Keyword there is “should.” As we see from recent surveys by different groups, there’s at the very least about a 20-25% of the population not interested in getting the vaccine at all or any time soon. Plus, there’s a lot of assumptions that getting a vaccine means you’re pretty much good to go. There is no perfect vaccine. The J&J results shown us that their overall trial vaccine efficacy to moderate/severe disease was 66%.
Alabama planning for full football stadium in fall Tide football to have full stadium for home football games in the Fall. That’s how they roll.
You've got it reversed. This is the reason a containment strategy (like China, New Zealand, or South Korea) doesn't work in the US. It's why we can only slow the virus (with masks and restrictions) but not eradicate it and go back to normal. In a place like the US, the only way back to normal is via herd immunity, preferably via vaccines but if not via everyone getting the virus.
States ranked by percentage of COVID-19 vaccines administered: March 2 I have to wonder if this is a measure of how organized and well documented they are (maybe some vaccines have been given out but records haven't been reconciled). But either way TN is 49th on the list. WV up in the top 5 as expected. snipped top and bottom of the list, see article for full list.
The vaccines work, and as long as they do, herd immunity is going to make a lot of sense. I don't completely understand the talk otherwise. Of course (just as with other diseases such as measles), there are communities that do not ever have herd immunity. And there are communities that don't get vaccinated. However, they tend to be isolated communities, and they will either reach herd immunity in a natural way, or they won't need it (due to no virus circulating). The virus will likely not be able to survive outside of those communities, in 2-3 months (barring significant immune escape, etc.). Herd immunity also isn't a binary thing - it's a moving target and influenced by so many factors, and we don't even know what level is sufficient. I guess if thinking of it as not being a fixed goal isn't easy to communicate, maybe it makes sense to talk about return to normalcy rather than actual herd immunity. It's going to be a very interesting next 2-4 weeks. Certainly B.1.1.7 is on the rise in prevalence. But is it actually much more contagious than what we have encountered? Will the relaxing of restrictions and general carelessness be enough to overcome the cutting off of nexuses of disease spread (health care, elder care, frontline workers, etc.)? We'll see. We're definitely seeing a slowdown in the decay now - but hopefully we can see a resumption in decline this week. I'm still less certain now about the future trajectory than I have ever been. It's just so hard to guess exactly how the race to vaccinate and the spread of the virus and the fairly high level of immunity in some communities will play out, in conjunction with the fairly reckless reopening occurring in many places (which @EVNow said would happen, and appears to be exceeding what I expected at this point...we just needed to wait 2-3 more weeks...). In San Diego, the modeling teams are projecting a slight rise in cases over the next couple months, even with very limited reopening, but that model assumed just 20k vaccinations per day, and it seems like we could nearly double that average this month (we're near 30k per day now). That makes a huge difference over 30 days! This could end up being perfectly fine. Question is whether or not there will have to be precautions like mask wearing, etc. Way too far out to be able to predict. There's definitely a chance it could be ok, with minimal restrictions, though! Finally have some preliminary data on P.1: Virus Variant in Brazil Infected Many Who Had Already Recovered From Covid-19 Fortunately, doesn't seem like it is a huge outlier in terms of behavior, though data is still very sparse. Reinfections were only of 25-60% (wide range - tons of uncertainty I guess!) of people previously infected (which seems about right, given what is seen for variability of antibody responses to natural infection, accompanied by antigenic shift). And neutralizing antibodies only 6 times less effective. This is in line with other variants which appear to be generally well addressed even by the J&J single-dose vaccine. Totally unclear, still; not nearly enough information, but with those snippets I'd guess that the two-dose vaccines at least will remain effective - and it appears that J&J will probably be similar effectiveness as it had against the B.1.351 variant (60-70%). No way to know yet, though! To me, this information is generally a relief - the situation seems stable, especially for the two-dose mRNA vaccines (still waiting on clinical data though!!!). I think we're generally fortunate in the US that B.1.1.7 has the biggest head start, but is the most effectively addressed by existing immunity. Whereas B.1.351 and P.1 (and possibly the new variant in New York) look like a bigger concern for reigniting outbreaks, but are weeks behind. This will give time for a strong vaccination campaign (vaccine appears to be substantially more effective at preventing serious reinfection by these variants than a natural infection) to provide a lot of additional coverage in vulnerable and at-risk communities. And near 100% efficacy against hospitalization. (The definitions of moderate & severe disease are different in every trial which is a bit annoying!) All the vaccines so far seem extremely effective at preventing hospitalization and death, and likely infection (even asymptomatic, though still struggling to get good data on that) to a significant extent. We'll see how that holds together and for how long the protection lasts. Given the apparent profile, it seems to be dramatically safer (about 40x or more, depending on your metric) to hang around others who are vaccinated, than it is prior to vaccination. But hanging out with people who are not immunized should be done with great caution (layered protection still seems like a great idea). These vaccines at these efficacy levels are going to be extremely effective. The concern is whether or not that efficacy drops over time.
There doesn't seem to be that drastic of a disparity if you look at it like this (##.# per 100 people) Details on each stay if you mouse over them here: More Than 245 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Tracker
Exactly. Thats why - if you see what experts have been saying recently - they have stopped talking about herd immunity. "Herd immunity" gives the impression of "once and done" - also the idea that only x% have to get vaccinated i.e. "I don't need to get vaccinated - let others do". Herd immunity - in a theoretical sense - is only applicable in a very homogeneous community. In a country like US - we are going to have periodic outbreaks - and variants which can spread more easily or behave differently w.r.t. vaccines makes the term, IMO, a misapplication. Getting back to normalcy is a better way to talk about this - both theoretically and practically. See above.
