But you get vaccines! Like even you personally!
Our rates are not too bad globally but our icus are full enough to worry plenty
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My SIL is a middle school teacher and got her vaccine yesterday. 
my brother is a college professor and apparently they are not considered essential so he doesnāt qualify yet. 
He does coach high school tennis though, so he is asking if that qualifies him.
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Plenty of folks being offered the vaccine and turning it down. Plenty of other folks not even getting it offered. Iād rather have your numbers.
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Iād like a combination system with low rates so high vaccine availability and not freaking out that my baby might have it.
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Snowbirds consider leaving Florida due to frustration with vaccine process
Oh noez, you might go back to where you actually live to get a vaccine. Let me contain my disappointment. The article does mention economic concerns if they take all their vacation dollars with them (Florida does not have an income tax because usually we get all that sweet sweet tourism money) but I donāt particularly care right now.
Another thing I saw the other day that made me realize unintended consequences - introducing a residency requirement for vaccines could lead to immigrant laborers not getting vaccinated. Agriculture is the second largest industry in the state.
@rural I think you had touched on this topic broadly months ago, do you happen to know how agriculture has been impacted? All Iām finding in a quick search is a few articles from late last summer that basically go āYup this is a problem.ā
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I donāt really know much about the effects on agriculture. Not much industrial N scale production of things that require a lot of labor around here. Itās all corn, soy beans, and, a little further south, cotton, so manual harvesting itās not really a thing. So there arenāt very many people involved, very seldom immigrant labor. Immigrant labor here works in textile Mills.
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So, yesterday we got an email from regional CEO. After they have send out 2 times two cloth masks in 2020, they are now sending FFP2 out to everybody.
roughly 12k employees in Germany, ca. 4000 working on sites, with a lot of covid regularities (max1/3 capacity in open spaces, max 1 person in āregularā offices, disinfectant everywhere, masks etc) All other are working from home.
Everybody gets PPE now.
Plus clearly stated in the letter that it would be highly appreciated that everybody who can work from home should do so.
The German government has now set out laws that pressures employers to let people work from home whenever possible. And mandatory to provide everybody onsite with PPE.
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Iāve found it a little tricky to get informed about the UK variant. Hereās my understanding:
- More contagious? Yes, 50% more, therefore itās worth upgrading personal masks
- Same vaccine works? Yes, Pfizer and Moderna both have studies to show this, though I donāt understand why 2 is true but not 3 (below)
- Same antibodies work? No evidence yet. (I wish I could have more confidence about this; would ease some worry since we had it in Dec)
- Causes more or less severe illness? Limited evidence from UK that it is more deadly, but not confirmed. Even if it is not inherently more deadly, rising hospitalization rates could mean poorer care and thus more impact. Fauci is worried.
This is summarized from the best roundup I have found so far: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/covid-19-variants-are-spreading-rapidly-here-s-what-scientists-know-about-them-and-why-you-need
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In my state (Southeastern, but not FL), I heard a lot about COVID spreading among migrant agricultural workers in the Spring and Summer, not as much because of the work itself, but because many times the migrant workers live in congregant housing. I think itās probably not an as much of an issue here now since itās winter.
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I have reached an important marker. Today was my first time doing a work call in pjās. Today was my first time doing a work call with no bra.
Today was my first day doing a work call on video wearing pjās and no bra.
(Cardigan over my pjās, and it is just an old t-shirt from a former employer)
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Congratulations!
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Vaccines are thought to provide better protection because they produce higher and more consistent levels of antibodies. Reference: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2032195
That said, the studies Iāve seen show that natural immunity is pretty good. This one shows measurable immune memory in antibodies, memory B cells and various T cells in ~95% up to 8 months out:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/01/06/science.abf4063
The UK SIREN study (preprint, not peer-reviewed yet) looked at the real-life rate of reinfection. Healthcare workers were swabbed regularly, and natural immunity provided ~90% protection against symptomatic covid (and ~83% protection against symptomatic + asymptomatic covid):
This is a level of protection similar to vaccines, but it was done before the UK variant became widespread.
The UK sequences 10% of their positives, and there havenāt been reports of large numbers of reinfections, so my best guess is that natural immunity is pretty good against the UK variant B.1.1.7 too.
The South African and Brazilian variants are more concerning. Interestingly, Novavax released a press release (not peer-reviewed), showing 96% efficacy of its vaccine against older covid strains, 86% efficacy against the UK strain, overall 49% efficacy against South African strain in a smaller trial (60% efficacy if HIV population is excluded). The press release also notes that 1/3 of the people in the South Africa who enrolled had +antibodies against covid. They were excluded from the original analysis, but without providing the numbers, Novavax says that there were a number of reinfections in this group, and their vaccine provided better protection than natural immunity:
https://ir.novavax.com/news-releases/news-release-details/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-demonstrates-893-efficacy-uk-phase-3
Still, I would be surprised if natural immunity provided zero protection against the new variants, and Iād also be interested to see how much it protects against severe disease. The 1918 flu disproportionately killed a lot of young people because older people had lived long enough for their immune systems to see a flu strain that provided some cross-immunity.
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This is SO exciting. Tldr; new vaccine is 66% effective at preventing illness and strongly effective at preventing serious illness. No hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccine group.
AND itās a single shot vaccine that can be stored in normal refrigerators for months.
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Substantially less effective than the mRNA ones it looks like, but enough that it would make a difference! And the one shot and storage makes it a much better option for a lot of places. Thatās great.
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Does 66% effective sound really low to anyone else?
Particularly in light of long-haul symptoms, possible heart/vascular damage even if you get a mild case, etc.?
I mean, itās absolutely better than nothing.
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Itās more on par with ānormalā vaccines. 50% is all you need to secure emergency auth.
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TDAP vaccine is approx 70%, flu is 67% and we all still opt to get it. The question I have is if I get a less effective vaccine first, can I eventually get the more effective option? I think that the first covid mrna vaccines are the most effective ā¦ever? Smallpox vax is 95% but I believe one of the covid vax is a touch above that. I think itās kind of a crime literally no news coverage is pronouncing ā90+% effectiveā with more amazement.
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There was a whole medscape opinion article about how weāre underselling the vaccine, and itās going to result in slower adoption, and what a problem it is. Scientists are used to bringing ādoubt to centerā (which is why charismatic leaders are so much more appealing than science, but I digress), but that we need to highlight the amazing breakthrough that these vaccines truly are.
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66% overall effectiveness is great if/when most of the population gets it. On top of that, it is ā85% Effective Overall in Preventing Severe Disease and Demonstrated Complete Protection Against COVID-19 related Hospitalization and Death as of Day 28ā
The additional availability of this vaccine is going to save a lot of lives, especially if it allows us to ramp up distribution.
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