Congrats, Trump. You succeeded at knocking your mishandling of covid out of the headlines.
3,915 deaths were reported today https://t.co/E2mWSkqpDY— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) January 7, 2021
We're experiencing stupefying levels of mass death every single day, but it's barely news. https://t.co/JAUH8fV1rJ
— Will Wilkinson ? (@willwilkinson) January 7, 2021
The US had +260,973 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 today, also a new record, bringing the total to over 21.8 million. The 7-day moving average rose to over 228,000 per day, a new high. pic.twitter.com/ODTJS6PBrJ
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) January 7, 2021
CNN: CDC has found more than 50 US cases of coronavirus variant first identified in UK.https://t.co/nz6QTdr27l
via @GoogleNews
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) January 7, 2021
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Multiple countries reporting record increases in new coronavirus cases:
– Czech Republic: 17,668
– Indonesia: 9,321
– Japan: 7,101 (at least)
– Malaysia: 3,027— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) January 7, 2021
UK reports further 1,041 Covid deaths, the highest daily death toll since April, and the highest number of cases since mass testing began https://t.co/CyLq9aQqPy
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) January 6, 2021
Ireland exceeds peak level of Covid hospitalisations https://t.co/XHBcbPJPWd
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 6, 2021
China reports most COVID cases in five months as Hebei infections rise https://t.co/aaLkETR45X pic.twitter.com/o9LHPPT0T3
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 7, 2021
Economy minister Nishmura said it's officially coming tonight: Japan Declares State of Emergency in Tokyo Area After Days of Hesitation https://t.co/Gqqzsi4R18
— Motoko Rich (@motokorich) January 7, 2021
Plan for Tokyo state of emergency moves forward as COVID-19 cases surge https://t.co/v2lZ5T2PAX pic.twitter.com/0Cin0ylS1c
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 7, 2021
Tokyo reports 2,447 new COVID-19 cases, nearly double the number announced a week ago. 112 people seriously ill. This graph compiled by ICU doctors across the country shows a record 498 people requiring ventilators, ECMO, and other apparatus across the country pic.twitter.com/3NtzlUUWbF
— Mari Saito (@saitomri) January 7, 2021
#COVID19 Statistics in SA as at 06 January .
Use the COVID Alert SA app to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community. Start using this privacy preserving app today. Add your phone to the fight! Download the Covid Alert SA app now! https://t.co/8YKEqaiiRF pic.twitter.com/ZNZgYgW2V7
— Dr Zweli Mkhize (@DrZweliMkhize) January 6, 2021
Nurses carrying in Moderna vaccines to the remote Indigenous community of Ahousat. The community honoured them with ceremony today before they vaccinated several members of the community. Chief Louie says it was an emotional experience, knowing Elders will be protected. pic.twitter.com/zthJbXX0tl
— Angela Sterritt (@AngelaSterritt) January 7, 2021
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Allergic reactions to the coronavirus vaccine are rare and outweighed by the benefit of protection, CDC finds https://t.co/Vi9a53OIGB
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 7, 2021
South Korean researchers say they've developed a pop-up negative pressure ward that can be assembled in just 15 minutes for overflow COVID-19 patients.
They say it's 80% cheaper and 70% lighter & smaller in volume compared to existing models.https://t.co/zDoqj1xtZo
— Victoria Kim (@vicjkim) January 7, 2021
Moderna aiming to make up to 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine this year https://t.co/ZkjgBaDtKS pic.twitter.com/xa6mCBtP7e
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 7, 2021
CureVac strikes COVID-19 vaccine alliance deal with Bayer https://t.co/otlXx3AvtQ pic.twitter.com/iY8pbksaka
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 7, 2021
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Reuters has identified dozens of workplace coronavirus outbreaks that followed employees' complaints to U.S. regulators. The complaints largely fell on deaf ears, according to an analysis of regulatory records https://t.co/gTDPLJLMtO pic.twitter.com/2jAafSQ3Ar
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 7, 2021
With frustration rising over the slow rollout of the coronavirus vaccine in the U.S., governors and other political leaders are ramping up the pressure – and even seeking to bend the rules – to get shots in arms more quickly. https://t.co/QicUWEOXSz
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 7, 2021
California hits 2.5 million coronavirus cases, adding 1 million in less than a month https://t.co/gHEwZfMSoE
— Morgan Fairchild (@morgfair) January 7, 2021
Only it feels different from 9/11, because this one I could see coming a long way off.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) January 7, 2021
WereBear
Pathetic as it is, I’m just grateful the Deplorables are the Trumpists are the Covid Denialists are the Insurrectionists!
