Optimism

[Fun CH]

Although on the other hand vaccines have eliminated smallpox and nearly eliminated polio...

At this point I will call it a win if I have to get a booster once a year.

penicillin saved my life back in the early sixties when I was in the fourth grade with a serious case of bacterial pneumonia. I still remember the hallucinations from dehydration and high fever.

And that was after me mom took a drug to keep me from being born prematurely.

So I call it a win also for without modern medical science I'd be dust.

[woodman]

Sorry to spoil the party of 4 in your echo chamber. I'm also sorry that you took the plunge. https://thehighwire.com/videos/live-fro ... dallas-tx/

[mister_coffee]

Things are getting "interesting" again. From the WaPo there is this article that describes how COVID-19 rates amongst the unvaccinated are as high as they were during the peak of the pandemic in January:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/i ... ed-people/

I am concerned that a lot of unvaccinated people are interpreting the lifting of mask rules for vaccinated people as meaning they can go without masks too. And since in some communities here the overall vaccination rates are fairly low, I suspect we will again be seeing superspreader events amongst those populations.

During a recent trip across eastern WA, I observed a lot of situations with substantial groups of people indoors where only a tiny minority (one or two people out of 50 or 100 people) were wearing masks. There is *no way* that all of those unmasked people were vaccinated.

[mister_coffee]

Well, about time I think:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... dance.html

Update that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask or physically distance in any setting, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance
Update that fully vaccinated people can refrain from testing following a known exposure unless they are residents or employees of a correctional or detention facility or a homeless shelter.

[pasayten]

I am optimistic because of God's given gift of technology to man when it is properly used for the common good... Vaccinations will save many people. God also has set up a free will system... It is up to us to make life choices along the way. Those that refuse vaccinations are in their right, but have chosen not to accept one of God's gifts. We are all responsible for the choices we make.

[mister_coffee]

I am becoming less optimistic because a lot of people seem to think they do not need this vaccine...

[mister_coffee]

It isn't that the tests "don't work". It is that there is a certain unavoidable error rate with any medical test, and if you are doing rapid testing it is hard to mitigate that error rate (e.g. by doing follow-up tests).

As a concrete example, the covid positivity rate in Okanogan County is around 3%. If your rapid test has a 1% false-positive (which I understand would be very good) rate, it is reasonable to expect an observed positivity rate of 4%. So one out of four of your positive cases would be a false positive. This problem becomes more painful as the overall positivity rate goes down, where can quickly get into a situation where nearly half of your "cases" are really false positives. Note that typical false-positive rates seen in the Real World for covid antigen tests seem to be around 5%.

On another note, a lot of research is starting to surface that shows that the T-cell mediated immune response (as opposed to antibodies) appears to work fine on any of the known variants. So there is more grounds for optimism:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1

[mister_coffee]

Testing and screening are probably poor ways to control the spread of this virus.

False positives and false negatives likely overwhelm any actual information, and it isn't clear to me if asymptomatic people will test positive, yet we know such people are a major transmission vector.

I do not know if it is true or not but would not be surprised.

In other good news, Okanogan county is now up to 37.4% having received at least their first dose. That sounds good but the average for the state is now higher than that.

[mister_coffee]

Well right now it is a glass half empty kind of situation.

The vaccines are working. Evidence from the UK and Israel shows that the vaccines work remarkably well, and that as we pass 50 percent of population being vaccinated we should expect new cases to drop. We should hit those numbers in the next four or five weeks in most parts of the states.

What is interesting about the variants is that they all seem to involve very similar mutations. This might well be good news because it means it is considerably less likely that a vaccine-evading mutation will develop in the short term. Although it is important to note that we have a poor understanding about how mutations can and can't work in the general case. It is also important to note that this might mean we are only detecting a fraction of the mutations out there as well.

I think it is appropriate to be cautiously optimistic. This whole story certainly isn't over and it could easily go either way. But compared to any time between March of 2020 and February of 2021 I think any of us would trade right now for then.

you are heavily invested in the vaccine, which is at best, a temporary fix.
look at the big picuture.
since the first wave, covid has managed to get much more contagious.
It is resurging around the world, in countries that are vaccinating and those that are not.
At first, it killed people over 65, but now, it has figured out how to make young people reject their own lungs.

we are not kicking the virus's arse.
it is kicking ours.

[mister_coffee]

Okanogan County figures as of today: 32.6% have one dose of the vaccine, 25.2% are fully vaccinated. Those numbers are likely to increase quite a bit in the next few weeks as more vaccine becomes available. The last ten days or so we have received relatively less vaccine so our numbers aren't increasing as fast as other counties.

Given that roughly 14 percent of Okanogan County's population is 65 and over, those numbers probably represent a pretty strong majority of both first responders and people most vulnerable to covid-19. So that is very good news.

