo explains, “Getting a booster shot too soon thereafter runs the risk of interrupting and restarting an immune-building process that the infection began,” he explains. “The longer those memory B and T cells have to mature, the better equipped they will be to fight a new infection, so it makes sense to delay a booster for a few months after recovery.”

Getting ready for bed, I feel a pinprick on my calf. Turns out that a sewing pin was stuck (sewn into) in the bottom seam of my pajama pants, from when I hemmed them shorter *last* November. I have multiple PJ pants and only wear these in the colder half of the year, but still. All the times I wore these and washed them since last year, and only discovered this now. ::amused::

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For tomorrow, I pre-ordered a cake and 3 dishes from a local vegan restaurant: mac'n'cheese, sesame ginger okra, and squash casserole.

I cooked a dish of my own, stir-frying together hominy, some nuts, lima beans, green soybeans, and spices.

I also baked cornbread muffins from a box mix. They taste quite good, the way I like cornbread to be. The main ingredient listed on the box is sugar. I guess that is why, when I make cornbread from scratch, with the main ingredient being cornmeal, it never tastes the same good.

My mom is making a sweet potato pie and marinated/spiced tofu.
It will be five of us getting together.

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I only found out last night that I can now get a COVID booster shot. When I checked the SC website a few days ago, after the federal announcement, it still indicated my age range was ineligible. I didn't want to get a shot today in case it made me feel ill for tomorrow. But I may go get it on Friday.

for the Second time!

I got my flu shot today. Yay.

I did finally get a Tdap vaccine shot on Wednesday.

Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Whooping Cough Vaccination: What Everyone Should Know

- DT (generic) and Td (Tenivac® and generic) provide protection against diphtheria and tetanus.
- DTaP (Daptacel®, Infanrix®, Kinrix®, Pediarix®, Pentacel®, Quadracel®, and Vaxelis™) provides protection against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough.
- Tdap (Adacel® and Boostrix®) provides protection against tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough.

Upper-case letters in these abbreviations mean the vaccine has full-strength doses of that part of the vaccine. The lower-case “d” and “p” in Td and Tdap means these vaccines use smaller doses of diphtheria and whooping cough. The “a” in DTaP and Tdap stands for “acellular,” meaning that the whooping cough component contains only parts of the bacteria instead of the whole bacteria.

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Studies estimate that diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines protect nearly all people (95 in 100) for approximately 10 years. Protection decreases over time, so adults need to get a Td or Tdap booster shot every 10 years to stay protected.
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Studies estimate that tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines protect essentially all people for approximately 10 years. Protection decreases over time, so adults need to get a Td or Tdap booster shot every 10 years to stay protected.
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In studies showing how well the whooping cough component works, Tdap fully protects:
- About 7 in 10 people in the first year after getting it.
- About 3 or 4 in 10 people four years after getting it.

Why must so many news reports about COVID-19 include video clips of vaccine needles being pushed into and pulled out of arms? I'm only a little needlephobic (I avert my gaze when getting shots) and a little bothered when I see those videos. But I imagine many people are a lot more disturbed by seeing it, and might avoid watching the news because of it? Seeing all those needles may be adding to their anxiety about getting vaccinated instead of relieving it.

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Another thing that oddly irritates me is hearing or reading the British term for it, "jab". The word "jab" makes me think of 2 friends walking down the street, and one of them giving the other a friendly shove of an elbow in the side. (Why do I associate it with that? Dunno.) So when I hear it used about the vaccine, it sounds like an attempt to downplay the fact that it's a needle piercing your skin. It sounds like a word you'd say to a small child to keep them from being afraid of it.

I have this reaction even though I know that's simply the term used in Britain and not a euphemism. And I know the word "shot" doesn't really describe an injection better than "jab".

WSJ has this intriguing-sounding article, but it requires a subscription to read: ‘Jab’: A British Term for a Covid-19 Shot, but Born in the U.S.A.