Keeps things so much simpler.
YY_Sima Qian
On 1/6 China reported 52 new domestic confirmed, 71 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
At Dalian in Liaoning Province, 4 domestic confirmed cases recovered and 2 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There are currently 40 domestic confirmed cases and 22 domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. There are 13 communities, 2 residential compounds and a village currently at Medium Risk in the city.
Shenyang in Liaoning Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed (moderate) and 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases. The confirmed case visited fever clinic on 1/5 and tested positive on 1/6. The asymptomatic case is a nurse at a fever clinic that the imported index case had visited, a traced close contact already under centralized quarantine. The 2nd round of mass screening of residents in 9 districts continues. As of 12 PM on 1/7, 5,054,363 individuals have been swabbed, 2,497,806 results obtained, all negative. There are currently 29 domestic confirmed and 2 domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 1 residential compound was elevated to Medium Risk. There are 1 community, 1 office building and 15 residential compounds currently at Medium Risk in the city.
Heihe at Heilongjiang Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed case, a traced close contacts already under centralized quarantine. There are currently 9 domestic confirmed and 3 asymptomatic cases. 1 building at a residential compound has been elevated to Medium Risk, There are currently 5 residential compounds, a residential building and an office building at Medium Risk in the city.
Hebei Provincial Health Commission reported 51 new domestic confirmed (3 previously asymptomatic) and 69 new domestic asymptomatic cases. There are currently 90 domestic confirmed cases in the province (5 serious, 84 moderate and 1 mild) and 144 domestic asymptomatic cases.
Xingtai in Hebei Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed (previously asymptomatic) and 2 new domestic asymptomatic cases, at Nangong District. The confirmed case is a traced close contact under quarantine and isolation since 1/4. No information released for the asymptomatic cases. 1 neighborhood committee office was elevated to Medium Risk. There are currently 2 residential compounds and 1 office at Medium Risk in the city.
Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province (provincial capital) reported 50 new domestic confirmed cases (2 previously asymptomatic), and 67 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 48 confirmed cases are at Haocheng District, 1 at Xinjiang District (who had visited parents at Haocheng Districts on 12/28) and 1 at Hangtang County (with no travel history to Haicheng District). 18 of the confirmed cases had developed outward symptoms as early as 12/25, but most are between 12/29 and 1/4. The others were discovered via local mass screening. No information have been released for the asymptomatic cases. The entire Haocheng District remains at High Risk. All residential compounds in the district are under lock down, with 1 member from each household allowed to leave the compound every 2 days to purchase daily necessities. All deliveries are to be non-contact. Each compound will only open one point of entry/exit.
Changji Prefecture in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic case, a truck driver coming from Hebei Province, previously loading cargo at Shijiazhuang on 1/1. The case was found via screening of all persons coming from or passed through Hebei Province.
China CDC has shared that the genomic sequences of the initial cases from Xingtai and Shijizhiang outbreaks are highly identical, and share the same 10 mutation sites as sequence uploaded by Russia in July.
