How long can we wait while flattening the curve?

[former player]

@former player reading your posts, I think you might have stress related burnout that is causing you to have difficulties with your circle of control boundaries. You might consider going on a news fast for a bit and see if that helps.

Thank you for your concern, I'm fine.

It's nice that so many of you on this thread are doing just fine.  That you have a nice roof over your head, food in the kitchen, health care and a vaccine to look forward to, and the ability to social distance and work safely.

[charis]

@former player reading your posts, I think you might have stress related burnout that is causing you to have difficulties with your circle of control boundaries. You might consider going on a news fast for a bit and see if that helps.

Thank you for your concern, I'm fine.

It's nice that so many of you on this thread are doing just fine.  That you have a nice roof over your head, food in the kitchen, health care and a vaccine to look forward to, and the ability to social distance and work safely.

It is nice.  We are incredibly lucky.

[MudPuppy]

I do have a lot to be thankful for. My post was not at all intended to be condescending. My own mental health has taken it’s own turn in dark places during this. It’s been incredibly difficult to lose patient after patient who, in normal disease, would never have made it to the ICU much less never made it out. It’s been a tightness in my chest not knowing which of my friends and colleagues would come down with it next and how sick they would end up being. I’ve had to bury friends and loved ones via live-streamed services which is just next level salt in the wound. I’ve worked with too few resources and not enough manpower. If you truly are okay and are still posting about how the world is doomed because you think the vaccine is for whatever not enough to matter, I don’t know what to even say except that it means a very, very great deal to me. For me, and for my colleagues, the vaccine changes changing our lives.

[former player]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

[nippycrisp]

ETA: CDC estimates 83.1 million infections as of 1/15/21

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

That is promising though ~ 25% of the country.  That's really broad penetration. 22 M have been vaccinated with at least the first shot (not sure how much overlap with those who have already been infected).  We're approaching 1.5 M new vaccinations/day (which will include a % of 2nd vaccinations), so I have to think by april things will be looking very positive.  Hopefully the J&J vaccine will be a game changer requiring only one shot, that could really speed things up if the efficacy is reasonably high.   I do wonder at what penetration rate we'll see a very noticeable decline in transmission before reaching statistical herd immunity.  Maybe we're not far from that point.

On a national level, "Cases" have been dropping like a rock from their peak on Jan 11, while the 7 day moving average peaked a few days prior on Jan 8th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/chart-tables/#chart-table-new-cases

But something really changed in some regions before the vaccine was even available. The Midwest as a whole started seeing pretty noticeable declines as early as November of last year, and were just offset by lots of spread in other places, notably CA. Thanksgiving Holiday reporting inconsistency makes it tough to really pinpoint, but confirmed cases in my state peaked some time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend Nov 26-30, Hospitalizations peaked Dec 1 and had dropped 23% by Jan 8th when cases peaked nationally, and deaths peaked Dec 14 (Same day that the first dose of COVID vaccine administered in the US) and had dropped 43% by Jan 8.

I think the vaccines are absolutely helping, but I think there's still something that we don't really understand about this virus, or our estimates for total infections are way too conservative.

I have a fun theory about the virus spread. There's little way to prove it, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I call it the covidiot theory. The premise: in the US, Most people in the US take precautions against coronavirus. However, there are a number of individuals who, for whatever political/ideological reason (or maybe just good old stupidity) do not give one single fuck about implementing basic protections. These people are a minority of the population, but they are the living embodiment of superspreaders.

My theory is it took a while for the superspreaders to be widely affected (perhaps because they tend to live in rural communities), but then they went apeshit spreading the virus around to normal people who just got sick and maybe accidentally infected a person or two. In fact, these covidiots were the main driver of spread. Over time, however, the covidiots all became infected and developed immunity. Despite their idiot ways being unchanged, they are incapable of exacerbating the pandemic further. With no supply of covidiots, Covid-19's spread options are limited.

Add all the little caveats and tweaks to it, but that's how I imagine it.

[MudPuppy]

You see no hope at all in the fact that as we continue to roll out vaccine to the first layer of folks, we help ensure that there are people available to provide necessary care? You can have hospital beds to infinity but if your staff are sick or dead it doesn’t matter what wonder drugs are developed because they can’t be administered.  Healthcare workers are the very last line of defense we have against the disease and we are beginning to shore up defenses. That’s huge. You are upset because we can’t fix everything all at once and therefore nothing will ever help at any point? Are you familiar with the starfish parable?

[kenmoremmm]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

[Michael in ABQ]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

I was in Africa when Covid started and though there was a couple of months of people wearing masks it was never more than 10-20% of people I saw in public. But the percentage of the population over 65% is only 1-2%. By the time I left in the late summer there were maybe 30-40 deaths and 1,000-2,000 confirmed cases. Very few old people and few comorbidities means it's just not that dangerous to that population.

[charis]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

You are reading a lot of glibness into people just expressing hope.  People can express hope without detailing all of their fears for humanity at the same time.  This is an anonymous forum, so the pieces of everyone's (trauma) puzzle won't always be revealed to you. It's ok to be hopeful.

[RetiredAt63]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

Some countries are doing things*.  Canada has pledged money, and we have pre-ordered far more vaccine than we need since no-one knew which vaccines wold actually work and which would be dropped.  Excess will go elsewhere. 

Right now we are behind our planned vaccination schedule, our orders are all behind.  We had to order Pfizer from Europe, Trump would not let the American Pfizer plant take our order, and of course they are in the middle of upgrading their Belgian plant right now.

*https://www.who.int/news/item/18-12-2020-covax-announces-additional-deals-to-access-promising-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-plans-global-rollout-starting-q1-2021

[deborah]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

OK. I’m very angry now.

Australia paid for several of the vaccines to be created. In return, we were to get doses of these vaccines. Our homegrown vaccine was dropped, not because it didn’t work, but because it gave false positives for HIV-aids. Some of the vaccines were successful. We’ve also been one of the instigators of a fair distribution to other countries.

We have had few cases, so we decided to certify the vaccines through the normal process, rather than through an emergency process. As a result, we’ve only just certified the first vaccine. Now, countries are saying that they are going to stop supply of vaccines to us, even though we helped to pay for the development, and even though we plan to do our first vaccinations in late February, because we want to be fair, and we are happy to wait a bit, BECAUSE WE PUT IN THE EFFORT TO GET COVID19 UNDER CONTROL.

