Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

exactly. So let’s say I’m right and the first 10 million vaccines covering HCWs, nursing home residents and 85+ reduces that number by a third. Now you’re down to 2000.

The next 30 million vaccinations, which we should easily have in arms by the end of January, covers 75-84 and people with severe pre-existing conditions. That should take off another 1000.

so now we’ve got 1000 deaths per day left by February. But that number will be constantly shrinking because of new vaccinations and lowering case numbers.

so by April, covid is still a thing, but it’s down to 250 deaths a day in America.

we can barely get people to wear masks for 3000 deaths a day. Does anyone think we will get people to give up baseball games and indoor dining for 250?

 

And SHOULD we?

Rick, let us presume a disease that kills 91,000 Americans annually, if we live life as normal.

Is that worth shutting things down over?

 

Feels like more and more data is converging on the UK variant indeed being more infectious.

for countries that have successfully kept the virus under control, that would mean even stricter controls would need to be maintained over the next few months as the vaccines rollout.

I’m not sure it changes anything for the US. At this point more infectious would just make things worse but over quicker.

 

That's more of a political/philosophical question than I feel comfortable opining on.

 

I heard something on a podcast last week about scheduling so-called superspreaders for vaccination (via contact tracing) to allow supply and demand to attain quickly some degree of harmony.

If the latter is even possible.

 

That is fair. But it is also a true policy decision.

 

But whatabout SCIENCE!!!!!?????

 

Ok, it spreads faster. Do we have any anecdotal idea of its lethality? Do you still get any immunity after you recover? Obviously 2 can't be answered now but a layman would assume yes. 1 should be easy to determine.

 

as of right now, they have not detected any signal that it is more or less lethal. That may emerge later, but early indications are no change.

there’s no reason whatsoever to think that immunity won’t continue to function as normal. Or that immunity from infection from a precious strain won’t carry over

 

Let's frame the "herd immunity" for what is being proposed, "hey people subject yourself, without protection, to a potentially fatal virus so that hopefully the rest of humanity could survive. And ignore that you could wait to get the vaccine."

 

My friend, I will be wearing a mask long after we are “told” that COVID 19 is a thing of the past.

 

After seeing cases escalate in stair-step fashion after every holiday, I'm afraid to see what will happen in January after Christmas and New Year's. We should be over 300K new cases per day easily, which of course means 2.1 million cases per week, or over 9 million new cases in a calendar month.