[mister_coffee]

In other good news, as of April 15th all Washingtonians over 16 are eligible for vaccination.

Hats off to Jefferson County, where as of today 47.5% of people there have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 32.1% are fully vaccinated.

[mister_coffee]

Still I know a lot of folks that have chosen not to get vaccinated. Their choice...

While there is still a limited supply of vaccine and a large population of people who want a vaccination and can't get one I agree letting people choose not to vaccinate is reasonable.

However, there is a Supreme Court precedent (Jacobson vs. Massachusetts) that says that state and local governments can force people to be vaccinated.

Some juicy quotes from that decision that I think apply:

in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand

[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty], whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.

This case has been brought up in defenses against legal challenges to mask mandates and other restrictions put in place during the covid era. So it is obviously still considered a relevant and legitimate legal position.

The upshot is that state and local governments 100 percent have the right to force us to take a vaccine if it is in the interest of public health.

My own feeling is that hopefully it won't get that far. Maybe we will get enough people to willingly take the vaccine, especially as more time goes on and many millions of people take these vaccines without ill effects. Maybe states will require proof of vaccination to work (especially in a public-facing jobs) and a lot of employers are already looking at requiring vaccinations for all employees. You almost certainly will be required to have a vaccination to travel either by air or across international borders for the foreseeable future.

There is no rational definition of "freedom" that includes the right to expose others to a potentially deadly or debilitating disease.

[pasayten]

30% is respectable... Still I know a lot of folks that have chosen not to get vaccinated. Their choice...

[mister_coffee]

Top six counties for vaccination in WA:

• Jefferson: 42.8%

• Clallam: 37.4%

• Chelan: 34.0%

• San Juan: 33.9%

• Okanogan: 29.9%

• Skagit: 28.1%

[mister_coffee]

One of the things I suspect is going on is that places having a high vaccination rate are used to using volunteers and have a pretty good network to organize volunteers. In Okanogan County there is *no way* you could get this kind of all-hands-on-deck vaccination effort done without volunteers.

Interestingly, the highest vaccination efforts in the state are in Clallam and Jefferson counties: neither of those counties are particularly wealthy or particularly liberal. And some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state are in very rural counties (Stevens, Franklin, Skamania) so being rural isn't clearly an indicator of high vaccination rates. As usual with humans the answer is complex.

[mister_coffee]

Okanogan County is at 28.1% having received at least their first dose.
Chelan County is at 31.8% having received at least their first dose.

Positive test rates in both places are below 1%.

Both Chelan and Okanogan counties are in the top 5 for vaccination rates.

Those levels of vaccination are nowhere near high enough for "herd immunity", but are definitely high enough that the r-value of the virus and the new case rate should noticeably decrease.

[mister_coffee]

Actually the US has released 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada and Mexico. My understanding is that they will be releasing more (and have purchased or committed to purchase over 80 million doses of that vaccine). It isn't very much but you have to start somewhere.

We are in a race against time here. The fact that we are vaccinating at least some of the most vulnerable people should have a moderating effect on hospitalizations and fatalities, if not new cases. But it isn't clear to me if we are seeing that effect yet.

Yes, there does seem to be a strong seasonal component to this disease, but you should remember that our "first wave" happened, well, about a year ago.

It also seems to be the case that the countries in Europe that are surging have a much lower vaccination rate. It is hard to detect any surge at all in the UK.

[mister_coffee]

Vaccinations in the states seem to be running at over 40 times the number of new cases.

If we can keep that up or increase it I think there is a very good chance we can beat this thing.

The real challenges will come when all or nearly all who want the vaccine have been vaccinated, and how do you persuade the remaining "skeptics" to also get vaccinated. My personal feeling is that we should round them up, at gunpoint if necessary, and detain them until they are completely vaccinated. But I am not a very diplomatic person, especially when the health and safety of myself and others is at stake.

[mister_coffee]

Although on the other hand vaccines have eliminated smallpox and nearly eliminated polio...

At this point I will call it a win if I have to get a booster once a year.

[mister_coffee]

Maybe it is because spring is on its way, but I'm feeling more optimistic about our situation than I have in over a year...

We are now in a situation where more than ten times as many people are getting a vaccination every day than are testing positive for COVID.

We are now in a situation where enough people who are high risk have received at least one shot that it is reasonable to expect that death and hospitalization rates should drop rapidly in the coming weeks. Or rather **continue** to drop.

We are learning much more about how safe and effective the vaccine is, and the most recent information is that the vaccine is probably safe for women who are pregnant (one high risk group that isn't getting vaccinated yet).

So if we hang tough for a few more weeks and I think the world will be a very different (and much better) place by May...