No thumbs touching foreheads this year.
This coming Wednesday, February 17, is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. My memory isn't very reliable (a limitation which precedes COVID-19; quite possibly it's attributable to what people smoked in my day), but as I recall, the country had not yet locked down when Ash Wednesday had rolled around last year. So Ash Wednesday in 2020 would have been normal.
Pre-pandemic, Ash Wednesday was one of the year's best-attended holy days. The attendance at our late-afternoon ashes service easily outstripped a typical Sunday mass, with our usually-capacious parking lot completely jammed. Many years, I have had to stumble over snowbanks after parking in the adjoining neighborhood and trudging over to the church.
But that was then. Sometime after last year's Ash Wednesday, the country did lock down. Parishes in our archdiocese celebrated last year's Triduum without congregations present; our parish video-recorded those services several days ahead of time (and, rather disconcertingly for me, not in the prescribed order) and then put the videos online at the appropriate dates and times. By last summer (or was it late spring?), churches around here had started reopening again, but with restricted attendance and many pandemic-mitigation measures in place.
Although some dioceses are starting to lift attendance restrictions (which strikes me as nuts - we're still a very long way from herd immunity, the vaccine rollout is not going very fast, and scary new variants of the virus are cropping up), the Chicago Archdiocese is holding firm to its restrictions. If you want to get ashes at our parish this Wednesday, you'll have to register ahead of time, and our Ash Wednesday attendance ceiling is no higher than it is for Sunday mass: roughly 100 persons at a time in a worship space built to accommodate 800. After each service throughout the day, a cleaning crew will make a disinfecting pass through the church.
Also forbidden this year is the time-honored method of getting ashes smeared on one's forehead by the filthy, ashy thumb of a priest, deacon or lay minister. Person-to-person direct bodily contact is not permitted during the pandemic. Instead, our archdiocese is recommending that ashes be sprinkled on top of people's heads. Apparently this is traditional in Catholicism, and still is done today in some cultures, but it's unknown, and rather off-putting, to everyone I've spoken with around here. The objections to having ashes getting sprinkled in one's hair have been virtually unanimous.
So instead, some of the parishes around here are going to administer ashes on the forehead, using a Q Tip. A separate Q Tip for each forehead. We already use Q Tips for anointing infants during baptisms (another pandemic mitigation measure), so we're getting pretty deft with the cotton swabs. One of our staff members did a test ash-smearing with a Q Tip and said it worked pretty well. I'll find out in a couple of days.
We're going to be using Q tips too. The sacristan already cut about a thousand of them in half (not that we'll need that many). She said she would burn the used ones in a fire pit this summer, since they are sacramentals. No one was interested in the sprinkling option. It was brought up that the ash particles might get in someone's eyes.
ReplyDeleteStarting next weekend, the attendance restrictions in our state will be lifted (yes it is premature!). However the dispensation from the Mass obligation remains in place in the archdiocese. Since we have rarely maxed out the 50% limit lately, I'm not too worried yet that the crowd will be at a dangerous level. We still have a local mask ordinance.
Heard from my brother in Colorado yesterday that he had had his first Covid shot on Friday. My other brother back home said that he and his wife have their appointments on Wednesday. So far we have heard nothing about when we will be able to get it.
Katherine - right, regarding the attendance restrictions: what really frosts me is the other part you mention: some dioceses are reinstating the obligation to attend mass. From a public health standpoint, I don't think that's defensible.
DeleteHere in Illinois, people who qualify now for the vaccine (like me) can't get an appointment to get vaccinated, because the state has now directed that the places administering the vaccine give preference to those who already received the 1st dose and haven't yet received the 2nd dose. Apparently there aren't enough doses, or shot-givers, or time slots, to keep both populations moving through the regimen simultaneously. And last week, the governor announced that shortly he will open up vaccinations to the next group, which are people between ages 16-65 with a health problem (cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc.). That means that another huge slice of the Illinois population (a couple of million additional? Maybe more?) will be competing for non-existent vaccination slots. Meanwhile, certain favored constituencies, like unionized teachers, are able to have vaccines set aside so they can be vaccinated (even though the CDC had said what everyone already knows to be the case: school settings are not particularly dangerous if common-sense measures like masks and social distancing are required). Local county public health agencies, which are bearing the brunt of trying to distribute the vaccine in this top-down, technocratically micro-managed, politically-tilted distribution fiasco, are furious at the governor. The whole thing is fubar.
