Via David Leonhardt at the New York Times, here's the rate of new COVID-19 cases by county:
We could be crushing COVID-19 completely. We have the technology. The main thing stopping us is vaccine skepticism, primarily among conservatives, which conservative politicians and conservative media refuse to do anything about. The contempt they're showing for their own constituents is almost beyond belief.
Accumulating data indicate that most of us who've gotten both of our shots are so far protected against "original" COVID and against Delta.
Yes, "most" and "so far" are conditional terms, because the possibility exists that not all of us are fully protected against Delta. So, as long as there are Covid-spreading vaccine-resisting fools among us, mask wearing and social distancing and plain old common sense are still wise behavior, as will be getting a booster shot when those become available.
Meanwhile, don't forget the coronavirus will almost certainly evolve into yet other strains, and those might be resistant to the vaccines we more prudent people procured at our earliest possible opportunities. For sure, every person who hasn't gotten vaccinated is a walking, talking, breathing Petri dish forming a convenient location for new varieties.
Put another way: Covid ain't over until it's over.
Agreed that the unvaccinated need to get it together and get their shots, but your speculations about what might happen with the virus in the future are of no particular value. Personally I think the vaccinated should return to normal pre-Covid activities both for their own personal mental health, and to demonstrate to the vaccine hesitant that being vaccinated has its privileges. Currently infection rates are low and dropping and the vaccinated are, for all intents and purposes, not getting sick and not spreading the virus. Continuing to make a big show about mask wearing and social distancing given all that really is the kind of virtue signaling the right wingers were talking about last year. Let's not make them right.
Put another way--if you are vaccinated Covid is over till further notice.
For about 4,000 people in the US who were hospitalized with breakthrough infections (and the perhaps 10,000 who got breakthrough covid-19), covid-19 was apparently not over even after being fully vaccinated:
- https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html
While delta is growing and gamma apparently lurking, if there are high levels of new infections in a region, even vaccinated people need to take precautions.
Covid-19 is by no means over and will not be over until we get much better control on new infections than we have now.
I disagree very much. Sure I'm vaccinated as is my high risk sibling and my 90ish parents who live nearby and need my help a lot. BUT the risk that they are in that small but growing percentage of unlucky folks? I'd never forgive myself if I brought COVID home as a symptomless carrier.
A two-fold decrease in case rate for a two-and-half fold increase in vaccination rate. Given the exponential growth of infections, the difference should grow more stark with time.
I think the remaining question is: How long will it be until natural vaccinations (getting sick from the virus) achieves herd immunity?
In a county that is 25% vaccinated, another 25% of the population has already gotten sick. At an R0 of 3 with no defenses, this gives us an R0 of about 1.5. If I remember correctly, it takes less than a week for one sick person to reinfect others. So we should see new cases increasing about 50% per week.
Looks like it should take another 3 to 4 months to achieve herd immunity in the most conservative counties at which point we should be seeing thousands of new cases per 100K per week.
Given that the GOP base tends to live in rural communities (not disease friendly big cities), it may take longer for those numbers to climb.
I also suspect there may be more herd immunity out there than we know about. This is just based on personal "data" - but in January 2020 a nasty bug swept through my wife's office. Her company runs a lot of corporate events and has crossover with the now infamous super-spreader Biogen event in Boston. About half her office got sick - all bad colds with coughing. Nobody got tested since that wasn't an option or even considered. I didn't catch it from my wife which is odd since we usually would trade cold/flus quite consistently.
There might be more but, paradoxically, there might be less than people are counting on depending on the degree and duration of the natural immunity. Apparently there will be large parts of the world that lack the resources or the desire to suppress the Covid-19 virus. That’s also true domestically as we see regions of our country which have no interest in suppressing the pandemic.
The assumption is that the combination of widespread vaccinations combined with the huge number of people who survived the virus will generally deprive the virus of hosts (with vaccinated people doing most of the depriving in blue states and previously infected people doing the heavy lifting in red states). But this only makes sense if the natural immunity lasts long enough. If it doesn’t, we’re all screwed. Some more than others, no doubt. But we’re all screwed.
