Sometimes I think the pandemic will never end, but I remind myself that it will.
Numbers are headed up again in the US and skyrocketing in other countries. A Yankee – Red Sox game was postponed because of 19 positive tests within the Yankee organization. One wonders what the vaccination status is of the Yankee organization.
This is how the pandemic will end.
People who are not vaccinated will become sick and die. Those who recover will be immune to the disease. Either way, they will be removed from the susceptible pool. People are being vaccinated every day. They are removed from the susceptible pool after the appropriate number of shots and waiting period. The numbers of the susceptible decrease every day.
The alarmist takes that immunity will wear off and that variants will get around immunity are wildly overblown. I have seen no evidence for either of those and good arguments that our multiple-barrier immune systems react well to the vaccines and infection, except for small numbers of people with weakened immune systems. Every day that passes argues that immunity is not wearing off. If we eventually find a decrease, we can deal with it from a base of immunized people.
As the numbers of susceptible people decrease, we can concentrate attention and vaccines on hot spots or boosters if we learn that they are necessary. At some point, we will even quench the hot spots.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s not clear when we’ll get there. My estimate is that it will be five years before the world is back to something close to pre-pandemic normal. It will be uneven for different places, as the pandemic has been all along.
We recently passed four million recorded deaths from COVID across the world. The total is undoubtedly higher and will go higher still.
We must speed up vaccinating people. The longer the pandemic goes, the higher will be the death count. And pretending we are back to normal now delays the end.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
NYCMT
The road to herd immunity and the end of the pandemic passes through the bodies of my three and nine year old sons. We kept them infection-free for eighteen months.
I am angry about that.
trollhattan
So unnecessary, at least in the developed world. We have practically stalled out in my (CA) county with new vaccinations, advancing a whopping 1.6% to 48.3% fully vaccinated the previous week. At one point about 15k vaccinations/week were being administered, now it’s about 2k. Not good enough.
As a result, new cases, hospitalizations and ICU case rates have all more than doubled. In a month, kids will begin returning to the classroom. That should be interesting.
Timill
The Yankees are one of the better teams on vaxxing, having reached the 85% mark for relaxing protocols.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/sports/baseball/yankees-coronavirus.html
Mary G
As one of the small number of people with impaired immune systems, I have gone back to staying at home after three trips to home improvement stores and one lunch outside on the patio. It was nice while it lasted.
HuCat
Yep, “…pretending we are back to normal now delays the end,” just like the cult of #OrngJulius pretending he won only delays consequences for that crime family.
Mallard Filmore
My ex-wife is a citizen and resident of Thailand. She wants to come here on a vacation visa to the USA with her other son so that she can escape the growing COVID problems there. Her current vaccine appointment is some time in October. Free walk-in jabs are a big draw.
Catherine D.
@NYCMT: This!
OzarkHillbilly
Meanwhile the hospitals here in Misery are becoming overwhelmed with covid patients, 95+% of whom are unvaccinated, and the vaccinated are paying for it. I’d like to suggest that anyone who chooses to forgo a vaccine is voluntarily giving up the right to hospital care for any covid diagnosis.
I feel certain the MAGA heads will have no problem whatsoever with this because they all know it’s a hoax, or no worse than the flu, or more than willing to die just to own the libs.
It’s a win win for everyone.
sab
@Mary G: Well that sucks. I am fully vaccinated but I still wear masks just for solidarity with other maskers. Also too my youngest granddaughter is 7, so still waiting for her vax.
Almost Retired
Back to mandatory indoor masking in Los Angeles County tomorrow. Fine with me. I was wearing one anyway. I am vain enough to not want to be mistaken for a Trump supporter.
FelonyGovt
Los Angeles County is going back to requiring masks indoors for everyone, whether or not vaccinated. Fine with me. I strongly suspect many of the mask-less have been unvaccinated people, because refusing to be vaccinated kind of goes with refusing to wear a mask.
…Or… what Almost Retired just said
MisterForkbeard
@NYCMT: This. I’ve got two kids (4 and 6) and I can’t get them vaccinated yet. We’ll all get there eventually, but good god I can’t wait until I can get them the jab.
Once it’s available for everyone here, then fuck the people who are still rejecting the vaccine. They’re killing themselves, but at least they won’t be killing us any longer. At least so long as they don’t make new awful variants that can skip the vaccine, which we haven’t seen yet.
