mattb65

It's the start of the dip, we are definitely past the immunization peak. I too wish we had maintained the pace a bit longer but it's dropping as predicted, and the drop is likely to accelerate in the next few weeks. I'm anticipating media hysteria on the drop off in vaccination rates over the next couple weeks. I posted before that the vaccine projection by youyanggu from months ago on vaccination rates appears to be remarkably spot on. On the plus side the expected collapse in cases also appears to be happening right on schedule also. *fingers crossed*

This data scientist projected the vaccination rates and infection rates back in December with adjustments made up until early March. What's impressive to me is that he correctly projected when cases would start to plateau and slowly increase through the last 6 weeks and appears to correctly have predicted the peak in cases to within a week. Let's hope he's accurate with how fast and how far cases drop over the next two months. https://covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-immunity/ He is also the only site that I've seen where the vaccination rates were projected out in time. He predicted ahead of time that new vaccinations would rise and peak about 1 week ago and then fall sharply over the next month and remain at a relatively low level until the fall when presumably younger people will be approved to get vaccinated. He made this apparently accurate projection without any knowledge of the J&J clotting issue. This is a long way of saying that though vaccine rates are likely to drop over the next few weeks, try not to get discouraged, we probably have enough people vaccinated to get cases through the summer to an extremely low level, even "well below 10,000" . If things go as expected and no crazy escape variant emerges then the next stress test will be in the fall. I'm curious once we get cases really low if we'll be able to utilize rapid testing and tracing more effectively to try and contain localized outbreaks. It seems like NZ and Australia have shown that this is possible but only when the virus isn't widespread.

Below 10k isn't vague at all, either you're above the number or below it. How is that vague?

I respect Dr. Fauci quite a bit and really don't like the way some law makers have behaved and been disrespectful toward him like what happened with Jim Jordan. There does need to be a better articulated end game. I think setting a goal to some low level of infections before we recommend easing up should be the message right now. They've done this on a local level here. "Well below 10,000" is too vague. Gun to head, Dr. Fauci said 10,000 even if he qualified it with "well below".

The 7 day average of reported cases will probably get below 10k well before the end of June, want to make a friendly wager? If 7 day average of cases are below 10k before July 1st, you don't post in this thread for all of July and August, if it never gets below that level I will do the same.

The last paragraph that you highlighted and underlined should be qualified further. Experts estimate 70-85% of people need to become immune to the virus through infection or vaccination to prevent spread without any mitigation measures. Again we are already seeing the beginning of a downturn but are nowhere near the 70-85% number. If you take that paragraph literally then there's no way we would have any of the downturns that we've seen. I feel very confident that the downturn over the next 3 months driven by seasonal changes and vaccination rates will be the largest we've seen thus far. Dr. Fauci suggests that we can lift all restrictions if the national cases get to below 10,000 cases per day, I bet we get there by the end of June.

There's been no better cause and effect relationship in this pandemic than vaccine uptake in a population group and subsequent declines in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. There's a difference between herd immunity in a population acting like it did before the pandemic and the current herd immunity threshold in a population acting like it is now and with the other environmental factors that affect transmission. We can and will overcome the herd immunity threshold and cases will start to decline in the coming weeks/months, I have a lot of confidence that this will happen because it's happened in comparable countries. I also think the current prevalence of the virus and hospitalizations should be some of the main metrics used to inform policy and messaging on how cautious people need to be at a particular time and that there can be different rules for people that are vaccinated and people that are not vaccinated. The herd immunity threshold will be different in the summer than it will be in the fall and winter but the rate of cases will reflect the current amount of immunity and caution needed to keep things contained.

Have you reviewed the infection and immunization curves in Israel and the United Kingdom. Once they had over 40% of their populations with some level of immunity from vaccination,, their infection curves showed exponential decay. We are getting close to those same levels of immunity in the US even with a large segment of people not eligible to get vaccinated yet. That segment obviously doesn't tend to get bad outcomes from this virus which is important to consider. The more the better obviously but I think there is compelling data that people will be able to resume most normal activities very soon. I think the July 4th date proposed by Pres Biden or maybe sooner is realistic. I don't think we'll have a herd immunity level of immunization by that point in time and I don't think it will matter. A critical enough mass will be vaccinated, anyone who wants to be vaccinated that has a significant level of risk will have had a chance to be vaccinated by that time period. Edit: you said there isn't data on this, only conjecture, that's wrong, see paragraph 1.

