the burden of COVID-19 falls almost completely on the unvaccinated. The threat to children from the disease is almost 0 regardless of vaccination status, and even closer to literally 0 for those who are vaccinated. It’s also basically 0 for vaccinated adults too. According to an analysis by the AP, in May over 99% of COVID deaths were among the unvaccinated. I’m highly skeptical of long COVID as a serious enough problem to change the cost-benefit analysis, as most of the research on the topic I’ve seen has been extremely flawed, and we should be very doubtful that vaccines that stop almost all hospitalization and death can leave you with a substantial risk of getting a chronic condition that has not been conclusively established as a statistically meaningful problem yet.
I’m all for telling the CDC and public healthocrats where they can stick it. But I personally am in the frame of mind that I was in back in March of 2020. In particular, I am not doing in-person dancing for a while. We have a son-in-law who takes immuno-suppressive drugs and three grandchildren who are too young to be vaccinated. I would like to be able to get together with them with a clear conscience. Note that there was one case of a 5-year old who reportedly died of COVID, with the Washington Post eagerly reporting that this was in Trump country.
Zvi Mowshowitz, the Fantasy Intellectual Teams star who I trust much more than any public healthocrat, writes,
Deaths are going up slower than cases, but faster than one would have hoped.
I think that’s right. On a brighter note, he writes,
The big mystery remains why Delta suddenly peaked and turned around, first in India, and now in the UK and the Netherlands. These turnarounds are excellent news, and I presume we will see a similar turnaround at a similar point, but what’s causing them to happen so quickly? I don’t know.
I would be happy to see a rapid turnaround, but right now things are going in the wrong direction.
Further on, Zvi writes,
The other news here is that Pfizer plans to be calling for booster shots. It seems that a three dose regimen is much more effective than a two dose regimen, now that we’ve had the ability to test such things, and some places are moving to implement this already. The data here suggests that the third dose will bring things back to at least the early stage 96% effectiveness and plausibly even higher. If I am offered a third dose, I will happily accept it.
There is the concern that giving people third doses while others have not had the opportunity even for first doses is not ethical. I respect that perspective, but do not share it, and will leave it at that.
I say fire the head of the CDC and put Zvi in charge, and will leave it at that.
Two cheers for private adaptation to current info about prevalence and risk!
My intuition is that a handful of reasonable policies would strike a good balance liberty and public health, if we may assume adequate hospital capacity:
1. Free and ready access to vaccination.
2. Freedom of health insurers to charge risk-based premiums, based also on individual vaccination or antibody status and relevant co-morbidities. (A person who has co-morbidities can avoid penalty for pre-existing conditions by vaccination or a positive antibody test.)
3. Exemption of organizations from liability for contagion.
What am I missing?
Perhaps Richard Hanania would remind me that no. 3 (and maybe also no. 2?) is politically unfeasible, given vague “safe workplace” requirements and HR culture.
If such ‘first-best’ policies are politically unfeasible, then where does the economist’s theory of the second-best (or sixth-best?!) point, given American politics and culture?
PS: An idea, re: 3rd vaccine doses for the vulnerable. Grant to every citizen vouchers for 2 doses, and allow a post-allocation market in vouchers. This 2-step mechanism would balance formal equality and individual preference intensity.
“If such ‘first-best’ policies are politically unfeasible, then where does the economist’s theory of the second-best (or sixth-best?!) point, given American politics and culture?”
Pay them $1000 to get (or have been) vaccinated. We just sent everyone thousands of dollars to do nothing.
Or tax them for not getting vaccinated.
The “immunological mandate”
Meanwhile, infecting your twink with HIV is no crime in San Francisco.
I agree on 1. and 3. Vaccines should be readily available to all who want them, and no organization should be liable because people in the organization happened to get sick. That’s ridiculous. We have to live life, we can’t reduce risk to zero.
I disagree on 2. Post Obamacare, we live in a world in which health insurance is supposed to be community rated. This type of thing would be very negatively perceived, given that risk-based premiums aren’t used for others who have largely voluntarily committed to higher health risks, the obese in particular come to mind here. I think it might actually increase resistance to vaccine among a significant portion of the unvaccinated, who would take such draconian measures as prima facie evidence of a sinister ulterior motive.
You’ll see responses to 2. like this:
“The vaccine is so safe and effective that you have to force people to take it on pain of massive financial penalties. Oh, and after you get it, you’ll still need to wear a mask in your own house. For a virus which has a 0.2% chance of killing me personally. LOL.”
