(2021-03-12) ZviM Covid-03/12 New CDC Guidelines Available

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 3/12: New CDC Guidelines Available. Then, finally, we got guidelines! Real ones that made a non-zero amount of sense! Nice.

Positive Tests

The next few weeks on this chart will be the moment of truth. If cases don’t pick up by the end of March, they’re likely not going to pick up at all from the current wave of variants, and vaccinations will have enough time to dominate. If cases do pick up, it’s going to be very difficult to pivot quickly.

Vaccinations

Not only is it clear we can sustain and further increase this pace of vaccinations, we are building up an increasing surplus of vaccine doses, and getting appointments is becoming steadily easier in most places.

We had (and continue to have) a ton of unforced errors along the way that caused (and continue to cause) massive delays, but we are on a clear path to vaccinations on demand for every adult within a few months, and yesterday Biden made that official (WaPo). Every state has been directed to make the vaccines available to everyone over the age of 18 no later than May 1

Then again, remember it could always be worse, if we grade on a curve we’re killing it here in the good old USA:

The English Strain

The moment of truth is fast approaching. Within a few weeks, new variants will be a majority of new Covid cases in the United States. Very soon after that, they will account for most cases

The question is how bad things will get. There are naively plausible mathematical models where we are rapidly vaccinating enough people to make up for the shift to the new strains

When those who always make demands in a direction make completely unreasonable demands – no loosening of restrictions of any kind for a very long time – the response is to go ‘yeah, that’s public health experts for you’ and that’s that. That’s what happened.

Everywhere, we see states lifting restrictions in response to the progress we’ve made

If public health advocates had wanted a different result, they could have offered a reasonable policy backed by object-level logic

Weeks went by, and the CDC issued no guidance on what vaccinated people could do.

Then, finally, we got guidelines! Real ones that made a non-zero amount of sense! Nice.

CDC Guidelines “Key Points”

*First one is good.

Then we learn that the vaccines may provide some protection against a variety of strains. However, reduced efficacy has been observed for the B.1.351 strain.*

CDC Guidelines For Fully Vaccinated People

Overall, these guidelines do seem reasonable, as a compromise between what makes physical sense and what preserve necessary norms of behavior, and as a compromise between encouraging vaccination versus letting risk get too out of hand. That doesn’t mean they need to be followed to the letter, but we could have done a lot worse, and this is far better than no guidelines at all, and far better than the previous FUD of ‘act the same as before.’

Vaccines Only Work If You Use Them

Novavax remains unapproved, and has new results

Who Wants the Vaccine?

this is far from a universal perspective

The six point gap between Republicans and Trump voters makes the role of tribal identity here very clear.

I wonder how much the ‘wait and see’ category is mostly ‘I don’t want to have to think ever and this is an excuse not to for now’ because most of those people aren’t yet eligible.

Mostly people deciding about vaccines aren’t basing their decision on physical world models and a study of immunology and statistical findings. They’re responding to various forms of social pressure and information cascades and blame dynamics.

AstraZeneca and Blood Clots

Several places, including Denmark and Thailand, have suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to concerns about blood clots.

blood clots on this scale are somewhat more plausible an issue than being struck by lightning more often, but not that much more plausible.

the BMJ confirming that investigations show zero signs of a statistical effect of any kind. Even if somehow there was some small effect, the chance of this being big enough to justify not using the vaccine is very, very close to actual zero.