Confused about the COVID-19 vaccinations? Look for reliable information.
Right now, there’s a fair amount of consternation and confusion about the vaccination protocols across the nation, the state and locally in your county.
Everyone is eager to be vaccinated with one of the two COVID-19 vaccines — Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.
The big issue is that so many rumors are flying about that people are having a hard time getting accurate information. The best way to get credible information is to look to the information provided at government Websites.
For instance, here’s the guidance at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Website: https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Vaccine/Pages/Vaccine.aspx
Your county, too, may have specific to your county information:
- Berks County has this Website: https://www.berkscms.org/covid-vaccine
- Lebanon County has this Website: https://www.lcdes.org/vaccinate/
This January 15, 2021 LNP – Always Lancaster article states “As neighboring counties launch websites for residents to sign up for COVID-19 vaccines, officials in Lancaster County have decided to hold off while federal and state guidelines continue to shift.”
The vaccination process is quite fluid and just two days ago, the Biden Administration added national COVID-19 guidance to the White House Website — you can download the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.
Other sources for reliable information about the vaccination processes:
- “Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 Vaccination” Updated Jan. 15, 2021 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- “COVID-19 vaccines at VA”
- “Vaccine Timeline | Availability & Distribution Guide” at Scientsy.com
“COVID-19’s Effects on the Brain” – The Scientist
“Autopsy studies have revealed a range of recurrent neuropathological features in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.”
by Katarina Zimmer
“When epidemics and pandemics washed over humanity through the ages, watchful doctors noticed that in addition to the usual, mostly respiratory ailments, the illnesses also seemed to trigger neurological symptoms. One British throat specialist observed in the late 1800s that influenza appeared to ‘run up and down the nervous keyboard stirring up disorder and pain in different parts of the body with what almost seems malicious caprice.’ Indeed, some patients during the 1889–92 influenza pandemic reportedly became afflicted with psychoses, paranoia, stabbing pains, and nerve damage. Similarly, scholars have linked the 1918 flu pandemic to parkinsonism, neuropsychiatric disorders, and a broadly coinciding outbreak of the “sleeping sickness” encephalitis lethargica, which would often arrest patients in a coma-like state—although researchers still debate whether the two are causally connected.
“That SARS-CoV-2, the culprit of the COVID-19 pandemic, is also associated with neurological symptoms isn’t entirely surprising, given some evidence that its close relatives, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-1, have been associated with neurological symptoms too. But the proportion of patients …
Continue reading this article at The Scientist, click here.
“As scams against senior citizens increase in Pennsylvania, state forms task force to help” – Reading Eagle
by Mike Urban
“Brian Long is 77 and knows his age makes him a target for the increasing number of scammers who try to steal from senior citizens.
“They see the elderly as easy prey, he said, and are ruthless enough to come after them.
“Long has learned enough about financial abuse of the elderly that he not only recognizes emails, phone calls and text messages from people attempting to rip him off, but also leads seminars about these crimes on behalf of Berks-Lancaster-Lebanon LINK, an agency that helps the aging and disabled.
“Despite his attempts to help people avoid being victimized, Long has repeatedly heard from seniors who still fell prey to financial schemes, evidence of how devious those scammers can be, he said.
“Long and others who work with the elderly in Berks hope a new state task force can help protect seniors, improve reporting mechanisms and cut down on those crimes by coordinating efforts between agencies.”
Resources for seniors
If you’re a victim, call your local police department or your bank if you notice something wrong with your accounts.
Those with general questions about crimes against seniors can call the Berks County Area Office on Aging at 610-478-6500 or the Pennsylvania Link to Aging and Disability Resources at 800-753-8827.
Pennsylvania also has a statewide Elder Abuse Hotline at 800-490-8505.
“Living Alone Has More Impact on Mental Health of Young Adults Than Older Adults”
From US Census Bureau
“Younger adults living alone were more likely than older adults living alone to report symptoms of both anxiety and depression in recent weeks, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data.
“The Household Pulse Survey provides insight into the mental health and well-being of adults living alone during the Coronavirus pandemic. The survey asks two questions related to symptoms of anxiety, and two questions about symptoms of depression.
“Phase 3 of the survey collects data over two-week intervals, and this article relies on publicly available data collected from Oct. 28 through Nov. 9, a time period in which the Census Bureau sent invitations to 1,035,752 households and received a total of 58,729 responses.
“Among adults living alone, respondents age 65 and over reported lower rates of anxiety and depression than those in other age groups.
“Those between ages 18 and 29 and 30 and 44 reported higher rates of anxiety and depression. The age groups were not statistically different from each other on either measure.”
Read this BCTV report in its entirety, click here.
About community living.
“All people, regardless of age or disability, should be able to live independently and participate fully in their communities. Every person should have the right to make choices and to control the decisions in and about their lives. This right to self-determination includes decisions about their homes and work, as well as all the other daily choices most adults make without a second thought.
Why Community Living?
“In survey after survey, when older adults and people with disabilities are asked where they would prefer to live, they say they want to live in their communities, not in institutions. People also are happier and healthier when they live in community settings.
“Inclusion of older adults and people with disabilities also offers many benefits to communities themselves. Communities miss out on valuable voices and perspectives when people with disabilities and older adults are left out. They are deprived of co-workers, volunteers, mentors, and friends who offer new ways of thinking about, and navigating, the world. When older adults are excluded, communities lose wisdom collected over many decades, and their connection to history.
“Community living also happens to be less expensive than other options for most people. Skilled nursing facilities can cost an average of $75,000 a year and public residential facilities for people with disabilities average $225,000 a year. In most cases, these costs are not covered by Medicare or private health insurance.
