The Return of Covid

 This NYTimes piece says it may be returning. People mostly aren't masking--the Post mentioned very few masked at last night's state dinner. And they aren't boosting.

(I got my fifth shot, the co-valent booster) the other day.  I sometimes mask, sometimes don't.)  We seem to be accepting of  roughly 300 deaths a day, or maybe 100,000 a year. What does the future hold 

Birx Book

 I've commented on it before.  Some bits:

• US has 574 Indian/Native American nations.
• Jared Kushner comes off as helpful and capable in this book, unlike other recent books where he and his young crew are mocked.
• Seema Verma is mentioned favorably.
• Birx doesn't come across as very flexible--she's focused on data, and keeps referring to the UP/CHop model, always emphasizing asymptomatic spreading. I don't know whether there any consensus has developed over the issue.
• She's down on CDC and portrays Redfield, the CDC head, as unable to move his bureaucracy in the directions she believes it should have gone, though he's one of the group of doctors (Fauci, Hahn, Redfield, and Birx who agreed to hang together). She thinks CDC should have people in the field with the state health departments (I didn't read her extensive set of recommendations at the end of the book).n
• She's no writer, so I did a lot of skimming in the last half. 
• She has an extensive list of recommendations, which I didn't study.  Now have Scott Gottlieb's book on the pandemic which seems also to look to the future. 

Are Congratulations Premature--Ordering Tests

 The White House's site for ordering covid tests is up, a day before promised.

Given the problems with the Obamacare website, I'm glad to see it seems, so far, to be going okay (the requirements were simpler by a lot, but the media likely won't focus on it--just success or failure).

The Impatience of Youth (and Ideologues?)

 Within an hour I read Frank Bruni's newsleterr (subscribe here) commenting on criticism of scientists re: covid:

What an inevitability. Science doesn’t usually figure everything out all at once; it’s a steadily growing body of knowledge, and its application, especially in the face of new circumstances, can amount to an educated guess, imperfect but invaluable. In the case of Covid, there was no awful screw-up. There was, instead, astonishing speed: These vaccines, powerfully effective, were developed and distributed in record time.

 and a Kevin Drum tweet responding to a Ryan Cooper tweet along the same lines:

Because scientists have the odd notion that they should look for rigorous evidence. The public doesn't give a shit about that. https://t.co/ALAdQfNxwm

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) December 2, 2021

I agree with both--there's a lot of impatience these days. After a long life (hopefully to be much longer) I've grown more tolerant of people (except the people who post erroneous things on the Internet) 

The Vaccinated Are Smarter?

 I'd answer "yes", if you're smart enough to get yourself vaccinated, you're smarter than your unvaccinated friend or relative.  And I'd point to this CDC study (via Lawyers, Guns and Money--Paul Campos) which shows a big difference in death rates between the two groups: vaccinated and unvaccinated.

The big thing about the study is the difference is based on death rates excluding Covid.  

Seat Belts and Air Bags

 To me the argument for using seat belts in an air bag equipped car is the same as for using a face mask when vacinated. 

More Metaphors--Wet Wood and Poison

 I posted earlier on nuclear reactions as a metaphor possibly explaining the rise in murders recently.  The key point is the reactivity--when the population becomes younger for whatever reason (baby boom, oldsters observing lockdowns, oldsters dying from covid) the interactions among people change a bit without the cushioning effect of the older.   A similar logic could apply to the pandemic--as more people are vaccinated, the reactivity goes down.

I came across a new metaphor today in a discussion of the effects of the vaccine.  The metaphor is wood, as in forest fires.  If the wood is very dry it catches fire easily, if there's been rain it doesn't. From that perspective the vaccine has the effect of dampening the wood.

A separate metaphor was poison--in a Post story explaining vaccination, the point is that the vaccine isn't binary, like shutting the door on the virus.  It's more like a poison.  So when the body is infected, the virus attacks and is multiplying, but then it starts to encounter the poison (as the immune system ramps up).  The virus starts to be poisoned, reducing its reproduction rate.  So testing may give a positive test during the time the virus is in its struggle with the immune system, as hopefully it's in its death throes.

The Lab Leak Possibility

 For what it's worth, which is nothing, my memory is that early on the theories of the origin of the virus were the wet markets in Wuhan and a weaponized virus from the Wuhan lab, a theory according to something I read this week which was being pushed by Bannon. 

So when I read the Vanity Fair article, this passage strikes me as off:

 But on April 30, 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out an ambiguous statement whose apparent goal was to suppress a growing furor around the lab-leak theory. It said that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified” but would continue to assess “whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Seems to me the ODNI was trying to suppress the Bannon--weaponized theory since they left open the lab-leak possibility.  And part of the push-back by US scientists was denying there was evidence in the virus genome of human manipulation, which would be a smoking gun for the lab leak. 

The other aspect was the determination by Trump and politicos after the virus hit the US to tie it to China--"Wuhan virus" etc. There's past precedent for using a location's name to identify a virus, but not for using it to attack the location.    So there were two triggers for Democrats to push back. The push back was perhaps as lacking in nuance as the Bannon/Trump positions.

Now I'll go back to reading the Vanity Fair article.

Testing the Vaccines

 The Times had this feature on how Pfizer  makes its covid vaccine.

It's fascinating,  What struck me most strongly was the amount of testing and retesting which was done all through the process. 

I recommend it for anyone on the fence about getting their shots.

The Vaccination Race

 We used to follow the race among companies and nations to get the first covid-19 vaccine.  We've lost interest in that one as the world has gotten several vaccines of varying efficacy.

Then in the US we had the race among states to vaccinate their citizens. 

