outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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

Lots can go wrong obv but, wow, imagine if we'd had politicians who care about governing in charge last February and March.

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

Well, yeah. But, I just don't have a lot of faith that the states that have absolutely fucked this up so far are suddenly going to have a complete change in leadership by June.

yes, you've made that clear, repeatedly

also

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/politics/pentagon-covid-vaccines/index.html

yes, you've made that clear, repeatedly

I continue to point out a problem because the problem still exists, yes.

jon if a big part of the reason that states are fucking it up is the lack of a coordinated federal effort then your skepticism that anything will now change seems unfounded no?

I hope its unfounded! But I don't think it's lack of a coordinated federal effort slowing things down here, it's how the state is distributing down the chain that seems to be the challenge.

I need to stop looking at the data, dips like this week aren't helping my pessimism.

The problem mainly lies with the fact that government is still the only place to get a vaccine. I don't think it's gonna be that much longer before they have enough of it that you'll be able to get the shot at CVS or Walgreen's or Walmart or Target or...or...or...

MAGA! (And an ode to joy & Canada first too)

Developing countries won’t be so lucky. According to the same report, 84 of the world’s poorest states won’t get enough vaccines to achieve herd immunity until 2024—an inequity that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, recently called a “catastrophic moral failure.”

The reasons for the delay are pretty basic: In their panic to protect their own citizens, rich countries are “hoarding” supplies, as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa put it at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference on Tuesday. A recent New York Times analysis shows that Ramaphosa wasn’t exaggerating: The EU has already signed enough future procurement contracts to vaccinate all its citizens twice over; the United States has locked in four times the doses it needs, and Canada six.

it's almost as if global capitalism is a death machine and western liberal democracy never existed.

Meanwhile, Americans go on about how they're not getting vaccinated fast enough.

here is the report mentioned in the quote above:

https://www.eiu.com/n/85-poor-countries-will-not-have-access-to-coronavirus-vaccines/

he rollout of vaccines against the coronavirus (Covid-19) has started in developed countries, but mass immunisation will take time.
Production represents the main hurdle, as many developed countries have pre-ordered more doses than they need.
The costs associated with mass immunisation programmes will be significant, especially for less-developed countries that have limited fiscal resources.
Vaccine diplomacy will play a role in determining which countries get access to a vaccine in the coming months.
Russia and China will use the rollout of their own coronavirus shots to advance their interests.
With priority groups vaccinated in rich economies by end-March, The EIU expects global economic prospects to brighten from mid-2021.
For most middle-income countries, including China and India, the vaccination timeline will stretch to late 2022.
In poorer economies, widespread vaccination coverage will not be achieved before 2023, if at all.

https://i.imgur.com/a2h68hu.png

I need to stop looking at the data, dips like this week aren't helping my pessimism.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, February 5, 2021 12:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't know what dip you're talking about, but there is a dip in vaccinations every monday/tuesday. I assume it's a reporting artifact similar to the apparent dip in deaths/cases/etc. on monday/tuesday.

https://i.imgur.com/7QMwyj4.png

it looks like this (with more noise) for pretty much every state.

the general trend is up although it does seem to have maxed out at the production limit, which is about ~1.4m/week for now.

I can't get the NYTimes one to load here, but that's what I was looking at earlier. The daily average over there has dropped every day since the 1st. I do think the Monday/Tuesday plays a part, but it hasn't bounced back up again like it did last week. Again, a minor dip, but I would hope to see it at least holding steady at this point. I also saw that they are now saying September 23rd as the target date for 70% vaccination in the US at the current rate, while it was September 11th just two days ago.

Obviously these are minor blips and neither indicate any long term concern, but it was disappointing to see the end of the steady rise in daily average we had been seeing. But probably why it's not helpful to check stats like these on a daily basis.

production is the throttle right now, it won’t be for long, ta da

but it hasn't bounced back up again like it did last week.

yes it has. look at the chart i just posted.

I also saw that they are now saying September 23rd as the target date for 70% vaccination in the US at the current rate, while it was September 11th just two days ago.

1. you were saying you weren't expecting to get vaccinated until next year a week ago.
2. the reporting around this has not been great. but "september 11 to september 23" is like saying a politician's approval is going down because it's gone from 46.5% to 46.4%.

i don't mean to be condescening but i do think that, like you say, you should stop looking at the data.

The costs associated with mass immunisation programmes will be significant, especially for less-developed countries that have limited fiscal resources.

Most of those poorer nations will also be ill-equipped to handle the Pfizer vaccine, which requires very low temperatures, below what dry ice alone can achieve. In the poorest nations the record keeping and transportation considerations for all the two-dose vaccines would be trickier, too.

