$10k fine and community service for 1 year.

Haven't seen that -- is that federal?

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Shitty thing to do.

My wife is an ICU nurse and watched and got increasingly pissed at people she knows posting on FB about how they had managed to get their vaccinations before she'd even gotten her first one. She's good now, she has both her shots, but after the year of hell her and her co-workers have gone through I can understand why they viewed it as a slap in the face from "friends".

Aside from the shittiness of jumping the queue, it's probably not the best idea to lie about having a medical condition, or being a smoker, when it creates an electronic record of that somewhere. Specifically, when it comes to health/life insurance applications or renewals.

Not Hitler.

More on par with Chris Christie sitting on a deserted beach or Gavin Newsome going to dinner in a restaurant.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Or Ted Cruz abandoning his state during a snowstorm of epic proportions to fly to Cancun with the family.

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''The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t.''

—Lars-Erik Nelson

Pretty much scum, but I might given them slack depending on the specifics. Like if they work in the back room of a grocery store and all the people who stock shelves have gotten the vaccine isn't as bad as the people who dressed up as old ladies.

I know a teach who got her vaccine and then quit when they told her to go back to in-person teaching. If she knew she was going to quit, I think getting the vaccine showed poor moral choice making.

I would support the $10k fine and 1 year community for those who blatantly lie.

... or being a spin instructor and calling yourself a teacher.

Scum.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

If I skip to the front of the line, somebody gets booted of the end of the line. If that person is more vulnerable than me, it's possible I could cause their death without ever knowing it. I'll let the experts decide the order in which we get vaccinated.

You'd be a bit of a twat

I am 55 and take care of a nursing home, inpatients in local hospital and have been seeing everyone who needs to be seen since this thing started. With proper PPE procedures etc. I am in Canada where we have a shortage of vaccine by the way. I get my first shot tomorrow. If somebody like you got in line in front of me and I got covid because I wasn't vaccinated and then I passed it on to someone and killed them I reserve the right to kick you in the nuts.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Pretty sucky, but there are a lot of gray areas. As an instructor and church worker, I could arguably move up the queue in a little while, but we are committing to remote teaching and worship for the next few months, and mask carefully for leading worship, and music-making. Others need it more than me.

Not harmless. We're short shots right now - budging the line means someone who is more at risk, remains at risk for longer.

It also means you're willing to be selfish when serious health problems are the consequence. That's not who you want to be if you're a decent person, so in a way there's self-harm to budging the line, even though it might protect you from the physical harm of developing COVID.

We can have debates over how to define what "the line for shots" should look like. Personally I think we should probably be trying to get more shots into more arms faster, even if equity of distribution suffers a bit as a result. But as long as there is "a line", don't budge it.

What are your thoughts on lying and cheating? Do you do that regularly? If not, why not? What stops you from doing it?

I am interested to see where I've fallen in the UK strategy.

I've been called before friends in their 50's and 60's.

I have had serious issues in the past. The GP has made a determination that's where I sit in the national guidelines.

I can't get it for a month or so, so I'm not losing sleep, having had the invite, I can go when I get back and will have it in about 5 weeks.

Others who definitely need it more can get it. But I wont feel guilty in 5 weeks getting it

It is not a close call ethically. It is wrong to jump ahead of people who — per the experts — are more vulnerable than you. It is one thing to take advantage of an ambiguity — though it is still wrong— but quite another to just blatantly lie.

Hoping that you asked this as merely an academic question, rather than something having personal relevance.

However, were the latter to be the case (which is to say, there is at least something personal about your inquiry), one would sure hope that the bar association(s) to which you belong (you indicated in your profile that you are an attorney, presumably a barred one) would at least suspend your membership.

A person should feel bad about being a sleaze, regardless of the context.


That said, it is really really hard to have faith in the efficiency and responsibility of the US health care system.

Dealing with a rotten system often encourages rotten behavior.

