COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Virginia's death totals the last few days are still perplexing to me.
Each of the last five days, VA has recording deaths greater than any day before that.

In just those five days, our 7-day average deaths have risen from 18 to 104.

This is at the same time that cases continue to decline.  And I haven't been able to find any indication that these are some sort of backlog or a change in the way the state is counting deaths.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Yeah I think basically everyone is on board with that. It's the rest of this year where there's still some uncertainty. Because we don't know how long vaccinating will take and how bad the variants will be in the meantime.

Why do you say we don’t know how long vaccinting will take.  We have contracts for 600 million doses by July from Moderna and Pfizer alone.  This seems like the pessimistic end point; the optimistic one is probably about two months earlier.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://mobile.twitter.com/anniekarni/status/1366517360673386501

It’s perfectly reasonable for Trump to get the vaccine, but I have no idea why his wife would be eligible.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It's fascinating that the pandemic has now come full circle and the two states with the highest number of average new cases per capita are once again New York and New Jersey.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don't feel like we need to wait for complete herd immunity to fully open up.  The virus does not present enough of a threat just to young and healthy people to justify severe social restrictions once the old and vulnerable are immune. It seems reasonable to me to reopen once everyone in Phase 1b has had a chance to be fully vaccinated.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Immunity from getting COVID lasts all of about three months, often less.

Yeah, this is definitely not true.

There's going to be a lot of variance in the length of immunity, and we don't yet know the average length of immunity. But the reason we don't know the average length of immunity is that we haven't hit it yet.  It's at least a year, and probably significantly longer.

If average immunity were only three months, we would literally be seeing tens of thousands of cases of reinfection worldwide every day.  Instead, there have been less than 100 total worldwide cases of confirmed reinfection across the entire course of the pandemic.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It looks like the US yesterday passed two pretty significant vaccinations thresholds: we are now averaging more than 2 million doses per day, and we are now vaccinating more people per capita per day than the UK.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If the US achieves herd immunity this year, then surely it would be the end of the pandemic in the US and other developed countries? Unfortunately developing countries are being left behind and there is the risk if new variants, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I have to imagine the US will achieve herd immunity several months before most of the rest of the developed world. We are so far ahead of them in vaccinations.  Most European countries have vaccinated less than 5% of their populations, while Asian countries like Japan and South Korea just started vaccinating a few thousand people last week.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Does anyone knoe if any states are keeping statistics breaking down covid cases and deaths by vaccination status?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Big news from Alaska, which just became the first state to allow anyone to get vaccinated:

https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1369677814681788416?s=20

It won't be long before other states follow.

This is great news.  Though this won't be as easy for other states.  Alaska has not only fully vaccinated the largest percentage of their residents already, but they they also have the 2nd youngest population of all states (after Utah).  So they had a much smaller share of elderly residents to get through before they could do this.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It appears the US will hit 100 million vaccination doses today, exactly 50 days (not 100 as promised) into Biden's term.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Another great thing about Biden's speech is that people now have May 1 and July 4 dates for when normal life might return, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully that deflates the rush to reopen right now and reminds people not to endanger their loved ones just before they can be saved.

I don't understand the logic of the July 4 date for "small groups" to get together.  The CDC has already said that vaccinated people can get together in small groups right now, and a lot people even criticized that for being to conservative.

If Biden's vaccine timeline is indeed realistic, he should be targeting Memorial Day for this sort of event.

And once everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, why limit it to small groups? Why any limits whatsoever?  Why not name an official national "Lick A Stranger's Face Day"?  Kind of like The Purge, but for sexual harassment only.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

And once everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, why limit it to small groups? Why any limits whatsoever?  

Because it might not be herd immunity and people who don't want to be vaccinated can still get sick and die, as can the 5-40% of those for whom the vaccine is not effective.

The vaccines have been shown to be basically 100% effective against death and hospitalization.  People who don't want to take it and want to die from covid instead should feel free to die from covid if that is their choice.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

And once everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, why limit it to small groups? Why any limits whatsoever?  

Because it might not be herd immunity and people who don't want to be vaccinated can still get sick and die, as can the 5-40% of those for whom the vaccine is not effective.

The vaccines have been shown to be basically 100% effective against death and hospitalization.  People who don't want to take it and want to die from covid instead should feel free to die from covid if that is their choice.

But there's still a ton of people who want the vaccine but can't get it for at least another month or two--shouldn't we wait for them too?

Right, which is why I said "once everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated..." But it sounds like this should really only take until the end of May.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I am seeing a lot of left wing attacks on the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.....

that is not the messaging we need

Don't worry about it.....

Yes I am going to worry about it because the last thing we need are lefties refusing to take Johnson and Johnson vaccines when about 1/3 of Republicans and 1/3 of minorities will refuse to take vaccines at all.

Where?  And what are the attacks?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Maybe it’s weird, but Canada is doing four months between shots, so I’m not really sure you have much to worry about in comparison...

The UK is doing 3 months between shots, and it seems to be working great for them. 

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Seems like deaths are now declining much more quickly than cases, and have been for few weeks now.
Even accounting for the natural lag between these indicators, this would suggest that the US vaccination strategy of prioritizing the elderly is working.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I got the first dose of Pfizer this morning as well.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1373610236221734912

We aren’t “running even” if you look at the graph of deaths.  The purpose of vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable first was to prioritize reducing deaths over just reducing cases.  If we just wanted to reduce cases we’d have adopted a much different policy, probably involving vaccinating college kids first or something like that.

We’ve reduced deaths by almost 50% in the last 2 weeks!

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

We REALLY need to start seeing cases/hospitalization/death stats broken down by vaccination status.

I have to think these would be the most powerful evidence you could show people to convince them to get the vaccine, and also convince doomers that the pandemic really is almost over in the US.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Georgia is opening vaccine eligibility to all adults (age 16 and up) beginning on Thursday.

So is Texas on Monday

Alaska made sense.  But Georgia and Texas are both rank way at the bottom in terms of vaccination progress (Georgia is dead last among all states).  I’m confused as to how they can be among the first states to completely open eligibility.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Illinois: Later this morning, Gov. Pritzker is supposed to announce that he will expand vaccine eligibility to anyone over 16 effective April 12 and add at least one bridge phase before Phase 5.

Capitol Fax.

Here's the Bridge Phase that was announced by Gov. Pritzker last Thursday.

https://twitter.com/GovPritzker/status/1372605401540202499
https://twitter.com/hannahmeisel/status/1372588528404676612

This seems like a reasonable way to go about reopening.  I particularly like the policy that vaccinated people don’t count against capacity limits.  And also the “stable metrics” apparently just involve counting deaths and hospitalizations, not cases.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I noticed that Oklahoma is only counting deaths once a week now.  The past few weeks they counted them on Tuesdays, but for some reason this week they counted them all on Wednesday.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1375530494461308931

Didn't we do over four million a week or two ago? Or am I misremembering?

There was some sort of reporting quirk on March 13.   For some reason several states (including California and New York) were reported as having administered a record number of vaccines on March 13, but then almost zero vaccines on Mach 14.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Some of the implied CFR rates by state right now are really bizarre.  Florida is averaging about 5,000 cases and 50 deaths per day (CFR~1%).  California is averaging around 2500 cases and 200 deaths per day (CFR~8%!!).  

Is Florida just much, much better at testing and thus counting cases?  Or much better at vaccinating the elderly?  What is going here?

FWIW, this isn’t really a red state/blue state thing.  NY has CFR ~1% while Texas and Georgia are 3-4%.