It’s probably too late for this, but I’d recommend 4: complete transparency and honesty into the science and decision making process, along with intelligent & properly educated right wing and black influencers who can review the materials and say “yes, this decision makes sense, but this is the uncertainty and this is the risk that remains for you as an individual.” You have to be impartial and eliminate political bias in your decisions as much as possible. If going out in public is going to spread the virus, you can’t make an exception for your pet political cause. Also, to give this any chance of succeeding at all, we need to fire people like Fauci and Walensky, as something like half of the public doesn’t trust them and their organizations. Some people are probably no longer reachable. But with enough effort, some may be.
Regarding the sudden drop in the India statistics, I have read that they began distributing Ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh and other Indian states with excellent apparent results:
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/uttar-pradesh-government-says-ivermectin-helped-to-keep-deaths-low-7311786/
Various Left media sources claim there is no evidence that Ivermectin worked because there are not yet random clinical trials. They seem remarkably indifferent to the deaths that were occurring, in not wanting to repurpose this relatively harmless drug in the absence of any other available therapy.
Do you have citations from liberals about Ivermectin? What I have read is that it doesn’t prevent infection, but does reduce severity of infection. Not to the point that you aren’t going to see elevated all cause mortality, but certainly enough that it is clear that it is helping even without needing to do randomized controlled trials.
You would trust a guy that would say this?:
“Few things warm my heart more than playing to win the game. Few things sadden me more than observing someone not playing to win the game.”
I’d give credit to Fauci for playing to win the game, even if his game strategies haven’t actually been winning.
“I’d give credit to Fauci for playing to win the game, even if his game strategies haven’t actually been winning.” What constitutes winning? It might be keeping his face and perpetually-talking mouth on TV, and in that he is a champion. It might be to provide politicians (elected or appointed) with authoritarian leanings a public health rationale to exercise their authority. That one seems to be slipping a bit. If improving the overall public health constitutes winning, I don’t think he’s playing that game at all.
Am not posting this to endorse it, but to ask for intelligent pushback if he’s wrong or overstating things.
I was in the Sailer/Cochran camp (covid may be terrifically dangerous, and we should act like it is) last year, but I’m steadily moving towards the view that we should stop worrying about it apart from taking precautions to protect very old people and others who have weak immune systems.
The data in tweet appear to be correct.
Might the effectiveness of a third dose be that the dose is being given further than 3 weeks out from the first (or second) dose?
I think seasonality might be at work with the peaks in the UK and India. On the other hand, UK has healthier/thinner people than the US, and has might have had a lower IFR, and thus higher total cases than the US. So the UK really may have hit heard immunity quickly. Personally I think we’ll get another wave in late fall winter if we haven’t hit the heard immunity threshold in the US.
There are things that suck besides sickness. First as a parent of young children, it would suck if my kids miss school again, or the rest of camp. Not worried about my kids getting covid, just worried they’ll miss out. I’m vaccinated, but my dad is unhealthy and immunocompromised. At this point I worry it won’t be safe enough to see him before he up suddenly passing away.
We need to make the vaccine available to kids, like yesterday, before schools start. That’ll bump our rate up another 5% minimum. Also make mask wearing contingent on vaccination status. Most of our evidence on schooling comes from last year with a virus that had an R0 of 2.5, not of 6. Worried that it’ll rip through schools in the south which start next week. Closing them down for months. In a big school system like Atlanta or Houston there could easily a kid death and the reaction will not be pretty.
–“We need to make the vaccine available to kids, like yesterday, before schools start.”–
Only if the benefits exceed the cost. Kids are extremely unlikely to have a severe experience with COVID, so it’s quite possible that the net benefit of vaccinating children will not be worth the cost. I suspect that is the case, given the hesitancy to make them available to young children.
I suspect Delta has changed that calculation. It’s not going to get less transmissible. The kids are going to get it or get vaccinated, for mine I prefer the former, seems likely to have fewer risks. Both of their grandfathers will definitely die if they get Covid. I’d like this to be over.
That hesitancy has nothing to do with a weighing of costs and benefits. The FDA requires studies of each age group before approving a vaccine and there just aren’t any that it finds acceptable so far.
Then the hesitancy is presumably based on expected costs vs. benefits. If children had much to gain from a COVID vaccine, why would we have waited a year or so to test the vaccines on them?
Because all through this, most of the medical establishment has not felt much urgency. If they hadn’t been forced into it by Operation Warp Speed, we wouldn’t even have an approved vaccine today.