Some of the bullsh#t I know about:
1) Government bureaucrats, with little human contact, are getting preferential treatment.
2) Health care bureaucrats are getting preferential treatments
3) Politically powerful regions of the state are getting preferential treatment. (In AZ - Phoenix metro is getting all the vaccines and the Mexican and Native American communities are getting the shaft- and those communities have the highest rates!!).
4) Many elderly people are not getting their shots- because they cannot navigate the bureaucracy.
5) Vaccine supplies thus exceed demand.
6) This means that friends and relatives of government and hospital Bureacrats are jumping the line.

It is tempting to be a sleaze when all this BS is going on.

Pretty scummy but also it will not result in you getting a shot that much faster.

Depending on the state most "front line workers" are getting vaccinated from their job. The few that are not are pretty far down the list. There is a flood of doses coming on line very soon. As Fauci said recently currently there are people chasing needles but soon it will be needles chasing people. You might speed up your shot by a few weeks, maybe a month.

I jumped the line , my wife was getting her shot last month and they ask me if I wanted one because people didn’t show up and they had to use it up

*** you can check with several vaccine locations towards the end of the day they may have doses left over.

j

That’s not even remotely close to lying about yourself in order to skip ahead. No reason at all to waste a shot.

Purely academic, but when asked for my opinion previously, that is the main thing that I was unwilling to compromise. I worked my ass off to get that little bar card and 6 digits. I'm going to protect it.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

I'm with you word-for-word there. There's a lot of us who understand what your wife has gone through at work and felt from social media.

My wife had the same experience. She had to drive to the other hospital during work hours to get her shot, but I think you know how easy it is for an nurse to take off for 90 minutes during a shift. Let alone 9 minutes in the ICU. I work in administration for a medical school and we were all lumped into the first group because having a clinic put us all into 'healthcare operations.' Obviously there's no reason for us to jump the line, especially when older adults, K-12 teachers, etc. were still waiting. I was not happy when nearly our entire IT group (mostly remote) slipped up and talked about going in for their second shot. My wife hadn't even had her first shot. However, I think she was less worried since she caught covid at work months before and had some immunity already.

It's what I would like for violators, sorry if I was not clear. I'd actually like to do worse, because I think they are shitty people.

That seems like full on Russian style corruption to me:

1) The system is broken. The doses are not getting to their intended patients.
2) The healthcare bureaucrats don't try to fix the problem.
3) Instead they give the vaccines to friends and family of well connected people.

That is totally f#cked up.

But it is very hard to be ethical when dealing with idiot bureaucracy.

Your one anecdote does not mean that is what is happening across the country. Many areas are doing a very solid job of distributing the vaccine in an equitable manner. Is it perfect, no. But from what I have seen from the inside, there is a lot of thought and hard work into the order of who gets the vaccine. Also, I have not seen examples of influential people skipping the line where I am. In fact, we have had multiple examples of influential individuals calling our health system trying to skip the line only to be told no.

ANd lastly, where I am vaccine supply does not exceed demand in any way. If we had more, we would be vaccinating more people. Simple as that.

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Ryan

I wonder why any healthy person is in such a hurry to get a shot when the jury is out in it’s effectiveness on the 3 variants (that we know of) that have popped up in the last few months. Would they still fight to get shots if it turns out you need 4 vaccines (8 shots) and another every time another variant comes along?

People at risk should get one but why the rush if healthy. If you’ve gone a year without getting it, surely you can wait to get a shot until they figure out if it actually is effective.

People who lie to get it ahead of those at risk should go to jail.

Inventing a story and plotting to get the vaccine early is not a nice thing to do.

However, everybody who is vaccinated potentially improves the risk of contagion / infection for those around them ... that’s the herd theory. So, while I don’t agree with lying to get it I can see a positive on each person who is vaccinated.

