How are we doing on booster shots? The Kaiser Family Foundation has the numbers:
This is remarkable. Even among Republicans who aren't nuts and have gotten vaccinated, only 50% plan to get a booster shot. Hell, the number is only 75% even among Democrats.
Get vaccinated, people! And if you're already vaccinated, get a booster shot!
I got my booster last week. Of course, our travel plans made it more of a priority.
I believe that's 75% among Democrats. Should still be higher. The 60% number is for everyone.
I wonder what these whiners who can't handle simple public health measures like getting a shot or wearing a face mask would behave if they had been, for example, in London during the blitz. Would they have said: "Hell, I'm not going to let that damn Churchill tell me what to do. I've got a right to leave my lights on!"
The ones refusing vaccination and mask wearing would have been for Hitler, so that's exactly what they would have done.
A other fundamental difference: I doubt Churchill would have stood by helplessly wringing his hands and urging Londoners who were Nazi sympathizers to please turn off the lights. No right to burn a light during the blitz and no right to spread a deadly virus during a pandemic.
Oswald Mosley & Edward VII erasure.
More of a mild shunning rather than erasing for both. Mosley, in particular, surely deserved to have his head displayed at Traitors’ Gate but, regrettably, he, too, was just shunned.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep-xgd_eETE
"I wonder what these whiners who can't handle simple public health measures like getting a shot ..."
Getting the booster was not simple at least where I live. It took considerable effort to get an appointment 9 days later and a 30 minute drive away. This is not making it as simple as possible.
I was able to make an appointment at the CVS down the street from me. I made it for Friday the 24th of September, the first day I was eligible. Piece of cake. Everyone I know was able to get a booster just as easily.
Access does vary a lot by location, even in places where the officials want everyone to get vaccinated.
I walked into Safeway three blocks from my flat on Monday at 1130am & was boosted by 1215pm.
"... at the CVS .."
Part of my trouble was the CVS sign up system. For a particular day they show you the nearby CVS locations offering the shot. But this doesn't indicate which ones have spaces available. You have to click on the location get a message that there are no slots left, back up and try a another location get the same message, eventually run out of nearby locations and try the next day and so on. I finally ended up at the same CVS location where I had gotten my original shots but the service was a lot worse.
I agree the CVS website sucks royally. OTOH, at least my local one takes walk-ins as does the local pharmacy (Price-Rite).
Your experience reminds me of trying to get a spot during the initial wave of vaccinations. I became eligible in late January and tried repeatedly to sign up. The county website required you to fill out a long fucking questionnaire before they finally told you there were no spots available. Luckily the local hospital group (which had my records) sent me an email saying I could get one through them on the same day I had come to despair of ever getting a jab. The booster was a breeze compared to that.
"... takes walk-ins .."
When I was there I tried to get the flu shot too (which I hadn't signed up for because I was worried that trying to sign up for two shots at the same was making things worse) and they refused to give it to me although they didn't appear to be busy. Sill haven't gotten the flu shot.
Mine wasn't this complicated, but it could have been a lot easier. You can't just "walk in" and get a booster, even at CVS or Walgreens. Like you said, you have to go online, make an appointment (possibly several days or weeks out), fill out page after page of disclaimers, insurance info, health history, etc.
Again, not a huge PITA (and nowhere close to the weeks-long clusterfuck getting the first shot was), but more than it should have been.
My wife was in the local Publix this week and noticed a table set up for flu shots
And no waiting line! How easy is that?
Then the lady working the table explained you must first go online, create a profile and then set an appointment for the location you're already at.
Could have gotten mine the day I made the appointment but I delayed a week until the Moderna shot was available.
Availability of appointments seems to vary widely across the country. In some places, it's pretty close to just walk-in whenever you want; other places have you waiting for weeks. Some if it seems to be related to our janky supply chain and shipping systems right now.
Yes, here in a small midwestern city of 60,000 you can get vaccinated on every street corner, it seems.
I live in Montana, home of the though shalt own the libs by not getting vaccinated crowd. Low demand == easy accessibility!
In Montana, Theodore Kaczynski was a center-left ideologue.
Mine was the opposite - I tried to get the shot the Friday before Thanksgiving going to the websites of CVS and Giant, a regional supermarket chain with pharmacies inside the stores. I soon noticed that Pfizer appointments were only available a week or more out but I could get a Moderna booster on that Monday so I took the slot and got the shot.
I was initially hesitant to get a booster as they were saying folks over 65 or work in healthcare, or "at risk" the guidance was fuzzy. But in my mid 50s I decide yes I'm "at risk" and wanted to beat the rush as it was apparent they were going to open up shots to anyone over 18 that day.
Back in the spring I got my shots via the local hospital, they set up a mass vax site in a previously vacant office complex, the first and second shots were a breeze, but it took quite awhile for my state to allow us to get shots unlike other states because the supply of shots was so limited compared to demand.
That’s actually a good. There’s a huge amount of confusion about whether to get a booster and about eligibility. I have several friends who have not gotten the booster because they thought they were not eligible.
Terrible messaging by the Biden administration. But also a lot of inappropriate policy making by medical professionals who discouraged booster shot so that less wealthy countries could get those vaccine doses. But that didn’t happen and now many Americans have the idea that the booster is unnecessary or that they aren’t eligible.
Biden should have the military out doing vaccinations. Instead he’s continuing Trump’s policies of low key vaccine mandates and leaving it up to the states
I agree that the messaging was confusing, you really had to pay close attention to what was happening to figure out what was going on. The difference between those getting the Pfizer and Moderna shots didn't help a whole lot either.
But right now everyone over 16 and more than six months out from their second dose are good to go. If you got J+J if you are more than two months out.
As far as blaming this on Biden? There are limits to the government's power (in this case I wish this were not true), and that is being vigorously contested in the courts even in cases where it is a clearly lawful application of said power (the medical vaccination mandates and the OSHA mandate). Hell, Republican governors are even disputing the power of the federal government to mandate vaccination in the National Guard.