Cermet
That death toll of 4 million is a vast undercount; India alone could very well have reached that number already. The vast interior areas of Asia, Africa, and so many poor rural areas just bury their dead without knowing cause of death and likely covid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzarkHillbilly: someone posted yesterday about two young men– 24 and 25– who are getting double lung transplants. There’s a story out of Louisiana about an anti-vax nurse— also a twenty-something– who died of Covid, but the hospital is now saying they can’t/won’t say her cause of death. Her boyfriend and parents were also reported to be infected.
MisterForkbeard
@Mallard Filmore: I have some friends in the Phillippines who are in a similar boat. They’re thinking about traveling here to get the shot.
dmsilev
@Mallard Filmore: I have a colleague in Japan, a US citizen, who was considering coming here to get vaccinations for himself and his wife. Ended up being able to start the process over there, but it was a real option for a while.
I’ll believe the pandemic is coming to an end once let’s say half of Africa has been vaccinated.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’d read about the young nurse, and read some of her twitter comments on the vax. Hadn’t heard of the double lung transplant guys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This worries me. Glad to hear from a Big Brain that it’s less of a problem than I feared.
lowtechcyclist
@NYCMT: I can totally understand how you feel. My kid is turning 14, and I practically wept with relief when they opened vaccination up to the 12+ age group.Don’t know what I’d do if he was only ten or eleven, and having to go back to school in the fall, but I’d be pissed as hell that everyone else was acting like it was all over, when it certainly wasn’t for me.
@sab:
So am I, but I’ll continue to wear a mask anytime I’m indoors among strangers, until this thing is really good and done with. It damn sure ain’t yet.
Baud
Domestically, two developments yet to happen are worth watching for.
At some point, I think the politics of this will change.
Meanwhile, a lot of the unvaccinated are non-Trumpers. We need to focus on them.
jonas
Reading the stories out of places like Missouri and Arkansas is just infuriating. The demoralization and exhaustion among health care workers is unbelievable. I hate to say it, but I see no reason why they should have to treat people who refused to get vaccinated when they could have and then show up at the emergency room with Covid. Save their energy for people needing other procedures and the rare breakthrough case that requires hospitalization. Imagine desperately needing a knee-replacement or something so you can, you know, walk, but the hospital has to postpone it for another six weeks because the surgery ward is filled with unvaccinated idiots who decided fuck around and found out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzarkHillbilly: I guess one has already undergone the transplant, and for the other patient it’s still a possibility. Their families are speaking out to warn other people, especially the youngs. Kind of a tough read.
Cermet
Something I would like to add that no one is talking about; while I agree the chance of the various Covid-19 variants mutating on their own is slim – this overlooks the far, far greater cause of viral mutation. DNA or RNA exchange with another virus while in a host.
The time a host carries the virus is critical – because the person (who is sick) is more open to other virus’s the longer they are sick. Then when both virus’s are in cells, the Covid virus can pick up new genetic information that can create a very dangerous variant that is so new it can by-pass an existing vaccine.
So preventing people from getting Covid for extended periods is critical to reduce the chance of this happening. So the faster most everyone is vaccinated the less likely this more common mutation process will occur.
Mary G
@Almost Retired:
@FelonyGovt:
You two have a mind meld!
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
That’ll be big, because employers can then start requiring it, absent a bona fide medical reason for being unable to tolerate the vaccine.
A lot of “you’re not the boss of me” Rethugs will find out that their actual bosses don’t have to put up with their stupidity.
jonas
I think there are two groups of people who have been vaccine hesitant whom I don’t hold in contempt like I do the Trumpist rednecks who refuse it because you’re not the boss of them: undocumented people who may think that it will expose them to government detection and deportation (and *of course* this is exactly what Trump would have used it for, so they’re not crazy), and low-income workers who can’t take time off and/or are afraid the side effects will make them lose work.
OzarkHillbilly
They usually are.
eta: I’m high risk, vaccinated but if anyone was going to get severe covid anyway, it would be me. I really doubt they’d put me in line for transplants and can’t say as I’d argue with that decision.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Almost Retired: Our store manager at the orange apron place that I work at was telling un-masked employees that as of tomorrow, mask will be required. Glendale is behind the rest of the county on vaccination and mask compliance.