"That means that another huge slice of the Illinois population (a couple of million additional? Maybe more?) will be competing for non-existent vaccination slots. Meanwhile, certain favored constituencies, like unionized teachers, are able to have vaccines set aside so they can be vaccinated ..."
DeleteNon-existent vax slots. That's it in a nutshell. Though I think teachers, day care center staff, clergy, and grocery store staff should all be priorities now.
Our diocese let the suspension of Mass obligation expire in September. The priest said it was OK to use our judgment.
I have an idea that my brother who lives in Nebraska and isn't 65 yet got moved ahead in the line because he has an artificial heart valve and is on several maintenance meds.
DeleteTeachers here are in a preferred tier, and I don't think it makes any difference if they are union or not. My son who works for a secular private school in Omaha said he would get the vaccine when the teachers did ( he is support staff). The union (in Omaha public schools) did push for teachers to be prioritized when the board wanted to return to full time, in person classes. Which seems fair, since a lot of teachers have health conditions and are 50-plus.
Yeah, the system is pretty fubar. Part of me thinks they should quit worrying about who is most deserving and just do as many as possible, as soon as possible. I couldn't believe it when I read that a health department official got fired because he authorized giving some doses which were one day from their expiration to people who weren't in the preferred tier, because otherwise they would be wasted.
I have mixed feelings. If vaccines were allowed to operate in a free market fashion, I think the distribution would be considerably more efficient, and many more people would be vaccinated by now. But those vaccinated under such a system would bear no correlation with those who have been deemed high priority; the more highly educated and more tech-savvy would get vaccinated more quickly. And that doesn't seem fair.
DeleteI haven't heard any major complaints about the priorities that have been established. I think everyone gets that health care workers, nursing home residents, seniors et al should get first crack. And I'd like to think there is widespread agreement that minority communities shouldn't be underserved.
Still, when comparing states to one another, some have done considerably better than others. Illinois is in the bottom tier, from what I understand.
We have to hope that things will improve as production cranks up and vaccines become more plentiful.
The way I see it, if vaccines operated in a free market fashion, they would be prohibitively expensive and only rich people could get them. Just like the rich cancer patients get the latest chemo and and people like me limp along on generics that don't work as well and hasten progression to leukemia.
DeleteWhat am I missing?
Right, I don't think you've missed anything. Hard to say how much the vaccines would cost if the federal government didn't subsidize it for everyone, but certainly they wouldn't be free. They'd be relatively expensive now, and then, as more drugs are approved and manufactured and supply grows, they'd recede in price.
DeleteAs the demand is worldwide, it's not clear to me how US supply vs. overseas supply would stack up, either. With Europe, India and Brazil bidding against the US for the scarce commodity, prices probably would be driven even higher. Some of that would be mitigated by different suppliers getting approval in different countries, e.g. AstraZeneca has been in use for weeks now in the UK and Europe, while it's still not approved here. Some of that competitive global bidding presumably is going on already.
Post-pandemic, I expect that what I'm describing will become the new normal for the vaccine. In a year, there could be several dozen different vaccine products, each looking for a niche in the global marketplace. Supply will be plentiful. Getting a COVID booster will be like getting the annual flu shot. Possibly every autumn we'll get the one in our left arm and the other in our right arm.
On the other side of the ledger: if the free market was allowed to work for vaccine distribution, I believe that many of the problems we're seeing now would be solved relatively quickly. As I understand the current state of affairs, the federal government is buying massive quantities from the drug manufacturers, warehousing it, and then deciding how much to allocate to each state. State health departments are receiving it from the federal government and then deciding how much to allocate to each county. And then the county health authorities are figuring out how to get it into the hands of entities who are contracted to administer it. It's kind of a case study in top-down planning, and we're seeing first-hand why it is sub-optimal.
