COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

On that list you post, the US as a whole is easily the least densely populated country.

Argentina has actually the lowest population density in that list

EDIT: even Brazil has a lowest population density than the US

Brazil doesn't really count as large swaths of the country are virtually uninhabited.

Thus is true of the US too.  Have you noticed how big Alaska is?
If you don’t count Alaska, the US is more densely populated than Spain, and about equal to France.

In any case, the US states with the higher per capita number of cases (not just now, but over the entire course of the pandemic) are North and South Dakota, so I really don’t this population density is dispositive in the long term.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/ToluseO/status/1320352247759441920

F[inks] this.

Seriously, this is not how any competent developed nation in the world acts.

France and Spain and Italy and the UK and the Netherlands and Belgium (among many others) all have way more per capita new cases than the US does right now.  Would you consider these competent developed nations?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

What is the source for the claim that testing has decreased? 

It is true that positivity rate has increased.  But according the Covid Tracking Project and the Johns Hopkins tracker, testing is also still increasing this week as it has been for the last 6-8 weeks.



https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Given the lack of leadership at the national level and the apathy of so much of the public, why is the US still doing so much better at controlling the spread than most major European countries over the past few weeks?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Again, the fact we don’t have a mask mandate everywhere in the US which is strictly enforced is outrageous. There is no economic harm from a mask mandate, and it greatly will reduce our transmission.

How would you enforce it?

Fine people who don't follow the requirements.

Who would impose the fine?

What would happen if someone refused to pay the fine?

You couldn’t really do it at an individual level.  I suppose you could do something like requiring work places to implement it, and then have OSHA conduct inspections of those workplaces and fine those that are not enforcing it.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I'm starting to worry that any vaccine will only provide temporary immunity, and that we'll be stuck wearing these bloody masks and taking all these precautions for the rest of our lives. 130,000 cases in a day, and that is after strict mask mandates and social distancing measures in 36 of the 50 states (including all the major population centers: New York, California, Texas, Illinois).  I do not notice a difference in rates between states which have mandated masks and moved schools online and states that haven't. There is evidence which suggests this will become endemic; it won't just go away.

If vaccines only provide temporary immunity, we’ll simply have to take it every year just like the flu shot.  It will probably just be combined with the flu shot, so we won’t even notice.  I don’t really understand why anyone is concerned about this possibility at all.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Despite the recent horrific trends, it appears that the end is in sight: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-effective/index.html

Good news.  When a vaccine is available, the trick will be trying to convince the population to get it.  So many right wingers are weird.

If right wingers don't want to take the vaccine, that just means fewer right wingers.  I'm not seeing the problem. /jk

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/09/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-effective/

In Pfizer’s 44,000-person trial, there have so far been 94 cases of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, in people who were not previously infected. Fewer than nine of those cases were among people who received two shots of the vaccine, a strong signal of efficacy.

Even if only the placebo group is getting infected, 94 cases out of a 44,000 person trial seems like a shockingly low number of infections, considering over 1% of the whole US population has been confirmed infected within the last two months, and everyone in the trial is being regularly tested.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/09/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-effective/

In Pfizer’s 44,000-person trial, there have so far been 94 cases of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, in people who were not previously infected. Fewer than nine of those cases were among people who received two shots of the vaccine, a strong signal of efficacy.

Even if only the placebo group is getting infected, 94 cases out of a 44,000 person trial seems like a shockingly low number of infections, considering over 1% of the whole US population has been confirmed infected within the last two months, and everyone in the trial is being regularly tested.

Presumably, the kinds of people who would be willing to beta test the efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine would also be the kinds of people who would be taking lots of precautions anyway.

Yeah, you're probably right.  I work with a woman who was part of this trial; she's older and has been very strictly quarantining since the start of the pandemic, except for driving about 3 hours each way to the trial location.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/JedKolko/status/1326888536767823872

What point is this post trying to make?  Where I am the weather has be beautiful all week, in the low 70s/high 60s during the day.  And while my state isn’t at the center of the surge, we still have the most cases we’ve ever seen.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The reality is that a vast majority of people would be better off getting the virus than being forced to shut down the economy, or uphend their daily lives in other ways.  So it might be fair to call people who oppose further restrictions selfish, but it is not necessarily fair to call them stupid.  

