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31 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: July 17 Update”

  1. iamr4man

    It seems to me that new cases and deaths should be counted as “new cases/deaths—vaccinated” and “ new cases/deaths—unvaccinated”. That would give us a clearer picture of what’s going on and perhaps encourage the hesitant to get vaccinated.

    1. Mitch Guthman

      I don’t understand why that’s not being done, either. It would really emphasize the points that are sort of trickling out about how the deaths, long-Covid-19, etc is almost entirely concentrated among the unvaccinated. Yet, overall, there seems to be a very deliberate attempt to downplay the vaccines in favor of lockdowns and mask wearing.

      I notice now that Israelis have been successful enough that they’re actually phasing out vaccine passports. I think if you don’t increasingly isolate the unvaccinated and simply quarantine places like India, Brazil, and Tennessee or Colorado the country will be living like this for many more years. From a Republican perspective, opposing vaccines is logical since the resulting death, physical suffering, and impediments to economic recovery will greatly improve the likelihood of a victory in 2022 (which will, in turn, practically guarantee a Republican president).

      The Democrats and the public health establishments seem to be playing some kind of “rope-a-dope” where they’re assuming that that the anti-vaccine people will eventually be re-relegated to crank status. This is a badly failed policy as the example of Tennessee, now an official anti-vaccine state, vividly demonstrates. What needed is a full court press and absolutely relentless targeting of the wealth of the Murdoch and Zuckerberg families.

      1. Spadesofgrey

        Lol, considering the low amount of new infections and we are nearing 80% of white's vaccinated 18+. I think it's a dead disease. By fall, I have white's at 85% vaccinated. Further suppressing actual illness.

  2. golack

    Looks like vaccination rates are going up a bit--or at least not slowing down. Upsurge having an effect? LA just hit 40% (first dose, total population), leaving MS, 38%, pulling up the rear.
    Nationally, we're at 68.2%. Still not the 70% target. Maybe by Aug 4th?

    Even higher vaccinated places have pockets of un-vaccinated. And the unvaccinated are getting hit hard--eventually the Delta variant will find them. Now we're moving towards the Southern Summer Surge.

    And as they said on the Sunday shows....get a good mask if you've not been vaccinated yet. Properly fitted N95's can protect you. Other masks help stop the spread, but do not help you as much.

    1. Mitch Guthman

      The figures that I’m seeing, particularly from the experts in France, is that because of the Delta variant a vaccination rate of upwards of 95% will be needed. I believe France and Denmark adhere rigorously to mandates for vaccine passports and begin to make vaccines obligatory they might be able to reach that figure.

      We needed to do the same. Vaccine passports needed to be required to eat in restaurants, shops in supermarkets, enter an airport or a public transit system, and need to be a universal condition of employment and the or school enrollment (withe the parents vaccinated status begins the requirement for registering a child who isn’t old enough to be vaccinated). The exceptions should be limited, not religiously based, and very rigorously vetted.

      2. Justin

        I’m not a fan of vaccine passports although I did provide my card to the health club where I work out so I don’t have to wear a mask.

        Perhaps those of us vaccinated should just do the right thing and stay home. Let the businesses stay open and get what they can. I think it’s just not going to make any difference. The unvaccinated are forever going to be a problem. There is no going back to normal. There will always be a risk. We need to accept it.

        1. Mitch Guthman

          Yours is the counsel of surrender to the forces of conservatism. Other countries are fighting both the extreme right and the virus—and they are at least holding their own. Allowing the most extreme elements of the right to rule our lives is unacceptable. We need to fight back with everything we’ve got.

          1. rational thought

            Mitch,

            I would say that justin is just the voice of reality. Maybe sometimes you have to recognize you lost and accept surrender and make the best of what you can.

            The world you want does not exist. You can fight all you want but the end result is not going to be getting vaccination rates alone up high enough to stop delta. There is just going to have to be enough additiknal cases to have enough natural immunity to supplement the vaccine. It is inevitable and we now have to decide how to manage that.

            And my prescription here is to not do what justin thinks and stay home if you are vaccinated ( assuming the issue is slowing the spread and not personal risk) . If you have been vaccinated and thus have low risk of getting sick, go out all you want unmasked and go ahead and spread it to unvaccinated. Because a large enough number have to get it and eventually will, and best to get through that as fast as you can.

            If natural and vaccine immunity does wear off significantly ( and my guess is after a year or so) we really really are better trying to get enough infections now rather than later. So we can get to herd immunity and low case counts before we start to see immunity declining as the big wave and start of vaccinations gets a year old in December.

