Tag: vaccination

Covid vaccines: Boris Johnson pledges surplus to poorer countries at G7

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56117120

Excerpt:

Boris Johnson is pledging to donate most of the UK’s surplus vaccine supply to poorer countries in a speech to a virtual G7 meeting on Friday.

He urged rich countries to back a 100-day target for the developing new vaccines for future emerging diseases.

The UK has ordered more than 400 million doses of various vaccines, so many will be left over once all adults are vaccinated.

Publication Date: 20 February 2021

Publication Site: BBC News

We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Excerpt:

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

Author(s): Marty Makary

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Great news in Illinois on COVID is going underreported, and so is the primary reason – Wirepoints

Mary Pat Campbell
Great news in Illinois on COVID is going underreported, and so is the primary reason – Wirepoints

Excerpt:

Vaccinations, obviously, are starting to make a difference. Over 2.1 million of Illinois’ 12.7 million people have had at least their first vaccination. That’s about 17% of the state.

But something far bigger is at work: the huge number of Illinoisans who have acquired natural immunity because they were already infected, mostly without knowing it. That’s probably over 7.6 million Illinoisans – about 60% of the state.

How can that be? It’s because the actual number of infections is about 6.5 for every reported case because most cases go unreported. That’s the current number used by Marty Makary, a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week. Illinois has about 1.73 million reported cases, so you just multiply that by 6.5.

The virus, in simple terms, is finding nowhere to go. Far over half of its potential victims are either naturally immune or have been vaccinated.

Author(s): Mark Glennon

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wirepoints

How Herd Immunity Works — And What Stands In Its Way

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/18/967462483/how-herd-immunity-works-and-what-stands-in-its-way

Graphic:

Excerpt:

What will it take to finally halt the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.? To answer that question we’ve created a simulation of a mock disease we’re calling SIMVID-19.

When you click “Run Simulation” above, you are witnessing how a disease can spread through a population and how increased levels of vaccination can stop it in its tracks.

We’re chosen to simulate a fake disease since there are too many unknowns to simulate the course of COVID-19. There are common features in how any infection spreads. When enough people are immune — through vaccination or natural immunity — a population achieves herd immunity. The disease stops spreading efficiently and starts to fade away.

Author(s): Richard Harris, Thomas Wilburn

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: NPR

Great Variation in Counties’ COVID-19 Vaccine Distributions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/now/Great-Variation-in-Counties-COVID-19-Vaccine-Distributions.html

Excerpt:

California is pushing shots into arms at a much faster clip than it was just a month ago — closing in on the national average, with vows to accelerate even further — but the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations varies greatly from county to county within the Golden State.

A Southern California News Group analysis of state data found that smaller counties with fewer people and less complicated logistics are leading the pack in vaccinating their residents: Little Mono, with 14,526 residents, ranked No. 1, managing to vaccinate one out of every three residents. On its heels was tiny Alpine, population 1,209, getting shots into 27 percent of its residents.

Author(s): TERI SFORZA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Publication Date: 11 February 2021

Publication Site: Governing

Biden Says Vaccine Will Be Available To All Americans By The End Of July

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/02/16/biden-says-vaccine-will-be-available-to-all-americans-by-the-end-of-july/

Excerpt:

At the start of the town hall, Biden told moderator Anderson Cooper that the U.S. will have “over 600 million doses” of coronavirus vaccine by the end of July, which he said would be “enough to vaccinate every single American.”

Biden emphasized that his deadline refers to vaccine availability, not the number of vaccines administered, a key distinction considering the logistical pitfalls that have hampered some states’ vaccine rollouts.

Author(s): Andrew Solender

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Forbes

N.Y.C. Covid Vaccine Disparities Revealed in ZIP Code Data: Officials

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/nyregion/nyc-covid-vaccine-zip-codes.html

Excerpt:

Officials in New York City released new data by ZIP codes on Tuesday that they said underscored troubling disparities in the city’s vaccination effort, with the share of residents who are fully vaccinated in some wealthier Upper West and East Side ZIP codes, which have high proportions of white residents, reaching up to eight times the rate in parts of predominantly Black neighborhoods like East New York.

