Out of boredom, I looked for a COVID-19 chart that I hadn't used before. Here it is: the number of vaccine doses administered over the past six months. It's going down everywhere since so many people have already been vaccinated, but the United States is in a league of its own. Even though our vaccination rate was already one of the lowest among our peers, we're also declining faster than any of them. What a bunch of idiots we are.
Starting to see data interpreted by experts that Omicron will likely significantly prolong the pandemic. We're not getting through this and our problems can't be fixed.
I think you meant to say starting to see experts interpreting the data that Omicron will...
Nope. It won't do a thing. Weak as it is, it is the end game.
As Spadesofgrey blindly walks into a wall.
Nigh. This is the natural endgame. Your walking in a wall of irrelevance.
As wrong as Spades is about many things, he is not necessarily wrong about this. Not necessarily right, either.
Yes. I don't want to be all "Spadesofgrey" here, but do we know much about the severity of this variant. Because if it is very mild, this could turn into a blessing in disguise. (That said, everyone should still get vaccinated. I have a booster scheduled for next Tuesday.)
The good news is that the vaccines with the third shot (booster) seem to offer a lot of protection against the Omicron variant. The bad news is that vaccine uptake in the overall USA is, as Keven notes, going down.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/omicron-threat-may-be-countered-with-extra-dose-of-covid-vaccine
My own belief, often expressed, is that it is time to exclude those who are unvaccinated by choice from non-essential activities. Austria is leading the way by having what is essentially a lockdown of the unvaccinated which is paving the way for the rest of us to return to normal life. Blue states and cities should follow suit.
Agree. The large pool of unvaccinated allows mutations to accumulate and some of those will turn out be more deadly in many ways. Minimizing interactions between the vaccinated vs unvaccinated would seem to isolate bad mutations to the group that volunteers to expose themselves, rather than protect themselves.
We're all gonna die! Stay home forever! Panic constantly!
Or get vaccinated and make the voluntarily unvaccinated stay home so the rest of us can enjoy a more normal life.
I'm on board with this. As a leftie myself, I'm just sick of so many lefties thinking that expressing the absolute most dire predictions about COVID somehow signals their virtue.
Because they really aren't "lefties"????
Because they are an annoying group of people.
Fuck you. You think I want this? You think I give a flying fuck how I am percieved? I HAVE A KID TOO YOUNG TO BE VACCINATED. HOW FUCKING DARE YOU THINK I DON'T WANT THIS DONE?
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
+1000
It would help if your uncle would get vaxxed.
How much of this effect is an artifact of having access to vaccines early? Steepest curve for vaccine administration in the US was more than 6 months ago. Steepest curve for many other countries was less than 6 months ago.
Daily vaccine doses in US have been on an upward swing since mid-July. We're now about 3x the July low, though still only about 40% of our April peak.
I second this.
I’d like to see a chart comparing cases, hospitalizations, and deaths for vaccinated vs unvaccinated people.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
Thank you.
Excellent article. I have really been looking for something like this. It's amazing how hard it is to get fundamental information about COVID at this point. This article basically confirms what I have been thinking but something that no one seems to want to say outright.
If you are vaccinated, stop worrying! For you COVID is like a bad flu bug going around. Are you worried about dying of the flu? Then don't worry about dying from COVID.
A bad flu is still bad though. I had to rush off in the wee hours of the night to help my mom get to the hospital because my dad collapsed on the floor, couldn't get up and we had the ambulance get him to the hospital. He had influenza A despite having gotten his flu shot because the year shot doesn't always match up well to what ends up floating around in a given season. Me? I had the flu about 25 years ago and I was so sick I could barely crawl off the couch for two weeks and couldn't get back to my normal exercise routine for over a month.
Instead of "it's just the flu" we should take the flu seriously , get flu shots each fall, do common sense preventatives to avoid getting it, avoid spreading it. Heck maybe the work from home idea should become a permanent feature when flu is widespread in a given area.
As for COVID the worry warts worry for good cause (within reason of course!) because we've been given all clear/everything is now okay announcement so many times before and a new variant crops up to delay the end once again. I'll tamp down my worry when we finally get our infection rates down to far lower levels.
I've caught the flu many times in my life. In fact I had it a few weeks ago (not COVID, I tested negative). Sometimes it's rough. Sometimes it's just annoying. It always sucks.
HOWEVER, I don't go around thinking I'm going to die. I don't stay home and avoid doing the things that make life worthwhile. I am saying if you are vaccinated, your fear level should be about the same as it would be during a bad flu season. At any point you might get the flu and die. Sure, it's possible. But you probably won't die so, to quote the world's worst person, don't let it dominate your life. That's what I'm saying. Not that the risk is 0. The risk is never 0. Just that the risk is at the level of risk you are used to living with when it comes to the flu, car accidents, etc.