Remember when West Virginia jumped out to an early lead.  It seemed so unlikely, but turned out they had relied on their pharmacies and a reasonably centralized model.  But WV has faded.

Four days ago Politico noted that New Mexico was leading. Again they were using a centralized registry system.  Both WV and NM were working against some unfavorable demographics: older people in both, Hispanics in NM, etc.

For a while the Dakotas were right up there near the top, but I don't remember a news piece on that.

Today the Northeast seems on the verge of taking the lead, at least according to this. You can click on the column headings to sort.  Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut lead NM, with Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island filling out the top 7 states.

I know my cousin, a MA resident, has had problems with the way they've handled registration and vaccination.  Extrapolating that to the rest of New England with any additional facts to support my theories, I'm guessing that New England's general  advantages have enabled their recent gains, overcoming some early problems in organization. 

I'll be waiting to see how the states have done after the dust settles, and how their accomplishments compare to their work on other vaccines.

Herd Immunity and Peak Infections

 This was an interesting twitter thread--the gist is that herd immunity does not mean the apex of the curve of covid infections.  

This is an image from one of the tweets:

Centralize Data--Yes or No

 President Biden, through the press secretary, says no centralized database for vaccinations. 

The General Accounting Office says we need centralized data for the virus.

I can see Biden's thinking--the right has this paranoid fear of centralized databases and of vaccination passports, so why give them an opening to attack you in one of the areas in which you are strongest? 

But as a ex-bureaucrat and nerd I think GAO is likely right. 

Pandemic Data Problems

 I've posted a time or two on the need for the federal government to improve its statistical/data collection processes.  

Here's a long discussion of the problems with the covid-19 data collection.

Covid-19 Statistics--North Dakota

 I check the Bloomberg site for tracking vaccinations.  Today I note that North Dakota has given out 102 percent of the vaccine doses delivered.  It seems to be the only state with this anomaly.   

Second Shot

 Just got my second shot of Pfizer vaccine. 

Siloed Covid Data

 I posted about registering for an appointment for the vaccine shot through the Fairfax county site.  Then Sunday I got a shot from Kaiser Permanente.  Today I got an Invitation to Schedule Appointment from Fairfax county.  Unlike the Kaiser site, I can't find a way to update Fairfax's data to show I've been vaccinated.  I've emailed them with the problem.  If it's not solved, the vaccination data for Fairfax county residents will be inaccurate. 

[Update: got a nice response from Brian at the Fairfax site suggesting using my appointment ticket to cancel.  Responded that I tried, but couldn't see a way to do so. Amanda at the Fairfax site replied she'd tell the IT people to do it. 

I guess the stats could be handled by taking the population of Fairfax and comparing it to the sum of those vaccinated by various providers in the county.  That would assume that every provider identifies the residence of the people they jab.] 

A Salute to Kaiser

Got my covid-19 vaccine shot on Sunday through Kaiser Permanente.  I have to salute their efficiency:

• I got an email notice from them which included a ticket with which to make an appointment.  I assume this was based on screening their database for people over 75 residing in Virginia.
• I selected my appointment time with a little problem--used my laptop which didn't display the whole signup page, so initially I missed a popup notice which appeared at the top of the page.  Figured that out when I tried again on my desktop.  I think they were doing appointments at 10 minute intervals, but I might be wrong.
• Got a confirmation from KP, together with the message of not to arrive more than 15 minutes before the time.
• Drove to Tysons and read a book in the car until 15 minutes before time.
• Walked into the building. Was greeted by staffer1 and was directed to staffer2, who in turn directed me to an empty intake station (I'm guessing they had 6 intake stations, each with a staffer3 to confirm my identity and appointment and record the intake, completing a card and scheduling me for the appointment for the second shot. 
• Was then directed down a hallway by staffers3 and 4 to an empty vaccination station (one of several) with staffer5, perhaps a nurse, who asked about allergies and previous experience with vaccinations and gave me the jab. 
• Was then directed to a waiting room, where staffer6 gave me a note showing the time I could leave (i.e. 15 minutes after I arrived). 
• Then got in the car and left.  I didn't check my watch, but I'd guess I spent 25 minutes in the process, 15 of which were post-shot waiting.

So, bottom line--I had no unnecessary waiting time and everything went smoothly.

I got the shot in the mid-afternoon, so I don't know how the process operated early or late, but from my experience it seems they did a great job of matching resources to demand.  They used lots of staff--half the people I interacted with were traffic police--but that was because they were using three different rooms and weren't able to organize a straight workflow.

Vaccine Appointment

 I have one for tomorrow at Kaiser.  I didn't apply, just got notified of the availability and provided a "ticket" to use in making appointment.  Kaiser says to notify them if I've already gotten a shot from somewhere else, which is good. Now the question is whether Fairfax county site will allow me to report my vaccination from Kaiser.  Will see after I actually receive it.

Have We Seen the Peak?

 It's possible the pandemic has peaked in the US with the graph of new infections flattening, possibly starting a decline, which would then be followed by a similar change in hospitalizations and deaths.  

The conjunction of 400,000 deaths, the Biden inauguration, and the peak would be significant.

A Test of Masks and Social Distancing: House of Representatives

 The NYTimes had a graphic on the Representatives and Senators who contracted covid-19 virus.  I was interested because at the Powerline blog one or more of the bloggers had expressed skepticism over the efficacy of face masks and social distancing in combating the disease. I think enough time has passed for a fair evaluation.  I also think the members of Congress are roughly similar so a comparison by party is valid.  The outcome: 44 Republicans and 17 Democrats have contracted the disease.

I don't know whether that's statistically significant, but it impresses me.