I've read that having been infected confers some immunity, but not as much as the two-dose vaccines, and I haven't heard anything about how those with natural immunity are responding to the new variants. Maybe I'm not watching the right programs, but I haven't heard Fauci or other health authorities talk a lot about that and I'm sure there are a lot of unvaccinated people out there who are putting it off becuase they had Covid last year, recovered, and think they're in the clear.
I think that’s a fair assessment. I haven’t heard anything yet about the duration of natural immunity or whether it is possible for those people to be reinfected. If it’s not effective against the new variants or if it wears off quickly, we’re looking at another brutal winter, particularly if we don’t stop movement of unvaccinated people in and out of red states and ban super spreader events.
A lot of people (including me) got bad colds in early 2020. There is no evidence that this was Covid and I think it's wishful thinking to think otherwise.
I think we're all understandably hoping society will enjoy substantial protection from the natural immunity conveyed by widespread infection (and why not, we certainly paid a heavy enough price), and, while no doubt we'll get some help from that front, I'm increasingly pessimistic this this will have a largescale beneficial effect. One datapoint would be the UK. That country has apparently suffered as many covid deaths proportionately as the United States, which would apply a similar level of coronavirus endemicity. But cases now are apparently exploding again because of the delta variant. I fear that's America a few weeks down the line. Or just look at the numbers. Something like 35 million Americans have been diagnosed with a coronavirus infection. Even if that's only half the actual number, that would still indicate only about 22% of the population would have developed antibodies. If, say, fully half of those people no longer possess sufficient antibodies (and the delta variant could be a critical factor here), we're down to a bit more than a 10% of the population. But likely at least half of these in turn will have been vaccinated. Which would mean at best the country only gets a "bump" of an additional 5% beyond our vaccination numbers.
Sure, it's possible the number of Americans infected is larger. Could it be 100 million? 140 million? We shall see. Or maybe "natural" immunity lasts longer. But I think there's substantial evidence to suggest virus-induced immunity isn't going to save our bacon, at least without another large-scale wave or two. Hope I'm wrong.
"The contempt they're showing for their own constituents is almost beyond belief."
If you think your voters (the so-called "base") are idiots you don't respect them. That is all.
Of course *they* -- including Trump himself -- all get vaccinated. But they won't go out of their way to recommend it to their supporters or denounce the anti-vax propaganda on networks like Fox and OAN. It is really a phenomenal level of contempt.
https://jabberwocking.com/how-many-people-will-die-because-of-the-jj-fiasco/
Eight datapoints on the chart. Nine if one includes overall. There are how many counties in the United States? I followed the link - the closest to Kevin's chart is a bar chart, which, helpfully, includes data values.
% Vaccinated New Cases per 100,000
0-30 5.6
30-35 4.3
35-40 3.2
40-45 2.8
45-50 2.7
50-55 2.4
55-60 2.4
60+ 2.1
First and foremost, the number of new cases per 100,000 is completely different between what Kevin has provided and what the bar chart in the NYT article shows. Also, there is no "25%" in the NYT article, only a 0-30% vaccinated. And 60% vaccinated is actually 60% and higher (presumably 60-100 although I doubt anywhere is at 100).
So, what is the source of the disconnect? Did I miss something in the NYT article or has Kevin rather seriously botched his conversion? What the NYT is reporting is not discrete data points but ranges. That should not have been put into a line chart as Kevin has done.
Interestingly enough, the NYT article has a scatter plot of percent voted for Biden vs vaccination (full) percentage. So it is clear the author had all the county data at his disposal. So why not a scatter plot of full vaccination percentage and new case rate rather than the distillation?
The charts match up. Kevin plotted points at midpoints of Leonhardt's ranges, with an arbitrary decision about where to spot the high and low extremes. And he made it cases per week instead of per day. I agree the representation is not superior.
Just to note, the CDC likes to report data and guidelines on a per week bases, and not a 7 day trailing average per day. Different "dashboards" may also present data differently--which is always fun.
The mid-point of 0-30 is 25? And at that point on the x-axis Kevin has what appears to be something very close to 40, where the NYT bar chart has 5.6. Both labeled as per 100,000. Etc etc.
0-30 would be one of the extremes I mentioned. It's reasonable enough to judge that few counties have vaccination rates below 25%, so around 25 would be a good place for that point.
