Porthos

No no, I get all of that, but I might have been imprecise. What I was talking about was the following sentence: "Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One." All I am trying to figure out is how long after they received their dosages that the one person contracted a "severe covid case", Some time after the first? The second? A day or two later? A month? That sort of thing. But it's also something of a rabbit hole that isn't that particularly important so if it isn't easily found out, no big deal.

The only thing I would be cautious about is how "severe covid case" was defined. I.e. is it x-amount of days after the second dose? 1st dose? The language there was a little imprecise for my liking, but I do agree overall with what the journalist was saying. I mean, obviously as I posted the link and all in the first place.

It's also not bad news. At least not necessarily. I looked for a source of this and near as I can tell it was a statement from an Israeli health official with no sort of further information. How long had they had the first doses before being diagnosed? Was it in expected parameters for efficiency of the first dose? Doing a quick check to refresh my memory, the Pfizer vaccine was supposed to be around 50% effective after the first dose with protection being meaningfully observed only after 12 days from the first dosage. And even then, as the article notes, that's a little fuzzy. So how many of these infections occurred after that 12 day window? Which brings me to a roundabout point. There is a serious messaging problem going on with the vaccine with far too many folks, inside and outside government, trying to downplay the effectiveness of vaccines: Whether it's because of the "if it bleeds, it leads" nature of reporting, an increased cynicism about the world among many of the folks in the news industry (as well as in government), or because of the inherent cautiousness of the medical world in general, there really is something of an amplification of the "bad news" out there and not nearly enough of the good.

That's only coz I just found out about this five minutes ago and was looking for the right thread to tag you. 😘

That's why I compared the current situation to the rollout on testing. Some of the same perverse incentives (triage with short supply) plus trying to ramp up to literally nationwide distribution. I don't need to tell you that, cliche as the idea is, battles can be won or lost on the logistical end of things. The bigger problem right now is the medical industry is trying to ramp up vaccine distribution while also giving out hundreds of thousands of COVID tests every day while also being slammed by the height of the second wave/third wave/whatever-you-want-to-call-the-current-peak. Can't even fully blame areas for not fully prepping for this over the last six months given the... let's be kind and call it lack of full coordination on just what would happen once vaccines did become available, including funding mandates. Hard to plan when one doesn't know what resources will be available. Doesn't absolve various locals from not having sound plans in place, but is a contributing factor in my mind. Which is another sad parallel to the testing rollout. But, all of the above said, the fact that the US actually sorta-kinda got a good testing regime set up eventually (not enough to really combat it, no — but enough to get large number of tests done) gives me enough reason to believe that we'll be able to deliver large amounts of vaccines every day in time. Emphasis on "in time".

Do want to make one point though. My biggest fear/dread about both of the mRNA vaccines wasn't logistics, as I knew that would very likely be a shitshow at first. No, I was more worried about reports of fatal reactions or other very bad side-effects of the vaccines once they got into the general populace. While enough time hasn't quite passed for me to think we have truly walked out of the woods on that front, every passing day that goes by without major stories breaking in those regards makes me feel a little bit better on how things will be later this year. Debate then becomes when "later" actually is.

Couldn't "like" the post, but still wanted to give a reaction, so... And, yeah. I don't think I'm quite as pessimistic as you are, though I suspect I am closer to your position than I am WandaLegion's. The timing is interesting as it does kinda depend on what you meant by "urban CA theaters". I agree that SoCal has a large hill to climb out of as much of it never really got close to getting out of the Widespread tier in the first place. Other areas of Cali might be a bit sooner though. Mostly I reckon this year is gonna mimic last year's in which counties are the first to start going down the tier list. Just think LA is gonna be the last major urban county to get clearance in this state, which in turn affects my thinking on when theaters nationwide start seeing real numbers. If I had any faith whatsoever in Los Angeles County seeing daylight sooner than later, I think I'd be closer to WandaLegion's position. As it is though...

Yeah, I saw that, but it didn't really answer my question on whether or not the model would try to figure out how many people might be expected to "double-dip" as it were. True enough, and agreed. Though I do note that he's already upped his target number for effective herd immunity (from 60% to 70%) due to the more infectious variant getting introduced. As more of that variant gains an foothold, could mess up the longer range projections. As for making projections "too far out" Youyang himself implies, is kinda... ambitious to try to project six or more months out. This, however, I think is something that isn't given enough attention. AstraZenca should be cleared sooner or later. We should be getting trial results from Johnson & Johnson soon as well. When, or should I say "if" in the case of J&J, those get added, that should be a strong... .... Wait for it... Shot in the arm for both vaccine distribution as well as the economy. Only real question in my mind is how long it is gonna take to get the logistics problems ironed out as well as, for us at least, what the state of the theater industry is gonna be like once it does.

When it comes to Youyang Gu's projections for the future, there is this page: https://covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-immunity/ If you look at his charts, Youyang Gu currently projects around 60% of the country will be immune due to either surviving the 'rona in the first place (121m | 36%) plus those who have received at least one shot of various vaccines (79m | 24%). I am unsure how he is accounting for folks who got the 'rona and are ALSO getting the 'rona vaccine in his models as I would think even if folks who were symptomatic/have a known diagnosis shy away from the vaccine (no sure bet, IMO) the folks who were asymptomatic or who had no symptoms whatsoever will still be getting shots in their arms. Then there is the dreaded logistics. As WandaLegion knows from our discussions in his BW club, I am not nearly as sanguine as he is when it comes to the vaccine rollout. I think the incoming Administration will help quite a bit. But just as it took longer than it should have to get the teething problems out of the way in regards to testing, I think we're still in for a bumpy road when it comes to scaling up vaccine distribution. Overall, I do agree WandaLegion that the economy is gonna do quite well, though since they're political reasons I won't go into them in this thread. I just think my timetable is a month or two or so behind his.

Except, as more details come out, it looks like we were VERY close to either an armed hostage situation, or something much much worse. Some examples: ==== Among just a few of the stories about this. Folks running around with LE grade zip ties are NOT just some random hillbillies whooping it up. In fact, it looks like a decent percentage of these folks were anything but random low-class folks: In other words while the initial media glare focused on folks like that guy cosplaying as a Viking as well as images of folks LARPing around, it could have been so so sooooo much worse, and it is only thanks to the heroic actions of some, that we didn't have a full scale 9/11-like tragedy.

So remember that pharmacist in Wisconsin who (allegedly) intentionally sabotaged vials of vaccine? Someone has been watching waaaaaaay too many bad Hollywood thrillers. Prob not a surprise this world view is leaking into his home life, again allegedly: Not gonna make many comments about this except to say that even a college education doesn't necessarily, ahem, inoculate a person from truly incoherent beliefs (that is, that this vaccine could "change people's DNA").

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