outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

yeah I have not being following this in a huge amount of detail, but i am not yet worried about the implications of variants for vaccines.

i am worried about their implications for countries that are failing to vaccinate people because of incompetence or corruption or whatever.

the UK should be fine fwiw

Targets scorecards 🎯 on 2 February

Based on 7-day 1st doses average (399,055):

✅15M by 15 Feb (1 day early on 14/02)
✅32M by 15 Apr (17 days early on 29/03)
✅53M by Sept (123 days early on 21/05)

All targets predicted to be achieved ahead of time 👍#vaccine pic.twitter.com/7G8xJYXooo

— UK COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker (@VaccineStatusUK) February 2, 2021

FWIW, whatever your views on COVID (or my posts), I have found it very sanity saving to ignore most news that has "might" or "could" in the headline, or that is only based on a single study. If you otherwise have some doomscrolling tendencies, like I do, this can really help counteract those tendencies.

The vaccines that have been approved now can all be tweaked pretty fast if there are any new variants that evade immune response enough to be a serious concern.

― wangdalf the blight (gyac), Tuesday, February 2, 2021 5:13 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah and that is also reassuring. part of me is wondering if I'd get the booster as part of my trial or if I'd have to seek it out. same for my folks.

so i'm not shitting...yet.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/why-are-so-many-health-care-workers-resisting-the-covid-vaccine

xp i think we'll all be getting a booster at some point in the next 12 months.

Good to see.

Israel: The trend continues

Further drop in cases (-40%), hospitalizations (-32%), and severely ill (-30%) among 60+ y/o in past 2 weeks

Stronger than in younger ages (note different axes)

Consider this as the pre-preprint. We hope to put out a preprint within the next day pic.twitter.com/5iv92pqaS1

— Eran Segal (@segal_eran) February 3, 2021

Is it just me or is anti-vaxx discourse also on the wane lately? Good news all around.

Uh except for

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/anti-lockdown-protesters-shut-down-california-vaccine-site-at-dodgers-stadium/ar-BB1di72b?ocid=uxbndlbing

Sorry, guess I wasn't thinking about the US.

xp i think we'll all be getting a booster at some point in the next 12 months.

So how would this work assuming most people still don't have their initial vaccination? Would they piggyback the booster (assuming one exists) right when you get the initial shot?

Is it just me or is anti-vaxx discourse also on the wane lately? Good news all around.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/europe-s-vaccine-disaster-commission-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-seeking-to-duck-responsibility-a-1197547d-6219-4438-9d69-b76e64701802

Uk is vaccinating people at five (5!) times the rate of the EU and twice there US, which I would imagine is resulting for cognitive dissonance for anti vaxxers

Sure, but even the French have calmed down in this regard. I think increasingly more people are taking in the fact that’s it’s our only ticket out of this mess.

xp

Fingers crossed yes

Yes France seems to be more hyped about this than I feared.

I wonder if the reason you’re not hearing much from anti vaxxers in the uk is that the the uk vaccination effort is a huge success relative to what is by all accounts a disaster in the EU, and anti vaxxers are also brexiters, so they’re confused about whether to gloat or protest.

They're also confused because they're claiming the vaccines don't work in fighting a pandemic that doesn't exist.

Interesting piece on battery farming increasing the likelihood of the next pandemic.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210202-Swine-flu-why-influenza-in-pigs-could-cause-another-pandemic

Not vaccinating millions of people in Palestine is also probably increasing that likelihood, but you know.

Yes I know.

He got shat on for posting about it itt, iirc

i am once again asking people to wear N95s and KF94s (thread)

My first work exposure to the new variant. Index was laughing and talking unmasked, no surprise that people 3 ft away were infected, but another person was infected on the other side of room. They were always >6ft from index, and was wearing a poor-fitting mask and face shield.

