The slow transition from ‘almost all about Covid’ to ‘only somewhat about Covid’ continues, with the non-Covid various-things-to-note portion this week reaching something like 25%.
Sharing my Paxlovid experience. Still somewhat feverish, sorry in advance if any of this doesn't make sense.
On Tuesday I woke up a bit phlegmy, but that's not super unusual for me. In the afternoon I took a sudden turn. Achey, coughing, and with a fever that climbed from 99 to 102 over about an hour. At-home rapid test gave me a very faint line, which still means positive.
I'm overweight and have had a near constant idiopathic headache the past two years, though I'm a spry 37 years old. I hoped that being overweight and having neurological problems would help me to get Paxlovid.
I called Bartell Drugs, a chain local to Washington, to ask if they have Paxlovid. They did not.
I called Walgreens and found that they did have Paxlovid. I asked if the pharmacist could prescribe it directly to me and was told that they can't do tha, the prescription has to come from a doctort. I told them I'm looking at the FDA announcement from Jul 6 authorizing pharmacists to prescribe the drug, and they told me that it hasn't been approved by the state's pharmacy board.
Okay then, I'll go the doctor route. I called them up and while they weren't able to prescribe based on my self report of a positive test, I was able to get an appointment later that afternoon. They told me that at-home tests can yield a positive result for flu, which AFAICT is not true.
Still hoping to avoid leaving my bed, I did some more research online. I Googled for "washington state pharmacy board paxlovid" and in my fevered state thought the first result was from the Washington State Pharmacy Board. It reiterated that pharmacists can prescribe Paxlovid, but it wasn't the pharmacy board. It was the Washington State Hospital Association: https://www.wsha.org/articles/covid-19-therapeutics-reminders-paxlovid-evusheld/. I realized I hadn't located the pharmacy board when I called Walgreens back to report my findings and they asked what site I was looking at and the domain was wsha.org. At this point I gave up on the pharmacist prescribed option.
As far as I can tell now, the "Washington State Pharmacy Board" does not exist. There's a Washington State Pharmacy Association which looks like a trade organization. Then there's a bunch of spammy sites that purport to share addresses and phone numbers for the Washington State Pharmacy Boad. But no website for the supposed entity itself.
On to the doctor. Taking a car ride at this time was not great, I'm lucky my wife was able to drive me. I had a 102° F fever, it was 85° F outside, I was bundled in a full sweatsuit, and still getting chills. They had me wait in my car, and luckily the wait was not long. An ARNP came out to gather the test sample and send me on my way. Twenty minutes later I got a call back telling me that I'm confirmed positive and that she'll send over the Paxlovid script. An hour or so later my wife picked up the drugs without any problems.
I was annoyed at my recent experience in Oregon, and it was not as bad as yours, so I'm sorry you had to go through that. I had the same experience with pharmacists refusing to release it because some pharmacy organization had not yet allowed them to, despite the feds saying it was ok.
Luckily, my doctors experience was better (although still frustratingly inefficient and worse that it needed to be). They did not make us retest, just took out temp and BP, talked to us for a while about the drug (including giving some info that I was pretty sure was wrong and other info that was technically true but seems to be overly alarmist; overall impression that the doctor would have preferred if he could have changed our mind about wanting it), then wrote our prescription.
Overall, what should have been a simple 1/2 hour trip to the pharmacy instead turned into a 3 hour ordeal of going to the pharmacy (because over the phone they said they would let us get it), being told in person that they wouldn't, having to get an appointment at an urgent care facility, waiting in our car outside for nearly an hour, then spending another half hour either waiting in the exam room/talking to the doctor, then going back to the pharmacy to get the prescription.
I think we shared the more annoying and bewildering part of the experience: being made to go out and about in the world, exhausting ourselves and exposing others.
On school craziness part N: Homeschooling is easy (though ease varies by state), better, and very legal in the US. The more extra cash you have the easier it is, but it doesn't need to be more expensive than childcare over the same time.
If you're smart, and you have smart kids, this gives them a ridiculously accelerated education on around 2 to 3 hours school per weekday. Then once they're teens you can send them to college, where they get "socialization" with the peer group they'll have for life, not the crazy mix of folks in school.
I'm homeschooling 6 kids, and the eldest is 18 and graduating college this year. It's really been great for them, and for me.
Just popping in to say that Justin (Amash) is totally correct about pro-liberty reps, so long as your definition of liberty aligns reasonably well with Justin’s... and I know this because I spent a year of my life manning those damn spreadsheets, and they’re some of the weirdest Excel programming I’ve ever seen.
I doubt the data exists anymore; I suspect he took the top line numbers with him, but Congress isn’t usually subject to federal records laws because it isn’t subject to FOIA. It could totally be recreated, though. Basically, we had a sheet with every member of the House’s name at the top of a column. Each row was a vote. “Yes” was 1, “no” was 0, “present” was 0.5, no vote was blank. Another sheet took that data and compared it to *Justin’s* vote. I think how it worked was that if he voted yes, each 1 would remain a 1; if he voted no, they would flip such that a no gave a 1 and a yes a 0. The 0.5 present votes would remain the same (and then I think a third sheet would calculate the same data but eliminate the present votes, to see how that affected totals). You can then look at everyone’s total to see how high their number is, compared to Justin’s. We also used it to check who had the longest streak of not missing any votes; you’d be shocked how many members routinely skipped out.