“Finally, a series of laws, court decisions, and administrative rules have established community living as a legal right. Most notably, in 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that people with disabilities must receive services in the most integrated settings possible. This landmark decision has been a critical tool in protecting the rights of people with disabilities and older adults alike.”
There’s more here at the Administration for Community Living Website: https://acl.gov/about-community-living
The Pennsylvania Link to Aging and Disability Resources is an initiative of the Administration for Community Living.
“Aging In Place: A Great Way To Extort Payback From Your Adult Children” – Forbes
by Sara Zeff Geber
“If you have bought into the idea that aging in place in the home you’ve maintained for 30+ years is the best answer to the question of where to live as you age, I can only conclude that you have decided it’s payback time for your children. Did your own parents live into their late 80s and 90s? Did they age in place? If so, how did that work out for you? Maybe you were one of the lucky ones whose parents lived happily on their own into their old age and then just died in their sleep one night, and now you are absolutely sure that is exactly what will happen to you. But what if it doesn’t?
“Moira knows first-hand what it’s like to have a parent who refuses to move out of their home of 50 years. Her mother, Pat, has a home is debt-free and there is enough money coming in from social security and a small pension to meet expenses every month. In addition to that, Moira’s parents saved a substantial amount of money over the course of their lives and were planning to leave Moira and her brother, Will, a nice inheritance. However, both Moira and Will are in good shape financially and would rather their mother used the money to ensure herself a comfortable and safe life as she gets older. They have toured several assisted living communities and eventually even persuaded Pat to come along on one of their visits. But it didn’t change her mind.
“No matter what Moira or Will said to Pat, she clung to the idea of aging in her two-story home. She claimed the stairs were good exercise and refused to even relocate her bedroom to the lower level.” Continue reading this article at Forbes, click here.
“The Staggering, Heartless Cruelty Toward the Elderly”
“A global pandemic doesn’t give us cause to treat the aged callously.”
GETTY
by Shai Held, President, dean, and chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar
“Crises can elicit compassion, but they can also evoke callousness. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve witnessed communities coming together (even as they have sometimes been physically forced apart), and we’ve seen individuals engaging in simple acts of kindness to remind the sick and quarantined that they are not forgotten. Yet from some quarters, we’ve also seen a degree of cruelty that is truly staggering.
“Earlier today, a friend posted on Facebook about an experience he’d just had on the Upper West Side of Manhattan: ‘I heard a guy who looked to be in his 20s say that it’s not a big deal cause the elderly are gonna die anyway. Then he and his friend laughed … Maybe I’m lucky that I had awesome grandparents and maybe this guy didn’t but what is wrong with people???” Some have tried to dress up their heartlessness as generational retribution. As someone tweeted at me earlier today, “To be perfectly honest, and this is awful, but to the young, watching as the elderly over and over and over choose their own interests ahead of Climate policy kind of feels like they’re wishing us to a death they won’t have to experience. It’s a sad bit of fair play.’”
Click here to continue reading this opinion piece at The Atlantic.
“You missed your chance to be a prodigy, but there’s still growth left for grownups.” – The New Yorker
“The joys—and occasional embarrassments—of being a novice could be an antidote to the strain of being a perfectionist. – Animation by Luke Wohlgemuth
by Margaret Talbot
“Among the things I have not missed since entering middle age is the sensation of being an absolute beginner. It has been decades since I’ve sat in a classroom in a gathering cloud of incomprehension (Algebra 2, tenth grade) or sincerely tried, lesson after lesson, to acquire a skill that was clearly not destined to play a large role in my life (modern dance, twelfth grade). Learning to ride a bicycle in my early thirties was an exception—a little mortifying when my husband had to run alongside the bike, as you would with a child—but ultimately rewarding. Less so was the time when a group of Japanese schoolchildren tried to teach me origami at a public event where I was the guest of honor—I’ll never forget their sombre puzzlement as my clumsy fingers mutilated yet another paper crane.
“Like Tom Vanderbilt, a journalist and the author of “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning” (Knopf), I learn new facts all the time but new skills seldom. Journalists regularly drop into unfamiliar subcultures and domains of expertise, learning enough at least to ask the right questions. The distinction he draws between his energetic stockpiling of declarative knowledge, or knowing that, and his scant attention to procedural knowledge, or knowing how, is familiar to me. The prospect of reinventing myself as, say, a late-blooming skier or ceramicist or marathon runner sparks only an idle interest, something like wondering what it might be like to live in some small town you pass on the highway.
“There is certainly a way to put a positive spin on that reluctance.”
Read this article in its entirety at The New Yorker, click here.
What’s the Ticket to Work program?
Download the Ticket To Work three page file; click on the graphic or here.
“Not All Trauma Is the Same” – Psychology Today
Many factors explain how trauma affects survivors differently.
by Mellissa Withers and Kathryn Maloney
“Human trafficking survivors often have to deal with the aftermath of complex trauma for the rest of their lives. What exactly is trauma? The first thing that comes to mind might be an unusual event characterized by extreme violence or emotion, such as a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or the unexpected death of a family member. However, trauma also applies to a much broader range of events that people can experience in their lifetimes. Trauma manifests itself in many forms. Often, trauma is not limited to a single, acute event, but rather a culmination of factors and experiences. A trauma-informed approach is one that takes into consideration the range of reactions of people who have experienced child maltreatment and abuse, intimate partner violence, and even human trafficking.
Forms of trauma can include:
- Complex trauma versus single incidents: Complex trauma is usually prolonged trauma that occurs between people, often beginning in childhood or adolescence. Since the events often happen in secrecy, the victim may suffer in fear and silence.
Click here to continue reading this article at Psychology Today.
