COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[mfb]

Looks like it.
If the vaccine would produce 1 in 500,000 additional blood clot rate then ~130 people in France would get it from a full Oxford/AZ vaccination. 130 blood clots in total (don't know how many would lead to deaths, but the strict upper limit is 130) vs. 300 deaths and numerous long-term health effects from COVID-19 every single day...

 

[russ_watters]

I'm chewing on the US vaccination stats more, and built a model to predict future rates and totals. It's more than just extending a curve fit. Some findings and predictions (if anyone wants to see graphs of the model, I can provide):

Goals/Commitments:

• The Biden administration's current goal is to produce enough vaccines for every adult by the end of May. That's a touch vague, as current guidance is for the vaccine to be administered to at-risk teenagers 16+. If it includes everyone 16+, that's 260 million people. Figure 4 weeks for the emptying of the distribution pipeline and we could have every adult vaccinated by the end of June. But not everyone is going to take it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...ohnson-and-johnson-covid-vaccine-partnership/
• The J&J vaccine is not currently ramping-up. There was an initial stockpile of 4M doses starting to ship on 3/1, but only 1.9 M have been administered so far, and over the past week the vaccination rate has actually dropped a bit. So I modeled that based on the assumption of a smooth ramp-up until J&J's projection of 95M doses shipped by the end of May is administered two weeks later (same link).
• 2nd doses of the Moderna & Pfizer vaccines are also not ramping-up. It's been fluctuating between 0.5 and 0.9 million per day for more than a month. Obviously that will have to change, but it is not clear if the cause of the low rate is scheduling or people just aren't taking their second doses. I'm assuming people will start getting them and have it ramping steadily to 3 million by early June.
• I have the total administered (1st + 2nd + J&J) continuing its current ramp rate. By the 2nd week in June it would reach 6 million per day if we don't run out of people to vaccinate. Currently it's about 2.5 million per day.
• There's 30 million doses of the AZ vaccine stockpiled. AZ has not applied for emergency use authorization yet, so there's a decent chance these doses don't factor into the USA's vaccination picture until we're well into the "everyone else" group if at all (more on that in the projections...). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/politics/coronavirus-astrazeneca-united-states.html

Demographics:

• Number of people 65+: 54M
• Number of people 16+: 260M
• Assumed 2/3 eligibility: 173M (that comes out to all old people and more than half of 16-64)
• At 90% uptake: 155M (conservatively high)
• At 75% uptake: 131M (realistic I think)

Current Status:

• 116M administered
• 41M fully vaccinated, of them 1.9M from the J&J vaccine.

Projections:

• By April 10, 131M will have received at least a first dose and 75M will be fully vaccinated.
• By April 20, 155M will have received at least a first dose and 114M will be fully vaccinated. We will need to have transitioned to the "everyone else (>16)" eligibility by then or we'll start running out of people to vaccinate.
• By May 10, even at 90% uptake we'll start running out of adults to vaccinate (everyone who wants one will have at least a first dose), and the rates will start to flatten or drop. I haven't modeled how that will look.
• By May 30, every adult who wants to be vaccinated will have be fully vaccinated (234 M) if everyone lines-right up for them (so the rates don't drop).

Additional Predictions and Caveats:

• I don't know what's going to happen with kids and the vaccine. Perhaps it could be opened up to them, but I suspect after every adult is vaccinated.
• When the vaccine is opened up to "everyone else", that will include me. I'll be aggressive about scheduling, so I'll expect I can get at least the first dose (if a 2-dose vaccine) by April 10. The big caveat to that is my county/area doesn't seem to be doing a good job with distribution/administration. That may be due to state level mismanagement/prioritization. Whatever is causing that, I expect it won't impact me by the time the vaccine is plentiful enough to get to me. But they'll need to get sorted out in the next two weeks...unless that only applies to the government-run facilities. Pharmacies are also administering the vaccines, so there's a good chance I'll be getting it from a pharmacy.

Side note: My area has been re-opening, too quickly. Case rates are too high, and they've been flat for the past few weeks even as restrictions are easing. As close as we are to the finish line, I think that's dumb and I'm not easing up on my protocols. I won't be doing any indoor dining, traveling, going to the gym or permanently returning to my office, etc. until I'm fully vaccinated or the case rates drop another order of magnitude. What's another month after 12? I believe tomorrow's my 1-year anniversary of work from home.