The newly imported name for a vaccination actually originated on this side of the Atlantic ...
It might not be the most important point of contention in the pandemic era, but a British-style, three-letter word for a vaccination shot has proved irksome to many Americans: “jab.”

So I'm not the only American irritated by that word?

Here I found a screenshot of the article on twitter.

Hah, so just like that flu of 1918, the word "jab" started in the U.S., spread out in Europe, and then came back.

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Damn:
SC tops entire country for COVID case rate as hospital reports record COVID patient count

I'm going clothes shopping for the first time since before 2020.
My last time grocery shopping was mid-May.
My last time in another store was the beginning of June. I wore a face mask that day though I think other people weren't.

According to this page: major retailers' face mask requirements,
it looks like most (or all) stores no longer require fully vaccinated shoppers to wear face masks. Around here that means probably no one, especially non-vaccinated people, will be wearing them.

According to the SC DHEC dashboard, 41% of South Carolinians have been fully vaccinated, and 48% have had at least one dose.

COVID-19 delta variant increasingly spreads in US but SC detection system not finding it (June 23, 2021)
"Because the state does not routinely screen for variants, only four delta cases have been confirmed in the state."

I guess I'll still wear a face mask even if I don't see anyone else wearing one.

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Addendum: Many, maybe even most of the people I saw in the stores were still wearing face masks. I was pleasantly surprised.

Something I hadn't considered was that the stores might have their fitting rooms closed. Both JCPenny and Kohl's had signs in front of fitting rooms saying they were closed. Perhaps other fitting rooms in the same stores were still open, I'm not sure. I didn't find any clothes that interested me in there anyway.

The shops where you CAN try on clothes as more retailers reopen fitting rooms (2021 June 1)
Why aren’t all the dressing rooms open?(2021 June 9)
Target is reopening fitting rooms after keeping them closed more than a year amid COVID-19 (2021 May 31)

The fitting rooms at Target were open. I found 3 nice pairs of pants there. Though still not as comfortable as my old cargo pants which have started getting holes at the knees. I bought some iron-on patches for them at Walmart.

Among the handouts given to me with both of my Covid vaccine shots was one about v-safe, the "after vaccination health checker". It's a smartphone-based tool for providing feedback to the CDC of any side effects you experience from the COVID-19 vaccines.

I didn't sign up for it after my first shot, because I didn't like that it is only phone-based, with no option to use a laptop instead. But also because I had too much other stuff going on at the time, and then also because I only experienced one side-effect, which was a very common one anyway.

But after my 2nd shot, I tried it out. It doesn't require installing an app on your phone. You sign up at the above website, which can be done on your phone or on a laptop. When signing up, you are asked for your name, date of birth, zip code, sex*, and mobile phone number. Then you are asked for the date of your first and/or 2nd shots, and which vaccine you got.

Thereafter, you supposedly get a link to an online questionnaire sent to your phone via a text every day (around 4pm for me) for the first week. Then some more at weekly or monthly intervals. The questionnaire asks about any symptoms you experienced that day, and also asks your race/ethnicity*.

*An option is included for "prefer not to say".

Yesterday I copied the questionnaire link from the text to my laptop by manually typing it in. (Just to be perverse, to see if it would work, and it did.) After filling in the answers, something distracted me. It may have been that I took too long in deciding "Did any of the symptoms or health conditions you reported today cause you to... Be unable to work... Be unable to do your normal daily activities..." (etc.)

I *could* have worked if I had really needed to, in spite of the mild fever. I *could* have taken Tylenol earlier than I did, and then probably would have felt better earlier. And I *did* do some work later that day. Most of the time, I do most of my work later in the day anyway. But I decided to select the options, as I hadn't really felt up to working earlier that morning.

When I returned to the page and finally submitted it, it gave me a time-out error. However, I was able to open the page, re-enter my answers, and then submit it successfully.

Yesterday I did the questionnaire a couple hours after getting the text.