It didn’t happen by magic that we got it under control. At one stage one of our most populous states, Victoria, had a higher rate of infection than the UK at the same time, yet they worked hard and got it down to zero cases. This is the only place in the world that has managed that. Other countries have more resources than us, yet somehow they decided not to put in the work, and to let a lot of their citizens die and the virus to mutate and become worse, and not to stop it. It’s just starting to take off in Africa because we’re now getting strains that are more effective at killing younger people.

I think that we should be ensuring that vaccinations are available equitably throughout the world. My government obviously thinks so to. It makes sense to show that the rich world cares. That China isn’t the only place that does.

[MudPuppy]

If anyone want to see some numbers about Covid vaccination in the rest of the world, you can find some here https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

[HBFIRE]

If anyone want to see some numbers about Covid vaccination in the rest of the world, you can find some here https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

This is great, thanks.  Israel is going to be the gold standard real world study.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

I don't think it's a racial thing. Or a class-based thing. You don't see much in this thread either about countries that are incredibly more privileged than the US and that have defeated the virus entirely. The US-centrism is not due to racial or wealth bias. It is just due to geographic bias. It's a bit hard to expect Americans to post in a non-American context. And I could just as well say "How come you folks are whinging so much about covid when Australia and New Zealand have zapped it like a common cold" the same way you say "How come you folks are so complacent when <<inesrt poor country here>> is struggling?"

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

OK. I’m very angry now.

Australia paid for several of the vaccines to be created. In return, we were to get doses of these vaccines. Our homegrown vaccine was dropped, not because it didn’t work, but because it gave false positives for HIV-aids. Some of the vaccines were successful. We’ve also been one of the instigators of a fair distribution to other countries.

We have had few cases, so we decided to certify the vaccines through the normal process, rather than through an emergency process. As a result, we’ve only just certified the first vaccine. Now, countries are saying that they are going to stop supply of vaccines to us, even though we helped to pay for the development, and even though we plan to do our first vaccinations in late February, because we want to be fair, and we are happy to wait a bit, BECAUSE WE PUT IN THE EFFORT TO GET COVID19 UNDER CONTROL.

It didn’t happen by magic that we got it under control. At one stage one of our most populous states, Victoria, had a higher rate of infection than the UK at the same time, yet they worked hard and got it down to zero cases. This is the only place in the world that has managed that. Other countries have more resources than us, yet somehow they decided not to put in the work, and to let a lot of their citizens die and the virus to mutate and become worse, and not to stop it. It’s just starting to take off in Africa because we’re now getting strains that are more effective at killing younger people.

I think that we should be ensuring that vaccinations are available equitably throughout the world. My government obviously thinks so to. It makes sense to show that the rich world cares. That China isn’t the only place that does.

Yeah, I have to say, Australia has been way too gracious in this whole thing. We've put ourselves at the back of the line for vaccines...but we do need vaccines, so that travel can open up and our economy can open up fully and society can go back to normal, not just covid-normal. There has to be some give and take after we've done so much on our end. Because we have eradicated the virus, we seem to have been put on the back burner for the vaccine, whereas a country like the US which has had a less cohesive response seems to be fast-tracking it...at this rate the US economy will rebound faster than ours.

[jrhampt]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

OK. I’m very angry now.

Australia paid for several of the vaccines to be created. In return, we were to get doses of these vaccines. Our homegrown vaccine was dropped, not because it didn’t work, but because it gave false positives for HIV-aids. Some of the vaccines were successful. We’ve also been one of the instigators of a fair distribution to other countries.

We have had few cases, so we decided to certify the vaccines through the normal process, rather than through an emergency process. As a result, we’ve only just certified the first vaccine. Now, countries are saying that they are going to stop supply of vaccines to us, even though we helped to pay for the development, and even though we plan to do our first vaccinations in late February, because we want to be fair, and we are happy to wait a bit, BECAUSE WE PUT IN THE EFFORT TO GET COVID19 UNDER CONTROL.

It didn’t happen by magic that we got it under control. At one stage one of our most populous states, Victoria, had a higher rate of infection than the UK at the same time, yet they worked hard and got it down to zero cases. This is the only place in the world that has managed that. Other countries have more resources than us, yet somehow they decided not to put in the work, and to let a lot of their citizens die and the virus to mutate and become worse, and not to stop it. It’s just starting to take off in Africa because we’re now getting strains that are more effective at killing younger people.

I think that we should be ensuring that vaccinations are available equitably throughout the world. My government obviously thinks so to. It makes sense to show that the rich world cares. That China isn’t the only place that does.

Yeah, I have to say, Australia has been way too gracious in this whole thing. We've put ourselves at the back of the line for vaccines...but we do need vaccines, so that travel can open up and our economy can open up fully and society can go back to normal, not just covid-normal. There has to be some give and take after we've done so much on our end. Because we have eradicated the virus, we seem to have been put on the back burner for the vaccine, whereas a country like the US which has had a less cohesive response seems to be fast-tracking it...at this rate the US economy will rebound faster than ours.

Agreed.  It seems like a penalty for behaving well and sacrificing. 

[chemistk]

I have no authority to do so, but on behalf of the US I apologize for our populace's idiocy and ignorance.

That being said, what good does it do to sow derision at a time like this?

Further, when supplies are limited, shouldn't you be directing resources at the most intense part of the fire? If an apartment building is on fire, and you only have two firetrucks available, doesn't it make sense to direct that water at the most intensely burning apartments? In this crude analogy, one could say we've all paid for the upkeep of the fire department.

This is not meant to be construed as an argument to defend US action/inaction - I get that there's a growing amount of anti-US sentiment here, there, and elsewhere and some would rather the US apartment just burn out entirely, but going back to my above point - what good do these arguments do at a time like this?

[chemistk]

ETA: CDC estimates 83.1 million infections as of 1/15/21

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

That is promising though ~ 25% of the country.  That's really broad penetration. 22 M have been vaccinated with at least the first shot (not sure how much overlap with those who have already been infected).  We're approaching 1.5 M new vaccinations/day (which will include a % of 2nd vaccinations), so I have to think by april things will be looking very positive.  Hopefully the J&J vaccine will be a game changer requiring only one shot, that could really speed things up if the efficacy is reasonably high.   I do wonder at what penetration rate we'll see a very noticeable decline in transmission before reaching statistical herd immunity.  Maybe we're not far from that point.