Chief Oshkosh
@OzarkHillbilly:
Voluntary? Fuck ’em. Mandatory. No vaccination? No hospital entry. We might treat them in a tent out back, but why the fuck should we or the other patients deal with their political theater shit? Die in the hot sun, motherfuckers.
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: All good points.
I’ve read that Washington State is no longer waiving insurance co-pays and such for COVID treatment. More and more colleges and universities are requiring vaccination. The political turning point is coming.
That will increase the numbers of situations that will require vaccination.
I would love to know what these numbers are. The Biden administration is coming up with more ways to reach them. Some people still believe that they will have to pay for the shots, and others can’t get time off from work. The refusing Republicans are very loud, but these people aren’t. They’re mostly trying to keep their heads down.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FelonyGovt: A portion of the population of my fair city has never taken COVID seriously, if they mask, it’s usually with their nose hanging out and vaccination rates have lagged behind other neighboring cities in the area by about 10%.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Baud:
I don’t know. I was just watching CNN and Jim Acosta played a reel of Fox News telling their viewers THIS WEEK the vaccine is unnecessary and dangerous. Propaganda is a hellva drug.
trollhattan
Sane vs. crazy, round the umpeenth.
Cheryl Rofer
@Cermet: I agree that mutations are more likely as more people carry the virus.
THAT SAID, the vaccines are all effective against the variants so far. The m-RNA vaccines can be tweaked for new variants. All the vaccines target the spike protein, which is how the virus latches onto human cells. If the spike protein changes enough to escape the vaccines, it may also change enough to become less infective. Those mutations may already have emerged and failed to reproduce.
Your argument is basically, what if a new virus emerges. That’s always been a possibility, but there’s no point in frightening ourselves with what is essentially a science fiction story. I’m tired of that panicky speculation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Cancel Culture! In Riverside, no less.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I thought it was Anaheim?
debbie
What about boosters?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, Ya got trouble, my friend, right here
I say, trouble right here in Riverside City
With a capital “T”
That rhymes with “P”
And that stands for Pool
Cheryl Rofer
@debbie: From everything I’ve read, there is no need for boosters now. Pfizer met with administration officials this week (including Biden?) to pitch their desire to sell a third shot to worried people, and the administration said not at this time, which seems like a good call when the current regime is working.
Ohio Mom
Oh yeah, I feel for everyone with a child under 12. There’s the worry about catching Covid, and then there is dealing with kids who have had their lives turned upside down and are being denied all sorts of things they want and need.
It sounds like school-age kids will become eligible relatively soon (though every single day until then likely feels like an eternity). That still leaves the babies, toddlers and preschoolers and their panicked parents.
Cheryl’s estimate of five years until the world is back to normal/whatever sounds about right to me. Hoping it can be sped up somehow.
Cermet
@Cheryl Rofer: While I overall agree, you missed my main point. Very new viruses are believed to come into existence when they and another virus (a very different virus) simultaneously infect a host. Through a well known process two different viruses will mix their DNA or RNA and pickup totally new ways to infect a host. Hence the spike issue for Covid that the vaccine uses, can become irrelevant for this very different strain of Covid to infect a host.
People getting sick and for long periods increase this risk a very great deal. That is what is worrying me. As many people as possible need to be vaccinated before the fall flu season gets started and offers Covid new viruses to interact with and maybe gain a new vector to attack our cells.
Baud
Re: mutations and variants. Seems like the bigger risk of that happening is in the rest of the world, which is still suffering a lot more than we are.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Last I heard was Riverside, but that was yesterday.
Baud
@trollhattan:
?
zhena gogolia
@NYCMT:
Yes, infuriating.
sab
@Ohio Mom: My step-daughter has kept her seven year old autistic kid out of school for two years now. It shows. Grand-daughter is quite sociable, but she is functionning at a five year old level, and she really really wants contact with kids who aren’t her cousins.
Our urban Ohio school district is really good at this stuff. They have a remedial pre-school program this summer to help figure out where the kids belong. Grand-daughter is absolutely loving it.
You told me the kids need school. I believed you. Now her mother does also. But sending her out without vaccination is terrifying.