Seriously, if there was ever a power covered by the 10th Amendment, it is the police power which contains the power to issue public health orders. Is this the wisest way to apportion these powers? As we have seen, probably not. But we are where we are, and Biden seems to be doing the best he can as far as using the power of the federal government to force people to get vaccinated.
From both a political and a public health perspective, letting Republicans set the agenda is a huge mistake. There’s nothing stopping Biden from making a huge push throughout the country for the same kinds of mega-vaccination centers used in blue states or to have an all out, major sustained campaign for vaccination roster the the occasion mentions.
Joe Biden was elected in no small part because he said he’d get rid of Covid-19. But except for not being Trump and an OSHA mandate, he’s been amazingly passive and left it to a state by state approach. The reality is that when the time comes, voters aren’t going to accept excuses. He needs to aggressively deal with the pandemic now rather than hope will will independently decide that nothing is his fault.
"Biden should have the military out doing vaccinations
Back in Feb when we got our initial Moderna shot we had Airborne troops checking us in. Once that round started tapering off they disappeared.
When we got our boosters it was regular health department employees two weeks ago. We had an appointment.
We weren't confused by the messaging, we deliberately delayed getting the booster to see if anyone had any reactions (none were reported) AND we wanted to time our booster at least 3 weeks before Christmas to give us peak protection around the holiday
I consulted an immunologist about the timing because I had to go to Texas. But the reality is that the Biden administration hasn’t taken charge of fighting the pandemic. You can leave it up to other people and you sure as hell can’t leave it up to the Republican governors to get rid of the virus and antagonize their antivax base and pave the way for Biden’s re-election.
Biden needs to get vaccinations going, not piously urge people to please get vaccinated. He needs to start requiring vaccinations for most everyday activities.
Hey, you know something? When there is an unprecedented pandemic crisis with information and mitigation resources changing on an almost daily basis, the "messaging" is not always going to be 100 percent spot-on.
How about we sort of deal with it, OK?
No, let’s not just “deal with it”. Let’s actually make an effort to get it right. Ultimately, the pandemic ends and life returns to something approaching normal or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, the party in nominally in power will be held to account so it’s much more important to achieve success against Covid-19 than it is to have whinny excuses.
That would work if there were a definitive answer about "getting it right." But there isn't. Just like the school administrators who have to decide whether or not to call a snow day, it's always a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. You are certain to be accused of being either overly cautious or not cautious enough. In this situation, with the stakes much higher, it is no wonder there is not always 100 percent agreement on the path forward.
With Biden, I at least have confidence that he is acting in good faith. Trump never acted in good faith in his life.
It’s supposed to be one presidency which speaks with one voice. The Biden administration had it right on boosters initially but lot its nerve when people began saying that boosters weren’t necessary (when what these public health experts really seemed to mean was that we should defer boosters here so that others could use those doses). The executive branch is a top down organization; the input to Biden should not be indirectly given via television interviews and once the White House has decided the public health experts need to either carry out that decision or resign.
Similarly, the administration’s nonpartisan, non-confrontational approach had left everyone basically adrift, just as in the Trump administration but without the craziness of the Donnie. The problem is that Republicans will not allow the virus to be defeated until after Joe Biden and the Democrats are defeated. But you cannot effectively fight the virus without impingement of individual freedom of action; if Biden cannot bring himself to confront Republicans or antivaxers and impose his will upon them, the pandemic will continue and, come election time, nobody will want to hear all the reasons why he didn’t act. Only the situation in November of 2022 and November of 2024 will matter.
Dipshit, the virus will never be defeated. It faces away. Learn history.
Sounds like a lot of backseat driving to me.
People at the wheel are driving off a cliff so probably a good moment for the people stuck in the back seat to suggest a change of direction.
Care to share location and date ? approximate is certainly good enough.
"Care to share location and date ? approximate is certainly good enough."
If this is addressed to me, central New Jersey, late November.
Good heavens! You mean you had to make an appointment and drive 30 minutes to get a life-saving treatment?
"Good heavens! You mean you had to make an appointment and drive 30 minutes to get a life-saving treatment?"
If you want everybody to get vaccinated don't give them excuses not to get vaccinated. I still haven't gotten a flu shot because because it isn't easy.
My county's public health agency ran walk in booster clinics for those 18 and up, even before the federal green light was given to open it up to those under 65. It was easy for me.
I did need an appointment. I took my son (10) to cvs to get his first shot. While there, I asked if I could get a booster. They said no problem. I waited all of 2 minutes.
*I do NOT need an appointment
They'd have said gosh, my house might get bombed. Actual danger. Huh. I'll keep the light off. Not like some idiocy that demands you get two shots, promising you'll never get it than oops, no, that's wrong, but get another shot but you'll still get it and so on forever.
See, some people don't get unnatural sense of peace from following demands that won't do a damn thing.
MAGA nutjob alert!
I think he's in the new season of Reno911!: Hunt for QANON.
No medical authority promised that the vaccinated would ‘never’ get Covid-19. If at least one hundred of your 86 billion brain cells are functioning, you ought to be able to process the concept of ‘percentage’, as in ‘90% effective’. With a few more functioning, maybe you could grasp ‘less likely’ vs. ‘more likely’. Work on it and get back to us, mmmkay?
Actually, there were a lot of Londoners who scoffed and ignored the blackouts and other warnings. The difference was that they were a minority and England was ruled by a majority who made sure the rules were enforced. Nowadays, we have minority rights like the right to enslave, the right to infect, to right to oppress and the majority gets forced to accept them.
In Miami, blackouts were ignored despite the predations of German U-boats on American shipping during the early parts of WWII. Bad for business...
All along much of the East Coast was the same story.
The booster was awful, as I knew it would be -- more than a day of 102+F fever. But at every moment I knew I couldn't infect people, so that's better than covid.
I had a shitty one-day reaction to the Moderna booster as well, but, yeah, one day with some flu-like chills and fatigue is a whole hell of a lot better than a bout of Covid in my book.