On a national level, "Cases" have been dropping like a rock from their peak on Jan 11, while the 7 day moving average peaked a few days prior on Jan 8th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/chart-tables/#chart-table-new-cases

But something really changed in some regions before the vaccine was even available. The Midwest as a whole started seeing pretty noticeable declines as early as November of last year, and were just offset by lots of spread in other places, notably CA. Thanksgiving Holiday reporting inconsistency makes it tough to really pinpoint, but confirmed cases in my state peaked some time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend Nov 26-30, Hospitalizations peaked Dec 1 and had dropped 23% by Jan 8th when cases peaked nationally, and deaths peaked Dec 14 (Same day that the first dose of COVID vaccine administered in the US) and had dropped 43% by Jan 8.

I think the vaccines are absolutely helping, but I think there's still something that we don't really understand about this virus, or our estimates for total infections are way too conservative.

I have a fun theory about the virus spread. There's little way to prove it, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I call it the covidiot theory. The premise: in the US, Most people in the US take precautions against coronavirus. However, there are a number of individuals who, for whatever political/ideological reason (or maybe just good old stupidity) do not give one single fuck about implementing basic protections. These people are a minority of the population, but they are the living embodiment of superspreaders.

My theory is it took a while for the superspreaders to be widely affected (perhaps because they tend to live in rural communities), but then they went apeshit spreading the virus around to normal people who just got sick and maybe accidentally infected a person or two. In fact, these covidiots were the main driver of spread. Over time, however, the covidiots all became infected and developed immunity. Despite their idiot ways being unchanged, they are incapable of exacerbating the pandemic further. With no supply of covidiots, Covid-19's spread options are limited.

Add all the little caveats and tweaks to it, but that's how I imagine it.

I would bet you're correct about that.

My oldest has been in school now since Sept, and his school has seen in total (albeit, good-faith reporting) less than 3 dozen cases since Sept. There are 6 schools in the district and only two of those had to switch to virtual for a handful of days when their case counts went too high.

We live in one of the most wealthy parts of our county and our district is one of the least rural, behind the 'city' district.

The most rural (and the most MAGA) districts in the county (and across the region) have all had to close buildings for prolonged periods of time and have seen total case counts much higher than our district's. 

Obviously this is one crude anecdote and I'm sure there's a lot of underlying contributors, but I could easily see your 'superspreader' argument have some contribution to the difference in our districts.

[jrhampt]

I have no authority to do so, but on behalf of the US I apologize for our populace's idiocy and ignorance.

That being said, what good does it do to sow derision at a time like this?

Further, when supplies are limited, shouldn't you be directing resources at the most intense part of the fire? If an apartment building is on fire, and you only have two firetrucks available, doesn't it make sense to direct that water at the most intensely burning apartments? In this crude analogy, one could say we've all paid for the upkeep of the fire department.

This is not meant to be construed as an argument to defend US action/inaction - I get that there's a growing amount of anti-US sentiment here, there, and elsewhere and some would rather the US apartment just burn out entirely, but going back to my above point - what good do these arguments do at a time like this?

In your fire analogy, it's like there are several homes (economies) on fire, but a few of them caught fire accidentally and one of them was deliberately set on fire by the property owner.

In the US, the vaccines are all distributed to the states in proportion to the state population.  That's fair.  I'd be annoyed if one of the states where there's no mask mandate and no travel restrictions got more vaccine because they've been deliberately spreading covid around.  I'd imagine the rest of the world feels the same.

[Mariposa]

Yeah, super-spreader events are definitely a thing, but there is some evidence that a new homegrown variant, CAL.20C, may have driven the spread in southern California Dec-Jan:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/health/coronavirus-variant-california.html

Non-peer reviewed preprint:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.21249786v1

The California variant has 5 distinct mutations, including a known antibody escape mutation, L452R. By January, Cal.20C was ~50% of the cases in the LA area.

I suspect a more transmissible variant could have driven spread in the Midwest in the fall too, but we haven't done much sequencing in the US, so who knows. California found CAL.20C in a significant number of cases because they're at the forefront of virus genomics here.

[bigblock440]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

OK. I’m very angry now.

Australia paid for several of the vaccines to be created. In return, we were to get doses of these vaccines. Our homegrown vaccine was dropped, not because it didn’t work, but because it gave false positives for HIV-aids. Some of the vaccines were successful. We’ve also been one of the instigators of a fair distribution to other countries.

We have had few cases, so we decided to certify the vaccines through the normal process, rather than through an emergency process. As a result, we’ve only just certified the first vaccine. Now, countries are saying that they are going to stop supply of vaccines to us, even though we helped to pay for the development, and even though we plan to do our first vaccinations in late February, because we want to be fair, and we are happy to wait a bit, BECAUSE WE PUT IN THE EFFORT TO GET COVID19 UNDER CONTROL.

It didn’t happen by magic that we got it under control. At one stage one of our most populous states, Victoria, had a higher rate of infection than the UK at the same time, yet they worked hard and got it down to zero cases. This is the only place in the world that has managed that. Other countries have more resources than us, yet somehow they decided not to put in the work, and to let a lot of their citizens die and the virus to mutate and become worse, and not to stop it. It’s just starting to take off in Africa because we’re now getting strains that are more effective at killing younger people.

I think that we should be ensuring that vaccinations are available equitably throughout the world. My government obviously thinks so to. It makes sense to show that the rich world cares. That China isn’t the only place that does.

Yeah, I have to say, Australia has been way too gracious in this whole thing. We've put ourselves at the back of the line for vaccines...but we do need vaccines, so that travel can open up and our economy can open up fully and society can go back to normal, not just covid-normal. There has to be some give and take after we've done so much on our end. Because we have eradicated the virus, we seem to have been put on the back burner for the vaccine, whereas a country like the US which has had a less cohesive response seems to be fast-tracking it...at this rate the US economy will rebound faster than ours.

That was the entire premise of this thread.  That lockdowns will kill the economy, and how long can we wait.

[dandarc]

ETA: CDC estimates 83.1 million infections as of 1/15/21

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

That is promising though ~ 25% of the country.  That's really broad penetration. 22 M have been vaccinated with at least the first shot (not sure how much overlap with those who have already been infected).  We're approaching 1.5 M new vaccinations/day (which will include a % of 2nd vaccinations), so I have to think by april things will be looking very positive.  Hopefully the J&J vaccine will be a game changer requiring only one shot, that could really speed things up if the efficacy is reasonably high.   I do wonder at what penetration rate we'll see a very noticeable decline in transmission before reaching statistical herd immunity.  Maybe we're not far from that point.