RSA
Reading the Post today I came across a story that made me sad about the way politics has degraded public discourse over the past four years. A woman writes about not getting a vaccine yet, because she had an unexplained stroke some years ago and her doctor apparently suggested that the vaccines are contraindicated. Some of the comments are just brutal, with no sympathy/empathy/understanding at all for her position. I try to distinguish between the cautious and the willfully stupid unvaccinated, but not everyone does.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-unvaccinated-medical-reason/2021/07/16/4937475a-df3e-11eb-9f54-7eee10b5fcd2_story.html
E.
I think a lot of people who read and comment on this blog are not that familiar with the habits and thinking of those who are very poor. Go to a restaurant: every single person you see over the age of 30 and probably every single person in the kitchen has zero savings, shares an apartment with possibly many people, and believe it or not is in many cases not on social media. They might not be able to tell you who the Vice President is. What they know about Covid came from their employers and speculation of their friends. They circulate among each other and rarely leave that group. They are almost certain to be unvaccinated, and the reason is that no one has ever tried talking to them about it. They only know it is a sensitive and hot-button political topic that can land you in trouble if you play it wrong. There are ways to reach these people but I think it’s going to require mobile clinics and people going door-to-door, on foot.
The Pale Scot
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve been saying that their insurance should not cover them. Two weeks on a ventilator is probably a half a million dollars.
And treat it like student loans, bankruptcy won’t help
Another Scott
ICYMI, the overstressed IKEA employee is back…
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@E.:
…which the RWNJs are trying to stop people from doing.
I have no idea why the anti-vaxxers on Fox aren’t in jail, or at least TRO’d off the air.
JCNZ
The view from New Zealand…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/17/no-return-to-normal-expected-in-post-pandemic-new-zealand-and-locals-say-thats-fine-covid-19
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: The polling I’ve seen indicates that of non-white, non-Republican vaccine resisters, surprisingly many of them don’t cite work-related or access worries, but are scared for a lot of the same reasons others are scared: they don’t trust the medical establishment, worry that the vaccines are untested, have heard scary antivaxxer stories about vaccine deaths or bad side effects etc.
But I think they’re more gettable, regardless, because there was a reason Republican unvaccinated often use that they don’t: “I just don’t want to.” That oppositional defiant response–that’s a white, Republican thing.
David Chop
As a little side project during all this mess, I checked up on my other vaccine status and got them all straightened out/updated. Got my second shingles shot a couple weeks ago (owie on the side effects/reactions. Way worse than the covid jab) and asked the pharmacist what else I needed and when. Nothing until I hit 65, a little over 10 years out. So I recon that makes all the other vaccines good for at least 10 years, but covid? No, nooooo, we have no idea how long that will be good for. Could lose effectiveness any day now! /s
Matt McIrvin
I think that when it’s possible (and to some degree mandatory) to vaccinate children, that will take a lot of the stress of this off.
The fact that immunity seems to be long-lived also bodes well for the ability of school mandates to control the pandemic. Get K-12 and college students to get the shots, and immunity in the populations that are currently most likely to spread the virus will squelch transmission for years.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
Glad to hear this, thanks.
Major Major Major Major
It’s as good right now (in NYC) as it’s likely to be for a while… not gonna rejigger my risk allowance just yet, especially given the body of evidence showing high mRNA vaccine efficacy against delta. This will “end” (though covid will likely be endemic) eventually but yeah. No time soon.
Chetan Murthy
@E.: Yeah, that’s bullshit. B/c people in their demographic who are *old* get the vaxx. They don’t fuck around. Unless somehow, going from being a poor 30-40-50-something, to a poor 60-something magically makes you brilliant, or civic-minded, or whatever.
People have agency It’s been *months* that we’ve had vaccine oversupply. At what point is enough enough? What date?
Major Major Major Major
@Cheryl Rofer: as I recall, a lot of the unvaccinated non-GOP don’t think they can get the time off work, and were some of the main consumers of the J&J vaccine before the pause. Nowadays nobody trusts it.
trollhattan
@Chetan Murthy:
Anybody hereabouts can get a vaccine, practically 24/7. Been that way for months, since mid-spring or so. Rides to and from are available.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Yeah.
A second summer of sequestering for them. Our neighborhood rec center has some summer programs. We looked at the photos of smiling, unmasked, un-distanced children and declined. We wanted to send Spawn the Younger to camp, ultimately didn’t feel comfortable with it…. our neighbors down the street did send their kids, who came back yesterday, and one of them isn’t feeling well and now they’re quarantined. She’s supposed to go back to school in person in the fall. I have tried enrolling them in two clinical trials with no luck.
