Updates: Anal Swabs, Florida, Anti-vax Protest, AZ Vaccine Eligibility

Here are updates on some recent Corona-zona posts.

Anal Swabs

After being scooped by Corona-zona on Chinese anal swab tests for SARS-CoV-2, Stephen Colbert did a bit on them during his monologue last Thursday (that part starts around minute 6:00). He makes some very funny jokes (if you enjoy scatological humor, which I do). 

But in an additional tidbit, he reported that that U.S. officials in China told the State Department that they had been so tested.  The Chinese are denying it, naturally. But, come on, don't you think the U.S. officials would know if they had been anally probed by some Chinese dude? 

DeSantis Has No Plan and Is Proud of It

In mid-February I had a post about Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis whining that he didn't get enough credit for his state's recent pandemic performance. I showed that Florida only looks good if you cherry-pick recent numbers, and that overall its performance has been terrible.

Last week Salon.com ran story pointing out that Florida has no vaccination plan, that it is the only such state, and DeSantis is proud of it. "If you notice, a lot of [states] adopted plans, and then they've already had to change the plans. We haven't done that," he is quoted as saying in the article.

Well exactly! The only plans that work are plans that never change. Plans also make it hard to distribute perks to your cronies. It's so much better to just make stuff up as you go along. 

Second Dodger Stadium Protest Happened, After All

In a previous update, I noted that a follow-up protest by asshat anti-vaxxers at Dodger Stadium in LA did not happen on the weekend it was originally predicted. I rejected the idea that this was because the organizers had come to their senses. 

I was right. They held their second protest on Saturday. Only this time they were met by counter-protestors and the vaccination site continued to operate normally. 

ADHS Has a New Vaccine Eligibility Tracker

I have written a lot of criticism about the ADHS website for scheduling vaccinations and its myriad problems. I also questioned why states should have to write their own applications to do this job (answer: Trump administration bungling).

Now ADHS has added an eligibility checker you can use to determine if you're in the current priority group where you live. I guess this was needed because different counties are in different stages of distribution.  It's nice as far as it goes, but an availability tracker would be a lot more useful.

Also I have heard that ADHS made some improvements to the scheduling system. I have not checked on this because doing so would require me going into the system.  I don't want to muck around in there consuming (apparently) limited compute resources when I don't really need an appointment. But I hope for the sake of my fellow Arizonans that it's less terrible than it was.

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