Nearly 50% of all eligible adults have already initiated their vaccination. Many colleges are requiring vaccinations to attend which will cover a large portion of the 18-22 group. I understand the concern over vaccine hesitancy but the data we already have on how many people have been vaccinated and continue to be vaccinated - 3.3 million shots per day and still climbing - is really encouraging. I think saying half of all Americans may not get it which includes all those under 16 that aren't eligible is the wrong measure to evaluate. It should be how many of the 16+ or 18+ are getting the vaccine. So far those numbers still look great.

Yes, though that probably would have also caused some chaos with people canceling appointments. My back of napkin math - looking at the data we have from cdc unfortunately doesn't break down vaccines individually by age or gender but does provide the breakdown of all vaccine doses by age and gender. If I assume a similar proportion of J&J is given based on age/gender of all vaccines - is 35% of vaccines to those under 50, and 55% to women. So of the 6.8 million J&J doses administered, approximately 1.3 million have gone to women under 50. This gives a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis rate of approximately 1 in 200,000 to 1 in 250,000 for this group. There my be additional cases identified due to more awareness as well as cases from doses given within the last 14 days that haven't developed or been diagnosed yet. For all of these reasons a pause is reasonable from a medical perspective imo. Maybe people will have more confidence in the RNA based vaccines that have been given for a longer time without any big safety problems aside from rare anaphylaxis. As I had mentioned when those first reports came out, anaphylaxis is not fun but is very treatable. CVST is much more difficult to treat and much more likely to cause potentially permanent disability or death.

One thing regarding the J&J vaccine that's missing in the public discussion is a more nuanced view of the blood clot risk. Everyone is putting out the less than 1 in 1,000,000 rate of this adverse effect. What I've read is that it's only affected women under 50 so instead the discussion should be the risk in women under 50 is 1 in x and so far this adverse effect has not been seen in any males or women over 50. My guess is eventually they will resume vaccinations with J&J except for the high risk population. They should be communicating the specific facts. Transparency will be the best way to build trust in my opinion.

As a Neurologist, I'm very familiar with cerebral venous thrombosis and can affirm that they are very scary, can be difficult to treat and can be deadly or very disabling. It's one of the reasons why I support them doing due diligence to define and mitigate this risk as much as possible. I'll never forget the woman I saw as a medical student who was teaching a class as a professor and went down and was found to have a massive CVT and became brain dead 48 hrs later even with maximal treatment. I've had plenty that were identified and got anti coagulation and did fine too. I agree with those that note since we have alternative and safer vaccines, maybe we should restrict J&J if we identify that young women are the ones getting this complication.

People will assume they can avoid covid or assume that even if they get unlucky and catch itthat they'll probably be fine. On the other hand they have to actively choose to get a vaccine that they've now heard May cause blood clots. Even though the risk of blood clots appears to be extremely low, I can easily see the thought process behind someone saying nope to choosing J&J or AstraZeneca because it is now a known risk that is within their control. Catching covid and the risks of infection is a much more nebulous risk. Tough position for the FDA/CDC if they said nothing it seems like they may be hiding something, if they do what they've done, the media and everyone freaks out.

The graph shows a dashed line continuing to 80% in May. It's just a graphical form of what they posted. No one said 80% are vaccinated, they projected current rates out in time just like the graph does. 60-70% immunized may be a sufficient amount to achieve herd immunity, we don't know. They posted their opinions, why do you have to be thought police by calling it misinformation. You're too much...

tHiS iS mIsInFoRmaTiOn11!!!11!

I've read their posts for months and disagree that those individuals are propagandists. I don't always agree with their opinions but both offer good faith discussions. I haven't seen either purposefully mislead or spread misinformation. The premise of the posts you had a problem with was correct, that's why I responded. You claimed it is misinformation, I had a proven with that. If you read what they said in context they were writing about rates of adults getting vaccinated. We are a lot closer to things being "normal" than you're willing to acknowledge.