DeleteIt's just a matter of time before people on the right start politicizing the issue by claiming that this government distribution scheme is costing patient lives. Probably some people are claiming that already.
If the goal is to reach herd immunity ASAP to limit infection and hamper mutations, then pricing the vaccine beyond the means of poorer people seems counter productive.
DeleteI'm not sure what you mean by letting the free market deal with all this or how it would be better than what we have, which is, I agree, a huge mess.
Private enterprise has been involved in everything from vaccine development to manufacture to shipment, to becoming "partner distribution sites."
But I lack the imagination to see how free enterprise could have fixed all this.
COVID swooped in quickly, nobody was prepared for the social and economic toll it would exact, Trump's government didn't want to face up to what was happening, and most people continue to do a pretty half-hearted job with masking, distancing, and limiting trips outside the home to essentials, especially around holidays. Americans are not interested in helping each other by making sacrifices to support the common good. In Michigan, you don't equate masking with patriotism unless you want your head blowed off.
The prime investor in vaccine development is the US citizenry through government funding. Vaccines developed with government investment should be open source. This would allow full global manufacturing potential to be unleashed and it would become more cheaply available to poor countries. At present, there is hardly enough vaccine for us and the poor countries are up the creek. One can say that Big Pharma would not be as interested in producing medicine if they had to settle for the profits from R&D and generic production. Well, perhaps Big Pharma has been spoiled by forty years of neoliberal excess. They can make as much profit as they want from the erection stuff but saving the lives of millions, that's another thing.
DeleteYeah. The Orphan Drug Act incentivizes companies to produce drugs for rare diseases by paying development costs. Then the companies gouge patients anyway. This is a total mismanagement of tax dollars--and not free-market economics, either. The bill was passed in the Reagan administration.
DeletePrivate enterprise and free enterprise are maybe two different things. As others have pointed out, the vaccine development has been a partnership of private enterprise and government investment. That is perhaps the most efficient way of getting vaccines in a hurry. The good thing is that all the eggs aren't in one basket. There are multiple vaccine candidates out there. The Pfizer and Moderna ones are very effective, but have the deep refrigeration limitations. The Johnson and Johnson one which is supposed to be released soon is one dose and more suitable in areas which can't supply the refrigeration. Hopefully we can do our part in helping international aid agencies to get vaccines out to the poorer countries.
DeleteThough the vaccine roll out hasn't been smooth or seamless, I honestly don't know how it could have been different, given the challenges we have been dealing with.
"I'm not sure what you mean by letting the free market deal with all this"
DeleteI am sure there are many possible ways it could work. What I have in mind specifically is the distribution part. By way of context: our local Walgreen's told one of my friends that they are allocated 20 doses per day, so that store has 20 vaccine slots available each day (which, as of 10 days ago, were completely booked through the month of February, and the Walgreens stores in my area no longer are taking reservations for vaccines). I don't know who is doing the allocating, but presumably it is a government bureaucrat - could be state, could be federal, could be at some other level.
In a free-enterprise model, Walgreens would earn a profit on each vaccine they administer (and perhaps they do today - it's not clear to me how all the players are being reimbursed in the existing system). The profit-earning motive would incentivize the store manager to open up additional slots each day. If the local Walgreens store runs out of vaccine, they could reach out to multiple private distributors, seeking the best supply at the best price. Maybe Walgreens as a corporation could get creative, renting unused retail space (of which there are square miles' worth in this local area) and opening separate vaccination clinics, hiring qualified employees to administer the shots, and subsidizing the training of other employees to get them qualified.
Of course, what I'm describing presupposes adequate supply of vaccines. We're not there yet, but we should be there relatively quickly - I know a lot of people are hoping that the approval of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine will be a game-changer. But ... the federal government also has ordered something like 200 million additional doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. I think that new order, on top of what currently has been ordered, would be enough doses to get all American adults vaccinated. But why artificially limit the market to two brands? Why not approve five brands, or 20, and let the retail medical marketplace figure out which ones make the most sense to people.
It's true that selling rather than giving away the vaccine would price some people out of the market. The government would have to subsidize these folks, just as it does today for health care.