Seems like the single dose vaccines that only require normal refrigeration make the most sense for global immunization programs. The two-dose mRNA vaccines make more sense for distribution in nations with decent infrastructure.

xp to be fair, i can see why you are frustrated with illinois (it's illinois, right?). california overtook it so now it's the worst performing big state right now in terms of fraction of vaccine used, and fraction of population vaccinated. and the US is doing a terrible job once you control for being THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH with THE BEST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

if you are in the US and trying to figure out when you might get vaccinated, you also need to account for the fact that lots of people have already had COVID and lots of people will refuse to be vaccinated. For better or worse, those will impact the timeline to an extent.

I also saw that they are now saying September 23rd as the target date for 70% vaccination in the US at the current rate, while it was September 11th just two days ago.

That date is based on daily average first doses of 886,656. We're doing 1.3 million first doses a day now and that will rise as supply rises.

I mean....I see no cause for pessimism anymore. Vaccination rates will keep expanding. Several vaccines will hit the market. It seemed impossible to think so last summer, but it looks like we may be looking at some semblance of normality -- do I have to add an asterix? -- by late summer.

That date is based on daily average first doses of 886,656. We're doing 1.3 million first doses a day now and that will rise as supply rises.

No, that date, at least on the NYTimes site, is changing each day and is pinned to the daily average rate. It dropped a little since last week, so the date has pushed back out a little. I am very hopeful this starts to move back in the other direction soon, but just wanted to point out that it is shifting with the data.

The table on the Times you're looking at specifies the daily average first doses of 886,656.

Sorry, they mean the average per day to date.

someone post the link and i'll explain why you're all wrong

thank you: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html

yeah that projection date is complete bullshit and it's honestly disappointing to see the NYT publish it.

firstly, we're not doing 886,656 doses/day at the moment. we're doing more than that.

but even if we were, you can't take that number and divide the number of people by it and get an estimate of when we'll be done that can be trusted to any more than +/- a couple of months, never mind one that is worth worrying about it changing by a week or two from day to day.

please ignore it.

FWIW the 886,656 doses/day refers to first does, not total doses. It also does not take into account future additional vaccines. The projection is just Moderna/Pfizer.

really need the needle to settle things IMO

I highly encourage jvc and others to step away from the data as much as possible. It really isn't helping you or anyone else to be freaking out over every little blip.

By Mon/Tue, California will surpass New York as the state with the most Coronavirus deaths in USA.

(for the sake of scale, I should note that California is #33 in COVID deaths/capita whereas NY is #2 to NJ).

more telling overall to break it down the deaths per capita by counties, or minority status, or employment, or net worth, or incarceral status. Just breaking it down by state excludes too many noteworthy variables.

go for it

today first day with over 2m doses administered in the US according to the bloomberg tracker. keep that rate up and we'll be done by the end of the summer, probably sooner assuming 1/3 of people can't/won't be vaccinated.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/

The missteps and lurches in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine program — which may yet prove to be a key global supplier of #Covid19 vaccine — are going to make a fascinating book. Here's chapter 1. https://t.co/HhHXHei5zl

— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 5, 2021

lots of messy stats and logisitcs inside baseball in there, probably of limited interest, but one piece of good news:

Now the US trial is fully enrolled, with data expected in the coming weeks. AstraZeneca is hoping for an emergency approval by April. Soriot has been busy talking to the US regulator, in meetings that one person close to the company described as “very constructive”. The data will be an important test not just for the US, but eagerly awaited by other countries wanting more information.

Some bad news. It seems the AstraZeneca vaccine was not effective at preventing cases of the South African variant in a new study.

In the AstraZeneca-Oxford trial in South Africa, roughly 2,000 participants were given either two doses of the vaccine or placebo shots.

There was virtually no difference in the numbers of people in the vaccine and placebo groups who were infected with B.1.351, suggesting that the vaccine did little to protect against the new variant. Nineteen of the 748 people in the group that was given the vaccine were infected with the new variant, compared to 20 out of 714 people in the group that was given a placebo.

That equates to a vaccine efficacy of 10 percent, though the scientists did not have enough statistical confidence to know for sure whether that figure would hold among more people.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/07/world/covid-19-coronavirus

the scientists did not have enough statistical confidence to know for sure whether that figure would hold among more people.

no kidding. i mean it makes sense that SA might switch to another vaccine out of an abundance of caution, but the reporting about this has been pretty irresponsible (incl. the NYT)

Here is the key slide from the South Africa variant press conference. Note that confidence interval extends from -50% to +60%, w/ a 22% estimate.

42 cases. pic.twitter.com/gH2sLOljqt

— Matthew Herper (@matthewherper) February 7, 2021

I thought this was good at explaining the likely outcome re vaccines and why we shouldn’t panic over these variants.

It’s a small study so the efficacy estimate is very imprecise ie inconclusive. It’s also looking at mild and moderate outcomes only, not what we really care about. Good basic explanation of that herehttps://t.co/2jkdbk1S04

— Aaron Richterman, MD (@AaronRichterman) February 7, 2021