Back on April 12th, I posted a call for platelet donations issued by Valley Health and Mt. Sinai Hospitals. I know of a handful of people who’ve donated blood or platelets, including my Felician colleague Amy Dombach and (I believe) PoT’s own Michael Young, but I know of only one person who did so specifically in response to my post. Loyal but low-key PoT reader Chris Paglinco tells me (if I understand correctly) that he donated blood to the Valley/Mt. Sinai program after being presumptively COVID-positive, and getting the idea for a platelet donation by reading about it here. In his words: “They took samples of my blood for antibody testing. If I have had COVID-19, and have the requisite level of antibodies, I will go back and make the actual plasma donation.”*
I’m happy to hear that, and hope Chris will write up his experiences for my COVID-19 Narrative Project at some point.
NB: Though the program is run by both Valley and Mt. Sinai, to the best of my knowledge, the blood work is done at Valley’s lab in Paramus, New Jersey, not at Mt. Sinai in New York.
*The original sentence incorrectly stated that Chris had donated platelets.
Policy of Truth 
I have O-neg blood so they don’t want my platelets; they want a “double-red”: two units of red cells compressed into one donation. In an emergency, they can give my blood to ANYONE.
I’m a regular donor and encourage everyone to donate what they can where they can.
sean s.
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I’m afraid I get credit only for *trying* to donate. In the U.S., there are still restrictions that prevent anyone who was in the U.K for more than a few months during the “mad cow” prion outbreak from donating blood, plasma, etc. Having done a bit of research, I think we should give serious consideration to doing away with this restriction. I don’t think anyone, even in the U.K., has gotten “mad cow” disease from donated blood, at least not in semi-recent years (even though, for obvious reasons, restrictions similar to those that we have do not exist in the U.K. and would not be consistent with having any sort of reliable blood supply). If I had the energy, I’d do more research and then maybe start up some kind of campaign to get this restriction temporarily (emergency-basis) or permanently relaxed or removed. This is probably yet another way in which our regulatory state has failed us in this pandemic (non-libertarian conclusion here is as much that we need a more competent, well-funded, stronger relevant bureaucratic and state apparatus here as it is that we need less bureaucratic/state rules, regulations, etc.).
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Since I don’t believe in moral luck, you basically get the same credit in my book. I don’t even have to issue a correction. I mean, I tried to get the facts right.
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