 

[mfb]

Germany is about to restart vaccinations with the Oxford/AZ vaccine based on recommendation of the European Medicines Agency.
A group of German/Austrian researchers claims they have found a reason for observed blood clots - and also a way to treat them. This happened after Germany's decision as far as I understand.
News article

 

[mfb]

Denmark is a bit ahead (and the UK is outside the scale), but look how close many European countries are with vaccination progress - including some non-EU countries in the same region, this is not purely EU distribution of vaccines.

 

[Astronuc]

Idaho Legislature shuts down due to COVID-19 outbreak
https://apnews.com/article/legislature-coronavirus-pandemic-idaho-9cc12cf52aecb26dd4f884e752317d8c

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Legislature voted Friday to shut down for several weeks due to an outbreak of COVID-19.
. . . .
At least six of the 70 House members tested positive for the illness in the last week, and there are fears a highly contagious variant of COVID-19 is in the Statehouse.

“The House has had several positive tests, so it is probably prudent that the House take a step back for a couple weeks until things calm down and it’s not hot around here for COVID,” House Majority Leader Mike Moyle said before the votes.

I have an appointment for vaccination later this week, either Pfizer or Moderna.

 

[mfb]

Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020

While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 percentage points of this. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection. Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly influenced by the number of COVID deaths reported in the county

As weaker legal orders lead to more reported COVID deaths it's not clear if weaker legal orders would have lead to a smaller or an even larger economic decline. It's only clear that it would have lead to more deaths.

 

[vela]

Rutgers will require its students to get vaccinated before returning. I'd guess a lot of schools may follow suit before reopening in fall.

 

[pinball1970]

Rutgers will require its students to get vaccinated before returning. I'd guess a lot of schools may follow suit before reopening in fall.

Hopefully

 

[bhobba]

Brisbane in lockdown again:
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/annastacia-palaszczuk-to-provide-covid19-update/news-story/021420fdfef16e9b67aaa527828d2db6?utm_source=CourierMail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Editorial&utm_content=CM_LATESTNEWS_BREAKING-CUR_01&net_sub_id=285783538&type=curated&position=1&overallPos=1

I am just included - I am in the redlands.

Thanks
Bill

 

[StevieTNZ]

New Zealand seems to be the only country doing the best at preventing outbreaks. We shiftly moved to alert level 3 for Auckland and level 2 for the rest of NZ when community transmission was detected in Auckland, and we've had no community cases for quite some time now.

 

[bhobba]

New Zealand seems to be the only country doing the best at preventing outbreaks.

NZ is doing very well, a bit ahead of Aus actually. But I think Taiwan is doing best of all and is the model that should be copied. I have to also mention it varies a bit between states here in Aus. NSW is generally considered the gold standard. I would say it is on par with Taiwan. That said QLD has done virtually the same thing with its Brisbane outbreak as NZ, but many (I am not among them) think it was a bit of an overkill. I am also not enamoured with what caused it (unvaccinated front line workers spreading it), but after discussion here have calmed down a bit, realising vaccinating all front line workers as was planned (but botched) was not that easy - they would have really had to lockdown hospitals to do it. It could be done but would have been quite difficult logistically (which, ironically, they ended up doing anyway - the world works in mysterious ways). Maybe that was why it was 'botched' - when the rubber hit the road it was more difficult than first thought. Anyway 86% of front line workers are now vaccinated, and rising, so they now can, and have, introduced the rule only vaccinated front like workers can do front line jobs. Better late than never I suppose - but I may be being too hard.

Thanks
Bill

 

[JT Smith]

This is a very long thread so I apologize if this question has already been addressed here.

What I am curious about is an estimate of the risk of contracting COVID-19 after vaccination if exposed. I know there are efficacy/effectiveness measurements that are available but my understanding of those numbers is that they are relative to the non-vaccinated or placebo groups and do not provide an absolute measurement of risk if one were exposed. Of course the question of degree of exposure surely matters. To put it another way, is there enough information to estimate what the results would be for a viral challenge study?

To me this is a more important number than efficacy. If after being vaccinated I take off my mask, jump into the mosh pit, and start slam dancing with infected people, what are my odds of getting sick?

