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the no-nonsense, nothing-but-the-facts-m'am C19 thread
NY, NJ, NYC, and Bergen County deaths include confirmed and probable deaths,
NJ: 5,791 new cases, 112 new confirmed cases
NY:18,831 new cases,165 new confirmed cases
NJ has 3,669 hospitalizations.
The Rt for NJ rose to 1.02,
The NJ spot positivity test rate on Sunday was 15.47%
Global numbers exclude China (87K cases, 4.6K deaths) which hasn’t reported any deaths in 9 months.
NJ: 6,435 new cases (record),102 new conf. deaths
NY: 16,943 new cases, 190 new confirmed deaths
NJ has 3,638 & NY has 8,527 hospitalizations.
The Rt for NJ rose for the 5th day. It is now 1.05.
Is ‘first dose first’ the right vaccination strategy?
But the shift to “first dose first” creates other dangers. One is vaccine resistance. Half-vaccinated people encourage vaccine-resistant strains of the virus. Some scientists think this is a modest risk compared to the selection pressure from millions of people who have already developed some immunity after infection. Others think it is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
A further problem is public trust. The UK’s move smacks of desperation, and the detail behind the JCVI’s recommendation has not been published. People have been vaccinated with the promise of a second dose, only to be told the second dose will be delayed; some will feel betrayed.
I posted this in the retirement thread (vaulting twins Lexi and Tori have retired)
This might be premature but I wonder if this is the first of some retirements driven by the decreasing prospects of the Olympics given the new, faster spreading strains (strains now, rather than just variants). Maybe this should go in the COVID thread but the faster spread means that the actions that were enough to quill spread and what people have gotten used to will be inadequate, maybe by a lot. Ireland hit a peak Rt of 2.1 (i.e., one person spreads, on average, to 2.1 other people, the R that powers a nuclear chain reaction). However, strong measures instituted ten days ago has lowered the estmated Rt to 1.2. The rate of climb might also be exaggerated because of delayed reporting and testing over Christmas.
That link shows the number of new 'net' hospitalizations as 597. But there were also 1035 new deaths. Adding those two imply to about 1600 people had to be hospitalized that day even assuming no one left the hospital except to go to the morgue. Adding another 500 semi-recovered takes the daily new hospitalizations to 2100 (if I am interpreting the data correctly. In Madison/Dane County there is both a count of those ever hospitalized and those currently in the hospital.
Much better news from more recent results; rather than post here go read the portions of Eric Topol's Twitter. If you are not looking at it regularly you are missing the breaking news and not having it filtered so much by journalists that are not as scientifically sophisticated (no disrespect for the journalists, but the nature of the expertise of each) https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/
Dozens of residents die at Belgian care home after Santa visit
At least 26 residents of a Belgian retirement home have died since a visit by a volunteer dressed as Saint Nicholas who has since tested positive for Covid-19.
And 47 medical personnel in an ER got infected mainly from a some inflated Christmas thing. My eldest is working as an EMT in California and when she goes to a nursing home the test the crew first before they (and anyone else, even though they had been there a day or two before and were tested then) are allowed to enter the facility. And they were vaccinated on December 28 (first dose, Moderna, I think) and now 12 days later has decent if not great protection. It was administered by the hospital where they do most of the transportation (there is really one main Hospital in Santa Cruz and surrounding area), so likely very good protocols.
Despite promises that the United States would have 100 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020, only 6.6 million peoplehave to date.
Where is the bottleneck? The United States lacks a clear and coordinated vaccine strategy. Since the vaccine first became available four weeks ago, more than 22 million doses have been sent to the states. Less than a third of these have actually been given, mostly to health-care workers and nursing home residents.
Germany purchased extra 30 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, outside the EU’s joint buying program. There's no way around it: Berlin violates an EU agreement to not negotiate in parallel with vaccine manufacturers. 1/4
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