Covid is probably going to become an endemic disease we have to get vaccinated for once or twice a year for the rest of our lives. Just like flu. People who don't are going to eventually get sick and/or die, particularly if they are older and have underlying health issues. Will they eventually learn? Probably not. If the past two years haven't taught them anything, nothing will. Might be better for gene pool in the long run.
jte-
The Mrs and I got our initial shots together and boosters together. We both had sore arms for the initial shots and felt lethargic.
The booster was no problem for me but she had a sore swollen arm and a headache for 2 days
But herein lies the problem. No one is the same when it comes to this stuff.
We "think" in terms of definitive's but then it causes our future thoughts to get scrambled. Case in point is the vaccine effectiveness. For some it's really great protection, for others? Not so much. Post infection immunity? for some its's strong, for others its surprisingly weak
I think we missed this in a much earlier UK study when they saw that some children did NOT develop post infection immunity anti bodies after getting tested positive for COVID. At that time we were resigned to the fact that it was (erroneously) an old timers disease only to see DELTA and OMICRON hit the much younger age groups.
Again, we are dealing with a LIVING thing that is changing as it gets passed back and forth between people.
I think a recent story referenced a study that said Covid would reach endemic stage in 2024. This has been pushed back a couple of years from previous estimates.
Over 40 states are ow reporting Omicron and we are setting case records in some locations.
We have been very VERY wrong about post infection immunity effectiveness. It varies too wildly from person to person
WE have been wrong about vaccine effectiveness. Its not as variable as PII is but certainly doesn't last in everyone the same
We were wrong about wiping down surfaces and wearing gloves
We were wrong in our belief that it would be NEXT SPRING before we saw a variant with immunity evasion capabilities.
And all along we were allowing certain states to change the rules of reporting to the CDC when other countries use ONE system outside of political influence to report their numbers.
This is craziness
It's a brand-new pathogen, never known to science. In that context, it is *miraculous* what we (as a society) have been RIGHT about. Asking scientists to get it right on the first attempt, for every question, is simply unrealistic, and if you look at the actual history of science, you'll see that it is rarely-if-ever achieved.
As a society, we're doing fine in figuring out this bug. The mistakes are all in public adherence to the recommendations of science.
Eh, I got the Pfizer booster and barely noticed it. The first shot gave me a 100F fever for a day and I was a little wasted, but not bad. Everyone is different on this though.
The shot that really got me was Shingrix. I was wasted and had a 102F fever and couldn't really even stay up to watch the final four this year. Glad I got it on a Friday.
Shingrix is known as the toughest one. They really should prepare you better to expect bad side effects. I did not have a fever but I could not move that arm at all for a few days and not over my head for a week. But still better than shingles by far.
Do you know getting worse side effects first shot indicates you had covid before?
Really? I had terrible side effects from my first Pfizer shot, lasted over a week. Not so much from the second.
I got the Moderna booster at the same time I got Shingrix and it was like death for two days, then gone.
I assumed it was all Moderna because that arm hurt and the one I got the Shingrix in didn't.
You MAY get a sore arm if you had covid before
There is no definitive proof of that because each of us has our own immune system.
Some of us develop anti bodies to a previous covid infection Others don't and the level of immune response to covid not only varies in strength from person to person but it also decreases as time goes by and that varies from person to person
From John Hopkins:
If you had COVID-19 before being vaccinated, the first injection*********** may cause******** more noticeable side effects than for people who have not had the coronavirus.
If you have never had COVID-19, you may notice more side effects after the second dose than after the first dose.
Covid is probably going to become an endemic disease we have to get vaccinated for once or twice a year for the rest of our lives. Just like flu.
Covid's on its way to endemicity, for sure. And the principle defense tool is indeed looking to be regular (once/twice yearly) booster shots. I'd guess this protocol doesn't last for multiple decades, though. But that's just a guess. But another 5-7 years of this looks pretty likely. But during this period the intensity of the disease and the lethality should be gradually declining (or maybe precipitously declining). The last coronavirus pandemic (the so-called "Russian Flu" that hit in 1889) was still killing people a decade after it first hit, but in much, much smaller numbers after the first couple of years. There are obviously no guarantees SARS-CoV-2 will follow an identical path, but the Omicron variant, of course, does appear to be substantially less virulent than previous iterations (yes, it's early yet!). So, my reading of the tea leaves suggests the virus, as it approaches true global endemicity, is evolving, as we'd expect, toward less lethality.
Jasper-
I hope you are right but I have my doubts
The timing is whats getting me
We are approaching end of year. In this year alone we've had 2 major variants emerge. Delta with its 60 different variations and Omicron which by itself has so many mutation noticeable (50 mutations different from DELTA). If we were having Omicron worries a year to 18 months after Delta I'd say the SARs virus was slowing down.
All indications are pointing in the opposite direction.
And if you are comparing this to previous pandemics then good luck with that. The 4th or 5th wave of the Spanish Flu was more deadly then all the previous waves were.
We also are far more inter-connected and a more populated global community, which is adding to this. Our comorbidities have also increased due to decades of poor eating habits spurned in part, due to our desire to make food last longer using preservatives to help those disadvantaged., along with smoking and drinking.
I don't like comparing our current day status to anything prior to the baby boom............
Death doesn’t affect the gene pool unless it occurs before procreation. If the stupid anti vaxxers manage to pop out a few kids before they succumb to Covid, their faulty genes were already passed on to the next generation.
Yes I had Moderna as my booster and similar, I felt sick for about 3 days, but worth it considering that the variant is racing through America now.
My second vaccine short gave me a fever and aches for 24 hrs, booster just gave me a very sore arm. I have one show to see tonight, a present I got for my wife last spring before I knew that there would be a bunch of selfish people determined to keep the pandemic going. But after that, I'm staying far away from crowds.
VIENNA (AP) — The omicron variant of the coronavirus has been detected in 89 countries, and COVID-19 cases involving the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in places with community transmission and not just infections acquired abroad, the World Health Organization said Saturday.