 

[PeroK]

To me this is a more important number than efficacy. If after being vaccinated I take off my mask, jump into the mosh pit, and start slam dancing with infected people, what are my odds of getting sick?

The risk to you personally depends on a number of factors, not least the incidence of infected people in your area. It depends on how many other people have been vaccinated (as that itself may reduce the number of infected people and the transmission rate of the virus).

Beyond that, it depends of course on your own profile. Without vaccination there is a distribution of outcomes, from asymptomatic to sick to very sick to hospitalised to ICU to death! With the vaccine that distribution changes radically: you are less likely to contract the virus (given the same exposure to it), less likely to become seriously ill and less likely to die. These distibutions depend on your personal profile, with a measure of randomness thrown in.

Finally, if you are young and healthy then the main risk is not to yourself but to older and/or less healthy people that you come into contact with. For one part of the population being vaccinated is largely about protecting themselves; for another part of the population being vaccinated is largely about protecting others.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

This is a very long thread so I apologize if this question has already been addressed here.

What I am curious about is an estimate of the risk of contracting COVID-19 after vaccination if exposed. I know there are efficacy/effectiveness measurements that are available but my understanding of those numbers is that they are relative to the non-vaccinated or placebo groups and do not provide an absolute measurement of risk if one were exposed. Of course the question of degree of exposure surely matters. To put it another way, is there enough information to estimate what the results would be for a viral challenge study?

To me this is a more important number than efficacy. If after being vaccinated I take off my mask, jump into the mosh pit, and start slam dancing with infected people, what are my odds of getting sick?

Say that for everyday activities, the average individual has a probability P of getting infected with COVID-19. For a vaccine that has a 90% efficiency, the average vaccinated individual would have a probability 0.1P of getting infected doing those same everyday activities. Once you start getting into very high risk activities that people in the vaccine trials were unlikely to partake in, it gets difficult to extrapolate the data from the vaccine trials (i.e. vaccine efficiency reflects the protection from infection at levels of exposure to the virus that are similar to those experienced by the "average" individual. The level of protection is likely lesser at much higher levels of exposure where the probability of infection for both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals approaches 1).

 

[JT Smith]

Once you start getting into very high risk activities that people in the vaccine trials were unlikely to partake in, it gets difficult to extrapolate the data from the vaccine trials (i.e. vaccine efficiency reflects the protection from infection at levels of exposure to the virus that are similar to those experienced by the "average" individual. The level of protection is likely lesser at much higher levels of exposure where the probability of infection for both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals approaches 1).

The average individual is behaving in a way that reflects the perception of risk. Specifically, wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowds. Not everybody, obviously, but there is enough avoidant behavior to affect P.

If the risk of infection, even for vaccinated individuals, approaches 100% in cases of high exposure then it seems likely that it will remain prudent to continue social distancing and mask wearing for... well, probably for quite a long while into the future. I hope I'm wrong!

 

[WWGD]

The average individual is behaving in a way that reflects the perception of risk. Specifically, wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowds. Not everybody, obviously, but there is enough avoidant behavior to affect P.

If the risk of infection, even for vaccinated individuals, approaches 100% in cases of high exposure then it seems likely that it will remain prudent to continue social distancing and mask wearing for... well, probably for quite a long while into the future. I hope I'm wrong!

Well, disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day. Not too great, but much better than runaway exponential growth. Still exasperating when I see people feeding the pigeons. Specially during this pandemic. " But there's no one else to feed them". I reply: Same goes for rats and roaches. Seems like a good thing, doesn't it?

 

[JT Smith]

Well, disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day. Not too great, but much better than runaway exponential growth.

Yes, it's better. And I think it's likely to get a lot better still. But given the human factor of vaccine refusal coupled with lack of availability in some parts of the world it seems to me that the risk will continue to be there at some level. If you're old or otherwise susceptible it may be too much risk. Hopefully they will develop treatments to keep people from dying and to help those who have long term disabling symptoms. The latter actually worries me more than death.

 

[bhobba]

The disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day.

IMHO that is still WAY too high, even without the vaccine. Look at Aus, Taiwan, Iceland and NZ. I know all countries do not have the natural advantage of being an island or island-continent, but when you read about Brazil (for example), you shake your head:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04...unger-patients-admitted-to-hospital/100048674

They can do what we in Aus do - one case - lockdown and tracing, which we now have down pat, starts. We are now so good that the lockdown usually lasts only 3-4 days, and they have traced everyone. Sure, it causes economic problems, but we are talking about a genuine full-blown pandemic here. I am reminded of the town in Italy that got it right at the start of the pandemic:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ed-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo.