On a national level, "Cases" have been dropping like a rock from their peak on Jan 11, while the 7 day moving average peaked a few days prior on Jan 8th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/chart-tables/#chart-table-new-cases

But something really changed in some regions before the vaccine was even available. The Midwest as a whole started seeing pretty noticeable declines as early as November of last year, and were just offset by lots of spread in other places, notably CA. Thanksgiving Holiday reporting inconsistency makes it tough to really pinpoint, but confirmed cases in my state peaked some time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend Nov 26-30, Hospitalizations peaked Dec 1 and had dropped 23% by Jan 8th when cases peaked nationally, and deaths peaked Dec 14 (Same day that the first dose of COVID vaccine administered in the US) and had dropped 43% by Jan 8.

I think the vaccines are absolutely helping, but I think there's still something that we don't really understand about this virus, or our estimates for total infections are way too conservative.

I have a fun theory about the virus spread. There's little way to prove it, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I call it the covidiot theory. The premise: in the US, Most people in the US take precautions against coronavirus. However, there are a number of individuals who, for whatever political/ideological reason (or maybe just good old stupidity) do not give one single fuck about implementing basic protections. These people are a minority of the population, but they are the living embodiment of superspreaders.

My theory is it took a while for the superspreaders to be widely affected (perhaps because they tend to live in rural communities), but then they went apeshit spreading the virus around to normal people who just got sick and maybe accidentally infected a person or two. In fact, these covidiots were the main driver of spread. Over time, however, the covidiots all became infected and developed immunity. Despite their idiot ways being unchanged, they are incapable of exacerbating the pandemic further. With no supply of covidiots, Covid-19's spread options are limited.

Add all the little caveats and tweaks to it, but that's how I imagine it.

I would bet you're correct about that.

My oldest has been in school now since Sept, and his school has seen in total (albeit, good-faith reporting) less than 3 dozen cases since Sept. There are 6 schools in the district and only two of those had to switch to virtual for a handful of days when their case counts went too high.

We live in one of the most wealthy parts of our county and our district is one of the least rural, behind the 'city' district.

The most rural (and the most MAGA) districts in the county (and across the region) have all had to close buildings for prolonged periods of time and have seen total case counts much higher than our district's. 

Obviously this is one crude anecdote and I'm sure there's a lot of underlying contributors, but I could easily see your 'superspreader' argument have some contribution to the difference in our districts.

Hopefully your school district isn't just doing a terrible job reporting like ours is. Reporting by the school district is so bad here that even anecdotal reports like 2 or 3 families with sick kids is enough to seriously doubt the school district's claims.

[waltworks]

In your fire analogy, it's like there are several homes (economies) on fire, but a few of them caught fire accidentally and one of them was deliberately set on fire by the property owner.

No, the US didn't deliberately (in this analogy) start the fire. The US had a ramshackle house that was in violation of the fire code and refused to do anything about it, but if you're going to blame a country for starting the fire, it's China.

-W

[Paper Chaser]

ETA: CDC estimates 83.1 million infections as of 1/15/21

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

That is promising though ~ 25% of the country.  That's really broad penetration. 22 M have been vaccinated with at least the first shot (not sure how much overlap with those who have already been infected).  We're approaching 1.5 M new vaccinations/day (which will include a % of 2nd vaccinations), so I have to think by april things will be looking very positive.  Hopefully the J&J vaccine will be a game changer requiring only one shot, that could really speed things up if the efficacy is reasonably high.   I do wonder at what penetration rate we'll see a very noticeable decline in transmission before reaching statistical herd immunity.  Maybe we're not far from that point.

On a national level, "Cases" have been dropping like a rock from their peak on Jan 11, while the 7 day moving average peaked a few days prior on Jan 8th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/chart-tables/#chart-table-new-cases

But something really changed in some regions before the vaccine was even available. The Midwest as a whole started seeing pretty noticeable declines as early as November of last year, and were just offset by lots of spread in other places, notably CA. Thanksgiving Holiday reporting inconsistency makes it tough to really pinpoint, but confirmed cases in my state peaked some time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend Nov 26-30, Hospitalizations peaked Dec 1 and had dropped 23% by Jan 8th when cases peaked nationally, and deaths peaked Dec 14 (Same day that the first dose of COVID vaccine administered in the US) and had dropped 43% by Jan 8.

I think the vaccines are absolutely helping, but I think there's still something that we don't really understand about this virus, or our estimates for total infections are way too conservative.

I have a fun theory about the virus spread. There's little way to prove it, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I call it the covidiot theory. The premise: in the US, Most people in the US take precautions against coronavirus. However, there are a number of individuals who, for whatever political/ideological reason (or maybe just good old stupidity) do not give one single fuck about implementing basic protections. These people are a minority of the population, but they are the living embodiment of superspreaders.

My theory is it took a while for the superspreaders to be widely affected (perhaps because they tend to live in rural communities), but then they went apeshit spreading the virus around to normal people who just got sick and maybe accidentally infected a person or two. In fact, these covidiots were the main driver of spread. Over time, however, the covidiots all became infected and developed immunity. Despite their idiot ways being unchanged, they are incapable of exacerbating the pandemic further. With no supply of covidiots, Covid-19's spread options are limited.

Add all the little caveats and tweaks to it, but that's how I imagine it.

I would bet you're correct about that.

My oldest has been in school now since Sept, and his school has seen in total (albeit, good-faith reporting) less than 3 dozen cases since Sept. There are 6 schools in the district and only two of those had to switch to virtual for a handful of days when their case counts went too high.

We live in one of the most wealthy parts of our county and our district is one of the least rural, behind the 'city' district.

The most rural (and the most MAGA) districts in the county (and across the region) have all had to close buildings for prolonged periods of time and have seen total case counts much higher than our district's. 

Obviously this is one crude anecdote and I'm sure there's a lot of underlying contributors, but I could easily see your 'superspreader' argument have some contribution to the difference in our districts.

It could also be that your wealthier area is more likely to have a large number of people that can stay home and limit their exposure, or more funding available for PPE than a lower income or more rural area.

[chemistk]

I have no authority to do so, but on behalf of the US I apologize for our populace's idiocy and ignorance.

