But if 2% of people throw massive parties, how many more get infected? Because, like, I wouldn’t be at the massive party, but maybe someone who was, would be in the waiting room with me as I get urgent medical care.
You’re right, though, I read so much about the vaccine’s problems and limitations and I can see someone who’s less terrified of covid than me thinking “eh, I won’t bother.”
I also feel like a lot of people are doing 1 step of caution less than what officials are saying. Like, if we’re told “don’t go inside buildings ever or let anyone into your home,” that turns into people feeling OK with briefer in person grocery shopping than usual, and letting 1 or 2 people in. That’s at least what I see among people I know (and, we in Chicago were told a while ago to not go into buildings or let people into our homes… of course, this was swiftly followed by restaurants quickly reopening, I think we’re now at 40% indoor capacity which I think is insane).
But if you and the medical staff had all been vaccinated…? That’s where this gets tricky. At a certain point, you want herd immunity. How do we get there? Especially when you look at people of subpopulations. At what point is a community that’s prone to going to parties and big church events and nonsense like that hitting an internal level of heard immunity. That’s one of the theories behind the current slow down. It’s basically, we have pockets were heard immunity is getting closer to being achieved just based on exposure. And then the vaccines are piling on top of that. And at this point, we’re also looking at the vaccines as being a race against everyone’s immunity from having had the disease wearing off.
I think there’s also a big question of fatigue here. So many people saw the vaccine is a promise of things getting back to normal. So it was a question of, just tolerate these measures until the vaccines are here. Well now we’re vaccinating people and we’re telling them not to change anything. At that point, do people just give up? And the problem is if they just give up on all measures before getting the vaccine instead of after. If people are going to get too fatigued and just give up, it’s better to have them get the vaccine first. 
Public health interventions are definitely messy. We can’t expect everyone to be perfect about everything at all times. I’m glad I’m not the one having to make any decisions around the messaging though. It’s definitely trying to make calls with insufficient data all the time, but it’s still science, so you need some data there.
Well, plenty of people are already having parties, so I don’t think that’s going to change.
Periodically the NYT asks epidemiologists what they are doing and what they will do after getting vaccinated, and it’s been interesting. They are NOT eating in restaurants and won’t do that for a long time. But they are going grocery shopping…
Yeah, I assume that’s because you have to take your mask off to eat and drink but not to shop.
This all makes a lot of sense.
Particularly how the communities who are partying maskless and going to church and all that, are likely the same ones who might have a high level of vaccine refusal. I’m not sure what to do about that. It’s messy for sure.
The mixed messages are still what kills me. Don’t change your behavior - but hey, let’s fling restaurants wide open again for indoor dining because the economy. Except, wait, you still can’t go to the lakefront, which is very large and entirely outdoors and can be experienced fully masked.
I read today that Chicago’s still only 1A, which I guess I didn’t realize. Ugh.
Yeah, I had really hoped that we would see really strong centralized messaging from the federal government to cities and states. So far I haven’t necessarily seen anything though. But, it’s not like most of the governors would listen anyway I suppose. So better to throw all the money at the vaccines? 
I’m wondering if at this point the CDC thinks it’s better to just power through vaccine rollout, let the states continue to be stupid, and just try to hit herd immunity. 
I feel like there are a couple of layers of messaging.
(1) You’re an idiot if you eat in a restaurant.
(2) But we know that there are a lot of idiots, and we don’t have a bazillion dollars to police every place, and we also don’t have a bazillion dollars to spend on unemployment, and we’d also like to keep our jobs, so you do you - but you’re still an idiot.
The bar across the street from me seems pretty busy, but I don’t have to go, and once I’m vaccinated, I don’t really care who does.
I don’t think there’s so much conflicting messages so much as an understanding that the Real World Conditions are different than the Ideal World, which happens pretty often in public health.
Like, it’s true enough that abstinence is the most reliable form of birth control, it’s just not realistic.
maybe they should make vaccination sites at bars and restaurants. just post up and shoot them shots en masse (after everyone else has gotten them, of course).
I think the J&J vaccine will make pop up vaccine clinics possible. There’s already quite a bit of discussion about it among some outreach friends and the ability to target underserved neighborhoods better.
This reminds me, Pfizer revised their storage guidelines. They can now be stored for two weeks in a regular pharmacy freezer temperature. Which I believe is -4 Fahrenheit. Anyway, this improves the distribution chain on Pfizer quite a bit. So now Moderna won’t be the only candidate for less easy to access areas right now. But obviously Johnson and Johnson takes that to a whole other level.
It will be a huge access shift to move from taking people to the vaccines, to taking vaccines to the people. That was part of what made the polio campaign so successful. They were able to set up small pop-up clinics just everywhere.
My BIL had an appointment for today and it got delayed for 3 weeks because of low quantities of vaccine.
My boss and his family ate inside a restaurant this week (probably more than once, in the before times, they ate dinner out probably 5 times a week). He said “I’m done not living!” He is also traveling to Panama next week for vacation. Sigh. He has already had a mild case of COVID so is not too worried about it. He does always wear a mask when out though, other than when eating of course.
I think people like that in a lot of ways are the silent majority. I know a lot of people that are relatively cautious overall, but they’re still doing a little bit of travel, staying with friends, that sort of thing. That’s the frustration with public health. We need to meet people where they are, not where they should be. especially once you’ve lost trust and attention.
He’s definitely never liked being told what to do! 
this entire shutdown thing (Michigan has been one of the more careful) has really worn on him. It doesn’t bother me much, I never go to bars and rarely eat in restaurants.
The messaging has been a complete mess, and it’s probably too late to really fix that.
I prefer to think about the messaging as bi-modal. You have some people who want to do the best they can based on what the science says (and trusted experts/organizations tell them), given real world constraints. And you have some people who basically believe they should be able to do whatever they want to do, who cares about COVID or public health.
While there is nuance, you really can’t effectively target messaging to both of these groups at the same time.
Messaging that says “You got a vaccine, but please still take precautions” is aimed at group 1.
The problem you’re pointing out of how many people are turning down vaccines and won’t want it (and will ruin herd immunity) is basically group 2.
Messaging touting how miraculous and awesome the vaccine is MAY convert people at the margins from group 2 to group 1. But I don’t think it’ll get anywhere near reaching the core of this plurality.
Meanwhile, when you have a shortage of vaccines for everyone who wants them (as we do now), you exacerbate the stress and frustration of people in group 1 if you didn’t insist that vaccinated people should still take the precautions that protect everyone who can’t yet be vaccinated.
(I also don’t have answers. Just pointing out another side of this same problem.)
My friend’s husband got the vaccine because there was a no show, and her mother was working the clinic so he got called and offered the vaccine so it wouldn’t go to waste. I am happy for him and happy for no waste, yet why cannot big healthcare system wait list people who are in the eligible group for this phase that can’t get an appointment cuz there aren’t enough vaccines? (This is at a hospital in a big city, so lots of nearby eligible people, probably even including patients literally already there for other appointments… Oh and hospital is very near to minority and poverty zip code that had highest rate of infection in the city).
So evidently Walgreens releases appointments at 8 PM, and dh and I both got them for this week, though on different days and different stores because scheduling things online is not all that easy.
Covid question. My friend’s entire household had covid at Christmas. Is there a period of time where I would be VERY unlikely to get covid from them? If they are in a window of immunity, is it likely they can spread it? A different friend (likely) had covid twice, so that anecdote scares me.
I believe the current tentative conventional wisdom is that most people are protected from reinfection for at least 90 days after initial infection. If someone tests positive again within that time, it’s likely due to the old, non-contagious virus shedding. Citation here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html
After that, all bets are off.