And we should have been crafting a national response that acknowledges this reality from the outset, rather than just trying to gin up uniform fear of the virus that anyone who has seen the basic statistics behind is knows is misleading.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The reality is that a vast majority of people would be better off getting the virus than being forced to shut down the economy, or uphend their daily lives in other ways.  So it might be fair to call people who oppose further restrictions selfish, but it is not necessarily fair to call them stupid.  

And we should have been crafting a national response that acknowledges this reality from the outset, rather than just trying to gin up uniform fear of the virus that anyone who has seen the basic statistics behind is knows is misleading.

Put your money where your mouth is and deliberately infect yourself.
Also don’t use hospital services no matter what because you need to simulate the inevitable collapse if we did pursue your strategy.

I don't even know how I would go about doing this.  And I certainly wouldn't want to infect anyone else in the process.  That's the problem.

I do believe that we would have arrived at a much better outcome by pursuing a strategy of controlled voluntary infection and quarantine.  As long as infections and quarantining were done under close medical supervision, we could have cut infections to vulnerable populations to a small fraction of what they were, and in the process used far less hospital resources are produced far fewer deaths.

Of course, there's really no hope for that now; we just have to wait around for a vaccine.
But even if you can't see the argument for voluntary infection to produce herd immunity, I hope most people can agree that it was absolutely criminal that we weren't conducting human challenge trial to speed up vaccine production.  This is easily the worst and most obvious mistake that we have collective made throughout the entire pandemic.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Apparently one upside of the recent surge in cases is that it will likely hasten vaccine approval.

Moderna originally thought that they wouldn't have enough positive cases in their trial to seek emergency authorization until January, but now their believe they will reach the required number of cases within the next ten days.

Of course, this just points to the absurdity of all the vaccine companies just waiting around for enough people to be infected rather than implementing challenge trials in the first place.  Those of us very reasonably hoping for a quick vaccination timeline are actually forced to root for a surge in overall infections.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Of course, this just points to the absurdity of all the vaccine companies just waiting around for enough people to be infected rather than implementing challenge trials in the first place.

There are huge ethical issues involved in those. We'd be deliberately exposing people to a disease for which we know we have no cure and only spotty treatments. This is made especially dire because we especially want to know how these vaccines help older adults... could you imagine a challenge trial where you give an 80-year-old COVID? Especially if you've given that 80-year-old a placebo vaccine? I don't know if it was the correct decision because ethics tends not to have correct answers, but it's a very understandable one.

Nobody was suggesting involving 80-year olds in the challenger trials.  But if they are volunteers, I don't really see what the issue is.  If you support other rights related to bodily autonomy like abortion and assisted suicide, why shouldn't a person be able to volunteer to risk their health to benefit the health of millions of other people?  If it is unethical to allow volunteers for this, how is it ethical to ask for volunteers to join the military? (FWIW, I've been signed up on the list of volunteers at 1DaySooner for months.)

Remember that these trials still need people to be infected to work regardless of who is doing the infecting.  The choice is between infecting a few thousand people quickly, and just waiting around for literally millions of people to be infected slowly.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I feel like the main problem to tackling covid in the US is that our political debate has come to so completely revolve around Trump during his time in office that many people on the left felt reflexively obligated to oppose every position that he took on every issue. 

It obviously didn't help that the "positions" he was taking on covid were so obviously callous, ignorant, and often loony.  So it became impossible for progressives to advocate for a more holistic approach to the crisis in a thoughtful way without getting tarnished through association with Trump's stink.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

New Pfizer Results: Coronavirus Vaccine Is Safe and 95% Effective

The companies said that out of 170 cases of Covid-19, 162 were in the placebo group, and eight were in the vaccine group.

If the F.D.A. authorizes the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer has said that it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year.

However, only about half of its supply will go to the United States this year, or enough for about 12.5 million people — a sliver of the American population of 330 million. Americans will receive the vaccine for free, under a $1.95 billion deal the federal government reached with Pfizer for 100 million doses.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Vaccinating just 20 million people within the next month should have a huge effect if we can correctly coordinate who to vaccinate.  I believe the oldest 6% of our population is responsible for about 60% of covid deaths.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Vaccinating just 20 million people within the next month should have a huge effect if we can correctly coordinate who to vaccinate.  I believe the oldest 6% of our population is responsible for about 60% of covid deaths.