If you stay vaccinated, you can tamp down your worry levels now.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/americans-are-losing-sight-endgame/619916/
I think this article did a good job laying out what.our (realistic) expectations should be.
I’d like to see a map of county-level relative-risk data for fully-vaccinated, mask-in-public vs. no-mask, unvaccinated, for hospitalization and death.
It’s a personal choice… being an idiot.
When Colin Powell died from Covid after being vaccinated and getting a break through case, no one cared. I guess there are vulnerable people getting sick and some dying every day even though they are vaccinated. No one cares. That is a tragedy. I’ll reserve my compassion and sympathy for them. The suffering and death of unvaccinated seems less like tragedy and more like justice.
Off topic but hopefully a sign of things to come.
“A 50-foot-tall Christmas tree caught fire outside the Fox News headquarters in New York City early on Wednesday, prompting a race to extinguish it and leading to one arrest.”
If this was a “protest” of Fox News, I think it’s a righteous act. Wait… was Mr. Drum in NYC last night? I’ll help with legal fees!
More likely, the War on Christmas is coming from inside the house!
The Great FOXnews Tower Christmas Tree Fire is the 21st Century Reichstag Arson.
It wasn't really a tree. It was a metal armature covered with boughs--FAUX!
Within your list of countries -- strange why you only include White European + Canada + US -- Portugal has the highest vaccination rate (88% fully vaccinated, 89% partially or fully vaccinated) but its current per-million daily new case rate is only just slightly below that of the US and it's rapidly going up.
A friend of mine posed a similar riddle regarding Texas' low vaccination rate but low daily case rate, compared to the surging number of cases in the Northeastern part of the US.
It appears to be a case where, since Delta, vaccination doesn't protect you all that well from infection but it does spectacularly well from preventing death and serious illness.
Greg Abbott is a chef of accountancy.
but its current per-million daily new case rate is only just slightly below that of the US and it's rapidly going up.
Unlike deaths from covid, which we can expect high income countries to all have a reasonable handle on, the "case rate" is entirely dependant on a country's testing capacity, methods and reporting practices. These vary widely.
Portugal's 7-day daily death average is less than half that of the US.
I spend very little time looking at case rates, and I believe I'm right to do so. The data are simply too fuzzy.
Besides that, case count is irrelevant. As Omincron shows, weaker more infectious variants will lead to a greater separation of "cases" and deaths. The Spanish flu was the same way in 1919. States would be wise to disband testing this spring. It's a waste.
In fairness, I’m pretty sure that Portuguese are white Europeans. But, apart from that, I think you make a good point.
Err, with a bunch of Anatolian genetic diversity.
Sorry, but 74% of adults are vaccinated and 81% have one shot. About 80% of whites are fully vaxxed. You forgetting time lags.
https://scitechdaily.com/co...
A discovery by researchers at the Texas A&M College of Medicine could lead to new therapies to prevent the virus from proliferating in the human body.
The immune system is a complex network of cells and proteins that is designed to fight off infection and disease, especially those like the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, that can cause numerous issues in the human body. But many individuals are still at risk of being infected with the coronavirus, letting it replicate in the body and further transmitting to other individuals.
The underlying mechanism of how SARS-CoV-2 escapes from the immune system has been poorly understood. However, researchers from the Texas A&M University College of Medicine and Hokkaido University have recently discovered a major mechanism that explains how SARS-CoV-2 can escape from the immune system and replicate in the human body. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
“We found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus carries a suppressive gene that acts to inhibit a human gene in the immune system that is essential for destroying infected cells,” said Dr. Koichi Kobayashi, adjunct professor at the College of Medicine and lead author of the paper.
Naturally, the cells in a human’s immune system are able to control virus infection by destroying infected cells so that the virus cannot be replicated. The gene that is essential in executing this process, called NLRC5, regulates major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I genes, which are genes that create a pathway that is vital in providing antiviral immunity. Kobayashi and his colleagues discovered this in 2012.
“During infection, the amount and activity of NLRC5 gene become augmented in order to boost our ability of eradication of viruses,” Kobayashi said. “We discovered that the reason why SARS-CoV-2 can replicate so easily is because the virus carries a suppressive gene, called ORF6, that acts to inhibit the function of NLRC5, thus inhibiting the MHC class I pathway as well.”
