I have been thinking about traveling but decided to put it off until 2022. Otherwise I am living my life normally. This delta variant sounds like bad news. Ugh! I really want kids to be able to go to school and resume their lives. Childhood is short and I feel sorry for what they are missing.
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Just hosted 5 friends from 2 other states and am so very, very delighted that we are all vaccinated and able to do this.
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I got a copy of Michael Lewisâ new nonfiction book The Premonition about the pandemic. In it the CDC is portrayed as an evidence-based, data-driven organization that is so inept and ineffective one of the lead characters suggested its name be changed from the Center for Disease Control to Center for Disease Observation and Reporting.
What is so bad about being evidence-based and data-driven?
As one of the lead public health characters learns, in the case of communicable diseases, protecting public health requires taking action with a minimum amount of information available. By the time the amount of data that the CDC would require is available, it is way, way too late for action. She found the CDC effectively useless way before Covid. Those who understood what was happening the best (according to Lewis) tried to work around the CDC rather than with it.
This agrees with what I have felt about the CDC through essentially all of the pandemic. I was reading everything I could find in very publicly available sources, watching what was going on in other countries, and felt the CDC was well behind the curve. Initially I thought that Trump was muzzling them. Reading this book, it seems the CDC does not want to issue any guidance that might have a negative economic impact unless it has the data to fully justify why it did so. So the guidance comes out very, very late after a lot of damage has been done.
What Iâm currently seeing in the news:
- Those fully vaccinated are generally protected against the Delta variant; most deaths and hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated
- However itâs not foolproof. Thereâs a report out of the UK that of 117 deaths from the Delta variant, 50 were in fully vaccinated with two doses of vaccine and all of those 50 who died were over the age of 50 (itâs good to be young). This is not a news source Iâm familiar with (linked below) so I donât know how reliable it is.
- Having already had Covid does not provide immunity to the variants that are out there
- Iâve seen some noise that the J&J vaccine is less effective against the Delta variant and may require a booster with either Pfizer or Moderna.
tl;dr: At best, the CDC is a lagging indicator about what precautions we should currently be taking.
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Of course I canât find the Twitter thread I saw that explained the math behind this in detail, but: one thing to keep in mind is that if most people are vaccinated, it is likely that most people who test positive for COVID will be vaccinated, just due to the population size.
(Not directed at anyone in particular, just seeing many comments pointing out that people who are vaccinated are testing positive for COVID).
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I think right now we are still seeing very much that more unvaccinated people than vaccinated are testing positive. This is becoming more pronounced now that summer heat is driving people back indoors, when in the spring we werenât seeing that as much.
So maybe somewhere that 90% of the population is vaccinated, there will be more cases in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated, but thatâs not happening in the US right now.
But another thing to consider, antecdotally, the people willing to get a test for minor symptoms (to help prevent any spread) are also probably more likely to be vaccinated. The unvaccinated are typically not unvaccinated because they canât be, but because they donât want to be. They are also less likely to submit to an extremely uncomfortable test if they otherwise feel fine. So we arenât catching a lot of low symptomatic cases among the unvaccinated. (When I had my most recent test, the NP who ordered it told me every single person she ordered a test for that day was vaccinated, and no one had more than minor cold symptoms.)
And the mRNA vaccines, at two doses, are still extremely effective against serious illness with the Delta variant.
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That sucks. Hopefully they become available soon.
I had no side affects or anything which is good
Sample size is small, but some serum testing showed that Moderna vaccination provides a response against the variants, including Delta. Promising news for the mRNA vaccinations.
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Hearing more and more about what is happening in Africa I do not understand how rich countries can justify getting vaccines to their children over getting vaccines to older folks in poorer countries.
Fewer people die - including in the richer countries, as we have less variants forming - the sooner we can get the most vulnerable vaccinated in the global south.
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Bright side is at least that it looks like kids are receiving lower doses, so one adult dose will cover two kids from what I was reading. That still doesnât get to the heart of the issue, but at least itâs something.
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If that had been the plan originally maybe Iâd be more okay with it, but if you (general you) now suggest pushing the date my child can get his vaccine back Iâm not going to take it well and it will not be at all rational.
That said, attempting to be rational - I wonder what the logistics costs of distribution are in poorer countries vs. rich countries. Theyâve already got some numbers from existing humanitarian efforts for other vaccine efforts.
My cynical side also wonders how much of it is political calculating âIf we give X and Y and Z rich countries more vaccine doses per capita, theyâll contribute more money to the overall global effort. If we prioritize by age regardless of location, theyâll throw a hissy fit and take their money and go home even though people are literally dying.â Because how much of this original distribution planning was happening when Trump was in office. But maybe last November was too long ago for that to be as much of a factor?
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You just described endowment effect which is a very normal rational human effect 
But I guess I take issue with what you describe as âoriginallyâ - the vaccines werenât even approved for children in the US, and still arenât in many other rich countries, just 6 weeks ago. Iâm not sure what âoriginallyâ refers to.
We always were prioritizing health care workers and the elderly. But the developing world, as usual, has been left behind.
Last month we had hundreds of health care workers dying from covid in African countries. None were vaccinated. .2% of the entire continent is vaccinated. The African Union goal is now 50% vaccination of adults by end of 2022. South and Eastern African countries are having a devastating third wave right now while weâre vaccinating children in the US. We know that every vaccine that goes to an elderly adult and health care worker prevents deaths, not just infections as is more common in children.