How does that happen? Idiot tourists. Fuck them. They ruin everything.
Trying to stop the spread just by testing people before they get on a plane or train is close to impossible. All it takes is a few recent infections the test won't catch or a few false negatives and...boom. You've got an outbreak. The only reasonable long-term is just to admit you're never going to completely stop the virus or all its mutations at the border and to restrict all air or cross-border travel only to fully-vaccinated people.
I’m sure I have no international travel plans. It’s a recurring theme… the virus spreads around the world via air travel and then the media tells us travel restrictions don’t work. Well of course they don’t. They need to be total. No one should be allowed to leave the UK, for example. France is closing the border. Good for them.
Here’s hoping global tourism dies off this next year.
There is absolutely zero chance tourism is going to stop. Lots of localities and entire countries would be a lot poorer without it… and overall poverty also is a factor in low health outcomes.
There was no realistic hope of stopping omicron in its tracks. The only path out is endemicity combined with reduced virulence combined with regular booster shots. Covid's a nasty thing, but it doesn't justify halting global travel in my view.
Seems like people should be looking at the OTHER graphs on that page before making comments:
Graph2 tells us that for at last one shot Black Adults are at 67%, not much different from White Evangelicals at 63%. Hard to spin that as an "I'm in thrall to Trump" claim.
Likewise Rural is at 67%.
Strikes me as much more likely that the underlying variable is Rural. Rural are more Republican, yes, but they are also probably believe themselves to be in less danger. (Stats don't actually bear this out, but it's an obvious human heuristic if what you see on the news is almost always about big cities...) Probably most important is that it's just more hassle and more difficult to get a shot in rural areas.
A second issue is the usual DO NOT NAIVELY BELIEVE SURVEYS when the issue is politicized. Booster prevalence was 4% in Sept, 10% in Oct, 23% in Nov. That's not a bad trend. Many of the people who claimed (or had claimed for them...) that they would not be vaccinated have now been vaccinated. I suspect a non-negligible fraction of the Democrat's Vaccine responses are aspirational, ie "I know I should and I plan to as soon as it's convenient, so I'll just say yes"; likewise the Republican equivalent "I know I should, but goddamnit I hate these people telling me what to do, so I'll say no even though I'm going to CVS next week".
Black adults not vaxxed? Too busy being criminals.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/09/nyc-man-charged-in-assault-sought-for-gunpoint-attack-on-woman/
I don't think that dude cares much about spreading or getting covid. 15 percent of the African-American male population have served time in prison. These sociopaths aren't going to bother with vaccination.
Thanks again for the racist non sequitur.
He's apparently both a virulent racist and a hard-left progressive. Weird dude, but I guess it takes all types.
There is resistance to vaccination for various mostly invalid reasons among various groups, but Fox News and the Trump/Republican faction are actively spreading lies about the matter. The uncertainty caused by this spreads to more than hardcore Trump voters.
Exactly.
With things so partisan and politicized today, many people now answer polls with whatever response is best for their party and not the truth . Or what they feel the consensus is that they " should do" from their partisan perspective even if they are not doing that.
And , as I think you describe, this problem is even greater when the poll question has somewhat vague categories where the dividing lines are not clear. A young Democrat who believed they really should get a booster and it is " the right thing to do" but also understands their risk is so low as they are young and still have decent protection on top from two shots ( at least for serious illness) can easily answer definitely will get although, if they were honest about it , they know there is a good chance they will just " never get around to it". And an older republican who is somewhat skeptical of the booster but who did get two shots is still probably likely to end up giving in and getting the booster eventually, but can answer probably will not get it without really being dishonest.
I suspect the majority of the way the poll is skewed in partisanship is by people choosing what answer when the honest answer is somewhat marginal and iffy between two categories. Democrats will answer in the more likely direction if iffy and Republicans the reverse .
I am especially suspicious with the large %age of democrats saying that they will definitely get vaccinated but had not yet done so. If boosters have been available for you and you are definitely going to get,
why have you not yet done so? All through the summer, polls asking re 2nd shot had a significant % age saying they definitely would get it. But that number just did not shrink very much over time. Although note that the poll was from mid November not now . If it was today, I think my point would be indisputable but mid November access could still have been a limiting factor. But I gaurantee you that out of that 36% saying definitely get , well under 30 will actually get it.
And note one comparison with direct political polls ..we know they have recently been off largely due to response bias and have been too democratic friendly ( conservative Republicans just will not respond). But there at least, in most cases, no partisan incentive to knowingly lie. If you supported trump in 2020, you might not respond to a poll, but not as likely you will lie and answer biden ( although that happened to some extent) . On an issue like this , a republican who did get the booster might lie and say no way just to make his party's position look more popular. And a democratic anti vaxxer might say they got the booster.
Polls like this can be valuable for policy makers in setting the right policy . But the excessive partisanship today has ruined this too.
For anyone on the KKKlay n' Chucklefuck tip grousing & lamenting that Dr. Fauci is a liar & is signing America up for bottomless shots, three shots in eight months, as is the case for me (April 4 & 25, then Dec 13), is hardly novel. When I went to Mexico in summer 97 on a school trip, I was required to get vaxxx'd for hepatitis b. & that was three trips to the Dirty Stallis Health Dept between Oct 96 & Feb 97.
I have since gotten hep a inoculation before going to Spain (fall 99) & meningitis inoculation (winter 01), but those were both one n' done.
Vaccination is not a one size fits all solution.
That was in 1997. Now when you go to Cancun all you need is a body armor.
"all you need is a body armor."
And no power back home???????
Exactly.
Or to be Ted Cruz!
Someone thought Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet was a documentary.
Access is still a problem, as are those refusing to get a vaccine for partisan purposes.
Thanksgiving meant reported numbers bounced around a lot, but reported cases numbers for upper midwest, northeast and mid-Atlantic were going up. Now....Looks like numbers might be dropping in CT and VT, but shooting up in the larger states there, plus TX, FL, and probably other southern states that had numbers drop after their last outbreak.
