I get it, but you've made it 11 months already, case counts are falling rapidly, spring is coming, and people getting vaccinated will drive down new cases even more. Calm down and wait another month or two.
The case counts will go up again within the next 2 months due to little vaccination and multiple mutations making their way through many countries. Germany and US will look like Britain, fighting B117, not too long from now.
Germany is "already" discussing to losen the lockdown and open schools again. It's really stupid in terms of epidemiology, fully understandable socially, and actually necessary in terms of economy. Germany has vaccinated a measely 2 million people, only 900k got the second dose (https://esri-de.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html...)
There's a wave of suicides coming from people who have lost a lot during the lockdowns.
To be honest, I get the sentiment. Arrival of vaccines was greeted as huge relief, and months after that, all I see is squabbling of politicians yet again caught completely unaware of realities of life. Companies not delivering what they promised, referring to some small prints in the contracts (which to be fair, were stupid to be signed but I suspect that states either accepted the contracts or didn't get anything). Big pharma industry is after all about making money just like any other, helping people is just a side effect.
Maybe US will quickly get the stuff done, if anybody you guys have the potential, and now also the leadership. But here in Europe, it looks beyond pathetic. Vaccines nowhere, cases stagnant for at at least a month during current lockdowns. My 93 year old grandparents had first jab (this one maybe 30% immunity), second nowhere to be seen, so not much protection. Our friend who works in intensive care in biggest hospital in Switzerland (exactly with all the covid patients on ventilation), wants to protect herself and her family and also get pregnant soon, can't get any.
I expect, and desperately hope that I am wrong, that in 2-3 months, we will be at exactly same place as right now, just more tired and desperate.
It's strange what you write about Switzerland, it's supposed to be the 4th best country in number of vaccinations (at 4%). Is that a lie?
At the same time I understand that pregnant people don't get vaccines, as the vaccine was not tested on pregnant people and it's hard to know the effects on the babies. It makes sense to skip them and get to herd immunity without them instead of harming the baby.
I don't know if its a lie, just saying what I see around me. That friend isn't pregnant yet but planning soon, but at the most risky doctor job one could have with covid, in biggest hospital, and still unable to get vaccinated.
My wife is pregnant, and as you write they don't get vaccination, just hope for the best and not catching it (since it has some potentially pretty nasty effects on pregnancy).
In Canada, it was 'by end of summer' - and now - it's 'anyone who wants a vaccine by end of 2021'.
And that's without the vaccine delays which have flatlined the roll-out, meaning, that timeline is now optimistic.
There is a material chance that many segments won't get vaccinated until way into the fall in Canada, supposedly a '1st nation' which is cause for revolutionary rethink of the incompetence of bureaucracy in face of an existential problem.
The opportunity cost of: 'lives lost, living conditions suppressed, massive economic damage' of the ongoing situation imply we should have been spending billions to refactor production sites and build out supply chains long before vaccine trials were complete. Even with the distinct likelihood that most vaccines wouldn't work or be deemed unsafe, it would still have made sense to at least ramp up manufacturing many months ago. Several billion dollars 'wasted' towards bad vaccines only to get a single good one, is orders of magnitude less than the 'wasted' lives and billions faced by many months delay in roll out.
It's a very simple calculation actually - spend a billion today to ramp up early, most of which might be wasted - to save 10 billion tomorrow in terms of early vaccination rollout.
In times of crisis, the press becomes a little bit propagandistic - what everyone is suppressing right now (because we plebes can't fathom to see it) is that governments around the world are spending the equivalent of an entire generation of deficit just in a few months. Frankly, the Capitol Hill Riots were a giant distraction from the severe underlying reality.
In that context, the speed and efficiency of the roll out is exceedingly consequential.
These are generational issues, this is our 'World War', the stuff that will define our era, and be studied for decades.