Where I am it’s being done by appointment and every day I have heard that there are no shows and some of the doses can’t be used the next day. I don’t know or understand the reasons. Truthfully I can’t even totally verify the accuracy of this rumor. But the rumor is that if you show up at the end of the day if there were no shows you might get a shot just so the vaccine dose doesn’t go unused. I have no moral issue with any person in that spot.

Honestly, I don’t much worry about how others are getting the shots. I’m toward the back of the line and I’m just patiently waiting my turn.

Deserving of a kick in the nuts.

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Suffer Well.

I have not had the shot and my wife has had both. She is a health care worker in a recovery unit and has been in direct contact as well as catching and recovering last fall.

For me I'm low risk as I see it but I am a coach for a youth shooting team. Technically I'm a teacher of sorts if I really wanted to work the system. The reality is I work from home, I'm only coaching 2-3 hours per week on Sundays, limit my outings and wear a mask when I am out. When coaching we don't wear masks but we are outside and distanced.

I have no desire to get the shot until my time is called according to the state protocol. Someone else probably needs it more than me and I don't have an issue waiting. People need to have a conscience and realize how their actions may impact others. Then it's a pretty easy decision. It's always amazing to me how self centered people are today with no regard to how their actions impact others. Something as simple as the idiot that parks their cart in the middle of the isle at the grocer store vs picking a side to let others by. If you think about it there are literally hundreds of examples where people only consider themselves.

To reduce the likelihood that I give it to someone less healthy, or to someone that gives it to someone less healthy...and on and on.

I am not sure that's the case at all.

My primary care practice received an extra 1750 doses due to a logistics error the first weekend it was distributed in the UK.

They'd already booked the first 1750 I'm advance. They couldn't return the doses and couldn't hand them off to another practice.

They started calling people non stop once they realised it was use them or bin them and brought in another 1700-ish people.

Every single day there are DNA - did not attends in clinics. Theatres, imaging labs and if you've 10 doses left, it's better to give it to X than have called a person and over booked a vax clinic and not be able to give them one because too many showed up.

This isn't a massive failure. Throwing doses away would be a failure

Right- the healthcare institutions had to give out the doses to well connected people.

That is always the way corruption works.
"The system is broken. Better me than nobody. Or someone else."


Not a massive problem!!
We have lots of anecdotal evidence in this thread already.

To be clear, I am not arguing that it is wrong to jump the line:
"Because the vaccine distribution system is broken."
Although, I chose to do otherwise.

I am arguing that there will always be lots of seemingly good excuses to jump the line when dealing with an inefficient and unequitable system.

If you want to get a vaccine shot, just hang out at one of the large vaccine centers at the end of the day. They usually have leftovers due to people not showing up.

Clinic has 100 doses. Notices go out and 100 people make appointments for their doses. Come clinic day 98 people show up. 30 minutes after the clinic is closed there are still 2 unused doses sitting there. Those doses need to go into an arm or they are wasted.

What is your fair and equitable solution to making that happen? Bearing in mind that it’s completely unfair to ask the volunteer clinic workers to hang around a protracted period of time beyond what they’ve already volunteered for waiting for someone to be chosen, contacted and physically show up at the clinic.

Yeah but more glancing and medium, not sure hard and square.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I was handed an opportunity to jump the line yesterday afternoon. My company (chemical industry) manufactures active ingredients that go into cleaning/sanitizing products, and we've been deemed essential from the get-go. The staff at our largest manufacturing facility (~1 hr away) are all getting vaccinated Mon/Tues on-site by Walgreens. Apparently, there are going to be a few more doses than there are arms and some of us in R&D were offered the chance to get the shot if we're willing to drive down to the plant. My wife and I signed up online w/ our county to get shots, but I figure we're pretty far down the list (mid-50's and in good health, not frontline workers, etc.). I had intended to just wait til my name was pulled by the county, as I certainly don't consider my job 'essential' and it's fairly easy for us to minimize our exposure. I didn't feel good about jumping the line and asked what would happen to doses if nobody claimed them - would they be offered to another employee? When I was told that no, they'd be wasted instead of passed along (WTF?), I didn't really see the point in saying no.