"The prime investor in vaccine development is the US citizenry through government funding. Vaccines developed with government investment should be open source. This would allow full global manufacturing potential to be unleashed and it would become more cheaply available to poor countries. "
DeleteI've read somewhere that there are logistical hurdles to cranking up manufacturing: these vaccines require extremely specialized equipment and processes which were created specifically for these products, and which are difficult to scale up. Third party manufacturers can't just throw a switch and start manufacturing; their facilities would have to be retooled first, which can take months (and costs a lot of money).
"But why artificially limit the market to two brands? Why not approve five brands, or 20, and let the retail medical marketplace figure out which ones make the most sense to people?" It's my understanding that the approval is based on safety and effectiveness, and each country decides that for themselves. I think we'll gradually see more options, and as time goes on there will be more choice for individuals.
DeleteLast week on Wednesday I receive a recorded call from the County Health Department telling me that I should expect an e-mail soon with a link that will enable me to register at a time and place for the vaccine.
ReplyDeleteI had submitted my request for the vaccine identifying myself as being in the over 75 category on January 19th.
The Health Department receives its allocation on Monday so I might still get an e-mail to register this week. Otherwise it will be over a month between signing up and getting the shot.
Ohio like most everyone else has prioritized health care workers and congregate living facilities as its top priority (1a) and then the elderly as its (1b) category being with those over 80, then over 75, then over 70, then over 65. There is a separate category for people with mostly genetically based long term problems. You could check this when you applied for age. I don't know how they factor the two together.
Now the state has added in teachers and school personnel to meet the governor's goal at getting kids back to school. I don't know how these people get factored in the age pool. I suspect they are separate and get administered by the schools.
Then the local pharmacies are getting their supplies which are administered separate and uncoordinated from the health department, though I think they have to prioritize by age. I am sticking with the health department because I suspect theirs will be a safer environment.
This will be the second time I have missed Ash Wednesday services due to COVID. I have always had a special affinity for that observance, so I am sorry to have it fall by the way yet again.
ReplyDeleteBTW are all of you in the deep freeze this week? We've been having rolling power blackouts, and they're asking everyone to turn their thermostats down 3 degrees. So far not too bad with dressing warmly. My heat-seeking cat is very friendly with human body heat right now.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWe haven't had the rolling blackouts. But on Valentine's Day the high was 6 degrees. Today it made it up to 17 - a heat wave. But we got socked with more snow last night, so spent the early morning getting us dug out.
DeleteMy coworkers in Texas are dealing with the rolling blackouts. They say one of the issues is reliance on wind power - which in the normal course of things seems like a good thing. When it gets this cold, though, there is something about the mechanics of the windmills which breaks down. Heard somewhere that there is a way to heat them up so they can keep turning, but that actually consumes more power than they generate when it gets really cold.
I'm sure Jimmy M joins me in sending condolences to our friends in the midwest. ;)
ReplyDeleteLOL! Yes, it's barely been above zero for a week here. The morning was -23° F.
DeleteHere in the Poconos, we're getting a few inches here and there every week maintaining a good thickness snow cover. Relatively cold because of the Artic blast but nowhere near as cold as it used to be. The way I look at it, can't go out much due to COVID anyway. I'm OK.
ReplyDeleteBeing in the mountains during snow times is so much nicer than being in cities and suburbs. Especially because of being retired! You can sit inside, maybe near a nice fire, and look out the windows at the beautiful scenery, clean snow, and just wait for it to clear. I lived in the Calif mountains from age 10 to college - we got some beautiful snowfalls, but school was closed and nobody really had to be anywhere. The temps seldom got lower than mid-20s, the air was dry, and if the sun was out, and no wind, you could be outside without coats. Pull out the sleds and have a fun snow day. There is a lot of snow in my hometown right now- it's only a 2 hour drive from our son's home in LA, but I really have no desire to go see the snow while we are here. Every morning I make some coffee and go out to the back yard and sit in the sun while I drink it and read the news. It's been delightful!
DeleteMakes me look forward to summer!
DeleteFurnace died yesterday. Heating guys Travis and Cody condemned it when they came out to do an inspection we put off for too long. They brought out a couple of space heaters to hold us over. Them they rearranged all their other jobs to get to ours quick.
