Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

Another variant (NY variant B.1.526, two different types) bites the dust...annihilated by both mRNA vaccines. They are powerless in the face of the firepower of the fully armed and operational vaccine.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.24.436620v1.full.pdf

 

[JRP3]

I was Modernized this morning, I can feel the 5G running through my veins. I expect to be connected to Starlink soon.

 

[TEG]

Vaccination appointments are still fully booked in many urban areas.
People are driving great distances to go to more out of the way places that have slots available for appointments.

 

[EVNow]

Vaccination appointments are still fully booked in many urban areas.
People are driving great distances to go to more out of the way places that have slots available for appointments.

Instead distributing by population, they need to start distributing by demand. No point forcing people to leave their blue islands to seek vaccine in red swaths that don't like vaccines.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Instead distributing by population, they need to start distributing by demand. No point forcing people to leave their blue islands to seek vaccine in red swaths that don't like vaccines.

I think we'll be getting to that point shortly. I suspect there is still sufficient demand in many of the red areas still to fill up the appointments. Obviously in the states which are opening it up to everyone, that's probably not the case.

Definitely getting to the point where PSAs & other outreach are essential to keep the demand rolling. Community leaders need to be brought onboard, etc. It's essential to get people who don't like vaccines or who have been misled about them to be vaccinated if they can be convinced to do so. We can't be left with pockets of raging infection, so uniform vaccination of the most at-risk groups is very important.

Good to see that some colleges will be requiring COVID-19 vaccination come the fall. I suspect that college students will almost all end up being vaccinated by the fall, and again, the sight of half of the deaths being of people in their 20s to 40s is going to be very clarifying in the coming months, if vaccinations lag in those age groups! Turns out people weren't dying "with" COVID after all, and that it wasn't "dry kindling" at all. Who coulda predicted...

 

[EVNow]

Definitely getting to the point where PSAs & other outreach are essential to keep the demand rolling.

In one of the interviews with Fauci - he was asked why there aren't medical staff going around in vans door to door to vaccinate. He said because there aren't enough vaccines (probably a month back). Hopefully thats what they will do - get FEMA or other medical teams going door to door offering vaccines.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Interesting that SD and ND are going up again. Suggests that we have a ways to go before we get out of the woods if we want to relax restrictions. These states are hard hit and have been leading in vaccination rates (20% fully vaccinated). So I’d expect they have something like 50%+ immunity. Clearly not enough if you allow gathering indiscriminately, as everyone knows. I do think it is sufficient with substantial reasonable but not too restrictive measures in place - but have to get the case levels way down first! An increase of 15% from 10 cases is much less significant than an increase of 15% from 100 cases. The plateau in many states is far too high and hopefully we see further drops.

I’d expect these surges won’t survive three more weeks of vaccination, even in these places with minimal restrictions, and strong messaging from public officials that the pandemic is over and there is nothing to worry about, but I guess we’ll see how much momentum they gather.

For context:

 

[jerry33]

In one of the interviews with Fauci - he was asked why there aren't medical staff going around in vans door to door to vaccinate. He said because there aren't enough vaccines (probably a month back). Hopefully thats what they will do - get FEMA or other medical teams going door to door offering vaccines.

Somewhat scary because someone could be giving fake vaccines, asking for money, or use it as an excuse to enter the home. A better plan would be to have an official van go to a neighbourhood on a publicized day.

 

[EVNow]

Somewhat scary because someone could be giving fake vaccines, asking for money, or use it as an excuse to enter the home. A better plan would be to have an official van go to a neighbourhood on a publicized day.

This would be no different than fake police trying to enter homes ...

 

[EVNow]

The plateau in many states is far too high and hopefully we see further drops.

In our county (King, includes Seattle) the 7-day avg has gone up from 135 to 200 this month. Fatalities has reduced to 2/day and may hold steady because younger people are getting covid more now.

The state has been flat ...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

because younger people are getting covid more now.

Yeah, the messaging is all messed up. I don't understand why it's so difficult to tell people that although it's ~100x less dangerous than it is for older people, the disease is still exceedingly dangerous to younger people, and that it is far from harmless, and they do not want to get it. It's like political leaders have just conceded the argument pushed by misinformation artists, and are not willing to communicate the message from their public health officials. Excess deaths in young people are way up! That's a big problem and it's not a difficult concept to grasp! Deaths are fairly uncommon in young people, but obviously far too common to be ignored.

The only group where an argument can possibly be made that it is "not too dangerous" is in the ~5-12 age group, where it does appear that it may be comparable to a typical flu mortality. The problem of course is the kids killing their parents (a significant problem) and grandparents (less an issue now with vaccination) when they bring it home. Wide open vaccination cannot come soon enough to avoid the whole "killing the parents" problem.

 

[dhanson865]

I have an appointment for my first shot tomorrow, I'll let you know if my arm falls off.

got it, smallest needle I've encountered since I was kid.

Seems like TN is opened up quite broadly, I filled out a super long form, made an appointment, brought an essential worker document with me and some one with 0 special classifications of any kind got the vaccine while I was there, no prior appointment.

 

[EVNow]

I don't understand why it's so difficult to tell people that although it's ~100x less dangerous than it is for older people, the disease is still exceedingly dangerous to younger people, and that it is far from harmless, and they do not want to get it. It's like political leaders have just conceded the argument pushed by misinformation artists, and are not willing to communicate the message from their public health officials.

While true - we shouldn't overlook the fact that a lot of younger people who get covid are service/blue-collar who have little choice.