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

O.k., what does the LR think of this situation (skipping your place in line).

1. Person has type 1 diabetes.
2. State currently has moved type 2 diabetes up in line (Phase 2) stating that they are more susceptible.
3. Study released by John Hopkins says that is BS and the science shows Type 1 at equal or greater risk.
4. Person technically meets their State's BMI metric for Obesity (though they are an avid cyclist and if you saw them you wouldn't consider them obese at all).

What would you think if they use the Obesity metric based upon BMI to get the shot?
a. Shitty because they are skipping the line.
b. Fine, because they are just following the state defined rules.

To be clear, I think the UK system is working, and a fraction of a percentage of doses are potentially wasted. Your choice as the provider in that l situation is give it to A body - usually one within arms reach so a non front line healthcare worker as the others have had it - or waste it.

That's it.

The overwhelming evidence is that its working. Working in Israel, the UK and everywhere sufficient numbers of the most vulnerable have received one to result is a precipitous drop in admissions and deaths.

Overwhelming.......

Our hospital has a emergency back up can be there in 15 minute list that they then rank by category. Google maps says I can be there in 16 so I signed up cause I’m willing to speed a little.

I guess that involves law breaking.

I doubt I’ll make it to the top of the list being in the lowest priority category- but I’m reading a lot of places only have 90% turn out for 2nd doses.

So I think that’s a pretty fair way to do it as long as they advertise well and go down the emergency back up list on the regular priority order. I think they text you and you respond if you can come or they move down the list.

b. It is ok, if that is their state’s rule. It is not the CO rule, but perhaps you were not asking about CO.

BMI is not the same thing as type 2 diabetes. So, even if type 2 diabetes is ahead in line, the big boned BMI cyclist still doesn’t qualify.

Pretending the BMI person also has a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, then I’d follow the states rules. I would assume that the state’s health department are capable of reading and assessing the merits of medical studies (which are sometimes published before they have been vigorously reviewed).

There are lots and lots of marginal calls

Some very clever public health people are determining the order and there are ALWAYS people at the margins.

I think I am a marginal case. I've been called now. My brother will be called in 4-6 weeks. Both in our 40's

Friends in their 60's have not been called. I'm far healthier than them or my in laws BUT unlike all of them I nearly died twice from cardiac and pulmonary issues a decade ago. I have permanent lung damage BUT I am in better health than all of them.

If I could go next Thursday and get it I would. I meet the criteria and whilst I am in better general health than them, we've no idea the consequences if I do get it based on my clinical history.

I also accept that others might feel differently, including my 60 year old friends who are Iver weight and are expecting their call this week or next.

I won't be able to get mine for a month or so, but I would if I could.

If your friend is getting it because they're obese as opposed to the wrong type of diabetes. They can get it right? Why wouldn't they?

One cannot defend lying on the ground that there is a positive for the person who lied. That is the nature of lying — the liar has determined it’s in their self-interest to lie. What matters is that it hurts (more) the more-deserving person whose spot the liar took, and hurts society more generally.

And, it is not just the institutions. I know a fully-retired doctor whose license has not expired and he used that to get one of the early shots when they were vaccinating frontline health care workers. He told me the story like there was no reason to think it was wrong. Plus, FWIW, he already had Covid (not that that’s full protection, but it’s something).

I ended up getting my first shot yesterday here in NJ. I signed up for the state website the first hour of the day it was opened, filled out the form truthfully and waited my turn.

I have no doubt that I ended up in front of other folks who have more pressing issues than I do or older folks who, for whatever reason, have not gotten their shot yet.

I don't feel any guilt whatsoever. I played by the rules given to me, didn't lie, and waited my turn. I think part of the reason I got my shot relatively early on is I was aggressive in signing up on the state website and following the directions given.

