Apparently those numbers are debatable.
I find ironic that people complain that they don’t believe the covid numbers from China (which I don’t think are terrible accurate) when a lot of the US numbers are equal unreliable - underreporting of covid deaths (just compare average numbers of yearly deaths with the one this year in many states) and overreporting testing results (sero and PCR test mixed together etc)
That’s a bit of an understatement. A lockdown of a city in China was widely reported in U.S. media a couple of days ago, yet just yesterday China claimed “no new cases”. As far as I’m concerned, the Chinese government has ZERO credibility.
In Texas County, Okla., patients pouring into the hospital with covid-19 symptoms are predominantly Hispanic and work in the local Seaboard Foods pork processing plant, which like many others has stayed open even after becoming the locus of an outbreak… State health officials tested everybody at the plant two weeks ago and found that of some 1,600 asymptomatic employees, 350 were positive, nearly four times as were known, Seaboard said in a statement. “As of May 20, 440 employees have active cases of covid-19,” the company said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/24/coronavirus-rural-america-outbreaks
When will it ever end?
San Diego County currently has had a cumulative total of 7000 confirmed (by testing) covid cases. The ratio of the number of positive tests to total tests done per day has been dropping steadily and is currently about 3%. In March this percentage was higher, and hopefully it’ll go still lower. But that’s the two-week running average as of May 26.
In any case, suppose for the moment that 3% positive tests is and has been an average for the County for the entire time since mid-March. And assume that the people tested are representative of a random sample having been taken among all areas and demographics in the County. (Yeah, ok, but just bear with me.)
Under those assumptions, the numbers imply that, at present, about 230,000 of the 3.3 million residents in SD County have now, or have had, the covid; about 7% of us. It took us roughly three months to get to those 230,000 infections, symptomatic and asymptomatic.
To get to the holy grail of “herd immunity” that number needs to go from 7% to something more like 70%. Ten times as many people having had infections (with recoveries), or immunization by way of vaccination, are needed. In the case of SD County, 2.3 million have to have had the covid and recovered, or vaccinated, for the County to achieve herd immunity.
By way of example, let’s say that the 3% number of positive cases, identified through daily testing, levels off and stays at 3% as testing expands. (Hopefully in fact it’ll drop a lot lower than 3%. But, bear with me.) And suppose there’s no vaccine in the meantime to help.
At a constant rate of 3% positive tests, coupled with the County’s stated goal of 5000 tests per day, there would be150 new positives (cases) identified per day, every day. These would be representative of over 2000 actual new infections County-wide per day, at present. At that same constant rate, however – neither accelerating nor decelerating in terms of the number of actual new cases daily (2000 or so) – we’ll need to wait a long time to achieve herd immunity. In order to go from 230,000 of us having at some point been infected to 2.3 M, it’ll take 2-1/2 to 3 years.
When a vaccine has finally been tested and approved for widespread distribution; enough of it manufactured and distributed; and after a large enough fraction of the population chooses to, and manages to get the shot, the remaining timeframe for achieving herd immunity will shorten greatly. In any case, that’s everyone’s hope.
Unfortunately, a vaccine probably won’t have been given FDA blessing before Memorial Day next year. Some say it’ll be ready sooner, even before the end of 2020. I personally doubt that, but hope they’re right. Either way, it won’t be 100% effective, and the whole population won’t get it immediately. Many won’t get it at all.
Meanwhile, beginning in October or November of this year, medical facilities will have to cope with both covid and flu patients at the same time, once again stressing the medical system. Covid won’t have gone away by then and flu season will ramp up, as it always does.
Also meanwhile, there will have been many cases of acute mental illness leading to life-threatening episodes; many who’s medical treatments for other illnesses, moderate to serious, will have been detrimentally delayed; and many who’s lives, livelihoods, social relationships, and avocations will have been deeply scared or extinguished.
So, what to do? I have no idea. No answers, only questions.
Welcome to reality
As said before vaccine development (and manufacturing) is key to overcome covid-19 which will take into 2021/2022. One way to shorten the timeline significantly is to start manufacturing on a full production mode of many vaccines already now - the obvious risk is that you will spend billions of $ on vaccine which will never go to market as they will fail in clinical trials but it still might be less money than not having the vaccines available for a longer time
1 Like
Just hanging out here eating popcorn
A vaccine by the end of this year is the most optimistic end of the most optimistic range. No responsible informed source will say that’s more than a stretch goal.
Seems like California’s in pretty good shape compared with Louisiana.
That’s a good idea. I wonder if it’s occurred to anyone in government. “Billions” doesn’t really sound like much when we’re talking about multi-trillion dollar stimulus legislation.
That’s exactly what the unfortunately named “Warp Speed” initiative is about, performing steps in parallel that would typically be performed in series. As honkman said, the upside is you might get an effective vaccine sooner. The downside is that you might waste a lot of money on a dead end.
I try not to pay too much attention to Trump. I’d heard of that, but didn’t know exactly what it was.
1 Like
Scott Gottlieb has pushed it for months now and yes, Project Warp Speed is going into this direction but I am afraid that they will preselect the companies who will work under the PWS umbrella not in a scientific way to spread the risk based on the different technologies, e.g. RNA-based, live, inactivated etc. (and even within these groups there are different approaches) but based on connections to Trump etc. (as it has happened now many times in similar situations, e.g. PPE etc).
1 Like
So, to clarify, is “Warp Speed” simply subsidizing the simultaneous development and testing of multiple vaccine candidates (politics aside for the moment); or is it that plus starting mass production ASAP of the most promising ones, so as to be well stocked with one (or more) of them when FDA approved? The idea of the latter would be to hit the ground running, with no delay for mass production (which I thought was your main point earlier). Personally, I don’t think that’d be a waste of money, even though the money spent on mass producing unsuccessful vaccine candidates could have been spent on other things. But yes, I agree with what you said about the likelihood of political pre-selection of the candidates.
In theory it should be doing as many steps in parallel as possible, so manufacturing millions of doses before testing and approval are complete. What could possibly go wrong?
PWS includes also the manufacturing in large scale (even though simply from a technical standpoint it would be nearly impossible to have enough doses for everybody in the US in all (first) batches of the scaled-up vaccines)
I see that Dr. Fauci says that a vaccine and 100M doses of it will likely be available in early 2021.
I am surprised that he has said it - I hope that they won’t take too many shortcuts especially with the safety of the vaccine. Efficacy I am less concerned that it can be shown in a relatively short timeframe but safety is much more complex, especially with the new (and unproven, with some questionable result when used in cancer) technology from Moderna (which is the only vaccine which could reach the early 2021 timeline)
He didn’t say “likely.” We may end up with hundreds of millions of doses of one or more vaccines that fail the tests proceeding in parallel.
Reading this report shows that the orange goblin is also trying to screw up the Warp Speed approach - no transparency how they made the final selection - those approaches which were selected are based on technologies which haven’t actually produced any vaccines to the market etc. It’s mind blowing that they not also in addition bet on classical, proven technologies for vaccine production like other countries are doing it (even if they need more time).