That being said, what good does it do to sow derision at a time like this?

Further, when supplies are limited, shouldn't you be directing resources at the most intense part of the fire? If an apartment building is on fire, and you only have two firetrucks available, doesn't it make sense to direct that water at the most intensely burning apartments? In this crude analogy, one could say we've all paid for the upkeep of the fire department.

This is not meant to be construed as an argument to defend US action/inaction - I get that there's a growing amount of anti-US sentiment here, there, and elsewhere and some would rather the US apartment just burn out entirely, but going back to my above point - what good do these arguments do at a time like this?

In your fire analogy, it's like there are several homes (economies) on fire, but a few of them caught fire accidentally and one of them was deliberately set on fire by the property owner.

In the US, the vaccines are all distributed to the states in proportion to the state population.  That's fair.  I'd be annoyed if one of the states where there's no mask mandate and no travel restrictions got more vaccine because they've been deliberately spreading covid around.  I'd imagine the rest of the world feels the same.

That's completely fair, and I agree. I also think walt's analogy is valid here too.

But a fire is a fire, and left to burn it consumes everything it touches.

[GuitarStv]

Yeah, super-spreader events are definitely a thing, but there is some evidence that a new homegrown variant, CAL.20C, may have driven the spread in southern California Dec-Jan:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/health/coronavirus-variant-california.html

Non-peer reviewed preprint:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.21249786v1

The California variant has 5 distinct mutations, including a known antibody escape mutation, L452R. By January, Cal.20C was ~50% of the cases in the LA area.

I suspect a more transmissible variant could have driven spread in the Midwest in the fall too, but we haven't done much sequencing in the US, so who knows. California found CAL.20C in a significant number of cases because they're at the forefront of virus genomics here.

I've wondered about this.  The US is the place in the world with the most replication of the virus . . . and the virus mutates typically through replication errors.  It's surprising to me that no significant mutations have been detected in the US so far.

[chemistk]

ETA: CDC estimates 83.1 million infections as of 1/15/21

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

That is promising though ~ 25% of the country.  That's really broad penetration. 22 M have been vaccinated with at least the first shot (not sure how much overlap with those who have already been infected).  We're approaching 1.5 M new vaccinations/day (which will include a % of 2nd vaccinations), so I have to think by april things will be looking very positive.  Hopefully the J&J vaccine will be a game changer requiring only one shot, that could really speed things up if the efficacy is reasonably high.   I do wonder at what penetration rate we'll see a very noticeable decline in transmission before reaching statistical herd immunity.  Maybe we're not far from that point.

On a national level, "Cases" have been dropping like a rock from their peak on Jan 11, while the 7 day moving average peaked a few days prior on Jan 8th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/chart-tables/#chart-table-new-cases

But something really changed in some regions before the vaccine was even available. The Midwest as a whole started seeing pretty noticeable declines as early as November of last year, and were just offset by lots of spread in other places, notably CA. Thanksgiving Holiday reporting inconsistency makes it tough to really pinpoint, but confirmed cases in my state peaked some time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend Nov 26-30, Hospitalizations peaked Dec 1 and had dropped 23% by Jan 8th when cases peaked nationally, and deaths peaked Dec 14 (Same day that the first dose of COVID vaccine administered in the US) and had dropped 43% by Jan 8.

I think the vaccines are absolutely helping, but I think there's still something that we don't really understand about this virus, or our estimates for total infections are way too conservative.

I have a fun theory about the virus spread. There's little way to prove it, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I call it the covidiot theory. The premise: in the US, Most people in the US take precautions against coronavirus. However, there are a number of individuals who, for whatever political/ideological reason (or maybe just good old stupidity) do not give one single fuck about implementing basic protections. These people are a minority of the population, but they are the living embodiment of superspreaders.

My theory is it took a while for the superspreaders to be widely affected (perhaps because they tend to live in rural communities), but then they went apeshit spreading the virus around to normal people who just got sick and maybe accidentally infected a person or two. In fact, these covidiots were the main driver of spread. Over time, however, the covidiots all became infected and developed immunity. Despite their idiot ways being unchanged, they are incapable of exacerbating the pandemic further. With no supply of covidiots, Covid-19's spread options are limited.

Add all the little caveats and tweaks to it, but that's how I imagine it.

I would bet you're correct about that.

My oldest has been in school now since Sept, and his school has seen in total (albeit, good-faith reporting) less than 3 dozen cases since Sept. There are 6 schools in the district and only two of those had to switch to virtual for a handful of days when their case counts went too high.

We live in one of the most wealthy parts of our county and our district is one of the least rural, behind the 'city' district.

The most rural (and the most MAGA) districts in the county (and across the region) have all had to close buildings for prolonged periods of time and have seen total case counts much higher than our district's. 

Obviously this is one crude anecdote and I'm sure there's a lot of underlying contributors, but I could easily see your 'superspreader' argument have some contribution to the difference in our districts.

Hopefully your school district isn't just doing a terrible job reporting like ours is. Reporting by the school district is so bad here that even anecdotal reports like 2 or 3 families with sick kids is enough to seriously doubt the school district's claims.

I have faith they are. We get a daily Covid 'digest' from the district outlining exactly how many cases have been reported and how many required quarantine (kids went to school with Covid) and how many are self-quarantine cases who report their absence to the district as due to Covid or even suspected Covid.

Early on, in our local Nextdoor and FB groups, ppl were assuming the district was just playing lip service and wouldn't enforce their own policies. Then they closed the HS for 2 weeks because a bunch of older HS kids had a Covid party, and people started to take it way more seriously. They've since closed the MS and one of the ES at the drop of a hat (as in, one particular ES received news that there was a positive case that broke the threshold early AM before school one day, and at 6AM they notified all parents that school would be closed that day and for the next few days).

And yes @Paper Chaser , that absolutely plays a role here. Ours is a relatively wealthy area (for the region) and people can afford to keep kids at home when they get sick, which allows the schools to continue to stay open. I will not apologize or epxress remorse because I live in such an area.

[OtherJen]

In your fire analogy, it's like there are several homes (economies) on fire, but a few of them caught fire accidentally and one of them was deliberately set on fire by the property owner.

No, the US didn't deliberately (in this analogy) start the fire. The US had a ramshackle house that was in violation of the fire code and refused to do anything about it, but if you're going to blame a country for starting the fire, it's China.