— Erin Bromage Ph.D. (@ErinBromage) February 3, 2021

Palestine has its own healthcare system that is not under the jurisdiction of Israel. It is negotiating a deal with Astra Zeneca for 2 million doses of vaccine as well as getting another 2 million through COVAX.

It's hard to find info on this (for me) but I believe Israel ARE vaccinating Palestinians and non-Jews in occupied territories? And it's just the shreds of the West Bank and Gaza that remain within PA control that don't have enough supply? I mean it's scandalous either way, particularly given how difficult Israel has made it to move anything across the various cross-crossing borders.

i bought a pack of the KF94s for surprisingly affordable rate, my whole family is wearing em now

absolute insanity

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/27/1016790/covid-vaccine-distribution-us/

While much criticism has been directed to federal tech systems during the rollout, it seems they are in fact largely working. Maddox says without Tiberius, things could get far worse. “We would have to fall back on very old-fashioned ways,” he says. “We would need a lot more people, and we would need access to systems that would take us some time to recover from, and it would not be integrated.”

Experts say the bigger challenge, however, was Trump’s decision to leave vaccine administration to the states. This put significant strain on local governments, which are often understaffed, have limited technical capabilities, and must deal with outdated tech systems.

federalism is a bad idea, and states that delegate to counties are making it worse.

it's kinda sad that for a while, we were being told that there was a significant non-zero possibility that we'd never get an effective vaccine (or if we did, it'd just hit the 50% FDA efficacy threshold), then we got two that greatly exceeded expectations, but the distribution is so fucked....

which wasn't a surprise because loud voices were screaming about how badly distribution was going to go if the Federal government didn't supply an assload of aid to the states to help them distribute it, as well as aptly track where the vaccine was going and how much was everywhere, and of course it didn't happen and here we are.

Probably worth noting that even with all the flaws in our system, we still have one of the highest vaccination rates of any country so far. Maybe just on account of being a wealthy and powerful country, idk.

It has everything to do with the US being rich and powerful.

yeah that is my sense

We’re like the Yankees in a year in which they spend a ton of money and they still suck, but the money and resources are enough to partly make up for the incompetence

"a year"

you put enough rich monkeys in a room, they'll stab Shakespeare or something idk

so they do that every year, but only in some years does the team still suck. Those are the good years

oh the way the Yankees played

U.S.A.: The Giancarlo Stanton Years

more like the Todd Van Poppel years

Too soon. Those five Todd Van Poppel cards I had were supposed to pay for my college, man.

i bought a pack of the KF94s for surprisingly affordable rate, my whole family is wearing em now

I stan for https://www.protectly.co/

that's right

https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/04/johnson-johnson-submits-application-for-covid-19-vaccine-to-fda/

Looking good!

57% effective against a growing strain seems on the low side.

yes but it's a larger number than 0.

The 100% against hospitalization/death seems key.

As long as the side effects are within acceptable boundaries, I'm all for throwing every vaccine into the mix if it can help eliminate deaths & hospitalizations. My guess is that COVID19 is almost certain to become endemic, but that's something we can live with. If we can drive down the numbers from a full blown pandemic with a half million deaths in a year to levels more typical for influenza that's a huge win.

If you need a mood boost

Feeling pessimistic about COVID & 2021?

Don't!

I'm not. Here's why

We'll likely have about 400M doses of Moderna/Pfizer by end of June

Enough to vaccinate 80% of adults

And that means a much better summer

Of course, we'll likely also have J&J, AZ, Novavax

Short thread

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) February 5, 2021

That is definitely promising news, but...

And I'm genuinely not trying to rain on the parade here, though I know I've been despairing in the past, but I'm just not seeing that this addresses the problem with getting the shots into arms. Some states are succeeding at this, others aren't even close. What I'm hearing from our local officials is that the distribution still isn't working right, so it feels like until those get addressed, it doesn't matter how many millions of doses are sitting somewhere.

Good thing we have from Feb to June to sort it out then

avg daily doses administered has tripled over the course of the past month in the US