            And I think your characterization of this as some sort of battle with the right is warped. The enemy is the virus here, not the right. If you think that the right is making it harder to fight that enemy and thus you need to argue with the right that is one thing. But you just seem often to have a mindset ( out of frustration I hope) that you are just have a goal here of beating the right and not the virus. I have to assume that you are really not that sort of person and would be happy if the right won the battle on what to do and it turned out that they were right and you were wrong and good that they won.

            1. Mitch Guthman

              But the right is blocking all health measures and especially the vaccines. Worldwide, the have blocked or disrupted every effort to defeat the virus. How can you meaningfully fight the virus without first completely defeating the Republicans?

        1. rational thought

          Mitch,

          First, does anyone know how to reply to a specific comment, and not just reply to the last comment in the thread? I think my replies have sometimes gotten buried at the end and that makes it confusing. I want to reply to mitch and ignore jakejjj but only allowing me to reply to jakejjj. And, jakejjj, I think I might actually agree more with you on some things if I could figure out what you were saying. That is hard when all you seem to post is an insult and lol. What does that accomplish. And if you meant me by " progressive fascist" I am somewhat politically eclectic but not at all a "progressive" as the term is now used or " fascist".

          Mitch,

          First, do you think you also need to " completely defeat" the African Americans too because that is the other main group where there is a great deal of vaccine resistance. And I think you overestimate how much of the vaccine resistance is due just to conservative Republican attitudes. Especially if you rely on misleading polls where some conservatives who are vaccinated will lie and say they never will in order to stay with the tribe while some Democrats who are not getting vaccinated say that have been for same reason. The poll numbers are just not possible and show too much discrepancy to be true if you look at actual data. I would note that a poll cited here a few days ago to " prove " how big a difference there was between Democrats and Republicans also presumably says african Americans were vaccinated at a higher rate than whites. And we 100% know that is not true.

          Second, look at the data now. Super democratic areas that have been highly abiding by restrictions and are heavily vaccinated like sf and marin county and Massachusetts still have a big increase in spread and a high R. If everyone had done the same, we still seem to be unable to stop this variant. Even if you could " completely defeat" the Republicans, you still lose, just slower.

          And talk like " completely defeat" the other side is not only completely unrealistic but scary. That is not how a democracy works.

          And it is all irrelevant now anyeay for the most part. No matter how we got where we are, no matter if Republicans were wrong or were right in past actions, or who is to blame, we are where we are now.

          So deal with where we are and do not focus on what could have been done different in the past or who is at fault.

          And now, with delta here and spreading even where vaccination and compliance with restrictions is highest, recognize that you can do nothing but slow it down and that is likely now a bad idea.

          Maybe you can persuade some of the vaccine holdouts to get vaccinated now, by taking honestly and politely and with a spirit of unity, not with attitude of "completely defeat". There are many conservatives and others who are vaccinate hesitant , not hard line resistant. And that hardline subset are just not going to be vaccinated. And a large part of the hardliners, I think maybe a majority of them, are not really based on conservative ideology. Some it is other types of ideology and others are just nuts. But all motivates by distrust of authority ( somewhat deserved).

          If you fantasize of being able to " completely defeat" the Republicans, institute a left wing dictatorship, and then forcibly vaccinate, I would be strongly opposed but that is irrelevant anyway. Because it is a fantasy..

          Instead, if you really want to help prevent covid deaths , if that is truly your goal, what can still be accomplished is more from understanding and reasoning, not stereotyping and hatred.

          1. jakejjj

            Always fun to see vicious "progressive," rich, smug, Anglo pukes lecture about manners, given what they post here and elsewhere. You hate this country's guts, and the people know it, including my people.

            You have no ideas and no solutions, and now you want me to smile? Fuck you. LOL

            Cordially,

            The Latinx

            p.s.: Racist, do you have any idea just how offensive your kind is with your Latinx bullshit? Nope, you don't. But you sure as hell are going to find out in November '22. You and your "progressive" friends think it's cute to shit on our language and turn us into "gender neutrals," but we don't. And if you think that your racism has gone unnoticed, think again. Just wait.

  3. rational thought

    Just to understand what is making me crazy, go to covidactnow and look at the states and the current Rs they estimate and compare them to the vaccination %age.

    Then just try to adjust for some estimate of natural immunity and adjust the vaccination figure for taking into account total population and for full vaccination, and correlation, etc.

    And see if you can find any sort of formula that explains the disparity in R even taken into account a good deal of randomness. And the problem here is that the spread in Rs just is way too small. Highest R is only about 50% higher than lowest R . Note that any extra randomness should exaggerate the R differences, so that in no way can explain the small R differences.

