Remember a few weeks ago when I finally gave up on my original vaccination trendline and drew a new one? It turns out I was too quick to cry uncle. Our weekend vaccination rate has been growing by leaps and bounds and it's now increasing at the rate predicted by the first few weeks of vaccinations.
So, since the trendlines are all kind of sketchy anyway, I put the original one back in. We should hit 5 million in a week or two.
A trendling of the weekly means would probably be more meaningful than a trendline of the peaks. It doesn't seem like the troughs are increasing as fast as the peaks.
Don't forget that the J&J vaccine supply is forecasted to drop by about 80% this week thanks to the recent manufacturing mistakes.
There has always been a lot of fluctuation in the J&J supply from week to week too.
One of the mass vaccination sites in the Chicago area announced they'll be using the J&J vaccine for walk ins. Makes sense if they have a hard time scheduling a vaccination time....wait, walk ins welcome??? Chicago, the city, has not opened up to everyone over 18 (or 16?) yet, still not enough doses available. Over in IN, they dropped residency requirements. And yes cities get their own allotment, separate from the state.
If you have trouble getting vaccinated in your area, try sites in Trump country. Yeah, that's a bit of a privileged move.
You bet it's privileged. My brother didn't get his first shot until last week, finally snagged a shot at a Walgreens near his apartment - he cannot drive due to health issues so popping over to IN wasn't feasible.
My first shot appointment is tomorrow. Unfortunately it's in Alexandria not the nearby hospital because they moved the mass vax center to Alexandria to be closer to folks who could not drive. A huge issue here is not enough shots for the number of folks who want to get shots. A ton of folks have snagged appointments in Maryland and rural parts of Virginia where there's less demand because the doses are trapped there not here where they are wanted.
Larry Hogan has 1,488 doses in reserve.
Maybe it will never reach 5 million in a day. There's no reason it must.
The farmer's kid (child, not goat) was there when a calf was born, and could carry the calf. Figured to go out everyday and lift the calf, then one day be able to lift a cow.
Lift that cow, and vaccinate it while you're at it.
Seriously, though, I think eligibility is being thrown open to a lot of people this week, and in three weeks or so, they'll be back to get their second dose, so I won't be surprised if there's still another high number of daily vaccinations at the beginning of May. Or maybe it just keeps shooting up to ten million, I don't know how many wheels are in motion now.
A pox on your vaccinated cow!-)
Anecdotally, I'm seeing the twitter bots I started following to help me find a vax appointment, facebook feed and other sources starting to go from very few appointment availabilities that disappear in seconds to hundreds or even thousands of appointments available and not filling. So I think we're reaching the transition from supply constrained to demand constrained limits, and the vaccination rates will start dropping unless someone figures out how to convince the lazy or openly opposed people to get vaccinated.
For all the hell that 2020 was, maybe we're short-changing a paradigm shift occurring right under our feet.
The world isn't producing enough vaccines fast enough. Even if we manage to vaccinate enough people in the US to reach herd immunity, SARS-CoV-2 is a global pandemic. As such, we're likely going to regularly and continually see new strains establish a foothold and some of those new strains will make their way into the US and cause breakthrough infections.
Having booster shots isn't winning the war; winning the war means reaching herd immunity around the world. We're still at the point where the world just isn't producing enough vaccines fast enough, so all we're doing is winning a battle on a couple of fronts.
By the time the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved here, we may not need it. The same for Novavax. It will be easier to make the case to let them be exported next month, once we've procured enough vaccines for all eligible in the US. Of course, only after the hot spots in Northeast and upper Midwest have been put out.
By July, the vaccines produced here can be sent everywhere, which will change vaccine diplomacy. Set up cold chain logistics for the Pfizer and Moderns vaccines, J&J for places where that would be difficult.
We should still support Covax and even regional vaccine production efforts. Maybe even more so now before we flood the market with vaccines.
As I've understood it, some -- maybe all? -- of the carry-over contracts for the vaccines block the exportation of vaccines, whether resold or given away.
Even if we gave away all our surplus shots, however, take into account the scope of the problem:
The world needs to reach herd immunity in every place to end the pandemic, otherwise it'll become endemic like Influenza, but as we've seen, much deadlier.
Globally, only *2.24%* of the human population has been fully vaccinated. Even at the current rate of daily vaccinations, just to get to 70% herd immunity on a first-shot policy, we'd need 10 months, logistics notwithstanding. A full vaccination policy will take significantly longer.
And consider that vaccine hesitancy isn't just a US problem. See: https://bityl.co/6MXQ
Because of vaccine hesitancy, some have suggested that we might hit a vaccination wall in the US by the end of this month, at which point, we'll fall short of herd immunity through vaccinations.
Optimist n. Someone always willing to risk the wrath of Yogi Berra. See also, Kevin Drum.