(2021-08-26) ZviM Covid 8/26 Full Vaccine Approval

Zvi Mowshowitz Covid-19 8/26: Full Vaccine Approval. Great news, everyone. The Pfizer vaccine has been approved. Woo-hoo! It will be marketed under the name Comirnaty. Doh!

Executive Summary of Top News You Can Use
Pfizer vaccine approved under the name Comirnaty.
Vaccines still work. If you have a choice, Moderna > Pfizer but both are fine.
Boosters are still a good idea if you want even better protection.
Cases approaching peak.

The Numbers

I was confused how there could be such sharp peaks in other countries. It looks like we won’t get one of those

Vaccination Statistics

How much will full FDA approval matter? Survey says not much.

I am more hopeful than this, and expect more than a 10% increase

Vaccine Effectiveness

The Delta vaccines are designed and would be easy to get approved, yet there has been no move to manufacture them quickly. The only reasonable explanation for this is that there isn’t actually much if any difference with the old vaccine. Or at least, that’s what the pharma companies that have every financial incentive acting against this are revealing they believe.

I continue to think that the decline in vaccine effectiveness over time is in large part a mirage, and for practical purposes the decline is relevant but small

UK cases are clearly rising again

I don’t know of anyone who has offered an explanation other than a shrug for the decline followed by a reversal here

How infectious are breakthrough cases? We now have two studies for that. They found that vaccinated people who get infected are still infectious, but their viral loads are substantially lower, so this was what we previously expected. And also they clear the virus faster, which was also expected.

Vaccine Hesitancy and Mandates

Formal approval is in, so here… we… go.

Delta Airlines is charging unvaccinated employees $200 a month extra for health insurance, on the very reasonable premise that every hospital stay for Covid costs them an average of $50,000 and they end up in the hospital for Covid more often. Insurance companies can’t do this, but it seems corporations employing you can do it.

NYPD has threatened to sue if the city attempts to implement a mandate.

One aspect of vaccination decisions is that patients in America do not pay for their health care. Almost everyone who can get it has health insurance because if you don’t the medical system bills you personally and attached some number of extra zeros to the bill because they can, so you can’t opt out. For a while, they even waved ‘cost sharing’ on Covid, so you didn’t even pay the fraction you normally pay, but that’s increasingly no longer true. Would be good if more people knew. Incentives matter, but only if people are aware of it.

Requiring ‘full vaccination’ so far has been simple. You get two shots and that’s it. Now there are signs that this in many places is going to morph into getting periodic boosters with different places (at a minimum, nations, Austria and Croatia are already setting expiration dates) having different requirements, and those boosters will have a much less slam-dunk risk-benefit profile.

Masking, Testing and NPIs

Study does some modeling and finds that according to its model masks work, ventilation works even better.

Filters win out here over windows, if one has to choose, and of course if possible you’d do both