West coast? Still bouncing around 15-20 cases/100K.
Looks like the omicron wave is starting to hit in earnest.
Vaccinations may not effectively stop infection with omicron, unless boosted, but it still helps prevent serious infection. "Natural immunity" not a real defense against omicron either, so get vaccinated.
I’m hoping for a big omicron wave to wreck the south.
I’m hoping for a big omicron wave to wreck the south.
The Shermicron variant.
Golack,
On what are you basing that CT is going down ? Is that just based on one or two recent days? I think using one or two days for most places and coming to any conclusion is a bad idea as the data is unreliable. Is CT data so consistent that you can really come to a conclusion based on one day? The covidactnow infection rate still has CT in #5 highest, although I do concede they are very slow in picking up recent trends there.
And you mention west coast bouncing. I do follow California and Los Angeles especially as I live there. And we are NOT bouncing . We are now clearly going up . Was not sure at first as you are correct holiday obscures everything ( there tends to be a false trend up after holiday as catch up period contrasted with holiday period). But no doubt now . We are seriously going up. Look at the recent fee days in Los Angeles. Seriously scary jumps .
And Los Angeles is one place , for all their other covid flaws, really is quite consistent in daily reporting and does not have big daily swings ( and when there is some anomaly for a day , they say so) I also check Alameda country and their daily data is crap and swings wildly. So the recent jump over last few days is meaningful.
I hope is it omicron mostly ( which does seem to be true in ny) causing the jump . But I fear not . The omicron cases here sequenced are just not that many. I suspect this is still mostly delta .
And probably weather related. Unless you have lived here , might not realize that , in Los Angeles, the season changes from near summer in November with Santa Annas keeping it warm and you can go in the pool, to a few weeks later , it is raining and getting into 40s and even 30s at night. We do not have a gradual change from summer to winter, we drop off a cliff sometime in late November to early December. That started a few weeks ago and, right on cue , cases jump up right after. Damn it.
go.........
I think Omicron is going to be the variant that demolishes the colder climate warmer climate argument people sometimes make. It is JUST that virulent
Nope. It's irrelevant.
Why would you think being more contagious would reduce the weather differential? Would it not just have the same weather differential, just at a higher level for both seasons?
I assume you just misspoke in your last sentence and meant that transmissible and not that virulent. Because most evidence shows omicron to be LESS virulent ( although still not sure 100% and the extent is uncertain) . While being more transmissible with pretty much 100% certainty.
Virulent refers to how much sickness and death it causes when you are infected. Not to chance of getting infected.
And one issue is that , for most of country, delta hit when they had a weather advantage , except Florida and deep south and maybe desert southwest .
And that helped to spread out the delta wave most places i.e. flatten the curve . States like Michigan had their largest delta wave in autumn but at least peak was limited by some cases getting some natural immunity in summer.
With omicron , it is hitting here coincident with the worst winter covid weather most places. Which will just accentuate the peak. And plus right a Xmas which will just cause more spread. There factors all hitting at same time. Three waves causes with same frequency accentuating each other. So the peak is likely to be real fast and massive, although fall quickly.
I do think that it looks like omicron is significantly less virulent. But unfortunately probably not enough to offset the huge number of cases we are going to see rising rapidly in a very short period. So Xmas and new years are going to be pretty pretty scary I bet. I am fully vaccinated with booster but still plan to hunker down for a few weeks. All stocked up with groceries.
Not that I am really concerned about getting a not so virulent strain while booster still strong. Almost welcome it to get natural immunity. But NOT when hospitals are going to be overloaded. I think I will prefer to get my inevitable maybe omicron infection in a few months after cases plummet.
So - Kevin Drum
Right now on the front page, excluding cat and photo stories you have 8 news stories 4 related to COVID
Is it time to dust off the old styled COVID stat story?
Well, Ed Yong just wrote another The Atlantic article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/america-omicron-variant-surge-booster/621027/
CovidActNow, WorldoMeter, as well as the people here (before file format changes and the database getting unmanageable) , and even the CDC, do a pretty good job of showing us what is going on. There is still a bit of noise in the daily numbers, especially around holidays and even weekends. Looks like FL is reporting deaths only one or two days a week. ...
Kevin did a good job posting Covid numbers on a regular basis, and picked a good time to stop. Now, I don't know if a regular posting would be needed, but it would be nice to have some that show variations in hospitalizations/deaths with vaccination status over time. And even some plots over time broken down by age group or other demographics.
I wonder if Conor Friedersdorf or Megan Mc Ardle has ever turned over Ed Yong's tray in the Atlantic cafeteria.
Nope. Raw data shows 60% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats have received boosters. This driven by age and race. Stop following useless surveys.
No more Kaiser or Monmouth. You need to read on their "past" scandal.
News out of PA, Il, and another state indicate they need to make big revisions to vaccination data for over counting!!! My home state of NC is indicating they will make revisions too.
They make no explanations as to the reasons but news reports indicate that some second shots are being counted as boosters and vice versa.
THIS is what happens when you have 50 different sites reporting numbers to the FEDs. One system, nationwide = all using the same parameters.
This is exactly whey I follow overseas numbers far closer than our own.
This is what I said on yesterday's post and have been saying for months.
Some of the second shots were counted as first shots . Some boosters were counted as first shots or second shots ( if they missed the 2nd shot record for that person ). I doubt there are many second shots counted as boosters though because that should be a much rarer type of error.
It is always hard in large data collections to link all records to the same person . How many have got the same piece of junk mail just addressed to a slightly different variation of your name because you are counted twice in one data base . I know one person who got called to jury duty in two different courts at same time and was a huge hassle ( she was mistakenly registered for voting twice she found out).
So to expect that every second shot or boosters got assigned correctly to the same person and not counted as first shot to a new person was silly. This error was unavoidable to some extent and should have known it would happen.
It has been obvious to me for months, before it was ever discussed as news, just by looking at the vaccination data for different places and how it was changing. I do claim on this issue that my speculation here, which some scoffed at , was dead on correct.