Iceland got it right too:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03284-3

What places that got it right show you can't let your guard down for a second. In Aus, due to bonking untrained security guards, there was a second wave in Melbourne, and something similar happened in Iceland. You must lockdown and trace, or you will suffer later, with even one case. The only discussion (sometimes quite heated) in Aus is the lockdown's extent. New South Wales does locally targeted lockdowns and is generally considered to have the gold standard in tracing. Where I am in Queensland, they do wider lockdowns, and while tracing is good, we likely could learn from NSW. In fact, we need a hi-tech Australia wide tracing system.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

The average individual is behaving in a way that reflects the perception of risk. Specifically, wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowds. Not everybody, obviously, but there is enough avoidant behavior to affect P.

If the risk of infection, even for vaccinated individuals, approaches 100% in cases of high exposure then it seems likely that it will remain prudent to continue social distancing and mask wearing for... well, probably for quite a long while into the future. I hope I'm wrong!

I don't know how high an exposure is needed to approach 100% for vaccinated individuals. It's possible that that level of virus exposure would not be reached in any real life circumstance. Furthermore, vaccines don't just protect against infection. In the case a person gets infected, the vaccine gives the immune system a head start on fighting the virus such that the vaccine prevents infections to progressing to severe disease and death. If the vaccine is not effective at preventing infection but does prevent hospitalizations and deaths, it would still be possible to return to normal life without social distancing (assuming everyone can get vaccinated).

 

[PeroK]

Yes, it's better. And I think it's likely to get a lot better still. But given the human factor of vaccine refusal coupled with lack of availability in some parts of the world it seems to me that the risk will continue to be there at some level. If you're old or otherwise susceptible it may be too much risk. Hopefully they will develop treatments to keep people from dying and to help those who have long term disabling symptoms. The latter actually worries me more than death.

After full vaccination (in the UK say), COVID will be just another minor/negligible risk in the business of living your life. In 2022, I would expect far more deaths and serious injuries from road accidents (*) than deaths and serious illnesses from COVID.

It will be interesting to see what governments do about people who refuse to be vaccinated. They may pose a risk mainly to themselves and health-care workers rather than the general public - although it will be interesting to see the attitude of coworkers.

(*) In 2019, there were 1750 deaths, 26,000 serious injuries and 153,000 total casualties in road accidents in the UK. And, unlike COVID, these are people of all ages.

 

[JT Smith]

...(assuming everyone can get vaccinated).

After full vaccination...

That's the problem though. Full vaccination isn't likely to be a reality anytime soon, if at all. Some countries will do much better than others. Here in the U.S. there may very well be a large percentage of holdouts. And worldwide it will take a long time.

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

At present, the CDC is ambivalent on this point.

 

[russ_watters]

IMHO that is still WAY too high, even without the vaccine. Look at Aus, Taiwan, Iceland and NZ. I know all countries do not have the natural advantage of being an island or island-continent...

They can do what we in Aus do - one case - lockdown and tracing, which we now have down pat, starts.

The problem is vastly different for countries that aren't geographically isolated than for Australia. My home state of Pennsylvania has about half the population of Australia and our best week of the pandemic was roughly equal to your worst and our worst was around 50x worse. Nobody in Australia commutes daily to New Zealand for work. Your border is much more real than the national borders in Europe and state borders in the US can ever be. That isolation limits the spread and opens-up opportunities we just don't have.

The lower baseline enables contract tracing to actually be a thing, for example. There's just no feasible way to manually contact trace 70,000 cases per week in a population of 13 million, and even though we hired thousands, we just couldn't do it.

Similarly, while I don't know if we would have even accepted military-guarded quarantines, it is a lot more difficult to guard a hundred thousand people that way than 4,000, and their complaints are much louder. But sure, maybe if we were only force-quarantining 10 or 50 people at a time, the populace would have accepted that.

The lower baseline also means the shutdowns can be used more like a surgical tool than a sledgehammer. Yes, we of course did shutdowns, but there was never an opportunity for a short duration shutdown because we never had case counts low enough to target them that way. And the longer they go, the harder they are to keep.

