Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

We are so f’d.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/01/27/961108577/why-...rom-brazil

tl;dr - a new variant has appeared in Brazil which appears to be extremely contagious and may have mutated to make vaccines less effective.

After watching Dr. Fauci and the CDC director on an extended CNN interview last night, I'm worried we're f'd. His level of concern over the variants and mutations is enough to kill any celebratory mood.

My wife has an appointment to get her first vaccine dose this afternoon. She's in phase 2 being an educator and having some risk factors (but overall pretty healthy, healthier than I am). Just anecdotally, it looks like their might be a focussed push to start vaccinating teachers because we know more than a handful that are getting appointments this week.

Some of you all must be a real hoot at parties.

Only covid parties.

I'd kill to have a party right now.

Dry hump it up Jeff, you are in the dry hump capital!!

Only if Steve is at least 95% there.

Ohio just relaxed curfew times with promises of more if we keep trending down.

Jeff said:

I'd kill to have a party right now.

Yep.

You know, reading through all of this there is a movie quote that keeps coming to mind,

"There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"

If there's any consistency at all in the ongoing discussion over the past year, it's that a certain segment is always at the ready with a "Yeah, but..." for everything.

Here's a Yahoo News article that's touching on a similar idea that I did where it doesn't take a lot of vaccination to get a pretty solid result. My take was that deaths fall sharply once we get the oldest segments vaccinated, but this hits the idea that herd immunity could happen pretty quickly when you combine vaccinations with ongoing, increasing infection numbers:

It’s worth pausing here to note that America’s mass vaccination effort has two overlapping goals. The first — because every other measure has clearly failed — is to stop the spread of the virus. The second is to vaccinate so many people that it won’t start spreading again.

These aren’t quite the same thing. Experts define “herd immunity” as the point when so many people gain protection that the pathogen can no longer easily spread from host to host. The gold standard, they say, will be getting about 75 percent of Americans (or 240 million people) fully vaccinated.

So while our goal may be to reach herd immunity by fully vaccinating 240 million Americans, an estimated 90 million Americans have already been infected — and they have some immunity too.

In short, there’s already a vast amount of immunity out there in America. Layer vaccination on top of that existing immunity and the virus starts to run out of people to infect sooner than you might think.

How soon? Nobody knows for sure. But a forecast by independent data scientist Youyang Gu, who has been using a data-driven approach with artificial intelligence to predict various aspects of the pandemic, suggests that as vaccination increases, cases could fall to half their current level by April and flatline by May. By July 10, we could reach a kind of combined herd immunity — 70 percent of Americans protected by either vaccination or infection.

All it would require, Gu estimates, is about 120 million Americans, or half of that 70 percent, to acquire immunity through vaccination. The other half would consist of Americans who acquired immunity through infection.

Waiting for the "Yeah, but..."

Yeah, but

Sucks

Not exactly a "Yeah, but..."

One issue is that no vaccines are approved for under 16 year old's. I saw on one source, YMMV, that the current over 16 population in the US is 260 million. Now, apply a (very) conservative estimate that 20% of the population will not get the vaccine even at gunpoint, and now you are looking at a maximum of 210 million vaccinated people. Not quite there.

There is also going to be some overlap, where covid survivors will be vaccinated. So the 120 million vaccinated and 90 million infected are not absolute numbers.

They are testing the vaccines on 12-18 year olds. Standard protocol that vaccines are not initially tested on kids. Then at some point, you start testing on younger people. Pfizer is approved on emergency basis for 16+. Moderna 18+. Assuming they are deemed safe and effective for 12-18 year olds, they will move to 5-11 year olds. Pretty common protocol. More noticeable now because of the short runway for the Covid vaccines.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. But, everyone says we need to have 75% of the population vaccinated for herd immunity. My point is, how do we get there when ~25% of the population (currently) is not even eligible for the vaccine. You would have to vaccinate literally every other living being to get to 75%.

Bozman said:

You would have to vaccinate literally every other living being to get to 75%.

Or let them get infected.

A combination of vacinating the high risk older population, exposing the low risk younger population and letting everyone inbetween deal with the own decisions regarding protection, vaccination and such (preferrable getting vaccinated and keeping protections in place for a buffer period after vaccinations are readily available), gets us there a lot faster than I think anyone gives credit for.

Is it going to save every life? Not even close. Will it stop us from dragging this on for years and years with "Yeah, buts..." while reasonably reducing the cost in lives? I think so.

Having enough willing arms was always going to be the biggest issue once you had vaccines and time to get production rolling. With new order of doses to vaccinate another 100 million people, the US should have enough vaccines to vaccinate 300 million people by the end of the summer. Not sure there will be sufficient number of arms to use them all though. For herd immunity, you do not need 300 million vaccinated people though. Whether we can get enough willing arms to reach herd immunity is an open question at this point.

Lord Gonchar said:

Or let them get infected.
---------------------------------------------------
This is likely the way the under 16 population will get to herd immunity, since their vaccine is probably still some time away.

I am actually in the camp that we may be seeing the very first signs of immunity. At least I am hopeful that this is the trend. There are significantly more than the reported 25 million cases, and vaccines seem to be accelerating. If J&J comes on board soon and is followed closely by Astra Zeneca, then yes, I could see herd immunity really pick up by June/July. Confident enough that we already have a reservation at Breakers for the first week of June, just in case CoasterMania happens.

And I am really in favor of vaccinating by age group. After the 65 and up are in the queue, then we should start with the 60 and up crowd. Go to 55 and up after them. And so on.

And if there are not enough willing arms, give it to the birds. (Thanks kpjb, I often forget just how literal CoasterBuzz can be).