I do think many folks are overwhelmed about how to go about that. I didn't chase the vaccine down per se, but I certainly made the most of being media aware and proficient with sometimes confusing forms on computers that many older/struggling folks might not be.

Just admit the truth and show up with a pint in Ben & Jerry's

I think if your lying to get the vaccine, its a pretty crappy thing to do. Creating a story to skip ahead is terrible.

I work remote and am young and healthy, but my employer called me, they (at the time) didn't have approval to give a dose to non-employees and had extra doses, so I could get it if I wanted one. Do I say no? I'd love to pass it to my kids teacher or my in-laws. But that wasn't an option since they didn't have the ok. So now I'm fully vaccinated, feel kind of bad about it, but its the result of our overly complex bureaucracy.

No reason for you to feel guilty. It’s up to the state/county or perhaps the health care provider to decide whether to use a random selection process or first come, first served. The former can be fairer to marginalized people, but that’s their call to make.

No I actually have no idea. It was just mentioned on a call I was on yesterday. I found it interesting. Here in CO Type1 will be in Phase 2, so that wouldn't be a problem.

O.k., maybe I didn't write clearly. Obese people qualify in this persons state for Phase 2, as does Type2 diabetic. This person is Type 1 diabetic, but technically would qualify as obese as per the states definition, but does not look or consider themselves to be obese. So would they be a jackass to get the shot as obese, since they meet the standard?

And no, obviously in this case the state can't read the studies or it came out after they set their standards and they are not going back to change it. I don't know. This was just a conversation I heard on a call yesterday. I found it interesting.

That is not the case here. They have an overflow lottery that you can email your name and phone number in daily. At 4PM when they are winding down, they know who many no-shows they have and how many doses will be available at the end of the day (zero to more than zero). They pull however many names from the daily overflow list and call you and you have to be there within 30 minutes. At 5PM every day, the entire list gets deleted and you email again the next day.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I have no issues with this. Just don't be stupid and brag about it on facebook to all the people who know you.

Just be thankful.

No vaccines should be wasted. Ever.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Science has shown that merging late moves traffic faster. You are helping the guy 1 minute back get through faster by being the dickhead who merges late.

I still won't do it : )

Getting a shot that would otherwise be wasted is filling the empty space. And it benefits everyone. That is something I would do.

Like BLeP said, I just wouldn't brag about it. (BTW, the reason clinics do not simply have on call waiting lists is because they don't work.)

What do you all think of this one?

Here in Arizona, volunteers at the large, 24/7 vaccination site at State Farm Stadium (Arizona Cardinals) are given the opportunity to get the vaccine. They have three eight-hour shifts per day, each requiring 60 to 100 non-clinical volunteers to check people in, direct traffic, and assist with logistics. They also have medically trained volunteers actually giving the shots. I happened to find out about this early on, when volunteering was open to the public, and got the shot early on. Volunteering has since been limited to family members of Blue Cross, who is administering the site. I am 50 years old but no other risk factors. They are offering shots to all volunteers, so maybe 200 to 300 people per day, with the site administering an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 shots per day total. They also allow each of these people to get the second dose when ready, without working a second volunteer shift, but I did another shift anyway, since I found it very rewarding to do so.

Legit to get the shot, or scum of the Earth?

Ha, agree 100%. It would be a total douchebag move.

All UK personnel in frontine roles are offered the shot.

Non issue.

Few of the examples provided compare to the douchebaggery proposed.

People at margins. People who probably should but can't and can't but should becauae there are nuances in prioritisation are not what we're talking about.

Person that started this is a twat, douche, vnut, whatever we want to say.........

Other examples provided fall way short.....

No issues. You volunteered, you get the shot.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Just replying to the last person...

The reason there are end of day doses that cannot be “saved” and need to be used up is that both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines have shelf life when out of ultra cold storage and also out of the vial.