    As I said earlier, giving a greater weight to natural immunity vs. Vaccine immunity seems to help a bit, but still just cannot explain. And adjusting for latitude a bit also. For example, MA has a fairly high vaccination rate but also has a lot of covid cases so should have decent natural immunity too. And more northern also. Should be one of the lowest Rs but they are 7th on the list.

    In order to try to explain this, all I can come up with is that the effectiveness of vaccine immunity and maybe natural immunity is quite a bit lower than we seem to think, in the context of spreading the virus.

    So consider a place with 50% vaccinated and another 25% unvaccinated but natural immunity, and you assume immunity is 100%. The R0 ( with other conditions fixed) is 4 so current R should be 1.0. And another place has only 30% vaccinated and 20% more from natural so R should be 2.0. So you should be a spread of Rs of two times if those are the high and low outliers or more due to random chance.

    If you do not see that sort of R disparity, most mean that the difference between effective immunity is lower than you thought.

    And only reasonable explanation I can see is that the vaccine and natural immunity is actually not as effective as we thought in storing infection and spread for delta. But we are just not seeing all of that as delta is causing a lot of asymptomatic cases among those with some immunity and they are not getting sick, or getting tested, so we never see those cases. And maybe delta is also causing more asymptomatic cases of those with zero immunity too. So it is just way more contagious but less deadly.

    Note that the actual ifr ( infection fatality rate) is always less than the confirmed ifr ( ifr for confirmed cases which mainly means those who get sick enough to test). If delta is just as deadly for those who get significant symptoms as alpha, but just causes symptoms less, we are not going to notice a lower ifr looking at confirmed cases.

    I really see no other way to explain what is happening.

    And this might be somewhat hopeful that maybe this delta is spreading faster than we think but mostly asymptomatic and is going to run out of vulnerable people sooner than we think.

    I am still not happy that it appears the govt, through this whole crisis and both as administrations, has never really prioritized a national sample testing program. Randomly choose maybe 5000 people every month or so, pay them enough to ensure real high participation ($100?) and test them, checking on things like vaccination status, whether they had covid ( maybe a smaller subsample check for antibodies) , how much and what masks they wear, how much they social distance, etc.

    That might cost 10 million or more a month but that is nothing compared to all we are doing. And maybe then we could find out important things.

    1. Justin

      My stay at home advice is for those who might be afraid they will get sick. Certainly there are some activities (clubbing / dancing all night in a crowd) which are worse than going to a restaurant or shopping. If people are worried enough to want to mandate vaccinations then perhaps they are too worried.

      I work at a plant with almost 2000 other people and have avoided getting sick until I was vaccinated (at work!) in February. I know it’s safe to bad around people all day but I wouldn’t want to be in a large crowd these days.

      Otherwise I agree we will see the disease spread around among unvaccinated all over the world. There isn’t anything to be done about it. I just hope my close friends and family can avoid serious illness.

      1. rational thought

        My personal inclination is to be super cautious but I realize I am being excessive and the decline in life quality is not worth it for a lot of things when risk is so low as vaccinated. I still segregate groceries and, if I use then within three days, I have to wash my hands for 20 seconds after touching the package. I know that is silly but it has become an ingrained habit that I am trying to stop.

        I finally convinced myself to go into a store without a mask, a nice airy bookstore with only a few people, about a month ago when cases were real low. Then they started going up and I reverted to n95 mask all the time. Also shook someone's hand a few weeks ago which felt weird. But made sure to not go anywhere near face until I could thoroughly wash my hand.

        But although against my personal inclination of caution, my best analysis is that as a nation we should stop trying to stop it now.

  4. golack

    Hospitalizations are 97+ % un-vaccinated.
    Caseloads, depends on where your at, probably less of a dramatic difference. Marin County breaks this down, along with a lot of other info--as rational thought pointed out, it would be great if everyone did that.
    https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/surveillance

    And for an primer on the different variants:
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/delta-and-gamma-variants-reign-begins-as-alpha-drops-from-70-to-35-of-cases/
    also reprinted here:
    https://www.wired.com/story/delta-gamma-alpha-covid-19-variants-taking-over-the-united-states/

  5. rational thought

    There is absolutely no way we need a 95% vaccination rate unless you assume the vaccine is largely ineffective in preventing infection ( not just less effective than assumed as I speculate). And this is clearly very unlikely.

    Any scientist who says it this way is either ignorant or, more likely, deliberately being misleading to pump up vaccinations.