Yes, distribution is part of it, also enough health care workers. But supply is the biggest issue - thereâs just not enough vaccinesâŚcovax orders that countries have made arenât even predicted to get in til early 2022.
Most of the current global distribution plan with regards to rich countries has been entirely the Biden administration. All the G7 country global vaccine efforts are recent commitments in the past three months.
The thing is that with variants - if vaccination efforts arenât global, we arenât rid of Covid. The more people with weak immune systems that get covid in developing countries, the more variants form, which weakens vaccines effectiveness in rich countries. Itâs a global pandemic.
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We have been hearing for months that we can reasonably expect vaccines for elementary-aged kids this fall, so now if that doesnât materialize, we parents will feel like something has been taken away from us and our kids. I mean, obviously itâs not a promise, but the rollout has been so smooth thus far that it has sounded super promising.
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Good to know, thanks. I was not aware of that.
I want to reply to the rest of your post but I think I need to flip back through my journal rather than relying on my memory, especially when I should probably actually be working (like a responsible adult, siiiigh).
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COVAX also promised vaccines to low- and middle-income countries back in November. Rollout has not been so smooth for them, but, turns out that having a huge disruption in the supply chain due a highly infectious variant outbreak in the main manufacturing country of the vaccines for Covax (India) means that expectation have to change.
Everyone is getting used to changing expectations, but if our goal is preventing deaths and new variants, then distributing vaccines to children in the US prior to getting supply to low- and middle-income countries that have put in orders to vaccinate health care worker and elderly folks - we may have to change expectations.
Iâm not an epidemiologist, but from my view itâs obvious that the global south is getting screwed over, and that if the global south gets screwed over, we all are.
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Right. Iâm just giving context to the âoriginallyâ and what the political barriers would be to postponing vaccination of children in the US.
Getting effective vaccines (so, not the Chinese one, for instance) into the arms of people in the developing world does strike me as more important than vaccinating US children, but I donât consider my opinion on the subject to be particularly well-informed.
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I fully agree we need to be prioritizing higher risk people in the rest of the world better than we are. But I wonder if part of this is a distribution issue? The Pfizer vaccine being tested for kids requires -80C storage. Wouldnât it be hard to safely get it to a lot of the elderly in Africa due to infrastructure gaps? Maybe if kids here get that one it would free up more supply of other types that are more easily transported. (And itâs certainly no excuse for not sending any doses where they CAN be safely stored.)
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Im not sure thereâs any way it wouldnât be political suicide for anyone to suggest we donât vaccinate American children first. I see what youâre saying about the global south, but I think the campaign would have to first be convincing american people that under a certain age risk of vaccine effects are similar to risk of long covid effects.
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Plague Journal Time Machine
OK I found a journal entry from December 1, 2020 saying that vaccines were starting to be distributed around the country while the FDA reviewed paperwork. âIt seems like everyone is in agreement that healthcare workers will get it first, then nursing home staff and residents. Eventually they will be available to the general public but thereâs no firm idea what month that would even be yet.â
That entry also talks about how I just then realized that my then-five year old wouldnât be vaccinated at the same time as myself and my husband. For most of his life every single well visit meant getting a vaccine until he was four, then before he turned five the pandemic hit. It biased my thoughts to âWell of course heâd get a vaccineâ because they were so normal in his medical interactions, if that makes sense.
The next entry is 12/29, by then vaccines were being given to healthcare workers but I conjecture that my kid (with a disability) might get his vaccine before me/my spouse since weâre both adults in the âyoungish and healthyâ group and it seemed like that group would get theirs so far in the future.
(lol my next entry is January 6th. Yikes.)
Skipping ahead, the next mention of vaccines is 3/12 when Biden announced that he wanted states to make all adults eligible for the vaccines as of May 1st. There was still no mention of when children would get the vaccine, but to go back to your original âI do not understand how rich countries can justify getting vaccines to their children over getting vaccines to older folks in poorer countries.â
So I feel like maybe Bidenâs announcement in March was a tipping point? Thatâs when a lot of the messaging about America getting back to normal by the 4th of July started happening - basically âSure sure weâll be magnanimous and send doses to other (lesser) countries, but the United States will be okay!â Honestly till you said something I had no idea other countries healthcare workers werenât getting vaccinated yet, it seems like if there was more/any intention towards equity that would have happened before opening the floodgates to every over-16 Tom, Dick, and Harriet here.
Some of the concern now (aside from political suicide) is all the parents Iâve heard of who cannot return to the workforce because they donât feel safe sending their kids out of the house to school. My own state has already said masks are optional for next fall and I doubt delta variant or even a clear sign from God Himself will change their Republican calculus on that decision, so vaccines feel like the only option to get working parents fully back into the economy.
(I fully acknowledge being a self-centered, US-centered American asshole in this post. Iâm only vaguely aware of Australiaâs status because of the Aussies around here.)
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For all of modern time we have accepted that poor countries will have diseases that become endemic that rich countries have vaccinated and tested away. It seems weâve accepted that again, which is a damn shame, especially given this year taught us how fast an epidemic becomes a pandemic. 
Iâm not an public health expert and I donât have the solutions, But the K shaped recovery is even more stark on a global scale.
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Distribution is an issue but supply is more an issue, the first country to get covax vaccines (south Africa) couldnât even use the ones they got, the only ones they ordered through covax (AstraZeneca) and had to send them to another African Union country because it was not effective against the South African variant.
Africa is trying to develop mRNA facilities for producgion on the continent.
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