Keep your hands off of our young child. We have zero plans to have her vaccinated. Her risk is tiny as is her risk of spreading it.
Thank the almighty that we live in a sane red state.
Also, keep your hands off of our dogs.
They aren’t spayed/neutered and won’t ever be. Deal with it.
This blog entry at “Healthy Skeptic” was pointed to by Scott Johnson at PowerLine. I’ve followed Kevin Roche on the Covid topic since the beginning of the panic. He has brought a “healthy” skepticism to the ongoing switches, swings, codswallop, and other confusions of the panicky pandemic responses: both medical and political.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/07/28/what-more-can-i-say/
Here’s his most recent on school/mask policies
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/07/29/the-cdc-and-doh-school-recommendations-are-just-absolutely-stupid/
If you have questions about his background, his “About” page has a fairly fulsome description.
Every wave in the western countries since last Summer have been about 12 weeks trough to trough. One could have predicted the duration of India, the UK, and The Netherlands wave of Delta variant if one actually looks at the freaking data. The only longer waves came during the first part of the pandemic when testing was catching up to the virus’ spread- in short those waves were artificially spread out in duration because the testing rate was much higher later in the waves than at the beginning (see India’s first wave from last year for the textbook example.
The rest of Hanania’s excerpt is pretty much wrong and out of date with regards to the efficacy of the vaccines- taking death data in May biases the field in favor of the vaccines because most of the deaths by that point were still coming from people who were infected long before the vaccines had even reached 20% of the population. Your kids are more likely to die in the bathtub from drowning than to die of COVID. It is extremely unethical at this stage to mandate or recommend minors get vaccinated for this particular virus given what we already know about the side effects.
As for the insurance ideas- yeah, go with that- I dare you- Obamacare was sold on the idea that pre-existing conditions can’t be penalized, and here we have people who supported that politically now trying to undo it for one particular condition. The hypocrisy on this is just stunning to witness.
As for the boosters- they won’t solve the problem of the efficacy waning- you will be, apparently, taking a booster every 6 months for this virus, and it isn’t even clear if the boosters are going to be able to stay ahead of the mutations. I am guessing each booster ends up fighting the last variant that is already in decline.
I for one won’t be playing this game. I will remain unvaccinated and undaunted by this virus. If you want to hide in your house with your masks and your boosters, then do so- just leave me the f*** alone. I am done playing safety theater.
It is extremely unethical at this stage to mandate or recommend minors get vaccinated for this particular virus given what we already know about the side effects.
Why are the people who recommend widespread vaccination confident that we adequately understand the risks? This is from an HHS-funded report published in 2011:
Has the system improved since then? Or are we getting better data specifically about covid vaccine side effects?
You basically have a choice- believe in the vaccines’ efficacy- if you do, then you have no reason to fear the unvaccinated- they can’t harm you. If you are worried about your children, then by all means- vaccinate them, I disagree with this idea, but I won’t lift a finger to stop you- they are your children, not mine. However, if your push to mandate vaccines by either government of employer fiat is based on the belief that this will extinguish COVID- then you are just a fool who knows nothing about respiratory viruses- literally nothing.
“Deaths are going up slower than cases, …”
Given that the death rate is 1/200 cases or so, this should be expected.
If deaths were always 1/200 cases, the rate of increase of both cases and deaths would be the same. One way of putting that would be that deaths are not going up either faster or slower than cases.
I think that’s the way Arnold is using it here. The people who are getting the virus now are less likely to die.
A better way to put that would be ‘the number of cases are increasing but the death rate is declining’.
I hope you’re right, but it will take a while to know for sure. There’s about a month lag from when cases start going up to when deaths start going up.
“There is the concern that giving people third doses while others have not had the opportunity even for first doses is not ethical.”
Obviously, in the US everyone has had the *opportunity* for first doses even if they haven’t taken it. Is the main reason for hesitancy in recommending a third dose really to reserve doses for other countries? I had not heard that. My question is whether too many “boosters” can be detrimental to the one receiving the boosters, e.g., is there some risk that the body will develop a “tolerance” for vaccines so that each successive booster produces a progressively smaller immune response? I guess we do receive annual flu shots and, as far as I know, the effectiveness of each successive flu shot doesn’t wane. What would be other reasons for reluctance to recommend boosters (other than the “obvious” one of not wanting to spend money on boosters that don’t add any value)?
Each year’s flu shot is different, protecting against different strains than the previous year. The vaccine people try to predict which strains are coming each year and make vaccines for them.
And it does seem like we might be headed that way with covid…