There seems to be general consensus that the first doses will be given to healthcare workers, which I think makes complete sense.

Yeah, I have no objection to this.  I suppose it comes down to whether you are trying to minimize lives losts vs. years of lives lost, and the latter makes sense to me.

Though I wonder if they will exclude people already infected from early vaccination.  It would be a shame to waste a scarce vaccine on someone who is already 99%+ likely to be immune.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

A shut down would be pretty pointless by the time Biden gets into office, since at that point a majority of the most at-risk and most exposed populations should have had the opportunity to been vaccinated.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Here's the latest poll on who's willing to get a vaccine when it's available:

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/jy5um9f1tw/econTabReport.pdf

https://twitter.com/ArgoJournal/status/1331647643970367489

Looks like the numbers have been gradually increasing over the last few months.  E.g., here's the same poll in September:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=402803.msg7581075#msg7581075

This is a weird split.  Is it a Q-Anon thing?

White Women, College 60/12 (+48)
White Men, College 64/20 (+44)
White Men, No deg 51/27 (+24)
White Women, No deg 40/31 (+9) (?!?)

Also, why are they only polling registered voters???  Especially after the election!

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The major isue with school seems that science doesn't have a clear answer how much they actually contribute to the spread. Studies often contradict themselves. That makes it so difficult.

I don’t think this is really accurate.  The science has come to pretty overwhelmingly show that schools contribute much less to the spread than many other aspects of society that have remained open throughout the pandemic, and which are less important to our future prosperity.  

Almost every interview I see with scientists recently supports this position.  Really the only people opposing school openings are teachers unions, Democratic politicians who don’t want to look like they are on the same side as Trump on any positions, and NIMBY rich parents who can afford alternative education.  

People who really care about achieving social equality through progressive policies over performatively doctrinaire partisan positions should support keeping schools open.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The major isue with school seems that science doesn't have a clear answer how much they actually contribute to the spread. Studies often contradict themselves. That makes it so difficult.

I don’t think this is really accurate.  The science has come to pretty overwhelmingly show that schools contribute much less to the spread than many other aspects of society that have remained open throughout the pandemic, and which are less important to our future prosperity.  

Almost every interview I see with scientists recently supports this position.  Really the only people opposing school openings are teachers unions, Democratic politicians who don’t want to look like they are on the same side as Trump on any positions, and NIMBY rich parents who can afford alternative education.  

People who really care about achieving social equality through progressive policies over performatively doctrinaire partisan positions should support keeping schools open.

Older but relevant:



(If anyone has a newer equivalent, please share.)

I’ve seen several of these lists throughout the pandemic, and I’ve never been able to understand how they all seemed to list shopping for groceries as one of the safest things you could do.  Like, how can it possibly be significantly safer than shopping at a mall, especially considering that most grocery stores are consistently very crowded and most malls are pretty empty and have been for years?

Of all the things on this list I’ve done in the past several months, shopping for groceries at least -felt- to me like the most dangerous, in the sense that I was forced to be in close contact with many people.  I’ve taken a few airplane flights that always seemed reasonably socially distanced, but I almost entirely switched over to curbside pickup for groceries.  

How can we be expecting students to do online school but not ask people to at least order their groceries for online delivery or pickup?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1334482802121781251

I'd be happy to get my vaccine on camera too if it moves me up the priority list.
Clinton and Bush are elderly, but I don't see any reason why Obama would be able to get a vaccine before the healthy general public in April or May.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why isn’t there national pressure to pass a stimulus bill that would put a few million unemployed people to work making and distributing vaccines?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The good thing about vaccine distribution is that we don’t need to vaccinate the general public inorder to reduce deaths to a tiny fraction of what we see today. 

97% of covid deaths come from people over 50.  Almost all of those under 50 have a serious prexisting conditions.  So given that those demographics will be vaccinated around February, we should see deaths drop by 90% or more as long as vulnerable people are willing to get the vaccine.