Today I waited until after I had finished my work for the day, and after I'd done a few other things. Ie., until 3am. This time I clicked the link on my phone, deciding to do it the way it was designed. But it gave an error, "Sorry, this Health Check-in has expired" !!!

So you have only a limited amount of time, not even a full 12 hours, to submit each day's questionnaire after being sent the link.

It was only my 2nd day of using the tool, and it already has failed me. No point in continuing with it, I think. It didn't let me enter any symptoms (in arrears) from my first shot either, by the way. So it's only useful if you sign up for it right away after getting a shot, and then answer the questions promptly every day after getting the texts.

I got my 2nd Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shot yesterday afternoon. I felt fine afterwards. During the rest of the day and night, my arm became slightly sore, but not nearly as much as after the first shot.

I went to bed around 2:40am, still feeling mostly fine. I felt very tired and worn out, as I'd done a lot of work, including physical activity, that afternoon and evening

A few hours later (about 14 hours after the shot), I woke up with a mild fever and chills/shivering. I put more blankets on the bed and managed to sleep some more off and on. The mild fever (ranging from 100.2 to 100.9) and headache persisted till the early afternoon. Then I took some acetaminophen; the fever went down and I started feeling better. My joints & some muscles were also achy today but they are feeling better now too.

The fever hasn't come back, so unless it returns during the night, I think I'm over it.

This is an interesting video from last August, about the development of the vaccines & antibody treatments. It's 54 minutes long, which is why I didn't get around to watching it until now.
The Latest on COVID-19 Vaccines, Treatment

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New to me:
Read Your Food Labels: Watch out for Maltodextrin (It has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease; it also has a very high glycemic index.)

I got my first COVID-19 vaccine shot today, Moderna. I got it at Kroger after scheduling the appointment Sunday night. From the sounds of it, all their slots today weren't even filled.

I wonder if there something about this vaccine in particular that causes more arm soreness than other vaccines? I'm pretty sure my arm wasn't nearly this sore after either of the 2 flu shots I've had in the past. Or maybe it only depends on how and/or where the needle goes in, so it can vary from shot to shot?

My arm didn't start feeling sore until a few hours afterwards, so I don't think it was injected in the wrong place (which is one of my vague worries in general about getting shots).

While searching on the arm soreness topic, I found this article about a possible delayed reaction at the injection site a week later:
What’s the New Phenomenon Called “COVID Vaccine Arm”?
That only happens in about 1% of people.

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I've had a lot of other stuff going on this last week.

All South Carolinians Aged 16 and Older to be Eligible for COVID-19 Vaccine Beginning March 31, 2021

Qiao told me about it. I'd finally stopped checking the daily numbers and news releases in February.

Dang. I wasn't expecting it to be so soon. o_o

I'd been content to wait several months at least; getting vaccinated isn't going to have much if any affect on *my* usual activities. There will probably be a rush at first, so it will probably be a while till I can get an appointment anyway.

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I've sort of started to like wearing a mask sometimes. I feel a bit exposed at first, when I go out for a walk without wearing one. That feeling adds to my slight general anxiety at going out in public where people can see me, which itself probably has increased over the last year because of me having been out less often.

Video title: MR. BIDEN (Bring My Vaccine) - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody
Posted by: Randy Rainbow
Date posted: Mar 9, 2021

Inhaled Vaccines Aim to Fight Coronavirus at Its Point of Attack

If an injectable vaccine were to be made available in the next few months, I'd be quite wary of getting it yet, as it doesn't seem that enough long-term testing of potential negative side-effects could have been done. But I don't seem to have quite as many reservations about one that would be inhaled or sprayed; I'm not sure that is logical of me.

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How quick and dirty Covid tests could end the weariness

"Even if a cheap-as-a-cup-of-coffee test could be produced and distributed in sufficient quantities, problems remain. The most obvious is the issue of false positives. The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1 in 2,000 people were infected with coronavirus in England and Wales in late August. With a test that has a false-positive rate of just 1 per cent, you would wrongly flag up 20 uninfected people for every genuine case. The rarer the virus, the worse this problem becomes."

