To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

[Deebased]

TL;DR: The numbers are relative to a peak, there's still lots of new cases. The peak occurred because with each holiday (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s) more people mixed together causing cases to explode. It's the old exponential growth story. On average, an infected person infects between 2-and-5 other people until there's a conflagration. Now with holiday season behind us and vaccines in front of us people at the margins are behaving more cautiously.


The longer version:

Even though caseloads and hospitalizations are falling the numbers are relative to a peak. There's still a lots of area under the curve, still lots of infection and hospitalizations. There are probably several reasons for the trend ranked in order of significance:

1 - A post holiday plateau
2 - More caution due to the imminent availability of vaccines
3 - Awareness of mutated variant further reinforcing caution
4 - Population-level immunity

Cumulative COVID deaths still remain roughly proportional to seroprevalence. By most estimates the death rate is roughly .5% and the U.S. seroprevalence number is roughly +100,000,000.

If 60% are essentially immune by behaving cautiously, while the other 40% have lots of contacts. And if 80% of that high-contact group has been infected — a third (~33%) of the population has seroprevalence — there might be some herd effects among high contact groups but not the community as a whole.

The good news is the high-mixing group has a higher rate of acquired immunity while the cautious group will soon have a high rate of vaccinated immunity.

Air Travel is up since the holidays. https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput

Observable Mask usage in the major PNW cities Portland/Seattle is consistent or down.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-ha...il-11613669731 is another very rational and likely vantage..

[teledad]

Must be a distribution issue here in NEPA......whole family got emails/calls today that our 2nd shots are all cancelled tomorrow (Saturday)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...-winter-storm/

Sent a COVID test to a lab in Houston last week (before the storm), just got the results 7 days later (negative) - the usual time is 2-3 days.

[MultiVerse]

Deebased WSJ article is ridiculously riddled with errors. What a hack. The author can't even get basic facts right.

For example, even with Brazil's high infection rates people there are still unprotected. In the WSJ article the Brazilian city of Manaus is presented as evidence of herd immunity but even with an estimated 76% infected they still recently experienced a resurgence.

Never mind other errors like arguing two thirds of the US population has been infected, never mind T-cells don't offer the kind protection described in the article, if 55% of people have natural immunity then why doesn't 76% of the population with acquired immunity offer herd immunity?

We don’t have herd immunity to the common cold and we won't have herd immunity for Covid until most of the population is vaccinated.

[old goat]

I would not be shocked if it turns out that the falling case levels have some basis in falling numbers of people susceptible to Covid 19--not necessarily or exclusively immunity but perhaps differences in the ACE2 receptor or in the inflammatory system. (Most of what we observe as symptoms of infection are not the direct result of the germ but of the inflammatory response. People with defects in the inflammatory response--like the elderly--often don't get sick with serious infections. They just die.) An analogy would be the resistance sickle cell trait confers against malaria--a resistance not due to immunity.

As far as colds go--we aren't immune to colds in general because there are so many cold viruses. Frequency of colds does decrease with age although that is more likely due to kids growing up and moving out of the house. And while complete natural herd immunity may not exist, we know from the devastating outcome when New World people were exposed to Old World diseases that some at least partial degree of immunity in a population is important in preventing a population from being wiped out.

I'm just having a hard believing there has been enough behavioral change to entirely explain the case drop. That said, I'm completely ignorant of the math and maybe I just don't understand how small differences in behavior can lead to big difference in cases--like compound interest.

[MultiVerse]

I'm just having a hard believing there has been enough behavioral change to entirely explain the case drop. That said, I'm completely ignorant of the math and maybe I just don't understand how small differences in behavior can lead to big difference in cases--like compound interest.

The argument is it's the combination of things like behavior as well as heterogeneous mixing etc. Heterogeneous mixing just means the infected are not uniformly mixed throughout the population.

With heterogeneous mixing people who refuse masks, ignore distancing guidelines, and so on tend to mix together. As a result you get some herd effects among high contact groups, causing cases to fall, but that does not mean there are herd effects with the larger uninfected community. The fact that people are going to restaurants or flying on airplanes does not mean those folks are representative of the population as whole.

That's why cumulative COVID deaths roughly proportional to seroprevalence matters. If the Martin Kozlowski's WSJ narrative was correct then the seroprevalence percentage would increase much faster than the death rate.

That does not appear to be the case.

[Catfish]

So basically everyone needs to let it rip or they are fucking everyone over? Lot of people been saying that not exactly breaking news.

[wooley12]

I think society can survive a small number of Covidiots.

