Not necessarily, although that is certainly possible. In the case of Texas, they have shown a desire to move through vaccination groups quickly-one gets priority in one’s group for a very limited time, so one should move quickly, or be merged into the next group. Health professionals were prioritized from December 14, the first day of vaccination availability, to December 28th, then vaccinations opened up to more groups. Health professionals still could get shots after December 28th, but faced more competition in obtaining them, I suppose.
I know there are dedicated vaccination teams for the elderly, including the national guard, and dedicated centers for those over 65 or homebound. I don’t know the level of vaccination by age. I suppose vaccinating everyone does provide some level of protection for the elderly as well, indirectly.
I think Texas was eager to use every shot it received as the highest priority, and did not delay giving doses or save shots for certain groups (other than nursing home residents, who were done first )
My high schooler only knows one person his age vaccinated because the kid works in a restaurant and is considered a front line worker. But my other kids know a lot and one of them has already been vaccinated in Texas. She went on a waitlist and her name came up. A bunch of her friends there have also but for a variety of reasons - volunteering at a hospital, part of a class/major you’re eligible, health issues (they’ve been vaxxing anyone over 16 with health issues since January), etc. My other daughter in NY has a ton of friends also vaccinated due to health issues, if they do research, tutor, jobs they have, etc. And then their friends at UIUC who have been able to get it for the reasons mentioned before. Crazy.
Here my son can get it if he volunteers at a vaccine site but the shifts are pretty long but I may send my husband to sign up to volunteer if he can handle being on his feet for that long. You get the vaccine during your first shift.
I do know a lot of kids who are now eligible or have already been vaccinated, but I think I know more kids taking a gap year or LOA than most, so they are working or volunteering instead of going to college right now. Restaurant workers, DoorDash drivers, workers in medical offices, soup kitchen/food pantry volunteers, camp counselors for the summer, lifeguards, all eligible in NY.
@homerdog — On Friday, a DSHS official stated that only 46% of Texans age 65 and older have received at least one shot. While it may be that some are not wanting the vaccine, I personally know a lot of Group 1b Texans that are 65 or older who are actively trying to get vaccinated and who have not been successful yet.
Also, re: 18-20 year olds who have been vaccinated, they only ones I know are the ones at Rice University that a poster here described, health care workers, and those with significant health issues that qualified them for group 1b. Some will also now qualify because they are child care workers (I forgot to add in my earlier lengthy post, last week Texas opened vaccinations to all K-12 teachers and child care workers). Texas has not announced yet what group 1c will look like. DSHS said they will likely announce who will be in that group by the end of the month. I am a little confused on how the counties that have opened it up to everyone 18 and above are allowed to do that since statewide we are still under 1b rollout, but as I said earlier, I was only able to find evidence of 2 Texas Counties that have done that. @roycroftmom —Have you seen more than two?
Thx for clarifying - when you said “all” her friends, I thought maybe somehow they had already started vaccinating all college students there, not just those who may have qualified under an earlier/current phase.
Texas is ranked only number 36 among states on the percentage of distributed vaccines that have been administered.
Her friends all have some type of on-campus job, even if only for a few hours a week. With NC opening to all students in congregate living on March 24, I think most of the campus will be vaccinated soon.
My daughter goes to UT and tons of kids there, including her have been vaccinated. Before she even returned to school in January, they were already vaccinating people over 18 with health conditions. There was a lot of vaccine hesitancy there especially with medical personnel, so they opened up to other groups fairly quickly. I’m not sure if that area now has less hesitancy but she put herself on a waitlist and her name came up and she ran and got the vaccine. She’s already had her dose 2. She has friends who volunteer at area hospitals and on day 1 were vaccinated, also way before her. Friends in certain courses were also offered the vaccine based on their major. If you volunteer at one of the vaccination sites you also can get it. I’m so thankful she has been able to get it since it is a total sh*t show down there in general with the joke of testing and lack of tracing they’re doing. Not to mention the parties these kids go to and don’t want to wear masks. Covid spread through where she is living and fortunately she dodged that bullet and hopefully she is vaccinated and now safe from getting it.