Sorry, I meant a month or two for someone 65 or older. Most of the story's gripes were among that group; outside of those with compromised immune systems or preexisting conditions, people seem resigned to waiting 4+ months.
What’s to remain calm about with a State government too busy trying to figure out who it is most fair to inject shots into arms, losing doses in the time it takes to figure it out, rather than getting shots into arms?
Start delivering on demand and the manufacturing supply will take care of itself.
You're kinda proving the point here. The source article is about exactly the opposite problem: Maryland is widely distributing vaccines rather than micromanaging fairness, so there are a lot of random tricks available for people to get vaccines faster, and the author is frustrated about that. When there's no perfect strategy available, we can and should push for continual improvement, but there's a point where we have to accept people are doing their best instead of getting mad about it.
My point is the entire process is over-bureaucratized.
If you want to prioritize anyone, with COVID specifically you come to two conclusions about who you might want to prioritize first: the very old and any employee involved in front-line healthcare work.
For the former, there’s a Federally administered healthcare system specifically for anyone 65+. For the latter: they work within, are affiliated with, or have relatively straightforward access to hospitals and generally clean spaces to inject a vaccine. They are also showing a lot of disinterest in getting the vaccine, and many of them have already been infected and survived COVID.
So States largely don’t need to involve themselves in vaccinations for the 65+ but they can provide additional resources of necessary, if Medicare can do it instead, and I’ll go out on a limb and say health care workers should get priority. Fine, but by this point most of them have had the opportunity and accepted or declined, and the priority access should be time-limited, not based on what percentage of them chose to accept. The time has passed, let’s move on.
For everyone else, if someone shows up, wants the vaccine and you have it; inject it. Need more? Order more. Manufacturing is not the bottleneck at this point. Just getting a goddamned appointment is, and this is bottlenecked by stupid rules about who is allowed to get an appointment in some States including mine, because some people are sitting behind desks at home paid by the government throwing around words like “push for continual improvement”, “strategy” and “doing their best”.
You want a strategy? It’s called a factory line. I was always amazed whenever I walked into a Kaiser with a buddy of mine anytime she needed blood work and impressed by how they had industrialized the process of drawing large quantities of blood from up to 10 people at a time in a small office space in under 5 minutes. Never been to another hospital like it. Injecting people should look a lot like that, and if you need to spread people out like we do, that’s fine, there’s plenty of space when you’ve made this a national priority. We have nothing but space.
> Manufacturing is not the bottleneck at this point.
This is just nonsense. We are manufacturing quickly, but vaccine production absolutely remains the bottleneck. We will not have sufficient doses for everyone who wants a shot for several months.
I understand your point, but the strategy you're describing is exactly what the author is frustrated by. Maryland doesn't have "stupid rules about who is allowed to get an appointment", and all doses which become available are quickly claimed - as a consequence, if she wants to claim a dose for her parents, she has to run around at odd hours checking with everyone who might have new availability. Until we have enough shots available for everyone who wants one, there's no way to make everyone happy.
Her problem is a good problem to have. Mine is not.
That means people in Maryland are readily receiving the vaccine and between whoever has already been infected, those who are likely to survive infection with little consequence and the daily increase of people who are now vaccinated, the entire State of Maryland is becoming more resistant by the day which will do as much to mitigate risk to her parents as everything else.
A 95% effectiveness rate still means that every 5 out of a hundred vaccinated people will still be vulnerable to infection post-vaccination. Either one of her parents could be one of those 5.
Given we have now reached the point that society will refuse to open up properly until we have vaccinated tons of people, let’s get people vaccinated, lots of them and quickly.
As a Maryland resident, I certainly feel we have "stupid rules about who is allowed to get an appointment" at a statewide level AND we've got a bunch of providers interpreting those stupid rules in inconsistent and arbitrary ways.
My doctor's office has apparently received some vaccines but are only vaccinating people in Group 1A because they feel that's the most important. But the governor claims we've moved into Group 1C, and if I can snag an appointment with a different provider, I might be in luck.