The figures for individual ZIP codes provided one of the most granular pictures of the city’s vaccination effort to date. And it added more evidence suggesting that across the country, the vaccine appears to be flowing disproportionately toward areas with wealthy and white residents, even though low-income communities of color remain the hardest hit by the coronavirus.

Still, questions remained. The new city data does not break down vaccine recipients by race in each ZIP code, nor does it account for how many people in each ZIP code are eligible to be vaccinated.

Author(s): Mihir Zaveri

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: NY Times

Why a COVID Skeptic Finally Took the Vaccine

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/02/vaccine-skeptic-covid-latinos-california.html

Excerpt:

When a vaccine became available, did your dad immediately want it?

Oh, no, of course not. He was still conspiracy minded, and even to this day. But when the vaccine starts, they’re saying it’s going to be for people over 65, and my sisters said that we’ve got to get our dad to get the vaccine. We told my dad, and that’s when he started saying, I don’t need it, they’re saying that’s going to kill you, they’re saying there’s a chip. I don’t need it. I have strong blood and a positive outlook on life and insurance.

Plus, the vaccine is a vaccine of privilege. Let’s clear about that, especially the way it’s rolling out in California. You have to do it online. For weeks, there was only English, no Spanish translation. If you’re 65 and older, and especially if you’re an immigrant, more likely than not you’re not going to be the most social media–fluent of people. So not only do you need somebody you can rely on to translate any internet stuff for you, but you also need someone who’s going to have a job that allows them to be on social media nonstop. It was the luck of the draw that my sister randomly saw a friend who told her about this Instagram post with vaccine info. So she was able to do it immediately.

Author(s): Mary Harris

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Slate

How a Black bioethicist makes the case for vaccination to people of color

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/2/16/22266517/covid-19-moral-obligation-get-vaccinated

Excerpt:

And in the Black community, if we’re just thinking about ourselves, I do think there’s some obligation there to not infect fellow members of your Black population. Black people on average tend to have housing situations with more people, so there’s more chance for more infection. Black people are more likely to be essential workers, working in grocery stores and places where they’re interacting. If they’re not vaccinating themselves, they have an effect on the Black community that they come into contact with daily.

Even if you can’t think about your moral obligation to the general public because of what medicine has done to Black people in the past and currently, I would encourage you to think about what not being vaccinated means for your family, your friends, your community.

Author(s): Sigal Samuel

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Vox

COVID-19: ‘Progress Is Being Made’ Latimer Says; Latest Breakdown Of Westchester Cases

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://dailyvoice.com/new-york/northsalem/news/covid-19-progress-is-being-made-latimer-says-latest-breakdown-of-westchester-cases/803391/

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Westchester is making progress on administering the COVID-19 vaccination, County Executive George Latimer said, citing a decreasing number of hospitalizations and active cases.

There are currently 6,602 active COVID-19 cases being monitored in Westchester, Latimer announced on Tuesday, Feb. 16, down from 7,353 late last week and more than 11,000 cases three weeks ago, representing an approximately 40 percent drop in the past month.

Author(s): Zak Fallia

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Voice

Coronavirus: Links, Discussion, Open Thread

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/coronavirus-links-discussion-open

Graphic:

Excerpt:

R in most US states right now is closely clustered around 1. Mutant strains are more contagious, enough to bring the R0 up to 1.5 or so. But having a lot of the population vaccinated will bring it back down again. Also, I’m acting like there’s some complex-yet-illuminating calculation we can do here, but realistically none of this matters. It’s not a coincidence that all US states are closely clustered around 1. It’s the control system again – whenever things look good, we relax restrictions (both legally and in terms of personal behavior) until they look bad again, then backpedal and tighten restrictions. So we oscillate between like 0.8 and 1.2 (I made those numbers up, I don’t know the real ones). If vaccines made R0 go to 0.5 or whatever, we would loosen some restrictions until it was back at 1 again. So unless we overwhelm the control system, R0 will hover around 1 in the summer too, and the only question is how strict our lockdowns will be.

In autumn, if we haven’t already vaccinated everyone there’s a risk things will get worse again because of the seasonal effect. Also, for all we know maybe the virus will have mutated even further and become even more vaccine resistant. Now what?

Author(s): Scott Alexander

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: Astral Codex Ten at Substack