So , in reality , the reported first shot vaccination rates are a bit too high and two shot and booster too low. Which on net is probably slightly good news as one shot does very little to help especially after a few months.
I am not surprised that the vaccine booster numbers aren't polling that high (if anything it's higher than I would have expected, add in the "probably will get" numbers in and it's a pretty high number, almost 80%).
I think there are so many factors that work against getting boosters. First, given we are reading a political blog site in the first place makes all of us kinda weirdos. Most people aren't that plugged into what is going on. So let's go back to what was going on when the boosters first came available. It wasn't a slam dunk amongst the experts. It was questionable whether they were really necessary. The WHO came out against them (heck, I think they may still be against them?). The FDA denied Pfizer's first attempt to get boosters approved. And a lot of the literature at the time sure didn't make it seem like a personal decision to get the booster was urgent as it seemed questionable whether or not they were THAT necessary. So if you are in a low-risk group and did your research at that time, you could have easily reached the decision to put it off. Heck, I didn't rush out to get a booster either.
Also, it's not like there aren't costs to getting the vaccine even if they are "free". First, you have to spend the time to get the vaccine and some places (at least where I went) aren't that efficient even when there really isn't anyone there to get a vaccine and you have an appointment. Then there are the side effects. I still see literature that says you might want to plan on taking a couple of days off from work after getting the booster. Some people can't afford to take that time. (Not to mention that the side effects are unpleasant and a lot more of us had side effects with the last shot we got.)
Now you have Omicron. But there are so many different reports right now (basically because it's new and it's hard to have instant knowledge). But especially if you just half-read headlines, it wouldn't be hard to come to the conclusion that a) Omicron is very mild and b) it evades the protection of the vaccines. So it wouldn't be hard to see how somebody might conclude that it might not be bad anyway and if it evades the protection of vaccines anyway, why bother?
Then what if you been vaccinated and later caught Covid-19? A lot of literature out there says you now have "super immunity" and that a booster would do little good. But does that still apply with Omicron? Do we even know yet? But if you read you had "super immunity" and a booster would do little good, you probably are not going to be first in line for boosters.
Anyway, I decided to get a booster. For me, my thought process went as follows.
It appears that a lot of the argument against boosters is that vaccinating the unvaccinated should get priority and would do more good. I don't disagree with that, but the decision to offer boosters was made by folks above my pay-grade, and it's not like me individually not getting a booster will mean an unvaccinated person will get it instead.
With that broader question out of the way, then what is the risk of getting the booster individually to me? I am still on the vaccines are safe train, and I figure even if there is some unknown negative long-term impact, it probably is not going to make a lot of difference between having 2 doses and 2.5 doses. I kinda figure that ship has sailed when I got the vaccine shots in the first place.
There is still a lot of uncertainly with Omicron. But I have come to the conclusion that even if the effects are mild for most people, I fear that it is so contagious that hospitals/healthcare may still get overwhelmed just by the sheer numbers of everyone catching it at the same time (a small percentage can still be enough to impact hospitals/overall health care delivery if it's a small percentage of a very large number of people). So I think it may turn into a public health problem even if it's not that risky to me individually. (Of course you have to add that it's not certain yet that the impacts are particularly milder than Delta, so it may not even be particularly less risky for me individually either.)
Once deciding that the vaccine booster is safe, then its particular effectiveness against Omicron becomes less relevant. It's not like it's going to make you MORE likely to get Omicron or MORE likely to get severe disease. So on that end, it's all upside, whatever extra protection I get is worth it.
(FWIW, I did not have any side effects with the booster, other than the same sore arm I have got with every shot. For reference, I did have a pretty decent reaction to the 2nd shot, kind of like a mild flu that only lasted a few hours. But it looks like that varies person to person. I have stuck with Moderna, and I know that's just a half dose booster, but I don't know how much that makes a difference versus just individual differences/luck.)
Great post and your analysis and decision making seems very logical. I do wonder how old you are. What you relate as your decision and others all related to personal risks and benefits and not considering how it might help community or family .
If as old as me ( 63) , I do think the decision is largely personal, as that leads to probably getting the booster for reasons you relate, in which case community benefit is irrelevant.
But, for young, their covid risk starts so small, gets almost negligible of double vaccinated, so any small cost of getting the booster really might outweigh any personal benefit. But take account of community benefits and hopefully that should change decision to get the booster. For someone in their twenties, the average personal benefit of getting the booster might be X ( with 95% zero benefit and 5% significant ) while cost might be 2X ( mostly side effects with a low cost but more certainty) . But the community benefit might be 5X. If they even take that into account discounted by 80%, swings the decision.
One problem is this logical analysis is sort of like a decision to buy a lottery ticket . Small upfront cost with certainty for side effects and hassle ( ignoring that they do vary ) and a benefit that is much larger but has a small chance of occurring. People routinely make the wrong logical choice with those decisions ( i.e. buy lottery ticket). Here the emotional decision is to avoid the certain cost and ignore the unlikely benefit.
And I too tend to discount the addtl risk of some unknown dangerous side effect we have not seen . I think chance is very low but if it does happen, could be real bad . But I am 63. I have less worry about something killing me in ten years at 73 that is so unlikely. I just have less future life to lose so current benefit and cost overwhelms that . If I was 23, the concern for some unlikely side effect is real . But clearly, as you say, that is more of a reason to never get vaccinated than to not get boosted.
You brought up one thing I had forgot to consider in my prior post. What if you got two shots and then got a delta infection recently. Do you get the booster now? I think not - bad idea. An actual infection likely stimulated your immune system ( boosted your prior vaccine immunity) better than a booster, just by seeing a different aspect. No need for booster now . But six months or so after that infection maybe then a good idea .
So, if any portion of those answering the poll " will definitely get in future " while not having got yet, that is a solid logical reason.
And there actually are some possible but I think unlikely ways a booster could actually increase your covid risk at least long term. But more likely for getting vaccinated at all.
