Texas Jeff

Since the re-opening we have gone from a plane crash every two days to a plane crash once a week or so. We've got that going for us, which is nice ... but still ... plane crashes, make 'em stop. We have this magical potion available for free in stores near you that can stop the plane crashes ... enough for everyone over 16 to be covered by July 4th. And it's sitting in fridges.

An update on Jimmy Flannigan, the city council member that lost to Kelly... https://theaustinbulldog.org/flannigan-loses-election-lands-plum-job/ The day after he lost, he was offered a job as president of Austin Convention Enterprises. This is a non-profit that runs the city of Austin owned downtown Hilton hotel. The president is the only employee of the non-profit. Flannigan does not actual run the hotel -- the non-profit hires Hilton to do that, he just maintains the non-profit. This involves working on the website, preparing for once monthly board meetings, working with vendors associated with the non-profit. The job is limited to 20 hours per week and his compensation was set at $140,000 per year, plus $6000 for health insurance. As a council member, Flannigan voted to appoint the three directors that then hired him and to create the position that he now holds. Two of the directors donated to his reelection campaign.

Deparkingism.

People need an incentive to get the shot at this point. It would have been nice to give vaccination bonuses as part of the last stimulus, but that ship has sailed. Maybe local businesses could offer "welcome back" specials to folks that could present a fully vaccinated card. Like a free appitizer or 10% off your tab or something, if everyone in your party could show a card. It would get people back in places and maybe push some folks into getting the shot. People might be able to hold out for a while but they will be challenged to maintain that position when they see their friends getting free stuff.

Not yet. By late May, maybe. Texas is still giving maybe a million first shots per week. Supply is catching up to demand, but demand is still there. There is going to be another demand bump when 12-15 year olds are eligible, and another one when elementary kids are eligible, and so on until all ages are covered.

Sometime yesterday, the 10,000,000th Texan got their first shot. Only about 18,000,000 to go, of that 13,000,000 are over 16. Travis Co, which was weeks behind the Texas average at the beginning of March, is now surging way ahead. At current rates, Travis Co will hit 70% first shots about the same time Texas as a whole gets to 50%.

A few articles about how the Austin Swing never happened back in 1995: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1995/10/12/The-Austin-Swing-struck-out-before-the-first-batter/7077813470400/ https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/1995-09-22/529795/ Evidently Austin voters rejected a proposal for a bond to pay $10 million to pay for about half of a stadium for an AA team. Not $10 billion for a train or $60 million a year for the homeless .... a one-time $10 million bond to help with a stadium. About $18 million in 2021 dollars. Seems comically low by today's standards. The city would have received 7% of ticket sales for 20-30 years, plus a portion of concessions and parking and sometime around now the city would have owned the stadium. The stadium would have probably been somewhere near Pleasant Valley and the river, east of IH-35. The stadium bond was opposed by a group called Priorities First. Said group got outed as being run by a group of developers who, and this is not going to surprise you, owned some land in Williamson Co and wanted to bring their own baseball franchise to town. Or at least close to town. Bridget Shea was the only Austin City Council member to oppose the project. She still holds elected office in Travis County.

If I had to guess, the 2021 numbers are in the mail and a website update is coming along shortly...

Today, Texans 50-64 reached 50% first-shots and Texans over 65 are past 65% first shots. Everyone else doesn't have long to wait, Texans 16 and over should reach the 50% mark by April 26th. It may be a few days later because of the J&J screw up, but it's right around the corner. At the current rate, we will hit 70% of first shots for all Texans over 16 by May 24th, although I suspect we will see vaccine hesitancy before then. Sometime in May you are going to see vaccine in stock everywhere.

They need to open it up. Every day where they inject fewer people than the max they could handle is a chance to give someone a shot you can't get back. If it was just a few appts in reserve, I wouldn't mind. But a third of their weekly allocation ... they are just prolonging the epidemic.

Texas is past the 1/3 mark for 1st shots and this weekend will pass 20% fully vaccinated. We are a week away from the 50-64 age group passing 50% first shots and 26 days away from everyone over 18 passing 50% first shots. Seniors are at 62% first shots but demand is slowing.

We are playing chicken with the virus. People are tired of living this way and looking for a reason to declare that it's over. Hopefully vaccines will beat back the variants. If you look at the northeast, they are clearly having an outbreak that is spreading, and they are more vaccinated that we are. Hopefully, there is enough time for more vaccine to get in arms here before whatever is going on in the northeast arrives in Texas.

"Conan O'Brian Can't Stop", streaming on Amazon Prime. Gives you a look inside his tour after whatever happened to him with NBC happened. If you don't like Conan this may not be for you, but it shows you what happens to a guy that goes on the road night after night. He's totally energetic onstage and wiped out offstage. Everybody wants just five minutes with him, or a photo, or something signed.

Sounds like they unfroze their supply for a clinic and then not enough folks showed up for the clinic. Dimmit is at 50% first shots already. 600 shots would have covered like 8% of the county. As these rural areas start to get to high percentages, the state needs to start sending J&J out there rather than the frozen stuff, just to avoid waste.