Texas is going to rank poorly for quite a while in vaccine administration, @1NJparent-that winter storm and subsequent power loss completely closed everything down here, all shots were stopped, and some unfortunate people still don’t have potable water. At least a week, and more likely 2-3 weeks of shots, were postponed/cancelled. It will take a long time to catch up.
My D is considered a manufacturing worker and should be eligible in 1B but she’s working in OH which is solely going by age so her best bet is hopefully to get a single dose JNJ when she’s home in May. I’m hoping by then it will be easier for her to get vaccinated. (Hope springs eternal).
I have a friend whose 18 year old was vaccinated last week because there was an oversupply of vaccines at his doctor’s office (TX). The only other 18-25 years old I know who have been vaccinated are either in health care or teachers.
Yeah, I didn’t realize that campus jobs would qualify a lot of college students. After I posted that query to you last night, I was talking to my daughter, a college senior, who just got her first dose on Friday. She just became eligible in San Diego County last week b/c she works in the “food and agriculture” industry at a bakery. She told me that a few of her friends who have campus jobs were able to get vaccinated. I should find out of my son qualifies - he works with his college advisor in the classroom with freshmen students.
At the rate all these groups are being added to current eligible phases, my four kids will all be vaccinated before me and my husband! Not necessarily a bad thing though as they all have WOH jobs, school, etc whereas dh and I have the capability of staying home.
Back to the subject of school rather than vaccine roll-outs, I expect colleges where vaccines were available to students this spring would revert quickly to a more normal campus experience
My s20 is a Bama. like all other freshmen, its been a strange year, but he’s liked it for the most part. All of his classes have been online, yet he’s in the dorms.
Bama for sure had high rates of covid amongst its students in the fall. This early spring, the campus has started opening up. Small groups can get together outside, there’s date parties, clubs, etc; masks required. Between dorms and greek housing , there’s at least 10K+ on campus; the school has 33K+ students. . . . and last week’s CV dashboard showed 16 students who tested positive.
i’ve been trying to figure out why so few, when some smaller schools who have been much more stringent with precautions are now having spikes. Herd immunity at this point at Bama? They are being more responsible? Why are others having spikes? Sometimes i just think this virus is stronger than us all 
Anyway, seeing that number drop to 16 with all the congregant living there was a very hopeful sign to me.
How often is Bama doing screening tests? They won’t find what they’re not looking for.
How often are they testing? Are they testing everyone at least weekly? Otherwise they are catching all of the cases.
It appears U of Alabama conducts randomized testing of over 1500 per week. I would expect that should catch any significant outbreak, though not every case, obviously.
Bama does require testing for those on campus; not weekly though. So you are right, there are probably cases that are not being caught. but, that enormous drop in percentages is good, right?
Moving through the priority groups quickly suggests one or more of the following:
- Earlier priority groups were small.
- Earlier priority groups had significant levels of vaccine refusal.
- Earlier priority groups had many people unable to get vaccine due to shortage, but the state move on and left them behind.
- The state got a larger vaccine supply relative to population and administered it quickly to earlier priority groups.
If it’s a well-designed surveillance test, the positivity rate is representative of the surrounding community. It’s not necessary to test everyone or catch every case. The purpose is to understand the underlying epidemiology, not stamp out Covid. That would be impossible.
Based on the thousands of cases that Bama had early on in the fall and the assumption there were probably thousands of asymptomatic undiagnosed cases, it is very likely there is herd immunity at Alabama.
I keep hearing about people who are randomly being tested for antibodies and finding out they had covid but had no idea they had it or where they got it from. These are adults, not kids. My daughter at UT went and got tested fairly regularly on her own first semester because so many people in her sorority were positive. I just couldn’t understand how she didn’t have it when it seemed that every time she was near someone that person later tested positive but she was always negative. She had an antibody test before she came home for Thanksgiving just to check and it was 0.0. I think she even expected it to show she had some antibodies but I was thrilled. Now she’s vaccinated and I feel even better. Cases there are much lower this semester and we’re pretty sure it’s the same thing, some herd immunity. As someone else said, you can find what you don’t test and UT is not doing a great job testing, but even so cases are lower based on who is testing.