Pfizer also has a shelf life once reconstituted. So, Pfizer has a 120 hour timer once it is out of ultra cold storage. Once the vial (holds six doses) is opened the vial now has a shelf life of 5 hours. So, you usually have between 1-5 doses at the end of the day to use up or you have to throw them out. Any arm is better than the garbage can...

Moderna has ten doses per vial and also has a short shelf life once the vial is opened so you have between 1 and 9 doses to find arms for at the end of the day with Moderna.

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Ryan

Of course it's more than that. It's that per vaccine station and when you have 15-20 stations running in parallel it's many doses.

No. At least at our health system we have a much smarter method of having a single station that opens the vials and makes up the individual syringes for multiple vaccination stations. As the end of the day approaches, they carefully watch their vaccine vials and limit the extra they are making up to match how many patients we have coming in. So we literally have 1-5 end of day doses pretty much every day (we have only had Pfizer so far).

We aren’t rookies at dealing with vaccinations, medicine that has shelf life outside of cold storage, etc...

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Ryan

Man, there are more sick people on this site than I would have expected. I would have expected the majority of the people here to be healthy and ambivalent about getting covid and about getting the vaccine so quickly. I guess this is the Lavender room so maybe everyone here has let themselves go and is unhealthy. :)

I imagine you're trolling, because no rational person could be totally ambivalent about getting Covid. Even if you're low risk or very healthy, there have been very serious cases and deaths within those groups. And even more cases of long haulers, and those with serious heart and lung problems, even among those who had asymptomatic cases.

Moreover, you can infect someone who is high risk.

Getting a shot (2, really) for just one shift is way too generous. At that point, you’re not really a volunteer. Most of us know what it is like to do true volunteer work, where it is a lot of sweat for a little swag. The site operator was hurting the general public by under-valuing the shots.

I don't disagree. I heard of a site in California that also incentivized volunteers with the offer of a shot, but only upon completion of four ten-hour shifts.

The zipper merge is your friend. Go with the science. It's not about merging late. It's filling the empty space. And it benefits everyone.

Was there a consensus on #4 specifically? Looks like the sub-thread combined BMI and Diabetes, vs. BMI alone.

On BMI alone, if your BMI is high because you're healthy-muscular, and you know it, then it's poor form to sign up, b/c your bumping or delaying someone else at greater risk. But I think the guideline-writers just didn't want to get into the high BMI but healthy clarification... and so the onus should be on the individual making the call.

Now, for the plus-size-accept-my-big-body-as-healthy folks, it would be interesting if any of those folks claim their plus-sizes mean they're compromised and thus queue up for the shots.

On the zipper merge: it causes road rage and other problems that a civil engineering study could not model. I *think.

This. Ajthomas, Change your mindset. It's not a late merge. By not zipper merging you are actually "early merging" and fucking it up for the rest of us. Merge at the correct time so we all get where we are going faster.

I don't think it is that clear cut. There is correlation with BMI and severity of disease. I don't think there is enough research to know if healthy large muscled people are at less risk than less healthy well insulated people. It could be that mass is mass and that all drives the demands on the cardiac system which leads to disease severity.

By definition, there is always a spot to zipper merge. It's always right behind the guy in the lane next to you, and the guy who is behind that guy gets behind you. It's so dead simple. We teach this kind of thing in kindergarten when we learn about "taking turns".

What if your BMI is high because you are muscular but also a little too fat but still race bikes, but also have asthma due to all of the allergies you've had to live with for the past 8.5 years after being moved from California? Where does that fall?

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

My.02, if you fall into a category that approves the shot, you get the shot. Full stop.

Exactly. Many people have put a lot of time into determining the prioritization. Bottom line is, getting a shot helps yourself and everyone else too, so when the opportunity arrives get your shot. Don’t lie to jump the queue, but don’t skip your spot so someone more deserving gets it either. That just adds additional work for those trying to get people into get shots.

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Ryan