But as the test would be so cheap and easy, couldn't the people who test positive simply repeat the test a certain number of times, to determine if the first one was really correct? I suppose that could be a problem as usually the false negative rate is higher than the false positive rate. But still, surely repeating the test a certain number of times would give a good indication?

This makes me wonder, not for the first time, what the false-positive and false-negative rates are for the current tests that are being used. If I recall right, there are hundreds of different tests being used in different places. I don't know if test takers are even told which specific test they're getting, and what its false positive & negative rates are.

So far, I've found this FDA page which lists the info for about 50 of the blood antibody tests:

EUA Authorized Serology Test Performance (EUA = Emergency Use Authorization)

This page lists a lot of viral & antigen tests as well as serology tests, but doesn't list false positive/negative rates along with them like the above page does. That info may be buried in the linked-to docs for each test, but I'm not sure:
In Vitro Diagnostics EUAs

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These are the main types of tests:
Viral (molecular) test: detects genetic material of the virus. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are of this type.
Antigen test: detects certain proteins in the virus.
Antibody test: detects the antibodies produced by the body in response to the virus.

Nice animated timeline of when each type of test is most likely to give a positive result.

Additional notes:
IgG = Immunoglobulin G
IgM = Immunoglobulin M
IgA = Immunoglobulin A (this one is not mentioned in regards to the above serology tests)
pan-Ig = I did not find a definition for this; I would guess it is some combination of the above.

I got the FluBlok flu shot yesterday. The nurse said I'd feel a pinch, so I waited for it (looking away from the needle as per my usual) but felt nothing at all, which surprised me. I'd thought a muscle injection would feel worse than a blood draw from a vein, but apparently I was wrong. Later I felt a very slight sting while moving my arm, but that was it.

I didn't get the TD booster shot yet. They had told me they had it when I called the day before (after making me wait a few minutes on the line while they checked), and it seemed like they were clear on the difference between the TD & the TDaP. But when I got there, the people there that day checked and said they had only TDap, not the TD on its own. (I'm not sure who was right). But they ordered it for me and will let me know when it gets in.

I'm a bit glad I didn't get both at the same time. This way, if either one affects me, it'll be more obvious which one was the culprit. (And it'll be less likely for them to interfere with each other.) But so far, I feel normal. Except for a slight stiffness in my leg/hip joint this afternoon, which could be due to anything.

Continued from: https://darkoshi.dreamwidth.org/697114.html

This page has more info; not sure if I saw this one last time:
https://edvfood.com/2015/10/24/vegan-flu-shots-2015-update/

The original article above (from 2015) indicated that Target had the Flublok (egg-free, recombinant) vaccine available, but a later comment on the article indicated that they no longer did in 2016.

https://www.sanofiflu.com/locator/locator-map.cfm - this page lets you search for places that offer FluBlok

Based on my search, the local Kroger and Walmart store pharmacies have it.

I called my Kroger to verify. They have both FluBlok and the TD (tetanus/dyphtheria) booster shot available.
So I plan to stop by there one day this week after work to get both of them.

Before this, I'd never have thought of going to Kroger for immunization shots.

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Lately, I've gotten several emails from my insurance plan, reminding & advising us to get flu shots. Driving home on Friday, I thought about it again, and my right upper arm immediately started phantom-aching simply from thinking about it. It was odd/amusing, as I don't even remember the last time I've gotten a shot in my upper arm.

Yesterday morning, I was talking with Qiao, who's already gotten the flu shot this year. I asked if they give it in the upper arm; he said yes. Then we got to talking about tetanus shots, etc., as I remembered I needed a booster for that too, from my above post.

Later that day, I accidentally jabbed my finger with a safety pin, and then started worrying a bit about tetanus.

So now I have a concrete plan of action.