If , as seems quite possible, omicron becomes dominant and pushes other variants to extinction, and is endemic and so contagious we should expect to catch every year or two, but is much less virulent, then best position now might be if never infected and never vaccinated ( although hide out for a month until delta goes away) . This is due to original antigenic sin . Your immune system remains keyed most to the first variant you saw. Even if you do get infected with the final dominant strain, your immunity will never be as good as the person who first got omicron for onicron. And current vaccibe mimics original covid .
So, if you 100% knew you never were infected and never vaccinated, probably NOT good idea to do so today. But I doubt you can ever be sure you never had covid given how asymptomatic it can be. So this logical point is likely practically useless.
These are all valid points. But I fear the government is falling down in its messaging (again!). Sure, I could be proven wrong in the fullness of time, but it certainly looks like there will be a 4th and 5th and 6th and 7th booster shoot. And more after that.
In other words, the path out of this crisis might well be regular booster shots for a half decade or more, until such time as the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 is similar to the common cold for most people.
I don't think the public is thinking along these lines: most of them are still hoping for the pandemic to "end" and many are growing fatigued. But a precipitous "end" is looking less and less likely. More probable is several more years of struggle, with gradually declining mortality risk, until the crisis has faded into background noise.
I'm definitely in the camp that Covid is never going away so we are going to get a version of it eventually. I don't think cases will even ever be particularly low, just hopeful that eventually hospitalizations/deaths will be.. I think periodic boosters are quite likely.
Like the 1889 Russian "flu" pandemic (clearly it wasn't influenza, but an initially quite deadly coronavirus that eventually became endemic and now causes common cold).
That episode — the 19th century's last pandemic — is looking like an increasingly probable model for our current situation. It took about a decade to reach full endemicity/non-chronic virulence. But the worst (in terms of excess mortality) was over after about 2.5 years, IIRC.
If Kaiser Family Foundation would like more people to get vaccinated, it should make vaccines at Kaiser hospitals more available.
Last night tried making an appointment at Kaiser Permanente for our son to get his booster. The website isn't working. No appointment dates are available. We went to Kaiser this morning anyway but they don't accept walk-ins anymore (my wife and I were walk-ins right before Thanksgiving). We tried making an appointment on the phone, but no appointments are available at Kaiser until January. Not good, with the holidays right ahead of us.
It was hard finding any appointment times at drug stores, med centers within the next 10 days via My Turn. We did get our son boosted this afternoon at a temp med clinic set up by L.A. City at a local park. About 20-25 people were getting shots.
It's virtually impossible to get a Moderna shot within 50 miles, even waiting till after the holidays. Pfizer or J&J is what's available now.
If people are resisting getting their boosters, and it's hard to get a booster for people that want them, that's a recipe for a spike in new cases. The weeks after Christmas last year saw the highest levels of new cases and deaths so far. Let's hope Omicron really is milder, because a lot of people will be getting it.
KFF is not associated with Kaiser Permanente.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought they were both cousins of Kaiser Wilhelm but I may have been mixing them up with Kaiser Roll.
Get your vaccine.
Let Republicans skip their vaccine and boosters so they can Make America Great Again.
There’s a part of me deep down that’s with you one this. But, at the same time, a lot of these people are just victims and their families are destroyed. If Tucker got it and died, that would be justice. But, as I’ve said, most of these poor slobs are just cannon fodder and that makes it tragic.
I don’t know what to make of this.
Last week, my nephews wife was sick. She had the booster in November.
Just now, my oldest brother shared that he was sick. He also had the booster shot.
My nephews wife is recovered already and no one else in the house got sick. My sister in law is fine so far. Hopefully my brother’s illness will be brief and mild, but he’s much older than my nephews wife.
Good luck!
So, previous postings on Kevins blog indicated that PII was just as good if not better than vaccine immunity. Case counts were not reported because some people had such mild symptoms but they built up PII
In spite of this DELTA raged until sept then tapered off
Only to have Omicron come out in Nov
Now from one of my previous posts:
**********
A previous Covid-19 recovery provides little shield against infection with the omicron variant, a research team from Imperial College London showed in a large study that underlines the importance of booster shots.
Having had Covid probably only offers 19% protection against omicron, the study showed on Friday. That was roughly in line with two doses of vaccine, which the team estimated were as much as 20% effective against omicron. Adding a booster dose helped dramatically, blocking an estimated 55% to 80% of symptomatic cases.
******************************
So which is better? The immunity you built up for DELTA PLUS the vaccine.
Or
Should you wait to get mild symptoms from a variant in which vaccines are only 20% effective and PII is only 19% effective against? to get THAT version of PII?
And what about those folks that had this immunity - so called super immunity already?
Of course the answer is we will NEVER know because here in the US there are HIPPA laws and political divides that make people think they don't have to tell us their status. Right Marjorie Taylor Greene - when in fact she had to prove vaccination to get back on the House Floor. Trump saying it would go away only to be hospitalized and then get vaccinated????
Who wants PII from Omicron? The next variation might be stronger. The 4th (or 5th) wave in 1918 was the one that killed all those people.
Omicron is showing exponential growth over Delta.
Rockettes are cancelled on Broadway (thats a damned shame), football games getting rescheduled, SNL going to empty theater again, Denmark going into strict lockdown, Most of the numbers here are DELTA, but by January we will see Omicron over take DELTA its growing THAT fast.
Delta evolved over a 6 MONTH period from June July to about now. We had 50 different Delta streams in 6 months.
We morphed into Omicron starting on Nov 25th? and within 2 months it will be the dominant variant? The pace of the changes in the coronavirus is what worries me most. If we tried to develop an Omicron specific booster and it takes 90 - 120 days to develop it never mind distribute and administer the shots - how would we vaccinate against it?
So we're back to the study I quoted. 19% PII effectiveness and 20% vaccine effectiveness. Seems like two weaklings to me and we're supposed to get super immunity out of that?
If the vaccines were only 20% effective against DELTA the PII folks would have had a fit about their INeffectiveness. But now that its shown the PII effectiveness is even LESS they are resorting to super immunity as their argument?