And the baby? I’m freaking out. We need that vaccine for the littles.
Matt McIrvin
@David Chop: I also got my second shingles shot just a couple of weeks before I became eligible for the COVID vaccine. Agreed, it was far worse. All the Moderna COVID vaccine gave me was a headache and maybe some weird stomach upset for a day, but Shingrix had me laid out with fatigue and chills for most of the following day. It was worth it, though, given all I’ve heard about shingles.
jl
All the research I know of indicates that the T-cell and B-cell immunity is long lasting, and that is the way almost all vaccines work. I hated the term ‘case-idemic’ when the Trumpsters were yelling it last summer, so I won’t use it now. But as Monica Gandhi has explained ( https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi) many ‘confirmed infections’ that are confirmed by PCR in vaccinated people are just cases where a few virus particles colonize a patch of the nasal passages, and then the T-cells shut it down in 2 to 3 days without the virus ever leaving the nose. As Gandhi says, that is how other nonsterilizing vaccines (which is most of them) work. Edit: need to remember that many PCR tests are so sensitive that they can pick up just a few dozen strands of RNA in a nasal swab.
And I’ve seen some mentions in the clinical twittersphere that the very low 64% vaccine protection against infection from delta in Israel was among very old and immunocompromised with multiple chronic conditions. Other estimates of protection against infection against delta are still between 75% and 85%. And given that some of the cases in the vaccinated are just small colonized patches of virus being destroyed by T-cells, protection against infection is a little higher.
So, the new headlines are two alarmist. And, too negative on the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy among Hispanics seems to have disappeared with time and experience, and in many surveys they are more willing to get vaccinated than other groups. But, there is still trouble getting it to them.
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@raven:
It was initially planned for a private meeting hall in Laguna Woods, FKA Leisure World, one of raven’s grandparents’ homes, but they had not told the venue who it was for, and as soon as the manager found out, he cancelled.
Thursday they got a convention hall in Riverside, owned by the city, but operated by a private co. The city first said 1st Amendment applied, but got so many complaints and threats of protest they cancelled Friday due to concerns for public safety.
This morning it was to be the privately owned Anaheim Event Center, whose yelp reviews took a dive, and the city of Anaheim said “OH, HeLLs, NO” (in different words). So they decided to hold a public protest opposing Communism outside the Riverside City Hall. I would’ve gone if I wasn’t having medical shit, it supposedly starts in an hour and a quarter.
I would bet money that they’ll be outnumbered by counter-protesters and will chicken out to fund raise about cancellation culture from the rubes back home.
They are pariahs within their own party, or they would be at some rich donor’s home in Brentwood.
James E Powell
@Mary G:
I saw something last week, can’t find it right now, said those three were the top fundraisers.
jl
Interesting episode of This Week in Virology explaining how repeated exposure and colonization to a bug (viral or bacterial) after vaccination boosts immunity, using long run immunity from bone marrow and lymph nodes, not the shorter term antibodies produced in response to the vaccine itself.
An interesting bit I didn’t know, as one of the virologists explains, is that the short term antibodies produced by the vaccine are much more likely to produce viral escape from the vaccine than the long run immunity of B-cells. Apparently we all get more or less the same antibodies from the vaccine, but each persons menu of of antibodies produced from B-cells is so idiosyncratic, that the virus can’t adapt fast enough to keep up. So if you get hit by a few virus particles from, say, a John Cole, the antibodies he produces from his B-cells are almost always so different from yours, and rapid evolution of the virus is checkmated. Wild, huh? I think way too much emphasis on the short run antibodies, which leads to pointless panic and worry, and in some people defeatism and resistance to vaccines. As many clinicians have said, if we kept all the antibodies of every bug we’ve ever been exposed to, there would be so many protein particles in our blood that it would be too thick to circulate, and blow out our kidneys in a few months.
