COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/jakecoco/status/1334993874276786178?s=20

how much longer will politicians expect they can have their rules be followed when they are making these decisions ?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/jakecoco/status/1334993874276786178?s=20
how much longer will politicians expect they can have their rules be followed when they are making these decisions ?

Context?

Outdoor dining is banned in Los Angeles, except apparently if you are making a big budget movie.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There's a debate about how many people to vaccine, whether we should prioritize giving as many doses as we have now, or only half so that the people who get it can get the booster also a few weeks later

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1337061974560165890?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The CDC and the public health profession in this country has been absolutely captured by wokeness, thus we have recommendation for essential workers to receive the vaccine before the elderly, due to racial demographics.

https://twitter.com/JCompson_III/status/1339816443668553728?s=20

https://twitter.com/surplustakes/status/1339574645180289026?s=20


never mind the risks that COVID pose to black and brown elderly, many of them having health conditions like diabetes

https://twitter.com/dbaten3/status/1339936163797331969?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Fortunately, we have a new administration coming in three weeks. Biden has pledged 100 million vaccines administered in his first 100 days. That won’t quite get us to herd immunity, but it should reduce deaths by more than 90% if allocated correctly.

Biden can make promises, but it's up to the states to actually distribute them.  Most states are below 1% of population vaccinated, with WV and SD at the top with just over 2%.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-29/u-s-vaccinations-at-200-000-a-day-run-far-short-of-warp-speed

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1344406149202849794?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1345519977600716800?s=20

This guy sure deserved his Emmy for portraying a competent public official.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1345819737389998082

Those aren't the words of a confident health official. Similar to the situation here, the vaccine rollout has been derailed by a toxic combination of desperation and poor scientific literacy.

Some of our officials have suggested 'mix-and-max' vaccine rollout, giving people two doses, but from different vaccines if they can't source enough of one. I cannot stress how incompetent and dangerous that idea is.

Unless cooler heads prevail, we're about to waste our vaccine stock. I'm beyond furious.

Sources (note, the Financial Times is a boring but trustworthy paper. It's like pre-Murdoch WSJ):
https://www.ft.com/content/afa31d12-c393-402b-9677-1fb312cfa1cf
https://www.ft.com/content/d97c72c5-ed23-4c2b-bf1c-9cc10b21f007

what is so incompetent and dangerous about the idea?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Biden will release all available vaccine doses in break from Trump administration policy of holding back stock for second dose

Two doses are absolutely needed for there to be any real effectiveness. Hopefully somebody who actually knows what they're doing will convince Biden to backtrack on this.

They can manufacture more vaccines for a 2nd dose.  A booster is probably more effective if you wait a while anyway.   The priority right now should be getting a first dose to as many people as possible.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

yikes, why do they have to make this so hard?

https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1348492810895437826?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

A lot of people are having to go through a lot just trying to get a vaccine
(see thread):
https://twitter.com/btshapir/status/1351218054580072451?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

CDC training still says visitors wearing masks when they visit hospitals doesn't help prevent infection if they are asymptomatic  -_-

https://twitter.com/RogueWPA/status/1352335394675671040?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1353821818449129473?s=20

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Interesting how there's no commentary whatsoever about how it's significantly more challenging to lead a vaccination effort in a state of 20 million than it is in a state of less than 2 million...

Percentage of vaccine doses delivered depends on absolute population now?

Yes, there seems to be a strong correlation there. The best states by proportion of vaccines administered and proportion of residents vaccinated, by and large, seem to be small states. There seems to be something about small states by population (and, interestingly, not by density or by area, both Alaska and Connecticut are doing great) that makes vaccine distribution easier.

Time to break up the big states.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

lots of canceled appts now, and there's no guarantee those people are going to be vaccinated anytime soon.  & they are not necessarily distributed randomly, but may be clustered together.

https://twitter.com/allahpundit/status/1382117696653889547?s=20