The day versus week thing is in the charts' text, although in places one might easily miss. 5.6 daily is about 40 weekly.
Tack.
Its win/win for them. They can ride the outrage wave now then blame Biden when people start dying. And Team Trump can leak more stories to Maggie making sure their self-serving press releases get released in the NTY's.
It's not like their constituents will punish them for it.
We have to keep in mind how crank psychology works. Last year Donald Trump campaigned against the virus, he was against it's very existence, that's how against it he was. This was highly motivating to the low information personality.
They weren't even going to give it the respect of acknowledging it's reality.
This is how you cut a guy dead, --where if you stoop to dealing with the thing, then you're stuck with it.
For conservative politicians if you give a guy the respect of being able to believe in his own abusiveness you've earned his vote.
Besides conservative politicians and media I would add Trumpian church leaders.
If we want to get the “skeptics” vaccinated I suggest starting the conspiracy theory that liberals are deliberately sowing the seeds of doubt in Trump’s great vaccine so that more Trump Republicans will die and Democrats will win in close races. So if they want to stick it to the liberals they can get the vaccine.
Well, you also have the 5% of mostly white new age hippies that are the true "anti-vaxxers" in political sense. Go back to the 19th century socialist movement(which had several variants themselves). Just about all of them hated vaccines made by raw materials that made machines.
The amount of "conservatives" that oppose vaccines is far less than you think because many of the people opposing them aren't "really" conservative. They are either partisan political hacks inside the Republican parties or paleo-lefitsts who simply don't like modern "left wing" movements because they feel their con jobs of corporate multi-culturalism. This distortion is something pretty damning.
So Mississippi and Alabama are full of new age hippies? Who knew?
Nope, but they are full of blacks and religious zionism within their social substructure that refuse vaccines for one thing or another.
Sorry Kevin, I don't agree. Total cases are still slowly trending down and we are reaching a point where it gets tough to drive numbers down much more than a infectious variant. Covid is simply over. Maybe it comes back this fall, but trying to arm flail over a few cluster outbreaks around small towns is bad reporting. Population density is so low in these areas which ironically why it is spreading. Compare that to black urban areas protected by White's pushing toward of 77% of 18+ with at least one shot. Despite the black man's own vaccine follies.
I think you are forgetting several factors about these surges, but what is most laughable is you declaring that COVID is "simply over".
Perhaps we should use your front yard to do triage for new cases....
There are two geographic clusters -- Nevada+Utah, and Missouri+Oklahoma+Arkansas -- where COVID-19 infections are now well into a new wave. CDC's most current sequencing data suggests that these areas are where Delta is now the dominant mutant.
July 4th weekend might be the impetus of the next national wave. America's about to conduct an ad hoc herd rate experiment to see what rate is needed against Delta and vaccine efficacy.
I personally think that the Biden Administration fell short on hedging in their messaging. While we may be able to open up as vaccination rates hit benchmarks, we may yet have to reverse some policies to stop new breakout waves. Without this advance hedging, the politicization of the pandemic will further work against us.
I think you are correct D_Ohrk_E1 - we started the victory lap a bit too soon. Now OPM wants government agencies to have their back to work plans in place by July 17th. I fear having to go back to work amongst military types who are refuseniks will put at risk folks who are immune compromised at risk.
I wish we'd continue letting office workers who can be full time remote be full time remote.
10000 cases a day isn't victory???? Give me a break.
No it isn't victory, victory is under 100 cases a day and no major outbreaks abroad to reinfect the US.
Victory is zero cases per day, week, month, or year.
Give me a break. Coronavirus's are basically one part of the common cold. This is never going away. I am amazed by stupidity among your types. You just don't think. You live fantasies.
Nothing conservatives do is beyond belief anymore.
Is Kevin showing empathy or scorn here for conservatives who resist vaccination? Because a few short weeks ago, he admonished us all to be more respectful and less dismissive towards conservatives rejecting vaccines.
Conservatives?? Don't you mean African and Hispanic Americans??? Because this winter, they will be having some fun.
' The contempt they're showing for their own constituents is almost beyond belief.'
I have no trouble any longer, believing the in the utter contempt that the GOP has for ordinary Americans, or the Common Good.