On 1/6, China reported 11 new imported confirmed cases, 8 imported asymptomatic cases:
* Shanghai Municipality – 5 confirmed cases, 3 Chinese nationals returning from the US and 1 each from Japan and France
* Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 2 confirmed cases, both Chinese nationals turning from Iraq; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Iraq and South Sudan
* Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed (1 previously asymptomatic) cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Japan and Pakistan
* Shijianzhuang in Hebei Province – 2 confirmed cases, off flight diverted from Beijing, no information releaesed
* Zhengzhou in Henan Province – 3 asymptomatic cases, no information released
* Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 1 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national returning from Indonesia
* Chongqing Municipality – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chines national returning from Nepal
* Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Spain
Guangzhou Municipal CDC reported an imported case infected with the 501Y.V2 strain first detected in South Africa, the first such case reported in China. The case is a South African airline pilot flying in from South Africa. China had previously reported 2 imported cases with the B.1.1.7 strain first detected in Britain.
Overall in China, 21 confirmed cases recovered, 12 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation and 4 were reclassified as confirmed cases, 2 suspect cases were ruled out as COVID-19, and 699 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 485 active confirmed cases in the country (280 imported), 13 are in serious condition (4 imported), 423 asymptomatic cases (244 imported). 19,582 traced contacts are currently under quarantine.
On 1/7, Hong Kong reported 33 new cases, 4 imported (from Nepal and Pakistan) and 29 domestic (5 of whom do not have source of infection identified). 30+ cases are preliminarily confirmed, awaiting retesting.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
In the Tokyo area we went from 1591 yesterday to 2447 today. The emergency declaration that starts tomorrow will do little I’m afraid. Schools are still open and businesses, such as restaurants, gyms, stores, etc. can stay open until 8pm. It’s clear that the virus has gotten a grip on the population and is spreading quickly. It’s going to take much more of a shutdown to bring those numbers down.
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY yesterday:
595 new cases, 57% are female. 934 people hospitalized, 148 patients in the ICU. Still at 621 reported deaths.
30% of the hospital beds are available on average and 25% of the ICU beds.
9.8% positivity
I realized last night that I’m overdue on having blood work done to make sure my various meds aren’t killing my liver. I don’t want to go out, but I really don’t have a choice.
Robert Sneddon
Britain is generally in a hard lockdown everywhere now, starting yesterday. Schools are still closed after the New Year and likely to remain so and, a biggie, the Government has announced there won’t be school exams this summer in England, just teacher evaluations which will be used in place of the traditional “leaving” certificate exams for employment and further education. The kerfuffle last summer over exams and evaluations nearly caused riots and problems for all the local and national governments with education officials resigning in droves.
Britain’s COVID-19 numbers for deaths and new cases are are worse than the US per capita (1041 deaths == 5000 in the US for the equivalent size of population). We’re a more urban and more compact population than the US which acounts for some of it, the rest is probably due to the variant of COVID-19 with increased transmissibility that’s widespread around here.
Various politicians are pushing for faster rollout of vaccinations (six million vaccinations a month!) without understanding the problems of basic vaccine supply and logistics — we’ve got a lot of vaccines on order but they’re still being manufactured and won’t be shipped to the UK for weeks or months.
This is the main reason for the move by the four regional medical officers to announce a twelve-week delay between first and booster shots of the two vaccines currently approved for use here (Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca). They want as many people to have at least some vaccine-derived protection as soon as possible to prevent the health system collapsing under the peak load of a lot of very sick individuals who need hospital treatment and medical intervention. Having more people contract milder forms of COVID-19 with lesser effects and, hopefully, less transmissibility in the community is the tradeoff they’re gambling on.
Keith P.
OT, but JoeScar is ON FIRE this morning. He is PISSED at the Capitol Police for opening doors for the rioters, etc. He literally yelled at the camera “YOU DON’T OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!” on live morning TV. Epic.
raven
Morning Joe “YOU OPENED THE FUCKING DOORS FOR THEM”!
Baud
@Keith P.:
@raven:
I hope they don’t bleep it out when they rerun it.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 numbers. Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 3,027 new cases today in his media statemeny, a new record for the second day in a row, for a cumulative reported total of 128,465 cases. Dr Noor Hisham also reports eight new deaths today, for a total of 521 deaths — 0.41% of the cumulative reported total, 0.50% of resolved cases.