That dog just don't hunt
The vaccines prevent serious illness. That’s the metric. What is PII?
I took it to be Post-Infection Immunity.
Ken-
Yeah, these old fingers just don't like typing Post Infection Immunity
There is NOTHING natural about it either. Deliberately getting sick to build up immunity only to have it nullified by Omicron is pathetically irresponsible.
50 mutations with 30 being on the spike protein within 6 months of peak Delta? So Omicron is just supposed to be "the end"????
Think about it.
50 different strains of DELTA within 6 months and then a new variant with 50 different mutations? A variant that is SO DIFFERENT it evades CURRENT vaccine and PI immunity?
There's too much spread. Too many people still not vaccinated.
Too many people not protecting others. And way too much I want my life back to normal thinking.
Its not hard folks. Get the shot
Is there any information on how people are doing who get covid and at the same time get some other illness like the flu or an ordinary cold?
For coronavirus colds , covid dominates and tends to push the cold virus out and same seems to be the case with the flu . So, although possible to be infected with both , having covid may add to your ability to beat off the flu or a coronavirus cold . From what I understand, easier to be simultaneously infected with covid and flu than covid and another coronavirus . Though still very rare partially as has been so little flu.. Which is one reason why , on top of masking and other restrictions, the flu and coronavirus colds were so diminished last year.
Rhinovirus cold viruses instead seem to dominate the covid virus and tend to push covid out. Having a rhinovirus cold during a big wave of a dangerous covid strain might be a good thing. Rhinoviruses did not decline as much last year .
Too early to tell if omicron changes this. It might not just be a covid mutation but a covid cold hybrid .
And yet booster shots are still not easy to come buy. Despite getting an email from rite-aid to make an appointment, the web site says no appointments are available and to come back later. CVS is similar. The county web site is similar. If you want us to get a booster, make it super-simple for us to plan and schedule getting the booster.
Where are you at???? Boosters are everywhere I live.
Huh? I see 70%+ of Democrats.
I actually see this as somewhat remarkable in the other direction, as I think the people in the "probably will get" camp are about 50% likely to actually get it. Which brings the total mid-80% among Democrats and over 50% among Republicans.
Cut Democrats down to 50%. Kaiser lied
How's your brain cancer? How much time you got left?
I got a 2nd jj booster to be thorough. But that is it. No more.
So do you want an open casket or closed casket at your funeral?
Lol, go to your bunker. Wimp.
The Sun Sentinel in Florida is reporting that COVID cases doubled in a week there. They are also saying 33% were break through cases but don't differentiate between vaccine break through or previous infection break through. This is affecting the UNDER 65 crowd mostly from what I can interpret from the graphs.
DeSantis is not planning on any form of shut down even though all indications are this is a DELTA wave, not an Omicron wave. Truth be told we do a lousy job sequencing our cases.
But herein lies the rub. if this is a DELTA wave - given the reduced PII and vaccine immunity against Omicron can we expect these same people to get sick AGAIN relatively soon? With Omicron? Say 60 days down the road?
Awesome news today. 😂
The Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac — which make up almost half of all shots delivered globally — offer almost zero protection from Omicron infection. The great majority of people in China have received these shots, which are also widely used in low-and middle-income countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received this shot, under the brand name Covishield; it has also been widely used across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where Covax, the global Covid vaccine program, has distributed 67 million doses of it to 44 countries.
Well, let’s hope these are mild cases. Chinese government are useless MF criminals. They perpetrated a scam on half the world. That’s not racist, it’s a recognition that they (CCP) are the source, intentionally or otherwise, of all this suffering and death.
Lol, go to your bunker. Wimp.
You've crossed a line, brother. Mocking someone who is immunocompromised (by the drugs needed to keep cancer in check) and thus needs to be extra wary of unvaccinated people, is just wrong.
Uh, "brother". That wasn't a poor sap post. They were mocking
Kevin, can you please ban this rude ahole?
Why should anybody get a booster when they are already **fully vaccinated** ?
The problem is, once again, the ineptness of the medical profession to understand public messaging.
You can't say "two-shots", because the J&J one-shot is out there. Instead of "fully vaccinated", the expression should be something like First Stage.
"Are you thinking of getting a booster after getting through First Stage?" is a better presentation.
Also, "booster" is a bad name because it conveys the impression that you're getting even better protection than the COVID-vanquishing vaccines already out there.
The booster is not a booster. It's a "restorative" dose and should be called that.
Omicron is going to present a whole NEW problem here in the U.S.
Right now our Medical community is advising boosters (or restorative, I like that) 5 months after previous shots.
People are concentrating on the bypassing of the immunity given by previous infection and vaccines. Re-read the South African study.
They were finding re-infections as quickly as 90 days after the initial Delta diagnosis. Think about this. You get diagnosed with Delta and spend 10 days in quarantine. You come back to work after 2 negative tests which might take 5 days (now you are at 15 days.
2 months and two weeks later you COULD be catching Omicron. Vaccines are not much better.
How do yo tell folks that anyone vaccinated prior to Oct 1 is not protected? How do you tell folks that had recovered from a previous infection over Labor Day weekend that they are NOT Protected?????
I got my restorative shot 3 weeks ago. - does this mean I have 69 days of protection left given a worse case scenario? Like many older folks I have several comorbidities to consider. So is MY time frame different?
I shudder to think what our reaction will be if we discover we need restorative shots every 90 days until Omicron passes? Of course this also assumes that Omicron will pass in 90 days.
Keep in mind that until now all vaccine and post infection immunity parameters were based on native, and Beta variants.
We talk of COVID becoming endemic using the reasoning of SEVERITY ONLY. What if omicron just ping pongs around the world - re-infecting everyone every 90 to 120 days ? If we were getting Flue season 4 times per year wouldn't we be clamoring for better protections?
Why the jump from reinfection to booster losing there juice in 90 days? Just curious. Maybe I missed something. I was trying to expunge the stupid Spades has been touting.