-W

Yes, and then as the ramshackle house fire was waning, some idiots came by with a can of gasoline (e.g., Trump rallies, Sturgis, unmasked protests and parties).

[Paper Chaser]

And yes @Paper Chaser , that absolutely plays a role here. Ours is a relatively wealthy area (for the region) and people can afford to keep kids at home when they get sick, which allows the schools to continue to stay open. I will not apologize or epxress remorse because I live in such an area.

Nor should you. I just wanted to mention that there are other factors besides political view that contribute to this pandemic. I'm not sure the "MAGA-ness" of an area really has much correlation, let alone causation for places with more viral spread. Stereotypically liberal parts of this country have been impacted by the virus in extreme ways just like stereotypically conservative locations have. There are plenty of Democratic politicians that have slipped up in very public ways, the same as Republican leaders have. It's not one side's fault while the other is blameless.

It's fine to criticize policies from leaders, but I'm just wary of consciously or subconsciously assigning blame to individuals in our communities who happen to be different from us in some way, while we pat ourselves on the back. That doesn't bode well for the future of our society.

[frugalnacho]

Meanwhile a bunch of us are stuck in the house with a bunch of arsonist and doing our best to not die and not exacerbate the fire.  It does seem unfair to australia to punish them for acting responsibly, but I also don't want me and my family to die because my government and a bunch of the population are inept and irresponsible.  Is the "right" thing to do to give australia more vaccine and let more americans die? Or give america more vaccine and let australia languish in some form of lock down?

[deborah]

The vaccine is great, for those that get it, and that's most of those who want it in the first world by the autumn, probably.  But there are nearly seven billion people in the world at risk of this virus, and there isn't enough vaccine for all of them to get it in order to stop the virus seasons from just going on rolling around the world, even if there was the money to buy it for them.   So I'm happy about the vaccine but pretty pessimistic about  the human ability to distribute it fairly and effectively, and about the world wide health and economic consequences of that.

The responses on this thread are very much "I'm all right, and the USA is going to be all right" - even though the USA is heading for half a million dead within the month.  There doesn't seem to be any interest, knowledge or concern about what is happening in parts of the world that are less wealthy - and less white.  And I think I'd better leave my comments on this thread at that.

"fairly" is an impossible to define term. if a country, with its money (tax-payer or printing press) is directly responsible for creating a vaccine, should that country not benefit more? i know there is a lot of benefit to equality on many fronts, but how do you justify to your populace that you're going to hand out vaccines to other countries around the world while your own country is burning down? also, africa, and i'm sure many others, has a much lower average age (skewed younger) so they will be impacted less.

OK. I’m very angry now.

Australia paid for several of the vaccines to be created. In return, we were to get doses of these vaccines. Our homegrown vaccine was dropped, not because it didn’t work, but because it gave false positives for HIV-aids. Some of the vaccines were successful. We’ve also been one of the instigators of a fair distribution to other countries.

We have had few cases, so we decided to certify the vaccines through the normal process, rather than through an emergency process. As a result, we’ve only just certified the first vaccine. Now, countries are saying that they are going to stop supply of vaccines to us, even though we helped to pay for the development, and even though we plan to do our first vaccinations in late February, because we want to be fair, and we are happy to wait a bit, BECAUSE WE PUT IN THE EFFORT TO GET COVID19 UNDER CONTROL.

It didn’t happen by magic that we got it under control. At one stage one of our most populous states, Victoria, had a higher rate of infection than the UK at the same time, yet they worked hard and got it down to zero cases. This is the only place in the world that has managed that. Other countries have more resources than us, yet somehow they decided not to put in the work, and to let a lot of their citizens die and the virus to mutate and become worse, and not to stop it. It’s just starting to take off in Africa because we’re now getting strains that are more effective at killing younger people.

I think that we should be ensuring that vaccinations are available equitably throughout the world. My government obviously thinks so to. It makes sense to show that the rich world cares. That China isn’t the only place that does.

Yeah, I have to say, Australia has been way too gracious in this whole thing. We've put ourselves at the back of the line for vaccines...but we do need vaccines, so that travel can open up and our economy can open up fully and society can go back to normal, not just covid-normal. There has to be some give and take after we've done so much on our end. Because we have eradicated the virus, we seem to have been put on the back burner for the vaccine, whereas a country like the US which has had a less cohesive response seems to be fast-tracking it...at this rate the US economy will rebound faster than ours.

That was the entire premise of this thread.  That lockdowns will kill the economy, and how long can we wait.

Actually, the countries that had lockdowns, and managed their spread, like Australia, are currently doing much better ECONOMICALLY than the other places. We have had a significant rebound. New Zealand is the best, and was the best at keeping it under control.

But the whole world needs the vaccines.

We have less than a tenth of the US population or the EU population. Pinching vaccines bound for us, that we helped to develop, and have already paid for, will do almost nothing for your own vaccination efforts. This is especially true since it’s possible that particularly the US population won’t be in a hurry to vaccinate, and that you’re not going to reach herd immunity with vaccination. There was a news article here yesterday about a vaccination team stuck in snow with six vaccinations that would go off - I’m sure you’ve seen it. They decided to offer them to people who were also stuck, and did so. However, it took them a lot of cars to get six people to agree, and they were surprised at the effort it took. One of the people had already missed an appointment to get vaccinated. You’re likely to be wasting enough vaccine to vaccinate our entire country. The best part is, of course, that US didn’t pay to help develop the vaccine most in use - the one we paid for, and possibly the one that so many stalled people rejected.

A number of people on the forum want to get vaccinated so they can travel again. Will countries that have been denied vaccines open up for travel from countries who have denied them vaccines? If they do open up, and you travel there, will you tout the fact that you’ve been vaccinated with stolen vaccines (that you’re happy to have stolen)? Your very presence with your accent will be obvious in countries that have been denied vaccines because they were too poor and the world didn’t prioritise them.

There are many countries that have successfully got covid19 under control but who won’t get the vaccine because they’re too poor, yet every plane load of visitors can create a fire, that they need to give a lot of effort to putting out, with spot lockdowns. Arguably, these countries are more disciplined and more likely to be able to effectively and efficiently distribute vaccines than countries that have had vast parts of their population ignoring and demonstrating against simple and effective measures such as social distancing and mask wearing.

The newer strains of covid19 are more difficult to control. Every country that has been successful in controlling it to date is currently having community outbreaks from travellers with these strains - including New Zealand. I have a theory that the British strain incubates for longer and that quarantine time need to be extended for more than 14 days.