25,221 active and contagious cases are currently in hospital; 142 are in ICU, 63 of them on respirators. Meanwhile, 2,145 patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 102,723 patients recovered – 80.0% of the cumulative reported total.
Nine new clusters were reported today: Senai Murni in Johor; Hartamas building site and Damai Pelangi in Selangor; Jalan Ipoh building site, Rungkup, Desa Setapak, and Jalan Jaya in KL; Ziarah Putra in Putrajaya; and Keranji Tabuan in Sarawak.
3,021 new cases today are local infections. Johor tops the list with 1,100 local cases: 893 in older clusters, 57 in Senai Murni cluster, 93 close-contact screenings, and 57 other screenings. Selangor has 706 cases: 168 in older clusters, 64 in Hartamas building site and Damai Pelangi clusters, 332 close-contact screenings, and 142 other screenings. Sabah has 493 cases: eight in existing clusters, 363 close-contact screenings, and 122 other screenings. KL has 314 local cases: 18 in older clusters, 118 in Jalan Ipoh building site, Rungkup, Desa Setapak, and Jalan Jaya clusters, 89 close-contact screenings, and 89 other screenings. Penang has 111 cases: 85 in existing clusters, eight close-contact screenings, and 18 other screenings.
Kelantan has 66 cases: 12 in existing clusters, 46 close-contact screenings, and eight other screenings. Negeri Sembilan has 63 cases: 23 in existing clusters, 26 close-contact screenings, and 14 other screenings. Perak has 59 cases: 35 in existing clusters, 20 close-contact screenings, and four other screenings. Kedah has 30 cases: 17 in existing clusters, seven close-contact screenings, and six other screenings. Pahang has 25 cases: six in existing clusters, 18 close-contact screenings, and one other screening.
Putrajaya has 17 cases: two in Ziarah Putra cluster, 11 close-contact screenings, and four other screenings. Sarawak has 13 local cases: one in an existing cluster, five in Keranji Tabuan cluster, and seven other screenings. Melaka has 11 cases: two in existing clusters, five close-contact screenings, and four other screenings. Terengganu has 10 cases: six close-contact screenings, and four other screenings. And Labuan has three cases: one close-contact screening, and two other screenings.
Once again, only Perlis reported no new cases today.
Six new cases are imported. Three were reported in Johor, two in KL, and one in Sarawak.
The eight deaths today are a 56-year-old man in Selangor with hypertension; another 56-year-old man in KL; a 78-year-old woman in Penang with heart disease; an 81-year-old woman in Selangor with hypertension, dyslipidaemia, and hypothyroidism; an 81-year-old woman im Selangor with diabetes, hypertension, and Addison’s disease; an 83-year-old man in Negeri Sembilan with hypertension, gout, dyslipidaemia, heart disease, and chronic kidney disease; a 38-year-old man in Putrajaya with diabetes and chronic kidney disease; and a 60-year-old non-Malaysian woman in Sabah, DOA with hypertension.
OzarkHillbilly
As I could have told him if he’d asked. OSHA was gutted as a regulatory agency long before trump came around. It’s a Potemkin bureaucracy that issues regulations it has no power to enforce. In all my years I only once saw an OSHA inspector.
The only thing keeping corporations in line is the fear of being sued for a blatant violation that ends in serious injury or death. And the GOP has been working to gut those protections for decades.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Stopping lawsuits is one of the main reasons the GOP cares so much about judges.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They would much prefer binding arbitration where there is no right of appeal. I fully expect them to push a law allowing for it as a condition of employment.
Ascap_scab
Question: Will the CureVac by Bayer be “Roundup Ready”?
Pass on that one.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Arbitration reform is actually something the Dems can do with control of Congress. The problem is that it’s low on the list of priorities.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yep. Fixing the Voting Rights Act has to be their number one priority in my opinion.