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After my efforts 2 years ago to get myself an official primary care doctor, the doctor's office sent a letter earlier this year that he'd left the practice (I suppose he moved or transferred somewhere else). That disappointed me, as he'd seemed nice and competent the few times I'd seen him. The letter said that they'd soon be contacting me to get set up an appointment with one of the other doctors at that location, but they never did.

So I probably won't bother setting up an appointment for an annual exam this year, as there seems to be no reason for doing so.

Pose S2E3 was macabre. I wasn't at all expecting that from this show, even after glancing at the episode description beforehand, and doing a double-take. I'm having trouble getting it out of my mind (and mentioning it here in a post won't help that, but oh well).

I'm somewhat relieved that, as indicated at the above link, the show writers didn't come up with the plot-line totally out of the blue.

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Rabies Kills Tens of Thousands Yearly. Vaccinating Dogs Could Stop It.

Reading that reminded me I meant to write about rabies a while back. This is macabre too, but I suppose one ought to be aware of it.

From Carolina Wildlife Center's Spring 2019 Newsletter:

When you interact with wildlife animals you may be putting their life in danger.
This is especially true of Rabies Vector animals such as raccoons, foxes, bats and skunks.
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If you must handle the animal you should use heavy gloves to avoid scratches or bites and avoid contact with saliva in your eyes, nose, mouth and open wounds. All three can transmit the virus. We stress the importance of extreme caution because if you are scratched, bitten or contact saliva, the animal must be tested for rabies, whether suspected of infection or not. There is only one way to test for rabies and it requires euthanizing the animal. If a Rabies Vector animals tests positive and you were scratched, bitten or contacted saliva, you will need to have the post-exposure rabies treatment. This is expensive and very unpleasant. Worst of all, a healthy animal may have lost its life to ensure you will not lose yours.

Rabies Testing: Things Better Left Unsaid

For [non-Rabies-Vector] animals that have bitten a person, a 10-day quarantine is the usual way of determining if they have rabies. ... The logic behind the 10-day stretch that you pay for is that very, very few animals that are rabid and shedding virus in saliva will live past 10 days. If your dog bites you or someone else and survives for longer than 10 days, the chances that your dog was rabid at the time of the bite are essentially nil.
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Sure, you don’t want your pet to get rabies, but the public health folks are more concerned with making sure your dog doesn’t catch rabies from a fox who was in the back yard and then passing it on to every kid in the neighborhood. Thus, the rabies vaccine was invented and has become the only legally mandated vaccine for pets; other vaccines, for diseases like parvo and distemper, are medically necessary for the pets but don’t play a role in public health.
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When we euthanize a pet that has bitten someone recently, there is obviously no chance to see if the pet would survive the 10-day period. Using the example of the injured dog that has bitten her owner, if the dog has a broken back and the owner elects to euthanize, we don’t know if the dog was rabid when she bit her owner.
...
The only definitive way to determine if an animal had rabies is to examine the brain. This is impossible to do while alive. Blood and other ante-mortem (before death) tests are not reliable enough when a human life is on the line. This means cutting the head off and submitting it to a state lab for rabies testing. This testing is not optional if your pet is not currently vaccinated for rabies. If an unvaccinated animal bites a human and then either dies or is euthanized, the head must, by law, be submitted for testing.

CDC article on rabies :

Skunks, raccoons, foxes and bats that bite humans should be euthanized and tested as soon as possible. The length of time between rabies virus appearing in the saliva and onset of symptoms is unknown for these animals and holding them for observation is not acceptable.

That explains why there isn't a 10-day quarantine for them, as with dogs.

So to summarize, you should be very careful when interacting with raccoons, foxes, bats, and skunks, even young ones which appear to be orphaned or in distress. In trying to help them, if you happen to be bitten or scratched, it could likely end up with the animal being euthanized to undergo this mandatory rabies testing. (Or if you don't tell anyone, you could risk coming down with rabies yourself.)

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