[chemistk]

And yes @Paper Chaser , that absolutely plays a role here. Ours is a relatively wealthy area (for the region) and people can afford to keep kids at home when they get sick, which allows the schools to continue to stay open. I will not apologize or epxress remorse because I live in such an area.

Nor should you. I just wanted to mention that there are other factors besides political view that contribute to this pandemic. I'm not sure the "MAGA-ness" of an area really has much correlation, let alone causation for places with more viral spread. Stereotypically liberal parts of this country have been impacted by the virus in extreme ways just like stereotypically conservative locations have. There are plenty of Democratic politicians that have slipped up in very public ways, the same as Republican leaders have. It's not one side's fault while the other is blameless.

It's fine to criticize policies from leaders, but I'm just wary of consciously or subconsciously assigning blame to individuals in our communities who happen to be different from us in some way, while we pat ourselves on the back. That doesn't bode well for the future of our society.

Very fair. My anecdote probably is a poor one for Nippycrisp's speculation.

[HBFIRE]

I've wondered about this.  The US is the place in the world with the most replication of the virus . . . and the virus mutates typically through replication errors.  It's surprising to me that no significant mutations have been detected in the US so far.

We're just starting to detect them (like mentioned above, in California).  The problem is the US is terrible at tracking the mutations compared to say, the UK.  There are probably many variants we are unaware of.  Really embarrassing for the richest country in the world with many of the top scientists.  We should be the leader in detecting variants.  I really hope this pandemic gives us a kick in the ass to change things, but I'm pessimistic about that.

[OtherJen]

I've wondered about this.  The US is the place in the world with the most replication of the virus . . . and the virus mutates typically through replication errors.  It's surprising to me that no significant mutations have been detected in the US so far.

We're just starting to detect them (like mentioned above, in California).  The problem is the US is terrible at tracking the mutations compared to say, the UK.  There are probably many variants we are unaware of.  Really embarrassing for the richest country in the world with many of the top scientists.  I really hope this pandemic gives us a kick in the ass to change things, but I'm pessimistic about that.

As a former research scientist, it does not surprise me at all that scientists were not given the data, tools, and infrastructure to monitor SARS-CoV-2 mutation. The US government has been cutting biomed research funding since the early 2000s.

[nereo]

This is the weirdest sentence I've read about the new J&J vaccine (emphasis added - from WaPo);

In the clinical trial, all cases of covid-related hospitalization and death — the outcomes that most people would like to avoid — were among participants who had received placebo shots.

"...hospitalization and death - the outcomes most people would like to avoid..."
Huh?  Most??  Why characterize it that way - as if there's a subset who think death is not the worst outcome should they contract the virus? Shouldn't it be unequivocally: "in the clinical trial, the worst outcomes of hospitilzation and death were among participants who recieved placebo shots."??

[Watchmaker]

This is the weirdest sentence I've read about the new J&J vaccine (emphasis added - from WaPo);

In the clinical trial, all cases of covid-related hospitalization and death — the outcomes that most people would like to avoid — were among participants who had received placebo shots.

"...hospitalization and death - the outcomes most people would like to avoid..."
Huh?  Most??  Why characterize it that way - as if there's a subset who think death is not the worst outcome should they contract the virus? Shouldn't it be unequivocally: "in the clinical trial, the worst outcomes of hospitilzation and death were among participants who recieved placebo shots."??

It is a weird sentence. I think they meant "the outcomes that people would most like to avoid" and they transposed 'people would' and 'most'.

[JGS1980]

And yes @Paper Chaser , that absolutely plays a role here. Ours is a relatively wealthy area (for the region) and people can afford to keep kids at home when they get sick, which allows the schools to continue to stay open. I will not apologize or epxress remorse because I live in such an area.

Nor should you. I just wanted to mention that there are other factors besides political view that contribute to this pandemic. I'm not sure the "MAGA-ness" of an area really has much correlation, let alone causation for places with more viral spread. Stereotypically liberal parts of this country have been impacted by the virus in extreme ways just like stereotypically conservative locations have. There are plenty of Democratic politicians that have slipped up in very public ways, the same as Republican leaders have. It's not one side's fault while the other is blameless.

It's fine to criticize policies from leaders, but I'm just wary of consciously or subconsciously assigning blame to individuals in our communities who happen to be different from us in some way, while we pat ourselves on the back. That doesn't bode well for the future of our society.

Actually, in the USA, at least 25 of the top 30 states in Covid19 Cases per Million are reliably MAGA states. I'm not buying your both-sides-ism at all. This despite the fact that initial entry point of the virus into the USA was reliably big urban centers like Seattle, NYC, LA, and Boston. They had time to prepare and they still fucked it all up.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[HBFIRE]

Actually, in the USA, at least 25 of the top 30 states in Covid19 Cases per Million are reliably MAGA states. I'm not buying your both-sides-ism at all. This despite the fact that initial entry point of the virus into the USA was reliably big urban centers like Seattle, NYC, LA, and Boston. They had time to prepare and they still fucked it all up.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Best to sort by deaths/M, that's much more revealing and a better apples to apples comparison.   Confirmed cases are subject to testing volume which has changed drastically from the beginning of the crisis (early on, very little testing compared to now.  Most of the east coast is considerred "blue" and was hit early on when our testing was abysmal -- the real number of cases during that period is exponentially higher), and varies from state to state -- so it is not a very good metric to compare.  I don't think the main cause of all of this is a political one.  There are numerous reasons the US got hit hard -- we are a country of robust international travel, we didn't manage containment well early on, we didn't have good infrastructure in place for testing and tracing, American culture, etc.  Both blue and red areas have been hit hard.   Just look at LA right now, one of the most democratic areas in the country.

[waltworks]

The blue state red state thing needs to be over. Everyone did a bad job. Full stop.

-W

[jrhampt]

Deaths per million is not apples to apples either because the states that got hit early and hard had high early mortality rates partly because they didn't know how to treat it.  CT is a case in point.  Very high early mortality rate. 

[HBFIRE]

Deaths per million is not apples to apples either because the states that got hit early and hard had high early mortality rates partly because they didn't know how to treat it.  CT is a case in point.  Very high early mortality rate.

I agree nothing is a perfect apples to apples comparison.  But comparing confirmed cases is about the worst metric you could use.   It's going to vary wildly just because we have different testing rates over time and from state to state.  Death rate is about the best apples to apples comparison we have available.