    This ignores that plenty of people have natural immunity to some extent from having had covid. And key here is not what % had covid but the % of those who are unvaccinated had covid. If you got to say 85% vaccinated and 10% of remaining 15% already had covid ( and I expect it would be higher in that scenario) I have to think that would be good enough.

    Now I could see maybe that you might need total effective immunity of 95% to stop delta if it turns out that delta R is 20. But that is real real unlikely. But say it is 8 ( unlikely but possible) and the vaccine and natural immunity are both only 50% effective in stopping infection . You need 87.5 % total effective immunity to get R down to 1.0. And then you need vaccination or natural immunity coverage of 93.75% for R of 1.0 ( as only 50% effective) . So if 85% vaccinated and 10 out of 15% unvaccinated had covid, you are there.

    With our current population, hard to see that we could possibly need 95%.

    Now possible that in longer run, if both natural immunity and vaccine immunity wear off, you will need a higher vaccine
    % if want nobody to catch covid again.

    But if , as very likely, immunity wears off for infection but body retains t cell memory so future infection is mild, it is just more realistic to expect that everyone without inherent immunity ( I e. Never catch it without vaccine) is just going to eventually get it and it will become endemic but not super deadly like flu or less.

    No way are we ever going to get 90% to keep getting a vaccine booster every year or two to stop the risk of dying for the very small %age ( under 5%) who somehow managed to never vaccinated or caught covid.

    1. HokieAnnie

      I think you are relying a ton on hoping this is what is as opposed to the fickle finger of fate moving the pandemic back to a more problematic status. We're hearing more about breakthrough cases, not simply folks testing positive but folks getting sick enough to be down for the count for a week or two weeks but not sick enough to be in the ICU.

      I'm not a risk taker by nature, never bought a lottery ticket, I don't play poker etc. but I don't think I'm crazy. I think we should be monitoring breakthrough cases more closely and assuming that vaccinated folks can be carriers. I wonder if the window to knock COVID-19 down for the count in the US has come and gone due to our failure to get enough folks vaccinated before the Delta variant reached the US.

        1. HokieAnnie

          I also care about not getting sick, I think that's important to try to avoid as well, I'm not a youngster and I live with someone whose health is somewhat fragile and around the corner from my 90ish parents. I don't want to be the conduit to my family at higher risk of being in that one percent.

          1. jakejjj

            What aren't you afraid of? Look, if you want to cower in fear, go ahead. The rest of us want our lives back.

      2. rational thought

        Hokie,

        If you are responding to me, not sure where the disagreement is.

        I agree there are breakthrough cases, but not all that many reported. And, yes a few still do get sick, but the vaccine ( and I suspect natural immunity) is better at preventing sickness of any kind than infection, so even a sickness of a week or so is largely prevented. But ICU for vaccinated seems to be real rare. And honestly a small number of vaccinated having breakthrough infection and getting only sick for a week is just not a huge problem.

        And my thinking is even more than what you are saying. Looking at the low disparity in R it seems that there just has to be even more breakthrough cases than most think. And they still can spread to a reduced extent. But that also means that the chance of a single breakthrough case getting actually sick is also even lower than estimated. Only this can explain the data to me.

        And I certainly am not relying on hoping things. Instead I am sort of resigned to defeat if goal is to stop this without it infecting enough to get to herd immunity substantially through natural. I have surrendered to the inevitable.

        And while I argue that best course is to accept and manage that defeat and just allow the spread to get it over with before winter, I do expect that we are still going to fight futilely and impose new restrictions, slow the spread vs my strategy, but lose in the end anyway and end up with even more cases and deaths.

        Personally I expect I am even more risk averse than you. I am a hugely cautious person. Even those who wore masks all the time make fun of how extremely careful I am. Took me a while after being fully vaccinated to convince myself to go in the pool outside with nobody around without a mask. And I still segregate purchased groceries for a few days after buying them. I am pretty ridiculous personally.

        But, although like you I have never ever bought a lottery ticket, or played roulette without an advantage, I do play poker. If you are risk averse as I am and thus do not like to gamble, you can probably be a small time winner in low level poker.

        I have played craps and roulette only when I got a fun book coupon for it in Vegas so the odds were in my favor. Word to the wise. If you have a fun book coupon for a bet $5 win $ 7 on even money bets, put in on " don't pass" and then use your turn to roll the dice and manage to win by not passing, and there are others who are betting thousands to pass, you are taking a chance at getting beat up.

        1. HokieAnnie

          I was replying to you, noting that my sense of your post as a hope that this is what is going on as opposed being more confident.