There is a 'rough sequence' that people should be following.
Some gears in the system will be off, and some individuals will act poorly - but that's ok, it doesn't need to be perfect.
Speed of delivery probably takes preference over secondary quibbles about order of priority, as long as there roughly is one.
Take solace in the fact the US is way ahead of other nations, and thank God, because the amount of 'anti lockdown' populism in the US I feel has been considerably higher than in most other places and I don't think the population could handle any more lockdowns or more assertive measures without some very ugly populism in the streets.
It is hard for people to calm down when some scientific advisers to governments are telling newspapers that social distancing must last until the entire world is vaccinated, to prevent new COVID mutations, so they recommend the status quo until 2024–2026.
Also, governments have handed virtually all authority over lifting lockdown to their health ministers, who generally prioritize saving every possible life above all else. Most of the population will, at some point or another, be willing to accept some number of deaths in order to reopen the economy and freedom of movement, but they legitimately worry that their voices aren't being heard.
> governments have handed virtually all authority over lifting lockdown to their health ministers
This does worry me, but in Europe and the US, the consensus seems to be that it's not possible to stop it, so settle on some sort of a "live with it" strategy. During the fall, I remember Europeans looking at the US and saying "they just needed a real lockdown." As winter came and case counts rose again in Europe, there wasn't much of an appetite for another round of hard lockdowns.
My best guess for developed countries is that things start getting back to normal by late summer one way or another because either vaccines are effective enough and bring down the case counts or they weren't, but people are willing to accept the risk and move on. Support for strict government policies only works if there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
You are right there wasn't much appetite for the hardest degree of lockdowns, but what Europe got instead is bad enough. Borders closed in spite of Schengen, putting a stop to things like cross-border relationships and the sort of everyday interaction between European peoples that staves off nationalisms. Then you have closure of restaurants, concert halls, etc. which has led to a wave of bankrupcies, and governments show little interest in compensating these sectors adequately for their lost business.
When politicians saw that they could get away with hard borders again and closed businesses without too much popular protest (and that is, to a large degree, due to popular protests being banned), I worry that these restrictions could last much longer than just this summer. After all, as I mentioned in my post above, when the scientific advisers to your country’s government are interviewed in the news and recommend restrictions in perpetuity, where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
"Listen to the epidemiologists" has been some of the worst messaging through all of this because they've never actually stopped a pandemic before (other than smallpox), and they don't necessarily understand the politics, economics, psychology, or legality of their ideas.
I wonder what has happened to human culture worldwide that 'safety' has been given primacy over all other considerations. If hitler had invaded france in 2020 instead of 1940, would the world have united to liberate france? I'm really not sure.
Yes, but as people 'open up' it may happen explosively as they feel more confident, leading to a material increase in cases.
COVID spreads pretty easily, we've taken quite a number of measures to keep it wrapped up. If people get lazy, it will get out of hand.
There's a kind of American hubris and self-belief, sometimes confused with 'courage and independence' (and sometimes not) that leads to this kind of activity.
It's very easy to think 'it's not going to affect me' when problems are on the margins, especially if there are vaccines at the ready.
In a way, it's a very dangerous time - even as rates start to climb, authorities may have a really hard time reeling people's behaviours in.
Most Canadians are under a curfew right now and vaccines are not coming. We may not reach critical mass until Sept/Oct and there will be riots if we have to do another curfew.
It's not a good situation - we need to be thinking in WW3 terms about getting those vaccines made and out.
Any rich country that doesn't get it done by Sept. should re-think their status as a developed nation.
Germany is "already" discussing to losen the lockdown and open schools again. It's really stupid in terms of epidemiology, fully understandable socially, and actually necessary in terms of economy. Germany has vaccinated a measely 2 million people, only 900k got the second dose (https://esri-de.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html...)
There's a wave of suicides coming from people who have lost a lot during the lockdowns.