[JGS1980]

Actually, in the USA, at least 25 of the top 30 states in Covid19 Cases per Million are reliably MAGA states. I'm not buying your both-sides-ism at all. This despite the fact that initial entry point of the virus into the USA was reliably big urban centers like Seattle, NYC, LA, and Boston. They had time to prepare and they still fucked it all up.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Best to sort by deaths/M, that's much more revealing and a better apples to apples comparison.   Confirmed cases are subject to testing volume which has changed drastically from the beginning of the crisis (early on, very little testing compared to now), and varies from state to state -- so it is not a very good metric to compare.

I agree that deaths/M is a good metric, but I would caution against ONLY using that data, as it has become clear that some rural states are counting their deaths differently.  https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-deaths-greatest-in-pro-trump-areas-analysis-shows/  Simultaneously, they are STILL undertesting their population. So my link to the 25/30 states remains a likely underestimate of the shittiness of their response.

There is also a time-course difference in regards to the death data. When Covid19 first came to the USA, there were few tests and fewer proven treatments available. The reason MAGA states have (relatively) better death metrics is because they are counting deaths differently AND that eventual Covid19 treatments were developed in the crucible of thousands of city people dying in their ICUs.

My conclusion is that despite the 3-6 month lead time that MAGA states had to get ready, they STILL didn't learn the lessons they could have learned.

[JGS1980]

The blue state red state thing needs to be over. Everyone did a bad job. Full stop.

-W

Lots of states did worse than others. How will be do better in the future if we just sweep this information under the rug?

[JGS1980]

Ultimately, when the CDC does a post-mortem on a state by state basis for 2020-2021 years that includes total death rate and excess deaths, we will finally be able to fully judge every states response. This will take at least a couple years.

[HBFIRE]

Ultimately, when the CDC does a post-mortem on a state by state basis for 2020-2021 years that includes total death rate and excess deaths, we will finally be able to fully judge every states response. This will take at least a couple years.

Sure, we will be able to compare states.  But it doesn't necessarily follow you can put the blame on whether the state is mostly blue or red (most states are fairly equally distributed btw).  It's far more complex than that.  @waltworks  is right, we need to stop with that nonsense.  There are much more important factors at play.  The US as a whole, is what not to do.  Cuomo is getting a lot of shit right now for his mishandling of NY (particularly nursing homes), but I think a lot of it is unfair as he had very little to go on early on.

[GuitarStv]

This is the weirdest sentence I've read about the new J&J vaccine (emphasis added - from WaPo);

In the clinical trial, all cases of covid-related hospitalization and death — the outcomes that most people would like to avoid — were among participants who had received placebo shots.

"...hospitalization and death - the outcomes most people would like to avoid..."
Huh?  Most??  Why characterize it that way - as if there's a subset who think death is not the worst outcome should they contract the virus? Shouldn't it be unequivocally: "in the clinical trial, the worst outcomes of hospitilzation and death were among participants who recieved placebo shots."??

It is a weird sentence. I think they meant "the outcomes that people would most like to avoid" and they transposed 'people would' and 'most'.

Can't be 100% sure but I suspect that I'd rather be hospitalized and die than end up with a weird chronic health problem that oooh . . . I dunno . . . caused me to live the rest of my life in pain.

[JGS1980]

Ultimately, when the CDC does a post-mortem on a state by state basis for 2020-2021 years that includes total death rate and excess deaths, we will finally be able to fully judge every states response. This will take at least a couple years.

Sure, we will be able to compare states.  But it doesn't necessarily follow you can put the blame on whether the state is mostly blue or red (most states are fairly equally distributed btw).  It's far more complex than that.  @waltworks  is right, we need to stop with that nonsense.  There are much more important factors at play.  The US as a whole, is what not to do.  Cuomo is getting a lot of shit right now for his mishandling of NY (particularly nursing homes), but I think a lot of it is unfair as he had very little to go on early on.

We can agree to disagree. 3 months in, hard to judge. Nearly 12 months in, I think we have enough data to make some judgements.

[chemistk]

Ultimately, when the CDC does a post-mortem on a state by state basis for 2020-2021 years that includes total death rate and excess deaths, we will finally be able to fully judge every states response. This will take at least a couple years.

Sure, we will be able to compare states.  But it doesn't necessarily follow you can put the blame on whether the state is mostly blue or red (most states are fairly equally distributed btw).  It's far more complex than that.  @waltworks  is right, we need to stop with that nonsense.  There are much more important factors at play.  The US as a whole, is what not to do.  Cuomo is getting a lot of shit right now for his mishandling of NY (particularly nursing homes), but I think a lot of it is unfair as he had very little to go on early on.

We can agree to disagree. 3 months in, hard to judge. Nearly 12 months in, I think we have enough data to make some judgements.

One thing's for sure, a whole generation of psychologists, economists, sociologists, epidemiologists, political scientists, etc. are going to base their entire undergrad and grad school careers (and even the foundation of their ensuing careers) on the results of this thing.

[bigblock440]

This is the weirdest sentence I've read about the new J&J vaccine (emphasis added - from WaPo);

In the clinical trial, all cases of covid-related hospitalization and death — the outcomes that most people would like to avoid — were among participants who had received placebo shots.

"...hospitalization and death - the outcomes most people would like to avoid..."
Huh?  Most??  Why characterize it that way - as if there's a subset who think death is not the worst outcome should they contract the virus? Shouldn't it be unequivocally: "in the clinical trial, the worst outcomes of hospitilzation and death were among participants who recieved placebo shots."??

Yes there is.

As a young person (under 40), I've never really been concerned about getting covid and dying.  You die and you're dead.  Getting it and having long term debilitating impacts (like weird health problems, lung problems, etc.) always seemed a lot scarier.

[cerat0n1a]

I've wondered about this.  The US is the place in the world with the most replication of the virus . . . and the virus mutates typically through replication errors.  It's surprising to me that no significant mutations have been detected in the US so far.

Not surprising at all - discussed earlier in the thread. The US does hardly any genetic sequencing of the virus, so although it probably has the most mutations occurring, they're going mostly undetected.  Some countries do it for every single case, some do it on a significant sized random sample - here in the UK it's about 10% of total weekly new cases. That's why South Africa has been able to detect a new variant and report its characteristics to the WHO and provide useful data.