YY_Sima Qian
@Amir Khalid: Out of curiosity, what is the COVID-19 strategy in Malaysia now? The daily new case count has been fluctuating between 1500 and 2500 for a long time now (at lease a month?). Are the authorities looking to hold the line at current level (preventing further exponential spread) until mass vaccination, or substantial suppression down to lower levels?
Why has the incidence rate stayed at the more elevated level?
YY_Sima Qian
@Robert Sneddon: Yeah, really a menu of bad and worse options. With a 12 weeks delay, is the 2nd shot still a 2nd booster shot, or a new 1st shot?
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear:
Yes. It’s very simple when they’re all subsets of Trash.
TS (the original)
Just a week or so ago the Australian PM was saying we could delay the vaccine in Australia until March because the country had little of covid-19 to be seen. Almost instantly NSW had new cases, followed by Victoria, and today one case in Queensland.
It shows how fragile is the “covid peace”. Meanwhile the vaccine process has been brought forward a month.
mrmoshpotato
@Keith P.:
@raven:
@Baud: Adorable. Joey Joe Joe Scarborough should now yell at those two hosts who let the fat orange fascist call in repeatedly and slobbered all over his knob.
What was that show – Morning Blows?
Amir Khalid
@YY_Sima Qian:
Dr Noor Hisham said at yesterday’s media briefing that the Health Ministry is working on a new strategy in coordination with the National Security Council. One measure being considered is movement control orders such as were put in place nationwide last March, but in specific states/districts. (Movement control orders here come in four degrees, ranging upward in strictness from recovery MCO, conditional MCO, and MCO, to enhanced MCO.)
The post-September wave was attributed to infected illegal immigrants coming in via Sabah. That seemed to have abated; but more recently, in light of the outbreak at rubber glove maker Top Glove’s factories and worker dorms, there has been a focus on testing foreign workers there and at other workplaces. That accounts for some of the spike, which is concentrated in the more industrial states like Selangor and Johor. But local community spread is also up, since foreign workers unavoidably interact with local people.
The busines sector is naturally not keen on stricter MCO — it’s bad for business. But I think stricter mesures are needed now, along with some rollback of things like allowing free movement across districts and states and permitted congregation size at houses of worship.
Zzyzx
WA detailed our Covid plan and it’s depressing. I might technically qualify for March since I’m a diabetic with high blood pressure, but my diabetes is controlled via diet and extensive exercise and I haven’t had a non-normal A1C in about 8 years. My wife, despite working in a restaurant, doesn’t qualify as an essential worker. Maybe I have an outside show at March but she’s looking at May at the earliest; that month isn’t general population but the start of additional phases.
That means I have at least 6-7 more months of not seeing friends or leaving my house other than going to the store or my walks/runs. Maybe they’re just underpromising, but I’m not a fan of this groundhog.
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/VaccinationPhasesInfographic.pdf
YY_Sima Qian
@TS (the original):
That is the case everywhere. People in China, who have become largely complacent to the prospect of resurgence of COVID-19 within the country, are now confronted by sporadic outbreaks all across northern portions of the country. At least the B.1.1.7 and the 501Y.V2 strains are not spreading here, yet.
YY_Sima Qian
@Amir Khalid: Thanks for the explanation. I am surprised stricter movement controls have not been implemented earlier.
Robert Sneddon
Yes and no and it depends. Statistics are the only way to really measure effectiveness. A single dose will make some people immune to mild exposure to the virus. It will also mean some vaccinated people suffer mild symptoms when exposed to the virus and most of the rest will suffer moderate symptoms. The evidence, based on the non-control test group sizes of 30,000 or so given the vaccine indicate that a single dose means few if any vaccinated people end up in hospital with severe symptoms.
The hope and plan is that this single-dose vaccination right now will keep a lot of people out of hospital over the next three months, even if they’re sick at home because we’ve got more homes than hospital places right now and for the next three months. Once we’ve got through this period second booster doses will be given out and hopefully that will move the cases that develop even further away from needing hospitalisation. If the delayed booster scheme doesn’t work well then we should have vaccine deliveries and infrastructure in place to start over with a new round of inoculations, two shots three weeks apart for everyone.