          My gut reaction is that there is far more spread and illness among the vaccinated than is being tracked because the emphasis was on selling the vaccine as a way to avoid covid when it appears it's more of a way to mange covid.

          I think we rushed to "new normal" hoping we had done good enough but now it's painfully apparent that nope we haven't. I think we still should be taking precautions like wearing masks inside public places and where we don't know of folks are vaccinated. Also I think we should continue to push telework for jobs that don't need to be in person.

          I've still not eaten in a restaurant since early March 2020 nor have I been in my office since. I do go grocery shopping and hit the garden center/hardware stores and do take out but other than that I'm not back to 2019.

          I really, really hope that we move in a direction where we respect the risks and allow those want to protect the vulnerable like kids under 12 the space to be able to do so.

          1. rational thought

            Hokie,

            I think we agree on a lot but not on some things.

            Yes, my analysis is based on some guesses and assumptions and I am certainly not confident. But I just cannot think of any sort of possibility that explains what we are seeing. Whar throws me is you characterizing my position as based on a " hope" which it is not. It is really a resignation to a bad reality and a willingness to consider what the best strategy will be when you accept you have lost the hopeful battle. My hope is that I am wrong and spades of grey is right and cases will start going down by next week. Hell, I would be overjoyed if they just started to flatten out in a month. But that hope is not my expectation.

            Where we seem to differ is what the best strategy is, at least if asking what is best for overall community. Since I think that it is inevitable that we are going to get enough more cases until natural immunity is high enough to get to herd immunity, only real issue is when. And better if the infections stay as high as they can without overwhelming hospitals and get through it before winter..

            I did say maybe keep restrictions for a few weeks to allow holdouts to get vaccinated. But then let it rip.

            Going back to harsh restrictions and masking etc..is based on a hope that it will work. And I think it will not..fighting that battle with delta and losing will be worse in the end than giving up.

            Now for you personally maybe staying real careful is best, if you consider the risks high enough to outweigh personal costs. But not for overall society as not everyone thinks like that and they never will. And I condemn neither side there.

            Where maybe I am more hopeful is that I think result if we let it spread is not as bad as many think. It seems fairly clear that, even if immunity does wear off and those vaccinated or with natural immunity get covid, that thr immune system will have enough familiarity that risk of serious disease will still be lower. And I expect vaccine boosters to be available by fall.

            And I think many doomsayers are just ignoring the facts that the total infections are a multiple higher than confirmed infections. So once you consider vaccinated and all those who have actually had covid, we have surely gone through the worst already and more even in worst case.

          2. jakejjj

            "I think we still should be taking precautions like wearing masks inside public places and where we don't know of folks are vaccinated."

            So much for science, eh Karen? We vaxxed normals laugh at you and your fear. LOL

          3. Spadesofgrey

            Wearing masks isn't going to help and is counterproductive in high vax areas. In the summer, with low cases, masks are useless.

      3. iamr4man

        Regarding breakthrough cases, I wonder to what extent such cases are in line with the various vaccine efficacies and if they are above that, how much more than expected they are.

  6. rational thought

    Thanks for another interesting post with a link. Although I sometimes dispute some conclusions of studies you post or question their biases, and often think you read too much into them and exaggerate what they mean, I surely do appreciate the extra info.

    Although I disagree with you a lot and I think have a different ideological perspective and bias, you do seem like someone who is trying to understand this and figure out what is best. And not just locked into a rigid ideological position impervious to new info or an argument you had not considered.

    I do think those with different political perspectives need to start taking to one another rather than just yelling at each other..

    On this link, I do see one very interesting thing which is just what I expected. The delta variant is not as effective as evading the vaccine as gamma but more infectious than gamma for unvaccinated. And gamma is spreading relatively more among communities with higher vaccination rates and delta in ones with lower. I just have not heard this type of thing discussed more and it needs to be.

    But I would have liked some thought into breaking out the unvaccinated into those with natural immunity and those with none. Seems to me that vaccinated and those with natural immunity, while different, should resemble each other more than those with no immunity. So does delta target those with natural immunity or those with none more ( re advantage in transmissibility). I would like to know that..

    And looking at the uk graph, I noticed the same thing that I have in marin county and others about alpha. Yes, as delta becomes dominant it drives out alpha but then it seems alpha hangs on at lower levels. In contrast to original strain which is basically extinct now. Alpha went down fast but that decline slowed and seems to level off at 10% or so

    Is there some subset of the population with some characteristics where alpha had an advantage over delta?

  7. jakejjj

    I see that Xiden tail-waggin' veep-ette has gone to the doctor. I hope someone has told her that getting screwed by the guy won't affect the viroids. LOL

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