That VaccineFinder shows that every one of pharmacies near me has the vaccine but none of them actually have any vacancy when I actually try to schedule. Basically VaccineFinder shows whether the pharmacy has vaccines - the one I posted figures out which pharmacy has open appointments by analyzing the website.
This will be an interesting experiment https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-lifts-mask-mandate-opens-texas-100-percent "Governor Greg Abbott today issued an Executive Order (GA-34) lifting the mask mandate in Texas and increasing capacity of all businesses and facilities in the state to 100 percent. The Governor made the announcement at Montelongo's Mexican Restaurant in Lubbock in an address to the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. "With the medical advancements of vaccines and antibody therapeutic drugs, Texas now has the tools to protect Texans from the virus,” said Governor Abbott. "We must now do more to restore livelihoods and normalcy for Texans by opening Texas 100 percent. Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed. Today's announcement does not abandon safe practices that Texans have mastered over the past year. Instead, it is a reminder that each person has a role to play in their own personal safety and the safety of others. With this executive order, we are ensuring that all businesses and families in Texas have the freedom to determine their own destiny." ------------------ The current 7-day average for the country is more or less flat for new cases and deaths. Seems ~2k deaths a day is an acceptable level for now. For Texas it's difficult to say what with the 2-week chill they had a short while ago that surely messed up reporting. Deaths seem to hold at ~250 per day. Will be a race between vaccinations and careless attitudes. With a dark horse named 'Mutation' having a small chance of catching up.
Yeah. But with certain assumptions, we'll reach herd immunity! But just as with other diseases, some communities won't have herd immunity. That seems like it's on a trajectory to below 500 per day in April, fortunately (some of the recent bump is due to a lot of old deaths from Virginia (150-200 per day), and of course the time shift on reporting of deaths due to the cold in late February). Also, the time-shifted and scaled case-to-death curves are not symmetric on rise and fall (deaths decay more slowly than cases due to the long tail, but rise in a more predictable fashion). It'll be interesting to see how low it goes. It may well go lower, since CFR is probably going to be dropping to something like 0.5% (or lower - just a point estimate here) now. Hopefully the decline in cases isn't also masking a change in the infection-to-case ratio (possible/likely with fewer severe illnesses), which would make resurgence more likely (we want lower infection-to-case ratios, and it should be possible with the testing infrastructure...but they'd have to be pushed out into the community for surveillance!).
They will always start restrictions late and lift them too early since people are expendable, donors are not. I think they are all secretly on the side of virus ...
Texas is known to be very slow in reporting COVID deaths. What's being reported now is a backlog of people who died weeks or months ago. Abbott is surely under some political pressure to give Texans some good news. I can see the motivation for reopening more businesses, but I don't understand the point of ending the mask mandate. How will ending the mask rules help the economy, especially at the risk of causing another outbreak? Under the new orders, capacity restrictions come back if COVID starts filling up hospitals, but mask rules don't. How does that make any sense? If you are worried about the economy, that's bass-ackwards.
The people who are most at risk or belong to a group that has the most cases/deaths per capita are the ones least likely to vote for Abbott. Because multiple terms are allowed, the job of a politician is to get elected, there are ethical and unethical ways to do this.
Open season is upon us early! Mississippi has also lifted mask mandate, and Chicago restaurants and bars are open to 50% indoor dining capacity. With these two southern states lifting mask mandates, I will bet the other southern states will most likely lift mask mandates very soon as well. Can’t be long before we hear of Georgia, Alabama and Florida following suit. Yay, we’re back to normal.
Yeah, I can't really see this going well, unless only vaccinated & prior infection people are making use of the reopening - then it will be fine. Very hard to predict, though! If this had not happened for another three weeks I wouldn't have been too concerned. Still, individual behaviors and very local level restrictions are going to be what matters. In San Diego we're down to near our fall lows - it has been an epic decline, and it took a good month to lose control of that last time. So I think we might be fine. It's a race.
Well, it’s the old who vote R and they are the most likely to die. But then, this was true of Trump too.
Thanks for that follow up. From what I saw (twitter Feb 25th) it was only specifically setup for the four states below (but seemed like if they were large multi-state companies then they were there in other states zipcodes). I'm wondering if that means it is more accurate for those four states currently but only generally for others. Longer more detailed article (I just learned about): CDC launches VaccineFinder tool to locate Covid-19 vaccine providers Snippet: Tweet info: FYI, I see J&J just showed up on it the past day or so.
Increased Resistance of SARS-CoV-2 Variant P.1 to Antibody Neutralization At least on a basic antibody neutralizing level, looks like P.1 is probably not much of a concern for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. WT means wild type. 6x reduction in HCP (convalescent) and just 2-3x reduction for the vaccine sera. Though the level for Pfizer is oddly low and highly variable in this dataset; I am not sure why. So that’s a relief. If the pattern holds as it has in the past, the vaccines will likely be extremely effective. Probably South Africa and New York variants are the biggest unknowns (for vaccine efficacy) right now. NTD antibody efficacy drop off is apparently much greater for that B.1.351 version (not shown) so may be part of the reason for the partial escape from the vaccines. Hopefully none of these other virus versions pick that up that NTD change too, but of course that is inevitable, eventually.