Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

You know, as the outlook gets better, it's clear that the CDC needs to prioritize the science around relaxing mask rules. Specifically, the question about the ability of the vaccinated to transmit the disease. That has profound impact on movie theaters, dramatic theaters, theme parks and cruise ships.

Are we at the point where that's the salient issue? (That might sound leading, but it's an honest question). I know we've said forever that mask rules would be the last thing to go because they don't have a huge impact on the economy and do a lot of good for protecting people. But are we at the point where "enough people are enough protected" and "enough people are staying home because they're annoyed by masks" that the tradeoff is becoming non-obvious.

Lord Gonchar said:

It flat out describes the deal in the article:

If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.

Based on the trial of 32,000 people:

It was 95% effective at preventing infection and reduced the risk to that of the typical flu for an additonal 4.997%.

It was 99.997% effective at preventing severe cases of COVID.

Apollo Andy said:

So I've been thinking about and parroting this a lot, and unless I'm missing something, 99.997% is not right.

The effectiveness at preventing severe cases of COVID is a relative measure and should compare the number of severe cases of COVID in the placebo group to the severe cases in the vaccine group. That proportion is the effectiveness at preventing severe cases of COVID. The fact that 1 vaccinated person out of 30,000 had severe symptoms does not mean that the vaccination was 99.997% effective at preventing severe cases of COVID, because if 2 unvaccinated out of 30,000 had severe symptoms then it's only 50% effective. Right?

So the YouTube machine fed me a video that reminded me of our conversation.

Yes, it's a Vox video. And yes, it's over-simplified. But at one point near the end of the video after all the explanation, Deborah Fuller of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington sums it up by saying verbatim, "...that all three vaccines have essentially 100% effectiveness in protecting from death."

(Although she specifies death in her comment, they're talking about hospitalization - or severe cases - as well in the video)

So yeah. Regardless of the 'correct' way to express it, the point is (and was) that the vaccines effectively completely prevent severe illness or worse.

Like I said, simple little Vox video, but if any of us have anyone in our lives that still needs nudged on the vaccine, it might help spell it out in grade-school terms.

Good stuff. Nice to have it in a short and accessible format. Is it bad that all I can think about while watching the video is how poorly most people understand stuff like this? (see also: how does an mRNA vaccine work). Just call me Debbie Downer, I guess.

I think Vox has consistently had the best and clearest explanation of various issues throughout the last year, of the various (too many) news sites I visit. Quite honestly I had no idea what the efficacy number represents (and honestly, I don't think there's any reason I should have to know that; that's what we have experts for). This was quite helpful in clarifying that. Thanks for posting it.

Dare I point out that at the 5:00 mark in that video, they use a slider to illustrate the outcome expectations?

We were so ahead of our time.

High five!

hambone said:

and honestly, I don't think there's any reason I should have to know that; that's what we have experts for

If only everyone would take that attitude. But too many people will take one tiny fact (95% efficacy) out of context with no expertise or understanding, then watch a YouTube video from some random blogger and then proclaim to know more than the experts (5% illness rate!!! Vaccines make you sicker!).

Remember when Fox News (or at least some talking head on Fox News) was saying this was the 19th corona virus so it wasn’t unusual?

Worse, it was Kellyann Conway.

Scientists scienced the **** out of this virus in record time, and they deserve credit for that. But I think smart phones are still amazing, so I'm likely not representative of the population.

It was Kellyanne who said "This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks" on FoxNews (about 50 seconds in).

Makes me think of this:

Nationally, cases are up 15% over the last two weeks, which sucks. I wish there was a more detailed breakdown of who is getting infected right now, because the 65+ crowd is over 50% vaccinated in most places, and overall populations are around 15%. Even if you've got one shot, you're around 89-90% effective after two weeks. Are people behaving that poorly in spite of the vaccinations?

Yes. Have you seen South Florida beaches? North Florida was a mess too when we were there and I hear the west coast of the state has gotten worse.

Jeff said:

Are people behaving that poorly in spite of the vaccinations?

As someone who is now halfway vaccinated *and* has continued to dine in restaurants throughout this entire thing, I've walked out of two restaurants in the last week, including one last night that just a month or so ago was still doing a great job.

Yes, they are. We just picked up takeout from a local restaurant. The number of people eating inside far exceeded any capacity that we have seen in the past three years.

Drove past Cleveland Metroparks Zoo on Saturday. They are supposedly running at 75% capacity. There was not a parking spot to be had. We drove on by.

People are just ready to get out. Unfortunately, many are no longer being careful.

Gonna "me too" here.

After arguing for months and months that people around here were wearing masks and following protocol, this past weekend was a bit surprising in my area. Not "a lot" of maskless people, but enough that it was surprising. Places far busier than I've seen in quite a while. Guards are definitely down in general.

I suppose it depends on who is getting sick and if where death counts land in the coming weeks because if it's vaccinated folks and dry humpers and people generally not at great risk, then *shrug* - no harm, no foul.

There are people that just aren't going to get the vaccination. At some point it's no longer my priority to protect them. Still a bit too soon, but also seeing vaccinations being readily available very soon and "whatever, it's on you" territory on the horizon.

I have gotten a lot of carry out meals with my dad since patios closed in the fall. Curbside pickup locations were typically crowded until a couple weeks ago. Now there are fewer cars in curbside pickup lines and more cars in restaurant parking lots. For restaurants without curbside pickup, there has been a noticeable increase in the last couple of weeks of people eating inside the restaurants.

And driving through the neighborhood and around time, you see more cars parked in driveways than you did a month or so ago.

I missed this article from last Friday, but it mentioned that the B.1.1.7 variant, which is 50% more transmissible, is gaining traction as the most common. I suppose if you combine that with even a little bit of lax behavior, you're going to get a rise in infection rates. That we bottomed out at the October rate is not great. Let's hope the vaccinations are moving fast enough to head this off and prevent another surge.

Lord Gonchar said:

There are people that just aren't going to get the vaccination. At some point it's no longer my priority to protect them. Still a bit too soon, but also seeing vaccinations being readily available very soon and "whatever, it's on you" territory on the horizon.

I agree, and seriously, **** those people, but for the 20 and 30-somethings that have a few more weeks before they can get pricked, that's a raw deal.

So much news to process... really good news reported today in a new CDC report. The TL;DR is that even one shot is 80% effective at two weeks, and transmission by vaccinated people is "extremely unlikely," which is probably the last variable we desperately needed to get data on.

Right now the US is at around 30% of the population having at least one shot. We are vaccinating around 1% of the eligible population each day. If we can continue that pace, and there are enough willing arms, then it stands to reason we should be at around 70% of the population with at least one dose in around 6 weeks. Hopefully that will translate into around Memorial Day seeing infection rates dropping significantly.

Ohio reported that of the 400,000 cases of Covid since vaccinations started in mid December, only 34 cases were from people that had been vaccinated. That translates to .0085%.

Illinois says that 217 people who were fully vaccinated reported a postive covid test more than 2 weeks after last dose. Out of more than 1.6 million.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/it-hit-me-hard-northbrook-mom...e/2465900/