Here's some video of the helicopter being developed. Hard to tell how big the rotors are, but you get the general idea. At one point they tell it to climb to 1 meter and from that it looks like the rotors are maybe a meter across.

You J&J fans are going to love next week. Last week's J&J allocation for Texas: 30,200 This week: 153,900 Next week: 392,100 Pfizer dropped 80k for next week, Moderna went up 10k, but J&J was the big winner. Next week will be the first week for Texas with over a million first shots.

J&J can be stored between 36 and 46 degrees F. You are not supposed to freeze it. It is a game changer because of the easy storage requirements, the low cost, and the single dose -- compared with Pfizer and Moderna.

Texas Week 16 is out: https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news/updates/COVIDVaccineAllocation-Week16.pdf Anyone know why UT received zero doses this week? Also, most of the J&J (45k shots) went to "DSHS CENTRAL PHARMACY WAREHOUSE" and 24k Pfizer doses went to "Texas DSHS Laboratory". What is the state doing with all of that vaccine?

If you or anyone else is still looking: 1. Make sure you are on UT's list -- anyone eligible can join. https://uthealthaustin.org/patient-resources/covid-19-updates/covid-19-vaccination Pfizer quantities are going up next week and UT is a Pfizer site. 2. On Monday and on Thursdays, at 5:45 PM, try to get in line with APH: https://covid19.austintexas.gov/s/?language=en_US The big batch of appointments has been going out Monday nights, but there are sometimes extras on Thursday nights. Make sure you can sign in to your account prior to 5:45. If you can't, try adding ".aph" to your user name. For example, joe@gmail.com would be joe@gmail.com.aph. Don't ask why ... just try it. At 5:45 you will be placed in an online queue. At 6pm they will randomly assign you a place in line to get an appointment. If you are 3000th in line and they have 3001 appointments, you'll get one if you just wait. People drop out so even if you are 4000th in line for 3000 appointments you have a chance. "Waiting" means you just have a browser open until it is your turn to pick an appointment. Check out Austin Public Health on twitter to see when appointments are being released. Monday night you could have just logged in and gotten an appointment. For about a hour they had appointments available and an empty waiting room. They eventually filled the appointments. 3. https://coryellhealth.org is north of Ft Hood, about an hour north of Austin. They tend to dump all of their appointments for the week at one time. If you catch them just after the dump, you can get an appointment.

Feds out with first dose vaccine numbers for next week for Texas: Pfizer 441,090 -- up 81,900 from last week which was itself a record Pfizer week Moderna 260,400 -- stable over the last six weeks or so J&J 153,900 -- up 123,700 from last week, not quite up to the 219,200 from their first week but their ramp has begun Next week will be a new record at 855,390 first shots allocated to Texas, only the second week over 700k. Second shots should also set a record as the effects of the winter storm wash out. It will be interesting to see how DSHS deploys the extra Pfizer and J&J.

Milestone. APH has more shots than takers for the first time.

My wife got both shots through APH. She heard nothing from them until the day before she was due for the second shot. No way to sign up in the portal. The day before, she got an email with an appointment time and location for the next day. The location for the second shot was different, so she had to drive to the Austin ISD PAC rather than the Delco Center for the second shot. So check the location as well as the time and date if you get an email appointment. Her onsite experience for the second shot was great. She took a printout for the second appointment with her, which I think had a QR code they scanned, but there was almost no line and she was back home less than an hour after she left. here's a tweet from APH with a flowchart telling you what to do based on your online portal status:

More than 25% of Texans over 16 now have a first shot. At this pace we will hit 50% in 40 days. And based on recent progress I would take the under. Phase 2 (no restrictions) is coming sooner than people think -- I have no inside info, they are just going to run out of 1A/1B/1C arms.

Every Tuesday, the feds publish allocation data for the next week here: https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/distribution/index.html That leads to Friday, when the state publishes allocation data for the next week here: https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/coronavirus/immunize/vaccineallocations.aspx The feds have a table just for J&J (Janssen) and the state breaks it out in their weekly allocations. So you can see how much J&J is coming to Texas and where it is going by the weekend before the distribution week. I don't have a link for the J&J ramp but I have read articles saying that the first week was a dump of all of the vaccine they had made up until that point, in the time when they were waiting for their trial to be over and for EUA approval. That was "Week 13". Now we are in a period where the initial dump is distributed and they are just distributing what they are able to manufacture that week, which is lower. However, I have read that once the factory ramp period is over they are going to be producing a lot of J&J quickly ... and that period could be over around the end of March. Put that together and we had a happy J&J week 13, followed by a trickle for a few weeks, followed hopefully by a flood in April.

The projected date at which 50% of Texans will have a first shot keeps moving in. Last weekend it was May 11th. Yesterday it hit May 1st. Today it is April 27th. The number of first shots per day is just flying up. Expect a little flattening over the next two weeks because there is not much J&J this week or next, followed by maybe a lot more J&J in late March and April. But holy cow the numbers are rising.