ReplyDeleteOvernight we got 10 inches of snow and temps fell to -5. Cody's mom called this morning to see if our street and driveway were able to clear. I said yes. She said, "OK, dear, I'll send 'em right over."
So Cody and Travis are banging away in the Michigan basement, having shoveled snow to make a path around the house to install some sort of new intake vent system. I sent Raber out to get them some folding money in appreciation for their coming out in this mess. He also gave them the last of the Swiss Miss, which they took to their van to wash down the gas station pizza they bought for lunch.
I hear occasional muttered curses and a lot of grinding and banging coming from under the floor. Nothing that needs to be fixed in this house is ever straightforward. I ask myself why we bought this house 30 years ago. Oh, right: Because we were young and we could transform this fixer-upper into anything we wanted. Hahahaha! We also thought we would have a better shot with adoption agency as responsible homeowners. Then SURPRISE! The Boy showed up.
So now I am in the bedroom tucked up with a hot water bottle and two of the cats, one under the covers, one on top. I am wearing a mask to keep my face warm. The digital thermometer reads 49, so considerably warmer than outside.
The cats and I say prayers for people who must rely on space heaters all the time because they are destitute. We are saying prayers for people who don't have a home. We are counting our blessings and thinking how much worse off we could be.
Travis and Cody say they should be done in a couple hours, and then they will walk off with my check for several thousand dollars which was to have been our Last Honeymoon to Montreal. Ah, well. It's not like we never got to go at all.
I wonder how much of that check will be theirs. They had to learn HVAC skills somewhere and are skilled and competent workers doing something that is beyond my comprehension and never think about until it breaks.
Cody and Travis are rummaging around for some odd-sized socket to fit yet some other sombitch in the cellar that doesn't quite fit.
Maybe I should have told Raber to get bigger tips.
Sorry about the furnace, Jean! Same thing happened to us a few years back, that unit was only 18 years old. The furnace in my dad's house lasted 40 years, they don't make them like that any more.
DeleteSure makes one appreciate the HVAC people, not to mention plumbers and electricians.
This one was about 30, so we got our money's worth
Deleteand this should be the last one we ever have to get. We had planned on replacing it in spring when they put in the central air. We used to laugh at the idea that anyone in Michigan needed a/c. Not anymore.
Travis is doing the new thermostat now. It's digital! He's telling Raber he's setting it to "manual," not "program," thank God. Raber still can't figure out how to use his new phone.
Jean, at least the new furnace should be considerably more efficient than the old one. A few years ago we replaced one that was 50% efficient (somewhere between 20-25 years old) with one that was 99% efficient. It used to take about 45 minutes to heat up the house when it was cold. When the new furnace first was installed, it took about five minutes. I expect it has lost a bit of efficiency now, but it still does it quickly.
DeleteWe bought a high-efficiency last time, which cut our bill in half. I don't expect it to be quite that dramatic this time, but we do get a rebate from the power company. Temp now at our normal setting of 63 and feels like a day at the beach after the last 36 hours!
DeleteJean, also hope that you have gas appliances and a big, big pot of soup on the stove in case your electricity goes off.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is, even gas kitchen ranges and furnaces now have electronic ignition, so you are still screwed if the electricity goes out. The old style pilot lights were a pain, but they were an advantage in a power outage.
DeleteI read about some people getting carbon monoxide poisoning because they brough their outside grill in to try and get some heat, so that's not a good idea either.
For some reason, they don't do gas stoves and ovens out here in the burbs. They were ubiquitous when we lived in the city.
DeleteThe snow was way too light to cause power outages here. We only get an outage with heavy wet snow. We use the two burner camp stove on the screen porch for outages. I was more worried the pipes would freeze, so we kept one of the heaters trained under the sink, and we were fine.
DeleteThe snow didn't cause the outages here. The extremely low temperatures did. The cold spiked the demand enough to exceed the available supply, not to mention freezing up generating equipment.
DeleteGannon university had a nice idea.
ReplyDeleteThey sprinkled ashes on the students heads, but also gave them a little white round sticker with a cross in the center something like those that they give out on election day to identify those who have done their civic duty.