[Casey E]

My day came



No appointment, just had to show my ID.

I am 65, and as a courtesy, they did the 63 wifey too, who was due Feb 22. So if Chile gets all over 60’s with 2 doses by March end, I guess hospitalizations will plummet. Kudos to Piñera et al.

Seems the younger, more “connected” are more resistant to vacs, so the virus may still be spreading thru the winter here.

[Dee Hubbs]

Got my first shot Thursday. Maderna. I’m 45, healthy and fit, but it knocked me on my ass for all day Friday! I had COVID in early November, and easily got through that with a week of taking it easy and just resting.
They say that if you had COVID the first shot will be rough, and if you haven’t had COVID your second shot will be tougher on your system.
Shot Thursday mid day, Friday 18-20 hrs later felt achey with slight low grade fever, and by 5pm Friday I had to go to bed and lie down. Felling better fist thing Friday morning.

[MESH]

Got my first shot Thursday. Maderna. I’m 45, healthy and fit, but it knocked me on my ass for all day Friday! I had COVID in early November, and easily got through that with a week of taking it easy and just resting.
They say that if you had COVID the first shot will be rough, and if you haven’t had COVID your second shot will be tougher on your system.
Shot Thursday mid day, Friday 18-20 hrs later felt achey with slight low grade fever, and by 5pm Friday I had to go to bed and lie down. Felling better fist thing Friday morning.

Sounds about right. Received my second shot of Moderna Thursday around the same time and felt terrible all day Friday. Slept 10 hours and almost back to normal today.

[MTT]

Everyone see the story about a third of military personnel declined the covid vacine?
Weird thing when I was in the USAF they never asked would you like to get the shot.

I wonder if they broke down the who.
Ethnicity, location, job description.
I the information kinda bizarre.

I also saw a story on tv about nurse's who declined to get the vaccine ??

[jono]

Everyone see the story about a there of military personnel declined the covid vacine?
Weird thing when I was in the USAF they never asked would you like to get the shot.

I wonder if they broke down the who.
Ethnicity, location, job description.
I the information kinda bizarre.

I also saw a story on tv about nurse's who declined to get the vaccine ??

Are you speaking the language they use to train the bots?

[MTT]

Are you speaking the language they use to train the bots?

Spell check on the dumb phone. When I get lazy it starts using a different?? I don't usually miss spell, its fat fingering the letters and the phone picking the wrong three word option

[The AD]

Everyone see the story about a third of military personnel declined the covid vacine?

You do know the old quip that "military intelligence" is an oxymoron, right?

[mfcf13]

Everyone see the story about a third of military personnel declined the covid vacine?
Weird thing when I was in the USAF they never asked would you like to get the shot.

I wonder if they broke down the who.
Ethnicity, location, job description.
I the information kinda bizarre.

I also saw a story on tv about nurse's who declined to get the vaccine ??

"Lots of people are saying"


Maybe in the USAF they don't ask whether you'd like to get a shot. But in the Navy, you can apparently decline. You just get kicked out. Apparently, that's what happened to Jake 'Angell' Chansley (Q anon shaman guy).
https://www.military.com/daily-news/...x-vaccine.html

I saw a story on tv about how your conspiracy lust is very similar to his. It's kinda bizarre.

[MTT]

I don't think we are discharging a third of the military.
I don't even know if it's true.
Was wondering if anyone else saw the same?

[MultiVerse]

Are you antivax MTT?

For what it's worth, as a VA patient you can probably get the Moderna vaccine right now just by showing up at a VA with cold storage capabilities. If you're not antivax, it's worth a phone call to your provider to find out.

[MTT]

Are you antivax MTT?

For what it's worth, as a VA patient you can probably get the Moderna vaccine right now just by showing up at a VA with cold storage capabilities. If you're not antivax, it's worth a phone call to your provider to find out.

Not anti vax. I am at the VA pretty regularly. When it's my turn they will tell me. They are good about that. I am there on march 9th and 22nd.
Let see if they bring it up.
I know they are giving out shots but there quiet about it.

[MultiVerse]

It might be better to ask. I have relatives who were just sitting in a VA waiting room when a nurse walked in and asked if anyone wanted to be vaccinated. That might no longer be the case but asking could still put you higher on the list.