TWiV 779: Evolving boosterism
July 11, 2021
https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-779/
jl
@jl: Got wrong twitter link for infectious disease doctor Monica Gandhi. Correct link is below
https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9
Anonymous At Work
Cheryl Rofer
@jl gives some facts that are the kind of thing I’ve been seeing and worth repeating:
I’ve seen that some of the reported “breakthrough” infections that the news reports so breathlessly are in fragile people too. Not clear how many. Add that to the cases in which a couple dozen viruses are in the nose being wiped out by T cells.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Here in LA there are vax clinics at Metro stations that should be able to serve these populations. I really do think much of the hesitancy has to do with a fear of side effects and missing work and their employer’s response.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: NYC has vaccinated tens of thousands with J&J at popup clinics in Grand Central and Penn stations. I think it’s a great idea.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for highlighting. If the B-Cells hold out for decades, then you are absolutely right, we’ll get to some kind of low, and mild disease steady state, in a year or two. Of course no ones knows for sure and we have to hope that current strong evidence for that case continues to hold.
So, it’s a question of whether it takes a couple of more months (high vaccinated areas) or a year or year and a half (MO and MS) from infection, hospitalization and death. Things look a bit better than reported in the media.
I think there are a few potential problems though. One is there will be imported cases into high vaccinated areas, and we need to have a strong disease control program for covid, just as we do for TB, mumps and measles, so question is whether capacity of US public sector is so decayed we can’t create a program for a new disease.
And we don’t have a population based surveillance system so we don’t really know how many ‘breakthrough’ infections are just colonization versus infection that spreads out of nose. We also don’t know how severe an infection has to be in order to make long covid necessary. Countries that have done much better than us in terms of both covid and noncovid health and keeping economy open, like Norway, Finland and Estonia, set up those surveillance systems over a year ago, so maybe they’ll tell us, if we are nice and ask politely.
Also, here is an interesting personal observation from a pediatrician who’s been doing vaccine outreach in Georgia. Not sure which groups she’s been talking too, though.
@RheaBoydMD
Last week I spoke to over 5000 people in rural Georgia. Most were not vaccinated because they still had questions. EVERY question they asked was legitimate and important.
Stop telling people to “just get vaccinated” if you aren’t willing to put in the work to help them do it.
6:59 AM · Jul 17, 2021
https://twitter.com/RheaBoydMD/status/1416397105678061576
Matt McIrvin
@jl: Breakthrough infections that are serious enough to make someone utterly miserable for several days seem to be common enough that I’m hearing the anecdotes all over. But it doesn’t seem to go beyond that.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Even in SF Bay Area, I frequently meet people who don’t seem to be Trumpsters at all who say they are waiting because they are afraid due to fast development, or want to watch what happens with people who’ve been vaccinated for a few more months.
I’ve said that so far, looks like what happens is that they don’t get real sick and wrecked from covid.
Feather
What sucks is that the antivaxx dickshits in the US are undoubtedly slowing down the world in the rest of the world. Plan was vaccinate the countries that developed the vaccine, then when that’s done, massive rollout to the rest of the world. But because the US, UK, etc. are going so much slower than expected, the second wave of vaccinations isn’t happening as it should. My wish is that Mr. B would announce that the US mass vaccination is winding down, so if you want it, get it now. Then huge rollout in India, Africa, and elsewhere.
Yes, I know the US, UK, and Europe have no more moral right to the vaccine than the rest of the world, but people who are wailing about it are proving to me that they aren’t part of the reality based world.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: That’s the problem in the US, we don’t have a population based surveillance system to get large representative samples to tell us for sure.
The torpor of the US public health sector is bizarre. We have those surveillance systems for dangerous staph bugs, pertussis, measles, TB. Why can’t we get one up and running for covid? It’s obvious by now that covid won’t be eradicated, and even high vaccinated areas will have to deal with periodic outbreaks from imported cases (from odd places with strange customs like WY, MO and MS). Edit: we can live normal lives with the same thing with TB, measles, MONKEYPOX!!!!!, dengue fever, zika, etc. Need to get our butts in gear, public healthwise to do the same with covid.
Feather
Also, this is a very cute short cartoon about how vaccines work. https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1416383046366945281
jl
@Feather: Sadly, countries with big pharma influence like Germany and Switzerland are being self-destructive jackasses along with the US. So, more than US anti-vaxxers and Trumpster cult media, like Fox News.
Matt McIrvin
@jl:
If I had to guess, I’d say people are afraid of getting marked for death by Tucker Carlson-crazed mobs.
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: I suspect that one of the reasons we don’t have the surveillance system you describe is that we’ve been so saturated with cases that it wouldn’t work. We are getting to a place where it will, and I hope one will be rolled out soon.