So while I'm happy for you guys, I don't think there is much we can learn from your model.

 

[PeroK]

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

I think you are exaggerating the risk. Last year when all this started people were commuting normally into London: packed onto trains, tubes and buses. If the virus spread that easily, then almost everyone would have caught the virus last February/March.

It also depends on the rate of infection around you. Let's say that 1 in 50 people has the virus, then there may still be a signifcant risk of being infected even if you've been vaccinated - although much lower than if you were not vaccinated.

But, if we get to 1 in 5000 people carrying the virus, then the chance of a vaccinated person being infected is very low - and the chance of getting seriously ill is even lower.

The other question is whether you should fly with an airline that does not require its passengers to be vaccinated. Personally, I won't fly this year if unvaccinated passengers are allowed on board.

 

[JT Smith]

I think you are exaggerating the risk. Last year when all this started people were commuting normally into London: packed onto trains, tubes and buses. If the virus spread that easily, then almost everyone would have caught the virus last February/March.

I'm not exaggerating the risk. I think it's actually pretty low even now where I am. And as more people are vaccinated it will get lower still. If the case rate drops to a minuscule level then I won't worry about the cumulative risk of numerous unprotected encounters. But if 25% of the population remains unvaccinated I'm not confident that will happen, not soon anyway.

I hope I'm being paranoid. But I have given up trying to forecast the trajectory of this pandemic. I keep seeing the horizon recede, like a mirage.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That's the problem though. Full vaccination isn't likely to be a reality anytime soon, if at all. Some countries will do much better than others. Here in the U.S. there may very well be a large percentage of holdouts. And worldwide it will take a long time.

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

At present, the CDC is ambivalent on this point.

In this case, the risk is greater to the unvaccinated individuals. It looks like the vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and in the case that a vaccinated individual does get infected, the vaccines are very effective at preventing hospitalizations and death. In that situation, the unvaccinated individuals would be risking catching the disease and having a bad outcome from the disease. Vaccinated individuals would be much less likely to catch the disease and if they did, the vaccine should make the infection lead to only a mild or moderate cold.

 

[JT Smith]

It looks like the vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and in the case that a vaccinated individual does get infected, the vaccines are very effective at preventing hospitalizations and death.

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Vaccines aren't perfect, we all know that. I'm just curious how good they are. Could I slam dance with a group of contagious people without too much worry or would that be really dangerous?

 

[vela]

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Are you talking about vaccines in general or the COVID-19 vaccines? In the Moderna clinical trials, none of the vaccinated individuals developed serious illness after the initial 14 days needed for the immune response to develop. I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

 

[JT Smith]

Are you talking about vaccines in general or the COVID-19 vaccines? In the Moderna clinical trials, none of the vaccinated individuals developed serious illness after the initial 14 days needed for the immune response to develop. I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

COVID-19. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were other cases I only know about the ones in WA state. It's expected that some people will get infected, some experience more serious illness, and some die. It's a very small percentage in the report I read. But it conflates risk of exposure with risk of infection/illness/death. And that's the crux of my question: Assuming significant exposure, what is the risk?

Out of one million fully vaccinated individuals in Washington state, epidemiologists report evidence of 102 breakthrough cases since February 1, 2021, which represents .01 percent of vaccinated people in Washington. Breakthrough cases have been identified in 18 counties. The majority of those in Washington state with confirmed vaccine breakthrough experienced only mild symptoms, if any. However, since February 1, eight people with vaccine breakthrough have been hospitalized. DOH is investigating two potential vaccine breakthrough cases where the patients died. Both patients were more than 80 years old and suffered underlying health issues. Further investigation will help to identify patterns among people who have COVID-19 after vaccination, such as if a virus variant may have caused the infection.

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Newsroom/Art...ne-breakthrough-confirmed-in-Washington-state

 

[bhobba]

So while I'm happy for you guys, I don't think there is much we can learn from your model.