Kobayashi, who holds a joint appointment as a professor at Hokkaido University in Japan, collaborated with Paul de Figueiredo, associate professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology at the College of Medicine, on this paper.
Kobayashi and his team’s discovery shed light on the mechanism to how SARS-CoV-2 can replicate in the human body and can potentially lead to the development of new therapeutics to prevent the coronavirus from escaping the immune system and replicating in the body.
Although the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, can lower an individual’s chance of contracting the virus, there is currently no permanent therapy that can entirely prevent a human from contracting SARS-CoV-2.
“We hope that this new discovery will allow us to develop a new drug that can block this gene so our immune system will be able to fight off the coronavirus for good,” de Figueiredo said.
Reference: “SARS-CoV-2 inhibits induction of the MHC class I pathway by targeting the STAT1-IRF1-NLRC5 axis” by Ji-Seung Yoo, Michihito Sasaki, Steven X. Cho, Yusuke Kasuga, Baohui Zhu, Ryota Ouda, Yasuko Orba, Paul de Figueiredo, Hirofumi Sawa and Koichi S. Kobayashi, 15 November 2021, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26910-8
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Natural immunity stinks as does the Pfizer vaccine
Now, I'm sure it will be a long time before we develop a medicine that does this but blocking the pathway for a coronavirus to evade protection? Yeah, this could be THE game changer (or not)
"Natural immunity stinks as does the Pfizer vaccine"
Actually, the Pfizer (and Moderna) vaccines are the most effective COVID-19 vaccines so far, based on the published literature. And both of these vaccines are more protective against infection and illness than natural infection by a wide margin.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm
Lolz, hope. Natural immunity is the best. You need a eye gouged out. Stop posting and lying.
I think this is the legacy of chickenpox parties. Natural immunity from getting cp from a relative or classmate, up thru the mid90s introduction of the cp vaxxx, was effective. But COVID19 isn't chicken pox. & even those who were born too soon for the cp vaxxx & acquired immunity from exposure still need the shingles vaxxx after age 50.
Everything you wrote in that article is true about the rhinovirus as well. It's how virus's survive in the long run as the "common cold" . Your a ignorant stooge.
Spadesofgrey calling Spadesofgrey an "ignorant stooge". Finally some self-realization.
Fun fact: US Representative Louie ("the Stupidest Man in Congress") Gohmert is a graduate of Texas A&M University.
KD is right, overall vaccination levels have gone down nationwaide
But here in NC? It's the opposite
https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard/vaccinations
As noted in the chart at the bottom vaccination numbers have gone up to over 600K per week since the news of Omicron came out. Now, some of these are previously un-vaccinated children which is fine.
But our over 65 crowd is heavily vaccinated.
The reluctance to vaccines is diminishing.
This is an excellent point. There's really a clear divide between heavily Republican area and the rest of the country. My guess is that in Blue states and cities people are getting all three shots; and those who are hesitant to get the booster are at least amenable to doing so with some encouragement.
Again, it's time for places who want to get back to normal without suffering horrific death and illnesses to exclude the voluntarily unvaccinated for non-essential activities. Why should the rest of us suffer because Republicans want to keep Covid-19 going until after 2024? Screw them!
Mitch-
The republican gig was up when kids got involved in the illness. See Special Newbs post above about his/her child who is less than 5 years old.
There's way too much vitriol on both sides and has been since Trump was president regarding the pandemic.
But you take a mom in a MAGA hat and threaten her child with an illness and that Mom gets her child vaccinated. Delta started infecting younger victims. Omicron in South Africa made them part and parcel of the pandemic. THAT changed everything.
I agree wholeheartedly with the lock down the unvaccinated mantra expressed by you and countries like Germany. Vaccines work, far better than post infection immunity does. There are differences between vaccines, as there should be but Pfizer's seems to be weaker. Keep in mind that Pfizer is very careful about their wording. They intertwince the word booster with 3rd shot because Pfizer vaccine is much weaker than Moderna's. Moderna's booster is half strength - Pfizers is almost a full strength shot. Israel is now pushing round 4 of Pfizer.
But a lock down of the unvaccinated should end all remaining resistance to vaccinations.
My concern right now is that world wide COVID is still circulating and expanding and the more it ping pongs around the more chances we have of future mutations. When I hear scientists saying things like "We never expected to see this many mutations so quickly" - I have to admit it kinda makes me wonder just why ANYONE would be so uncaring as to not get vaccinated.
The problem is the Republican leaders are cynical and cold blooded. They regard the MAGA base as cannon fodder 2ho can keep the pandemic going until 2025. MAGA moms seems to genuinely believe the antivax idiocy. Those MAGA moms aren’t going to get their kids vaccinated because they “know” that that the virus is less dangerous than the vaccines.