Political leaders essentially conceded its ok to kill 500k people for profits. So have the people, essentially - esp. the "prolife" crowd.

This will never cease to amaze me - the cognitive dissonance needed to oppose some things that increase the risk of a few deaths (say Tesla's autopilot or more asylum seekers accepted) vs supporting "opening the economy" that will kill 100s of thousands (or various wars).

 

[NikolaACDC]

Just got an email from the state, MN will open up vaccinations for anybody 16 and over starting Tuesday, March 30.
Currently and until then it was officially only for old / middle-age + 1 med. condition / younger with 2 med. condition and a few more groups.

They are skipping a group-step and are opening wide, this was more recently planned to happen early May.

Didn't see any open appointments on the different websites recently, maybe they are expecting larger shipments.

 

[TespaceX]

That 72 number is looking awfully high considering an effectiveness rate > 90%. But without needed extra information - its just a scary clickbait.

How many people who had the vaccines did they test in total ? Over how many days of testing is this ? What is the infection rate among comparable demo without vaccines ...

So far ~800k people have been vaccinated in MN. They obviously didn’t test all those people and ended up with 89 total reinfections so far. There’s no data released on how much time after second dose these patients tested positive. But, Pfizer and Moderna’s studies were based on the fact that there were zero hospitalizations from 2 weeks and 1 week after the second dose, respectively. (I also wish they would have used a longer metric post second dose). I doubt every single one of those 89 reinfections happened within just 1-2 weeks of getting the vaccine. So, obviously, the vaccines don’t work just quite as excellently as they showed in trial results. I’m leaning towards there being at least some more reinfections than 89 if they tested all 800k residents right now.

On another note, looks like AZ has now dropped all mandates. No more masks.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Didn't see any open appointments on the different websites recently, maybe they are expecting larger shipments.

Yeah that 27 million will probably start going into arms in the first week of April. Apparently it was confirmed at the press conference this morning that 11 million J&J will go out next week. So that will probably show up in the CDC dataset next Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375458576936894467

Big deal since it means getting 11 million people fully vaccinated very quickly. There are going to be a lot of people getting J&J for the first time. I would guess that 27 million mystery from earlier is resolved by taking 11 million from J&J and 16 million for Pfizer/Moderna (which seems just about right since Pfizer will be around 11.5 million, probably, and Moderna is around 7 million). Ends up being 29 million but maybe the "around 11 million from J&J" will be closer to 10 million, and 27 million is rounded down out of caution.

Moderna is due for a jump soon and Pfizer is also still lagging expectations so I think the next jump up will be to 13 million (P) + 10 million (M) + 10 million J&J = 33 million. (4.7 million per day, about 3 million fully vaccinated per day.)

(J&J is supposed to deliver 100 million doses by June which would mean 80 million or so more over the next ~8 weeks.)

 

[NikolaACDC]

So far ~800k people have been vaccinated in MN. They obviously didn’t test all those people and ended up with 89 total reinfections so far. There’s no data released on how much time after second dose these patients tested positive. But, Pfizer and Moderna’s studies were based on the fact that there were zero hospitalizations from 2 weeks and 1 week after the second dose, respectively. (I also wish they would have used a longer metric post second dose). I doubt every single one of those 89 reinfections happened within just 1-2 weeks of getting the vaccine. So, obviously, the vaccines don’t work just quite as excellently as they showed in trial results. I’m leaning towards there being at least some more reinfections than 89 if they tested all 800k residents right now.

On another note, looks like AZ has now dropped all mandates. No more masks.

At least for MN they seem to only count re-infections as a vaccine breakthrough if tested positive more than 2 weeks since second dose.

Quote from the original article:
"Director of Infectious Diseases Kris Ehresmann said a "breakthrough" case is when a person gets COVID-19 after the two weeks following getting fully vaccinated."

 

[Mark57]

I get my second Pfizer shot tomorrow. They just confirmed if I was coming. It can't come soon enough for me.

I've been Pfizerized. Second shot is done with no side effects at all. I wish they'd made this vac card wallet size.

 

[TespaceX]

I've been Pfizerized. Second shot is done with no side effects at all. I wish they'd made this vac card wallet size.

I find this whole thing about the vaccine card to be silly. Some places across the country aren’t even giving out those cards according to friends and family. I know for a fact a few county vaccination sites and pharmacies around me that are not handing them out.
Plus, one can easily just call up their PCP to update their office saying they received the vaccine with no proof required. So, those vaccine cards, and any situation that requires proof of vaccination to participate in something, hold zero meaning IMO.

 

[rxlawdude]

Interesting that SD and ND are going up again. Suggests that we have a ways to go before we get out of the woods if we want to relax restrictions. These states are hard hit and have been leading in vaccination rates (20% fully vaccinated). So I’d expect they have something like 50%+ immunity. Clearly not enough if you allow gathering indiscriminately, as everyone knows. I do think it is sufficient with substantial reasonable but not too restrictive measures in place - but have to get the case levels way down first! An increase of 15% from 10 cases is much less significant than an increase of 15% from 100 cases. The plateau in many states is far too high and hopefully we see further drops.

I’d expect these surges won’t survive three more weeks of vaccination, even in these places with minimal restrictions, and strong messaging from public officials that the pandemic is over and there is nothing to worry about, but I guess we’ll see how much momentum they gather.

For context:

Even more galling are the Florida statistics that ignore every spreader who contracts the virus but then return to their home state to spread it and get counted there. So the actual rate of infections in the Sunshine State is obfuscated.