Would a Vaccine Mascot help get people vaccinated? John Oliver offers the Vaccine Cicada.
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
uujjj2
Member
I have a simplistic system for assessing what's safe these days. To be safe from COVID, you need 2 points. You get one point each for:
- 6 foot distancing
- being outdoors
- wearing a regular facemask
- a vaccine dose (only FDA authorized ones)
- a prior confirmed COVID case
(You get 2 points for a fitted N95 mask. Mrs. Uujjj's experience in the emergency room shows you can avoid getting infected even in a crowded indoor space with confirmed COVID patients if you have a fitted N95.)
So, unvaccinated are safe if they are outdoors wearing a mask, even if it's crowded. Or outdoors unmasked if there's no crowd. Or indoors masked *and* distanced. Double vaxxed are ok even indoors without a mask (i.e. double vaxxed can restaurant dine indoors).
This is just my quick and dirty way to assess things for me and my kids. Anyone else think this is pretty reasonable?
- 6 foot distancing
- being outdoors
- wearing a regular facemask
- a vaccine dose (only FDA authorized ones)
- a prior confirmed COVID case
(You get 2 points for a fitted N95 mask. Mrs. Uujjj's experience in the emergency room shows you can avoid getting infected even in a crowded indoor space with confirmed COVID patients if you have a fitted N95.)
So, unvaccinated are safe if they are outdoors wearing a mask, even if it's crowded. Or outdoors unmasked if there's no crowd. Or indoors masked *and* distanced. Double vaxxed are ok even indoors without a mask (i.e. double vaxxed can restaurant dine indoors).
This is just my quick and dirty way to assess things for me and my kids. Anyone else think this is pretty reasonable?
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I like it. Seems like a pretty good system. I think the weak point is the 6-foot distancing when applied indoors as a point. But that’s been a tricky thing in the guidance for a long time. I also question whether a normal mask is really worth a full point, since they are primarily source control. I feel like you could count it as a full point if everyone is wearing a mask.
I guess I’m usually at four points when indoors, and outdoors.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Still really hard to get a vaccination at any time within 5 miles of a particular location in Washington State. Seems like there's still a bunch of people who want to get vaccinated. Unflagging demand, it appears. Just need to make vaccinations convenient.
May be lots more coming in as it seems not all allocated vaccines are being ordered by certain states whose residents prefer to 'live (vaccine) free or die trying (not to get vaccinated)'.
Interesting.
There wasn’t a single person in line when I went to get my 2nd shot yesterday. I assumed there would have been at least a small line given how appointments were all full for weeks when I got my first shot. Did not have to wait at all. Just walked right up to the medical assistant and got my shot. Where are all the people who got first shots around the same time as I did?
In other news, I just heard that a young gentleman in his 20’s in my area is in the ICU after coming back from India about two weeks ago. Too young…
No further information on whether he was vaccinated or what strain of the virus he was infected with.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah, hopefully. Definitely some J&J available in the location I checked, but in general you can't schedule at will where you want and get the good stuff. Definitely not easy enough yet. This of course is in a place you'd expect vaccine demand to be high, around Lake Washington. It's hit and miss. There are some places where you can find one. But not down the street at the local grocery or pharmacy (which of course is what is needed if you want people to get a vaccine).
My guess is if you did an exhaustive search of all medical facilities within 5 miles you could probably find one - but if you can't find a vaccine in 30 seconds online, it's effectively not available, for the people currently needing to be vaccinated.
The redistribution of vaccines should help.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Great news. Strongly suspected at this point, since there has been approximately zero evidence to date of ability of the virus to escape the mRNA vaccines properly (we've only seen a 6x titer reduction or so, which is not ideal (it's a sign of immune escape!), but also not really a cause for any concern theoretically, as we all know), but good to see it confirmed in real life: Pfizer vaccine DESTROYS B.1.351 (75% effective). Novavax also 50% effective against B.1.351, which is great (perhaps they will be able to develop multivalent versions too).
Hopefully it doesn't get any more creative!
If you squint hard at the data, you can see the impact of the titer reduction.
Hopefully it doesn't get any more creative!
If you squint hard at the data, you can see the impact of the titer reduction.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Buddy of mine who's invested in MRNA is freaking out.
(moderator note: Re surfacing this quote, as we received a few new reports from this thread.)
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
People afraid of the truth? They should unsubscribe and stop reading it.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
The two mega mass vaccination sites in SF Bay Area have announced that they will be closing later this month. These places used to do up to 5,000 vaccinations per day at its peak, and now are down to just a couple hundred at most a day. Some smaller county vaccination sites here are there around me are also closing this month.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yes, these sites (including the smaller county sites) are far too inconvenient (you have to drive, had to have an appointment for a while, there were lines sometimes, etc.), but they worked for their target audience. It'll be interesting to see the next phase, where vaccinations are super convenient and come with incentives, rather than being a chore.
The local drug store was super convenient for me, though they can't handle large numbers of people. Close by, very little waiting. They were doing 4 people at a time (all they had room for) 3 people getting 2nd shot, 1 person getting 1st shot.
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
for those that didn't watch she says models now say you need 90% vaccinations to hit herd immunity.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Hmmm... I'd love to see those models. It seem unlikely to be true unless there is substantial immune escape (for a vaccine with 75% efficacy, a 90% requirement would imply an R0 of the virus of 3.1 (1/(1-0.75*0.9))- which is fairly high with any mitigation measures in place) . We get away with 90% vaccination rates for measles (a very effective vaccine)! But it is mysterious - there seems to be a lot of scare tactics from various modelers (not necessarily this guest - she just seems to be repeating the output of some model) right now making this sort of claim, and I'm not sure what is the motivation for it. For most existing variants with efficacies of around 95%, 90% implies an R0 of 6.9, and that seems extremely unlikely in the context of a population where people are mostly vaccinated - and thus less infectious when infected.
The video had this topic come up in the context of Seychelles, which has a quite poor quality vaccine. (Was not mentioned in the clip.)
In any case, not much to worry about. We're very close to containing this thing in the US now. Absolutely a change in the virus which drops the efficacy below 75% would be a problem (we're all holding our breath and hoping it doesn't happen). But right now there are just a small number of such viral strains in the US, and those variants will have a difficult road to travel since people who are vaccinated will likely be less infectious, even if they do get infected (think less super-spreading). And they'll still be working with a dramatically reduced susceptible pool, which will make spread very difficult amongst groups that are taking modest precautions.
The other thing completely missed by the 90% number is the impact of infections which have already occurred, which are likely still quite protective against immune escape variants (probably 40-50% effective - though not a lot of good data on this, at all). We've had at least 35% of the people in this country infected, most likely (115 million people). So that's another 15% or so of immunity taking 90% down to 75% even in the worst case.
You'd expect an end game where these variants (ones with some degree of immune escape) become dominant for a period of time since they would have a competitive advantage. But that would be some time down the road - and continued vaccination will still be sufficient to stop them. And it's looking increasingly likely that we'll be dealing with very small case numbers in the near future - which makes it even easier to contain outbreaks. So while they might be dominant, they'll likely not be very numerous. Once you're on the good side of that exponential, good things happen.
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uujjj2
Member
COVID-19 has caused 6.9 million deaths globally, more than double what official reports show | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
New analysis from IHME highlights the true toll of the pandemic.
www.healthdata.org
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