The only path to safety for people like ourselves is to lockdown the voluntarily unvaccinated. Don’t let them travel, don’t let them on public transport or allow them in restaurants. We must exclude that crazy minority from all nonessential activities. There’s no other way and we need to do this before it’s too late.
Mitch
One of the problems with COVID is that we tend to think of it as the flu - which requires ANNUAL action. We aren't there yet.
If you define fully vaccinated as being given a complete regimen of shot(s) - and thats it - then Kevins chart makes sense. But if you take into account immunity waning and we need to have shots every 5 to 6 months then the chart shows a very dangerous response.
I think the correct way to look at this - right now - is to assume immunity only lasts 6 months - then - redo the chart to see who is now fully vaccinated. THAT is where Kevin's codicil in the story comes into play:
"Even though our vaccination rate was already one of the lowest among our peers,****** we're also declining faster than any of them. ******
The world needs to come to grips with the fact that this was a "novel" virus - something new. We weren't gonna solve it in a year, or with one or two shots. We were LUCKY that the existing vaccines worked (although less effectively) against DELTA. They made the conscious decision to KEEP the formula the same for DELTA, but warned of future mutations that would make their vaccines even LESS effective. Now they are tweaking their vaccines and/or boosters.
I believe that anyone who got vaccinated between Jan and July (which, if memory serves is the BULK of our vaccinated) then you should now be considered UNvaccinated for the purposes of charting our progress or lack thereof. That puts us with the bulk of the population having little to no protection against Omicron. The vaccine makers are admitting thats where we are at by the fact they are tweaking their formulas accordingly
Oh, and one more point that will come into play over the next few months.
I am hoping to see some sort of consistency in the reporting, and the definitions
Fully vaccinated should mean that the person is protected. If that means 2 shots in Jan through June AND A booster g=between Sept and today? Then THAT should be considered FULLY vaxxed
ANYONE who got vaccinated back in January and thinks they are DONE should be considered to have no protection
Right now, yes, we need to have the third shot. But that’s because of the amount of transmission and the fact that there are many countries, South Africa, the USA, England, and India which essentially encourage transmission and encourage prevalence of the virus on the theory espoused by “experts” like Charles Atlas who essentially says to let the virus run its course (much like the Black Plague, which, having killed about half of Europe’s population, seems to have run out of hosts. It may be the case that this have deteriorated to the point where the best we can hope for is that Covid-19 will become epidemic like the flu.
For the moment, the vaccines seem to still work (particularly with the third shot) but if we do nothing to stop the spread of the virus, it is only a matter of time until there is a variant which can defeat the vaccines. The sane people of the world need to change course; we can no longer recognize a “freedom” to infect others. The unvaccinated must be barred from travel, from public places, and from all nonessential activities.
In fact, we did solve it with two shots. The shots worked. The world could have returned to normal but we encouraged the development of variants by pretending that the right to be unvaccinated and spread the virus was some kind of basic human right. We continued to allow unvaccinated people to travel more or less freely which meant that Delta started in one country that worships the virus, spread to England (which has consistently had the policy of “taking it on the chin” and then reopening), and from there to everywhere else. We unvaccinated people had not been permitted to travel, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
It is our social organization that has let us down, not the vaccines. The voluntarily unvaccinated must be excluded from all nonessential activities. There is no other way to stop the transmission and thus the development of every more numerous and ever more virulent variants.
At SOME POINT, Mitch we will have to say those who got vaccinated x number of months ago are no longer considered vaccinated (same goes for post infection immunity)
At some point, one of the variants will completely escape the vaccines and we will be back to zero.
Would be nice to see the contents of: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/05/covid-vaccine-demand-omicron/ which is from two days ago and suggests a rise in vaccination…
The key paragraph:
Thanks.
I question that chart. There should at least be a bump for people getting boosters. Oh wait that is a trailing 6 month graph which would be smoothed to the point of uselessness. Either cumulative or past 7 days would be way more informative than this muddled middle ground which likely just shows the US got off to a fast start in a time period that is not included in that dataset.
It's a really weird chart. If you just Google "covid vaccination rate" they've got a pretty decent interactive chart. If select "new" and "all regions" under the United Status you'll see that our vaccination rate started strong, tapered off a lot in late May and was very low over the summer. Then it picked up in September and has been on a slight upward trajectory since then.
Geordie
KD pointed out the RATE of decline is faster here than the rest of the world which is absolutely true.
Dumbing down and "faux" are truly working. Ah, less population, fewer repulsive voters, a bit of a coup. Also idiocy.
