Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Yup. Tell your doc you want MMR titers done and a new MMR if needed. If you need a white lie, tell him that you're around infant grandchildren or something, although that may get you a pertussis booster too, lol. The MMR/Covid thing is unproven and he may not go for it based on that reasoning, thus the white lie.

Warning: Dr. may tell you titers are not needed, just a shingles shot. At that point you probably should come clean about why you want it. That gets into how the insurance coding gets done. If nothing else you can likely get the MMR if you pay for it out of pocket. It might be worth a call to your local health department. They'll generally do immunizations cheaper than almost anywhere else.

 

My doctor did an MMR titer test last year as part of my physical (I’m 51). My level came back very low, so she had me get a booster. Her office didn’t stock it, but I got one at CVS Minute Clinic.

 

I traveled to the Middle East last year, and wasn't sure about my MMR status because of when my birthday is. I could have gotten a live specimen vaccine so I could have just not had enough protection. Rather than seeing my doctor and getting my levels checked, I just got the booster. My insurance paid for it. Done.

 

It depends on how your insurance coverage is written as well as how the doctor expresses the visit in his diagnosis code. If you ask for this lab while doing a check up visit and he files it under a check up code, I can all but guarantee you that you get billed. I have seen routine immunizations for children that their insurance did not cover, as well as people who had titers done who received a bill from the lab. We always dreaded phone calls from patients that began with "I got this bill..." because that meant having to deal with an insurance company. That was one of the worst parts of the job. Giant pain the the ass.

 

LA County doing three more months of shelter in place.
L.A. County 'with all certainty' will keep stay-at-home orders in place through July

Not sure why we continue to bury the lede in LA county. The OVERWHELMING number of people dying are elderly people, in nursing homes. In Long Beach, like 90% of the deaths are people in facilities.

Hospitals haven't been over run.

Keeping dentists office closed isn't going to make that a difference.

 

I'm not with you
STAY THE FUCK HOME people. In my state, and in my 10 million person county, the deaths aren't being caused because people didn't STAY THE FUCK HOME. They are at the nursing homes and prisons, and elderly with underlying conditions who should definitely STAY THE FUCK HOME.

No hospitals got overrun in LA County. We have learned a lot in the last seven weeks. We all wash our hands. I will wear my mask in the stores. I wiped off my car when I got the oil changed. I am not going to any concerts.

But not letting dentists or tailors open for business until at least July. That is fucking cruel.

 

I think Gov. Trumpflufer in Georgia is getting away with some interesting book-cooking. The screen-grabbed image below seems to show a massive decline in new cases since the relaxation of restrictions. So I went to the CovidTracking project and looked at their numbers, which are from the same state health department that produced the image. Same source.
Here are the 7-day averages in new cases between CovidTracking and the numbers in the screen grab:





I'm wondering if the timeline in the image is based on date of test administration rather than date of receipt of results. That's highly deceptive if you don't go back and retroactively add the positive cases to the date of test administration.

 

I have two anti-COVID plusses in my favor: I have O-positive blood and I've been inoculated four times in my life with MMR vaccines. Twice for service-related reasons, once at birth and once because a private school I attended refused to release my shot records.

That's why I suspect I had it in early March already and am home free. I just need a serology test to spike the football.

 

I think in most of the opening states, dentists are the least of concerns. You might get a full set of teeth if you get 32 persons in a room.

 

It's a chicken and the egg kind of thing: Did the Shelter in Place prevent hospitals getting overwhelmed or does hospitals not getting overwhelmed mean we should stop the SIP?

California shutdown relatively early compared to the rest of the US and that was combined with other measures coming online to limit crowds before that. The worry is the OC-LA-Inland Empire megaplex and the San Francisco Bay Area are so densely populated we could see cases explode if relaxed too soon. Don't mean to be throwing too many metaphors out there, but just because the Santa Ana winds aren't whipping, doesn't mean it's a good idea to have a camp fire in August.

And by the way, your Long Beach stat is wildly misleading. Long Beach accounts for 3 percent of the total cases in LA County. More than 1,500 people have died in LA County. Just 44 of those are from Long Beach. And 75 percent of the LA County cases are younger than 66. Of the more than 1,500 people who died, 33 were over the age of 65.