[XavierD]

Neither of vaccines in military inventory are FDA approved so only the CiC can mandate/encourage anyone get the shot. Military decline rate is lower than forecasted general pop, difference is we asked everyone in the military and have an easily recorded and reported data set. Most folks in the military are also in the group who are significantly less likely to experience severe negative symptoms of COVID. They have less incentive to get the shot. Many are declining it not because they are anti-vaccine but because it’s the first time they have gotten to tell the military no. Many have the response “I’ll get it when they tell me I have too.” Another guy told me “You don’t buy a first Gen truck. I’m gonna wait for the improved version when they fix the kinks next fall.”

I got my second dose on Wed. First dose was pretty easy on me but this one hit me like a train. Full body aches, headache, general fatigue. Lasted from +12hr to +48hr. Arm still hurts a bit, close to 72hr later.

[old goat]

Everyone see the story about a third of military personnel declined the covid vacine?
Weird thing when I was in the USAF they never asked would you like to get the shot.

I wonder if they broke down the who.
Ethnicity, location, job description.
I the information kinda bizarre.

I also saw a story on tv about nurse's who declined to get the vaccine ??

I saw the story about the military in WAPO or NYT. It goes along with what my son in the AF tells me--it's not just people waiting to see what happens or waiting to be told they have to--he's run into a fair number of covid deniers.
There are certainly nurses who are declining and there have been stories. If I were a patient in the hospital for something other than Covid I would be very unhappy to be taken care of by a nurse who declined the vaccine. I suppose they can get away with it until it's FDA approved and not EUA--like the military.
Nurses are required to have flu shots or to wear a mask during flu season. That wouldn't be good enough for covid imo.

As a diabetic you should be pretty high on the priority list. wouldn't hurt to ask. I get the priority going to age 65 for mass vaccinations, people signing up for shots at pharmacies--to simplify and speed up the roll out, but when your health care provider has vaccine they can be a little more discriminating in prioritization. I would put you ahead of a healthy 65 year old (if there is such a thing as a healthy 65 year old at the VA).

[yeahman]

Friend of mine who works for the county health dept. and is closely involved in vax distribution told me 35-40 percent of local healthcare workers declined, including some doctors.

[XavierD]

Keep in mind we don’t know if getting vaccinated would keep the nurses from transmitting the virus to you.

Personally I don’t think we should hold refusal for a non approved vaccine against anyone. As (an American) society we have agreed on the FDA as the body to approve of the safety of things we put in our body. Insisting others put non fully approved shit in their body is counterproductive to a faith in science argument.. Comparing requirements for this to a flu vaccine is crap because one is a fully approved option and the other is not.

The rapid development of multiple options needs to be championed as a major success of human capability along the lines of the space race, but that shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging how much we don’t know about it.

[old goat]

Keep in mind we don’t know if getting vaccinated would keep the nurses from transmitting the virus to you.

Personally I don’t think we should hold refusal for a non approved vaccine against anyone. As (an American) society we have agreed on the FDA as the body to approve of the safety of things we put in our body. Insisting others put non fully approved shit in their body is counterproductive to a faith in science argument.. Comparing requirements for this to a flu vaccine is crap because one is a fully approved option and the other is not.

The rapid development of multiple options needs to be championed as a major success of human capability along the lines of the space race, but that shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging how much we don’t know about it.

Easy to say when you're not in a hospital bed and an unvaccinated nurse is wiping your ass. I don't hold it against them, I just want a vaccinated nurse wiping my ass. And yes, we don't know for certain if vaccination will prevent transmission but there is a very good chance that it will either prevent transmission altogether or reduce viral load if there is transmission. And of course I would expect the nurse to wear a mask and wash their hands.

I do find nurses in particular refusing vaccination to be hard to understand. Nurses in particular are at very high risk of contracting Covid 19; too many have died. I understand that people don't always trust drug companies, but it seems hypocritical to spend your days injecting people with drugs from the same companies you don't really trust. In the case of the vaccines the data has been clear enough and available enough to anyone who cares to read it and the threat real enough that I think trust is justified. That is certainly not always the case; I sure wouldn't be taking any vaccine from Perdue Pharma.

And while we're at it, I'd appreciate it if my surgeon was vaccinated for Hep B and if any HCW's I encounter have been treated if the Tb test was positive.

[Casey E]

It is ironic for me to have gotten the Chinese vac for the Chinese virus. Maybe it is less effective than others out there, as nobody I know has had any important reaction at all to it. Time will tell.

Will the US be using any of the Chinese vacs?

An odd assortment of small countries lead the pack per 100 persons vaccinated, some of which, like Chile, for hedging their bets with Sinovac or other non-warp speed / western vacs.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/d...ses-per-capita




Shocking is Canada’s place, below Brazil and Bangladesh.