5-11 year old vaccination rates by zip code in my county range from 89.2% to 10%.
You mean, what a bunch of idiots Republicans/conservatives are.
Just after I have been commenting on kevin seeming to look for the most unusual crappy statistics to show that the USA is doing worse than Europe, etc. , he appears to again go out of his way to prove me right.
As pointed out above , this is a graph of trailing 6 month average. So what the change in the line over the short period kevin picks out actually shows is just the difference in the number of vaccinations per day six months ago vs the number today. If more people were being vaccinated each day six months ago than today , the graph will show a declining line , even if currently vaccinations are increasing.
Since the USA rolled out their vaccinations quicker the relative numbers of vaccinations six months ago affect the line as much as today . So using the slope of the line to try to demonstrate a point that our vaccination numbers are getting comparatively worse is just ridiculous and kevin should know better than that .
He is either deliberately trying to mislead or, more likely, is so devoted to his point of view that he jumps on anything he sees that seems to support it and rejects anything that contradicts it without any real thinking of whether it makes sense .
Pick a somewhat different starting point, say use a 4 month trailing average , so starting point is when many European countries were more at vaccination peak and USA was lower, and the slope of those lines will be the opposite .
Just about the worse trash post yet by kevin.
I do agree that a six-month trailing average seems to have been selected to confirm a bias on the part of our erstwhile esteemed pundit, but do you mean to suggest the weeks in between those two points don't affect the result? If that were indeed the case, then the spike example I show in https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13nmgPiEv-bR872fSopNHaHfdPxioa6q0eHNCTkN4ha0/edit?usp=sharing for when people were confused about the effect on a 7-day trailing average would have suggested the effect lasted only one day.
I meant the slope of the line and not the absolute number ( which i think you know) . And the slope for one day ( or change in number for one day, is difference in number vaccinated last day vs 6 months before. All the numbers in between are irrelevant.
And the slope of the line does NOT indicate that vaccinations are going down in recent weeks, they have been increasing. It is just that the high numbers from 6 months prior keep dropping off .
We use 7 day average to smooth daily reporting inconsistencies. But you would not use a one day change in that 7 day average to indicate a big thing just in last day when you know the absolute numbers are different at beginning and end periods.
Generally trying to use an x day average as evidence of trends for a shorter period than those x days is greatly subject to such distortion. Using it to indicate trends over a period longer than the averaging period is more proper.
Like I said, use a shorter averaging period, where beginning point is when European vaccinations were near peak and USA was low and you likely can show the same period kevin shows and have usa line going up and Europe down.
And re prior discussion on that post re median incomes of countries, I think I figured out that probably kevin was using equivalized household median income. I did find one chart showing Canada on top but different year searching for that , but, when you click on the link to wiki it goes to another year which had usa on top. But some such charts with Canada on top existed.
Equivalized household income is an eu invention which is a bit strange . Instead of just using per capita income, it uses household income and then weights the denominator by counting the 2nd and subsequent adults ( anyone 14+) as .5 of a person and anyone under 14 as .3 of a person.
I understand the concept but seems way too simplified and the weights seem off to me . .5 for 2nd person seems a bit too low for true adults, especially if not married and have seperate bedrooms and mostly sepertate lives ..and same weight for each subsequent person takes no account of differences.
Plus , if people could improve their life by forming larger households, they would. When a teenager moves out to their own place , the net standard of living of family may decline vs. Staying home . But they are not " better off" . If nation a is structured to make it financially difficult to allow people to live in seperate households, a measure showing their income as higher is wrong.
We have treated vaccinations like flu shots
We are talking annual (cumulative) and just dividing it into the population as whole go give us and annualized rate
This is mathematically correct but misses the point
All immunity dies off. (long time immunity varies from individual to individual)
If we KNOW the vaccine immunity begins to wane then we should be re-doubling our efforts every 6 months to get immunity up there and staying there.
So the vaccination rate should only be measured against 6 months? It would be helpful to know who has been fully vaccinated AND boosted. THAT would be the true indication of the protection level of Americans.
Depending upon your nomenclature I would include 3rd shots IN with boosters. Keep in mind Pfizers 3rd and 4th shot in Israel are almost identical to shot #1 and #2. Whereas Moderna is 50% the strength of the initial shots
If breakthrough infection with Omicron are very prevalent as they suspect they will be we may have to reset this in a couple of months
We are dealing with humans each having individual reactions to infection, exposure, developing long term memory resistance to infection and all of THIS is in response to a viral infection that is changing - and rapidly
Way too many variables