Sharing my Paxlovid experience. Still somewhat feverish, sorry in advance if any of this doesn't make sense.
On Tuesday I woke up a bit phlegmy, but that's not super unusual for me. In the afternoon I took a sudden turn. Achey, coughing, and with a fever that climbed from 99 to 102 over about an hour. At-home rapid test gave me a very faint line, which still means positive.
I'm overweight and have had a near constant idiopathic headache the past two years, though I'm a spry 37 years old. I hoped that being overweight and having neurological problems would help me to get Paxlovid.
I called Bartell Drugs, a chain local to Washington, to ask if they have Paxlovid. They did not.
I called Walgreens and found that they did have Paxlovid. I asked if the pharmacist could prescribe it directly to me and was told that they can't do tha, the prescription has to come from a doctort. I told them I'm looking at the FDA announcement from Jul 6 authorizing pharmacists to prescribe the drug, and they told me that it hasn't been approved by the state's pharmacy board.
Okay then, I'll go the doctor route. I called them up and while they weren't able to prescribe based on my self report of a positive test, I was able to get an appointment later that afternoon. They told me that at-home tests can yield a positive result for flu, which AFAICT is not true.
Still hoping to avoid leaving my bed, I did some more research online. I Googled for "washington state pharmacy board paxlovid" and in my fevered state thought the first result was from the Washington State Pharmacy Board. It reiterated that pharmacists can prescribe Paxlovid, but it wasn't the pharmacy board. It was the Washington State Hospital Association: https://www.wsha.org/articles/covid-19-therapeutics-reminders-paxlovid-evusheld/. I realized I hadn't located the pharmacy board when I called Walgreens back to report my findings and they asked what site I was looking at and the domain was wsha.org. At this point I gave up on the pharmacist prescribed option.
As far as I can tell now, the "Washington State Pharmacy Board" does not exist. There's a Washington State Pharmacy Association which looks like a trade organization. Then there's a bunch of spammy sites that purport to share addresses and phone numbers for the Washington State Pharmacy Boad. But no website for the supposed entity itself.
On to the doctor. Taking a car ride at this time was not great, I'm lucky my wife was able to drive me. I had a 102° F fever, it was 85° F outside, I was bundled in a full sweatsuit, and still getting chills. They had me wait in my car, and luckily the wait was not long. An ARNP came out to gather the test sample and send me on my way. Twenty minutes later I got a call back telling me that I'm confirmed positive and that she'll send over the Paxlovid script. An hour or so later my wife picked up the drugs without any problems.
I was annoyed at my recent experience in Oregon, and it was not as bad as yours, so I'm sorry you had to go through that. I had the same experience with pharmacists refusing to release it because some pharmacy organization had not yet allowed them to, despite the feds saying it was ok.
Luckily, my doctors experience was better (although still frustratingly inefficient and worse that it needed to be). They did not make us retest, just took out temp and BP, talked to us for a while about the drug (including giving some info that I was pretty sure was wrong and other info that was technically true but seems to be overly alarmist; overall impression that the doctor would have preferred if he could have changed our mind about wanting it), then wrote our prescription.
Overall, what should have been a simple 1/2 hour trip to the pharmacy instead turned into a 3 hour ordeal of going to the pharmacy (because over the phone they said they would let us get it), being told in person that they wouldn't, having to get an appointment at an urgent care facility, waiting in our car outside for nearly an hour, then spending another half hour either waiting in the exam room/talking to the doctor, then going back to the pharmacy to get the prescription.
I think we shared the more annoying and bewildering part of the experience: being made to go out and about in the world, exhausting ourselves and exposing others.
On school craziness part N: Homeschooling is easy (though ease varies by state), better, and very legal in the US. The more extra cash you have the easier it is, but it doesn't need to be more expensive than childcare over the same time.
If you're smart, and you have smart kids, this gives them a ridiculously accelerated education on around 2 to 3 hours school per weekday. Then once they're teens you can send them to college, where they get "socialization" with the peer group they'll have for life, not the crazy mix of folks in school.
I'm homeschooling 6 kids, and the eldest is 18 and graduating college this year. It's really been great for them, and for me.
Going to college early is not necessarily a good thing.
Just popping in to say that Justin (Amash) is totally correct about pro-liberty reps, so long as your definition of liberty aligns reasonably well with Justin’s... and I know this because I spent a year of my life manning those damn spreadsheets, and they’re some of the weirdest Excel programming I’ve ever seen.
A write up and share of the actual data would be awesome. Can you or would you do that? Or persuade him to?
I doubt the data exists anymore; I suspect he took the top line numbers with him, but Congress isn’t usually subject to federal records laws because it isn’t subject to FOIA. It could totally be recreated, though. Basically, we had a sheet with every member of the House’s name at the top of a column. Each row was a vote. “Yes” was 1, “no” was 0, “present” was 0.5, no vote was blank. Another sheet took that data and compared it to *Justin’s* vote. I think how it worked was that if he voted yes, each 1 would remain a 1; if he voted no, they would flip such that a no gave a 1 and a yes a 0. The 0.5 present votes would remain the same (and then I think a third sheet would calculate the same data but eliminate the present votes, to see how that affected totals). You can then look at everyone’s total to see how high their number is, compared to Justin’s. We also used it to check who had the longest streak of not missing any votes; you’d be shocked how many members routinely skipped out.
Zvi do you plan to home school your kids?
What agency would be responsible for regulating mediums, and when can they start?