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: Cases are going up (rapidly), not down. I’d imagine we’d have to wait out the next wave or two.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: Good point. I hope that it the case and a program is being prepared. FN, NO and EE had very effective shutdowns that reduced prevalence of disease close to zero last summer, so it was feasible to get informative surveillance programs up and running.
The lack of good estimates based on good and large samples is causing problems. Recent research has suggested, for example, that long covid is rare for asymptomatic infection, or vaccination helps resolve long covid. But the sample sizes are so small, that the conclusions are not reliable. A study with zero cases of long covid in eleven asymptomatic infections doesn’t tell us much.
Edit: it’s the sort thing that feds and state governments have to do, relatively small academic studies won’t get us the info.
Starfish
@RSA: I think it is the exhaustion at the number of people who think they are exceptional in some way.
At this point, many millions of people have been vaccinated, and most people are able to get vaccinated.
There are concerns, and your doctors will talk to you about your special case, but a lot of this is people shouting “I am special, and I don’t have to” at other people as opposed to talking to their doctors about it.
When my child was having a medical emergency, someone asked me if I thought the people where we live are special and extra sensitive, and “No, we are not special. We just have medical problems.”
Matt McIrvin
Here in the Northeast we are likely to have something very odd by the standards of the past year and a half: an enormous COVID wave with as many cases as in the winter, but with relatively few deaths. Like what they’re experiencing in the UK now. The cases will mostly be either young people or vaccinated people, so they won’t get as sick.
And we’ll have to decide: do we shut everything down one more time, or do we just let it rip, as if it were a seasonal flu epidemic?
RSA
@Starfish: I think you’re right. Thanks for your story about your child; I’m sorry that that happened.
Morzer
I am not at all surprised by the emergence of the variants, because that was to be expected from the coronavirus family. Flu produces seasonal variants without missing a beat, despite the wide availability of flu shots. I think we were “unlucky” in that covid-19 struck at societies where the anti-vaxxers had had a significant impact, combined with Trumpian sociopathy and willful stupidity. At the same time, too many of us tolerated obviously imperfect political systems and politicians, while vaguely hoping that our fellow-citizens couldn’t possibly be dumb enough or vile enough to buy into right-wing nonsense yet again. We were lucky not to have a major pandemic before this, but sooner or later luck runs out. Our aspiration can’t be to get back to normal, given that it was this normality that produced the disaster we are now enduring. As a wise man has been saying for some time now, we have to build back better.
Jeffery
@Matt McIrvin: Britain goes to voluntarily masking and lifting all restrictions tomorrow. As British Dr. James Campbell calls it, “The British experiment.”
It’s expected there will be 50k to 100k new covid cases daily in Britain. Boris is going for herd immunity. The Tories say between those vaccinated already and those who get and survive covid it will be reached.
Cheryl Rofer
@Morzer: The flu virus is very different structurally from SARS-CoV-2. The flu virus has two parts, the H (Hemagglutinin) part and the N (Neuramidinase) part, that can mix and match, and they frequently do. SARS-2 is all one piece. Once we get the numbers of cases down, we will see fewer variants than we do with flu.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffery: Of course, huge numbers of cases among the young still means the ICUs entirely fill up with patients on ventilators (especially since, if they don’t die, they keep filling those hospital beds for weeks and weeks).
Carlo
FWIW, the epi sources that I’ve seen suggest an endemic equilibrium of some sort is the likely long-term outcome for SARS-COV-2, with pockets of susceptibility nurturing new mutations that spread back into the general population.
On the other hand, what is likely to happen (IMO) given the level of global investment in COVID-19 medical research is that affordable therapies such as effective antivirals and immune therapies will appear, and anyone diagnosed with the disease will be prescribed a pill, or a shot (or with any justice in the case of anti-vaxxers, a suppository), and be cured of a minor inconvenience. At which point we I’ll stop talking about the disease in world-political terms, so that the pandemic will have “ended”. Kind of like what happened with AIDS — a trajectory from “politically-freighted fatal disease” to “nuisance”.
Not a (medical) doctor, so no $0.02 charge for the above :-)
Auntie
@lowtechcyclist: actually EEOC guidance already says that employers can mandate the vaccine with caveat of process to consider reasonable accommodations for disability and sincerely held religious beliefs. But I do hope and believe that more employers will be willing to mandate with full approval.