He claimed if the current rate of vaccinations continues that we will reach 80% of adults in about 1.5 months which is correct plotting a linear graph from where we are now per the CDC with a daily rate of 3.1 million shots per day. Do you have trouble with reading comprehension and algebra? y = mx + b You could argue instead that current rates aren't likely to continue but instead you said it's "false information".

They literally posted data from the CDC... we don't have a long ways to go, a couple more months isn't that long. This model has been remarkably accurate to include predicting the plateau/rise in cases over the past 6 weeks - months before it happened. It predicts cases droping dramatically through May and June where June 1st has 33k cases total on June 1 and less than 10k by July 1 - that's total cases not positive tests. At that level and with the majority of high risk people vaccinated, I would bet that the daily death rate will be less than 100. If we have infections and deaths at that low of a level and >60% of adults vaccinated then we will be in a great position to have almost all of the restrictions lifted. If that isn't good enough then nothing will. Source - https://covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-immunity/ In addition to the infection levels getting to such low levels there is also the rational argument that once everyone who wants the vaccine will have had a chance to get it. Once that happens, there's no good argument for restrictions imo.

Give it a rest they are spreading factual information and you are getting hung up on very minor minutia. If vaccine rates continue at their current pace the timelines posted are accurate that we will have a critical mass of people vaccinated by late May with first shots and full vaccination a month later. As was posted the econd shot only provides modest additional benefit. Look at the UK to see how well their first shot strategy is working. I think the bigger concern is that vaccine rates are unlikely to continue at this pace due to reduced demand from people that are actually buying into false information.

Not that much for a couple reasons. 1. 32.5% is a relative risk reduction - aka if the death rate is 1% in the control group then the death rate in the treatment group would be 0.68%. In other words the absolute risk reduction would be 0.32% so 0.32% of people would be saved by this intervention. Relative risk reduction is often publicized by it may exaggerate the benefit, I always try to calculate the absolute risk reduction when deciding how beneficial something is. 2. This is an observational study and subject to confounding bias. Maybe more young people than old people are prescribed zyrtec or other h1 blockers because seasonal allergies don't affect older people as much as younger people. That's why the authors say that prospective controlled trials are needed. These type of observational trials can be helpful to provide a signal that an intervention might be beneficial but the prospective trial to try and account for any confounding variables is needed to prove it.

If I recall correctly, you caught covid about a year ago, right? If you've had the virus before, the vaccine hits you harder. You'll both be fine by tomorrow. Take a Tylenol.

If my appeal to common sense and anecdotes didn't have any effect (seems like anecdotes are better than data on the internet) How about you consider some evidence from observational studies. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768533 How about the data in the non hospital setting? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776536 It is admittedly hard to study this stuff because it's all observational which means there will always be significant confounding variables and messy data. But in this case common sense and the data are both lining up and showing the same thing. Masks aren't a panacea but they are an effective tool in reducing transmission when worn properly and in the right circumstances where risk of spread is high.

If you can't understand why wearing a mask properly for a respiratory pathogen helps to prevent infection then I don't think there's much help for you. Would you go into a known heavily infected person's room without a high quality mask? I sure as hell wouldnt. How do you explain how the many physicians and nurses treating highly infected covid patients not getting infected? The masks cause people to get weakened immune systems and cause them to get covid, that's your claim, right? Once we got proper ppe protocols in hospitals, providers stopped getting covid, why is that?

Except for rare circumstances, anyone can choose to get vaccinated. Comparing this to something like the ugly history of segregation which has been based on innate qualities most commonly race is a pretty terrible false equivalency. There was also no rational basis to segregate people based on things like race or gender in the past. There is a very clearly rational basis to give vaccinated individuals different treatment compared to unvaccinated people given the current circumstances. If a business suffers because of giving preferential treatment to those vaccinated then the free market will sort things out, isn't that what most conservatives preach? Also in terms of moving the country forward, we do so by crushing the pandemic, the best way to do that is by everyone that is able getting vaccinated.

I'm surprised that you're so in favor of this sort of government overreach. Sure the state government can stay out of requiring vaccine passports but why push their agenda on private businesses?