A Honduran COVID Update...this one surprised even myself. This one is very personal experience and may ramble for a bit. If you care but for plain numbers, those will be at the end. That being said, I believe sharing my experience may bring a new point of view or at least a chuckle.
The concept of a vaccine-a-thon is nothing new and certainly not invented in Honduras. I believe Peru was the one who came up with it in the region. The idea is that, instead of just opening vaccine centers and hope people show up, you make it into an event. And so it was that this past week the government announced a vaccine-a-thon in my city. where previously only people under the age of 50 unless they were journalists, of worked in transport could have access to it. This time it was anyone over the age of 35 that could go to one of five designated (and huuuge) centers. The largest one was on the national university, where a literal stadium was repurposed for both foot traffic and drive-through service.
The flip side of such an event is quite simple and obvious at first glance, it is literally a gigantic gathering, which means an enormous risk of infection. However, it seems the state deemed it an acceptable risk if it meant the inoculation of many people.
Below are some images so you can gauge the success of the initiative
Huge turnout for vaccines, despite sensationalist bullshit and extremely irritating whatsapp messages about vaccines doing whatever. By the afternoon of Saturday, the age was lowered to 30 and over. I kept watching it. Confirming that the people I give a shit about were going there. Sunday afternoon. I get a message. The age has been lowered to 28 and over. That was all the confirmation I needed. I grabbed my car, my sister (25) and her boyfriend (28) and we set off to the aforementioned location.
That queue you see in that Twitter video was the one we had to make and it was roughly that length when we arrived. I expected the usual fare of people cutting in line, shouting, rushing gates, you know, the sort of thing that makes me laugh wholeheartedly whenever someone gets shocked at first-world protests, but what I got instead was a perfectly ordered, normal, respectful three hour queue. everyone was behaving in accordance to the rules, respecting police officers and their instructions, and proceeding in an orderly fashion to get their vaccine.
It was uncanny. Very bizarre. I must admit I was taken aback by it. If my surprise seems exaggerated to you, you clearly haven't seen some of the links I have posted.
Because I was in a queue, I even had time to ponder just exactly how could it be possible. The fatalist in me said that it was because anyone getting a vaccine has at least a couple of brain cells to rub together and therefore may be more aware of rules and common courtesy. This feeds into the flip side negative stereotype of course, and it is one that I do not care to reinforce. Then the realist in me said that it was probably because all entries into the building were heavily guarded with multiples of uniformed policemen and presumably a couple of plainclothes, but that never stopped these things either. I decided to turn my attention to the melodious sounds of Chrissy Amphlett and basking in the
ordrung rather than try to piece out why It was there. inside the stadium itself, we noted there was a stage with live music, concessions, karaoke (which was awful). All part of making it an event I guess.
There was no sign of the queue getting any shorter we made it to the actual vaccination section (with, again, nary an incident on record). It was very nice. eight stations socially distanced with each of them taking care of two rows of cars derived from the main queue. Now came the hardest part for me, because I am rather a wuss when it comes to needles. Not that I needed to be this time. The woman who administered our shots must've had it down by a science when we showed up because nobody in the vehicle could feel a thing. We asked the staff if the vaccine aged had reduced once again. They asked my sisters age and, even though she answered truthfully, she got a vaccine as well. In as much as I can gather. The age had not been lowered to 25 and there hasn't been any piece of news or communication that said so. I can't complain, all of us got nice shots of Moderna, a vaccine card, and a nice little pamphlet elaborating on it and the side effects (soreness of the area, fatigue, etc.)
The staff was definitely feeling the strain though. There were some errors on the vaccine card that we were given. My card, for instance, has sis BF's phone number, which is just as well since he has my address on his. We're to receive a second dose on august the 28th according to it. As we drove away, we noted there was indeed a huge and not-socially distanced gathering outside the stadium. We didn't stick around if they were waiting for their turn. 10/10, would get vaccinated again.
So? did it work? Well, on a city of roughly 1.5 million people, the goal was to get 50,000 of the over 30s across five locations in two days of vaccination from 0700 to 2200. Seems a bit low. And it was, in the end 121,209 people ages 28
*wink* and up received a dose. This are government statistics so apply correcting factors as you see fit. even with my most cynical rounding I'm still looking at 100k+.
And the news just keeps getting better:
We're back to the nice, non-government charts. For the Spanish impaired, this shows that we have recieved a total of 4.5M vaccines and administered 2.1M of those. those are divided in 1.8M people who have received a single dose, and 296k with two doses. For those keeping track, this means that, as of August the second, we have administered 1,127,917 more doses. Or, to put it in marketing, more than doubled the people vaccinated.
Below a visualization of this in lovely graph form:
What this also means is that 25% of the population is now vaccinated (44% on my department/state/province, I am guessing higher in my city). Statistically speaking it means that if we continue at the current (unsustainable) rate. the entire population will have received a single dose in three and a half months, and two in six and a half). Honduras seems to be doing a great job at vaccines...and that is just as surprising as orderly queues.
This weekend, the vaccine-a-thon is going on tour. 65 locations across the country. We are desperately trying to burn through our vaccine stockpile, and I love it.
tl:dr: Vaccine good. No vaccine bad. I hate the new nanotech version of Windows 11 but I like the newest version of Minecraft...I wonder if melinda will keep my chip in the divorce.
www.npr.org
wgntv.com
www.kmov.com
www.theguardian.com
ourworldindata.org
