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by saurik
1865 days ago
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> Giving a pair of doses as first shots to two >65yo results in far fewer people dead than giving that pair of doses as a full course to one 65yo. In the US, though, I don't think we have ever been forced between these two scenarios: we have always had enough vaccine doses for people in our high risk classes. The question thereby is more whether it is better to have all the essential workers and everyone over 65 years old along with maybe third of everyone else with a single dose or to have the first two classes of people fully dosed... and "I dunno", right? ;P |
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I'm not sure; January->April the US was constrained by vaccine supply. The initial rollout to at-risk groups was not a case of "we got a shipment of 100m doses, now we need to figure out how to use them", it was more "we're manufacturing 1-2m doses per day and trying to ramp that up". It took months to go through the gradually broadening risk tiers. (e.g. see https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d..., which says "deliver 100m vaccines by end of March, 100m more by end of May").
I believe the US was keeping shots back in favor of using them later as second doses, rather than giving them immediately as first doses, though I don't have a citation for that to hand. If that's right, the US could have ~doubled its rate of vaccination, i.e. got to the April 15 "all age group open vaccination" milestone in 2 months instead of 4 months, with first doses only administered to that population. At the very least, we were giving second doses in Feb (21-28 days after first doses in Jan) that could have been given as first doses to the higher-risk groups we were still prioritizing through April.
There's a follow-up question on which I have not run the numbers -- are there any X,Y pairs for which you'd rather hold back a shot to give as a second dose later for a >X year old, instead of giving it immediately as a first dose to a <Y year old. Interesting question, I don't think that's what you were getting at though.