Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

maumann · Feb 15, 2021

1,500 pages since "sounds pretty bad." Just reading the first few pages again gives no indication whatsoever how much of a life-changer (or in some 500,000 cases, life-taker) this would become. Irresponsible decision-making. Amazing scientific breakthroughs. Incredible heartbreak for hundreds of thousands of families. Hoarding toilet paper. Wearing masks. And yet we can almost see the light of the end of a very dark 12 months.

Hang in there, folks. Stay vigilant until the end.

Elliotte Friedman · Feb 15, 2021

It's gonna be worse for us in Canada.

Predictions of a "third wave." We are way behind on vaccines.

wicked · Feb 15, 2021

TigerVols said: ↑

I guess 497,000 deaths and Jan. 6 insurgency proved me completely wrong all along.

Welcome back @RickStain!
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It was meant tongue in cheek, but in retrospect this was not the place for it.

And yes, way way way way way too many people dead. Thanks, incompetence. Glad that adults are in charge now.

Jerry-atric · Feb 15, 2021

RickStain said: ↑

Alright, quick pop back because I can't stop thinking about this stuff.

I'm really starting to think this might be it. No promises, to be sure, but things are just racing in a positive direction far faster than I imagined when I made my "worse holidays than people expect, then faster recovery than people expect" posts back in November.

The nosedive on those charts is insane, and it's not showing any signs of slowing down. The rate of hospitalization drops is actually increasing a little bit this week, which I think is the first sign that our vaccination campaigns on high-risk individuals is working.

Hospitalizations dropped about 18% in the last 7 days, and the rate of the drop seems to be increasing slightly. If we could even maintain this pace for 6.5 more weeks, we would hit Opening Day with 18k people in hospitals. We haven't been below 28k since we had enough tests to have an idea of how many people we had hospitalized with this mysterious new virus last spring.

Re: Vaccinations

Vaccinations are going better than people think. Everyone always thinks that today's headlines (LOTS OF PEOPLE WANT VACCINE, SMALL SUPPLY) will always be true, but in this pandemic things change fast.

Right now, we're vaccinating enough people with mRNA vaccines to account for 1.8% of the population (3.6 doses per 100, but it takes two doses per person) every week. Those vaccines are still promising to slowly build up production levels each week. But even if they just stay at that pace, that gives us 63m people's worth of vaccinations (126m doses) by the end of April. We've already administered 52m doses (26m people's worth) so that's 89m people with mRNA vaccinations by the end of April.

But wait, there's still the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which appears to be less than two weeks away from approval. There haven't been any good updates on their production numbers lately, but in mid-January they were saying they still expect to hit their goal of giving the US 60m doses by the end of April. That's a one-dose vaccine, too. So that would give us ~149m people's worth of vaccinations by the end of April (and there's a chance Novavax could peak in there by the end of April too, but we'll ignore them for now.) That represents 60% of the ~250m eligible adults in the United States. Assume some percentage of people who are eligible and don't want it, then I would guess than means maybe 80% of people who want it will have it by the end of April. We'll clean up the stragglers in May. By June, we'll be trying to figure out who we want to give all these extra vaccines to.

Re: Variants

It sure looks to me like the United States dodged a bullet on variants. They're a global concern, but I don't think they're a significant threat to the United States. The South African, Brazilian and other variants just plain got here too late relative to our mass vaccination program. Oxford vaccine does not appear to be currently in our plans, and all the other vaccines seem to work well against the South African variant. That means they should work well against the Brazilian variant, which is very similar to the SA one in terms of concerning mutations.

The one exception is the UK variant, B117. That one appears like it will have some effect on the United States. It appears to be 50% more transmissible than the common variants already in the US. It is in the US in prevalence that isn't huge yet but it is notable (something like 5-10%) and it does appear to be growing even while our overall virus totals are shrinking.

That's not great, but it isn't the end of the world. We're still pumping out those effective vaccinations. It's a race between our vaccination program pushing transmission down and the variant pushing it up, and when I run the numbers, it sure looks like our vaccination program wins out. Gottlieb has been saying something similar in the press the last few weeks, so I can't be too far out in left field. By my math, it will take 2-5 weeks before the B117 variant could push our transmission rates potentially above 1, and 6-10 weeks for the vaccination program to push it back down below 1. There's just not a large window in between where the B117 could do a lot of damage, especially when you consider it will be spreading among the younger, unvaccinated population that is less likely to experience severe complications.

After that, there's not much left to worry about. Maybe I'm underestimating the effect of reopening and people loosening behaviors, but that only sets us back temporarily before vaccines catch up. Maybe there really is a seasonal component and this stuff just keeps plummeting even faster than I expect. And I guess maybe a mutant strain develops that is so different it's basically an entirely new virus and we have to start from scratch, but that's about as likely as any new virus popping up, and hopefully this time we're more prepared.

End of the day: Vaccines work and we're pumping that shit into arms at a high rate. Congratulations, we win (soon).
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This is a very fine post.

Please clarify your understanding of the variants: The vaccines work against them, but they are more contagious without the vaccine.

Is this what you mean?

Baron Scicluna · Feb 15, 2021

Scout said: ↑

I’m in awe of the timing and choreography.
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Austin throwing his baseball cap at Vince always gives me a chuckle. Sometimes it’s the little things ...

Baron Scicluna · Feb 15, 2021

maumann said: ↑

1,500 pages since "sounds pretty bad." Just reading the first few pages again gives no indication whatsoever how much of a life-changer (or in some 500,000 cases, life-taker) this would become. Irresponsible decision-making. Amazing scientific breakthroughs. Incredible heartbreak for hundreds of thousands of families. Hoarding toilet paper. Wearing masks. And yet we can almost see the light of the end of a very dark 12 months.

Hang in there, folks. Stay vigilant until the end.
Click to expand...

I went back and read the first 15 pages. Some posts on how this is nothing, one poster talking about how within 6 months, telecommuting would be widespread (turned out it took about 1 month) a joke about the Mets and some very prescient posts about how Trump was going to fuck this up.

I also should have taken InkyWretch’s advice from Page 12 and invested in Netflix and Amazon. Their stock prices have soared since February 2020.

BTExpress · Feb 15, 2021

Because the virus was invented in a Netflix lab.

BTExpress · Feb 15, 2021

Iron_chet called it "Wuhan Flu" on Jan. 24, 2020.

When is the first documented case of Trump calling it that (or some variation thereof)?

Jerry-atric · Feb 15, 2021

BTExpress said: ↑

Because the virus was invented in a Netflix lab.
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That is a hoot!

Neutral Corner · Feb 15, 2021

Yeah, I just reviewed the first ten pages, through 2/24/20. Most of what I posted was pretty solid.

The prescient award goes to this one, though.

HanSenSE · Feb 15, 2021

wicked said: ↑

Waiting for TigerVols to pop up with doomsday prophecies in 3, 2, 1 ...

Wish I were clever enough to come up with a #coup-related hashtag re: COVID.
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The covid has already happened?

HanSenSE · Feb 15, 2021

Seeing case and hospitalization numbers go down, wondering why those who wanted things opened by last Easter aren't calling for vaccinations to stop?

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Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

maumann Well-Known Member

Elliotte Friedman Moderator Staff Member

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Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

maumann Well-Known Member

Elliotte Friedman Moderator Staff Member

wicked Well-Known Member

Jerry-atric Well-Known Member

Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

BTExpress Well-Known Member

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