Valid counter-argument. The circumstances are entirely different. What I will say is our debt spike per person from Covid measures is the greatest in the world. I suspect that is something peculiar to our culture and other counties citizenry may not tolerate such debt.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

See:
https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/...hing-you-need-to-know-about-covid-19-vaccines

There was one case with the Pfizer trial of severe Covid. The rest none. Actual use in the UK, where they have done millions, is basically all are equally effective. Pfizer has an advantage in the frontline and aged care home residents group because the second dose is 3 weeks later, so they have maximum immunity quicker. This, for example, allows frontline workers to resume all duties quicker, bearing in mind where I live, only fully vaccinated front line workers can do so. There is also an issue with the Oxford vaccine and blood clots, but I will do a separate post about that.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Vaccines aren't perfect, we all know that. I'm just curious how good they are. Could I slam dance with a group of contagious people without too much worry or would that be really dangerous?

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor.

Based on my understanding of the vaccine, the vaccine should protect you if you were to socialize with contagious people. Of course, as you state, the vaccine is not perfect, so there is some risk of infection. However, that level of risk is certainly lower than the risk of getting infected if you are not vaccinated (~90% less risk, in the case of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines). Furthermore, even if you do get infected, the vaccines lower the risk that the infection will lead to hospitalization or death.

It is difficult to calculate the exact risk because there are too many unknown factors and those factors can change over time (e.g. as the prevalence of various variants changes). The vaccines won't completely eliminate risk, but they can reduce it to very low levels (maybe to the extent that the most dangerous part of a trip to a slam dance might be the risk of dying in a car accident while driving to or from the slam dance rather than the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19).

Here's a good picture of what a "return to normal" might look like:

Even if widespread vaccination can’t halt the spread of the virus, it promises a major step back toward normal. Preventing severe disease and death in the elderly and people with comorbidities such as obesity and hypertension—the most vulnerable—is still a resounding victory over the virus, many epidemiologists say.

Large swaths of the population might still become infected and develop minor disease or asymptomatic infections. That prospect worries some scientists and clinicians, who note that even mild cases can lead to the “long COVID” phenomenon of lingering symptoms. Hospitals, though, will not become overwhelmed with emergency cases and deaths will become increasingly rare.

To Corey, those metrics are the most relevant. “When will the ICU use and all of this decant so that we’re at the point where, yes, we can sort of tolerate this?” he asks.

“We’re not going to shut down this virus and end transmission,” agrees Nicole Lurie, an adviser to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. “We have to make a decision as a society about how much of this we can and want to live with.” Society lives with influenza, after all, which remains endemic despite a vaccine. But Lurie stresses that flu is not an appealing model. It kills up to 60,000 people per year in the United States alone—a toll she would not want to accept from COVID-19.

Still, immunologist Brigitte Autran, a member of France’s Scientific Committee on COVID-19 Vaccines, says herd immunity isn’t needed to bring back normalcy. “The first goal is to have individual protection, and by summing the individual protections, to have a protection of the society that will allow countries to come back to almost real, true lives.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/how-soon-will-covid-19-vaccines-return-life-normal

 

[Astronuc]

From NY Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html (Updated daily, so information will be replaced)

At least 956 new Coronavirus deaths and 81,769 new cases were reported in the United States on April 9. Over the past week, there has been an average of 67,923 cases per day, an increase of 12 percent from the average two weeks earlier. As of Saturday morning, more than 31,107,200 people in the United States have been infected with the Coronavirus according to a New York Times database.

The cumulative total for deaths in US due to Covid-19 stands at 560,531 as of April 9.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-cases.html - note the clusters at universities and colleges.

 

[mfb]

Chattahoochee, Ga had 34,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 and it's still a hot spot?

Israel vaccinated over 60% of the population. New vaccinations (first dose) have slowed down significantly as most eligible people interested in getting a vaccine have one by now. New cases are down dramatically.
The UK seems to follow the same pattern at close to 50%. Clear downwards trend here as well.

For comparison: Germany, Italy and France added another peak in early April and Spain might be heading towards another peak.

Global vaccination doses will reach 10% of the world population in the next two days (but many of them are two-dose vaccines).

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

 

[pinball1970]

I received an alert regarding a study about wearing masks in school. The study used fluid dynamic models.

https://scitechdaily.com/new-resear...p-covid-spread-better-than-social-distancing/

Paper here.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0040755

 

[russ_watters]

Chattahoochee, Ga had 34,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 and it's still a hot spot?

That has a question mark at the end, but is worded as a statement. Can you say where you heard of it, what the criteria is for being a "hot spot" and if that's really a question, what the question is? I've never heard of Chattahoochee, Ga., so I googled it, and I see that it isn't where the Master's Tournament is being held.