The other hope is that vaccinating a lot of people right now will limit the spread of the virus, reducing the number of serious cases and superspreaders. The only way this virus and indeed all viruses can be created is in infected individuals and some animal species. Reduce that number of infectious cases drastically and theory says the number of future cases goes down too. That’s not proven, of course.
The data on the actual benefits of the three-week interval is actually a bit thin, it seems to be what the vaccine designers decided was a good idea so they could launch the trials and get the effectiveness and safety proven. In a true trial they’d have had different periods between initial and booster shots or no-booster test groups and lots of Excel spreadsheets to find the absolute best interval. They and the world were in a hurry so the makers said 3-4 weeks and the world has gone along with it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Robert Sneddon: There is only Phase III trial data (which assesses efficacy) for 3 week interval. There is no trial on other intervals. Unless I am mistaken, estimate of single shot efficacy is based on seroconversion and immuno-response from the Phase I & II trials, as well as the infection data for the control and vaccination groups during the 3 weeks interval between shots from the Phase III trials. These are tiny data sets with huge error bars. Why bother with Phase III trials if the dosing regime can be changed on a dime? What if we find that immune-response starts to wear off after 6 weeks without the booster shot?
What percentage of the population is the UK expecting to partially immunize with the single dose regime in the next 3 months? If 20% of the population gets partially immunized and some percentage of them walk around feeling fine (being asymptomatic or mild cases), it just makes it easier to spread to the rest of the population not yet immunized. Of course, neither of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech Phase III trials studied sterilization effectiveness of the vaccines, so we do not know under either single or double doze regimes.
To me, it’s a hell of a risk and a desperation move. Perhaps the only move to make given the UK’s predicament, the least worse of a plate of terrible choices.
Chris T.
Exactly. The probability is fair-to-good that a single-dose jab of an mRNA vaccine is effective enough to tame the spread, and can be corrected any time later. With production ramp-up, this gets one from “now” to “later” without decimating the population.
Amir Khalid
@YY_Sima Qian:
So am I.
Robert Sneddon
@YY_Sima Qian: The three-week interval between initial and booster shot was the only interval tested in the mass trial (I think the Moderna vaccine was a four-week interval but Moderna has not yet been accepted for rollout in the UK). Due to the vagaries of testing, some folks never received the second shot, some received it later than optimal so there is some (very limited) data on one-shot and delayed booster shots. Seroconversion and antibody titers in blood samples are measurable in individuals but epidemiology at its heart is a statistical process and the headline reports weren’t about titers and T-cell counts but about the very low numbers of COVID-19 cases in the non-placebo groups in the Phase III tests, the 90% numbers thrown about (with no error bars that I could ever see but that’s just me).
It’s all a risk but we can either inoculate x people with two doses with a three week interval or x times 2 people with one dose (an easier process than scheduling individuals to turn up at the 3-week appointment on time for their booster shot) over the next three months.
Case 1 we get some number of vulnerable people with good protection, a large number of people with zero protection and our hospital beds filled and the health professionals working 16-hour days and everything medical crashing around us due to the overload. Case 2, unless the science and our understanding of how this works is entirely wrong, we get a lot of people with some protection, a lot of sick people but fewer hospital beds filled and we can sort everything out later with boosters and revaccination campaigns after the crisis is over.
The game-changer is this new more virulent version of SARS-COV-2 that’s reportedly responsible for 50% of new cases in Scotland. Before it popped up in December 2020 Britain was on schedule to roll out the vaccines with the two-shot process at the recommended 3-week interval. If we do that now then thousands more people will die than we expected because there just isn’t the vaccine supply in place or in train to get everyone two shots by the end of May and the hospitals and medical staffs can’t cope with the surge to come in February and March.
Mike in Pasadena
Thank you AL.