Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[havoc315]

What are the "right decisions?" Getting vaccinated or putting in strong restrictions on top of the vaccinations? If the former I agree it is the right decision. Thus far, 37.9% of the population has begun vaccination (for FL it is 36.2%, over 80% for 65+). Regardless of hesitancy or whatever other reason, there's no reason to think it won't get to the 62% level that Israel is at now.

If you think the "right decisions" are continued strict restrictions on top of the vaccinations then I disagree strongly.

Look to the UK and Israel as models of the right decisions.
UK... 90%+ vaccination rate among eligible adults + tight lockdown until cases drop massively.
Israel: 80%+ vaccination rate among eligible adults + passports required for many activities including employment.

Merely vaccinating 60-70% of adults with minor mitigation measures is unlikely to obliterate Covid in the foreseeable future.

With decisions more like the UK or Israel, we would be down to under 5,000 cases per day and under 50 deaths per day by July 1. For a truly normal summer.

 

[havoc315]

Also, we need to rethink vaccination availablity to make this go faster. Unlike when we were vaccinating old people, the people left work. Workers do not want to have to use a sick day to get a shot or stay home due to side effects. We need to increase staffing on Fri-Sun for the rush and othertimes just start offering walk ups. It’s time to make this process more easy to do and eliminate the excuse of it being too hard to book.

It’s no longer hard to book in many places. Through NY, same day appointments now tend to be available.
In many parts of the country, walk up is now available.

 

[carolina_yankee]

Lets start today with the good news. Florida went back down to 29. NJ is at 40 and NY to 34. The US as whole is at 21.3. The beark down is 10 states at 30 or above and 10 states in the 20's, 22 states in the 10's and 9 in single digits.

Overall, this must me considered a good day. Vaccinations continue to go up and the number of people who are at least partially vaccinated is now 125.8 million with 78.5 million fully vaccinated. There are still 15 days including today to see the major drop I still expect to see and have the US in single digits.

We're also right around the time some models have predicted that the current surge (surgelette?) would peak. I'm hopeful that late April, May starts to show real sustained progress. The "moderate surge" model for NJ had the peak on April 18 with a bit of a plateau for a couple of weeks. We may be a bit better than that as we've been going down for most of the week, as your stats reports have shown. So, hopeful signs indeed.

 

[havoc315]

The right decision is getting a vast majority of all Americans vaccinated by any means necessarily.

Yes. But that may mean vaccine passports, etc.... any means necessary to drive up vaccination. (Short of holding people down and jabbing them).

 

[DisneyCane]

Look to the UK and Israel as models of the right decisions.
UK... 90%+ vaccination rate among eligible adults + tight lockdown until cases drop massively.
Israel: 80%+ vaccination rate among eligible adults + passports required for many activities including employment.

Merely vaccinating 60-70% of adults with minor mitigation measures is unlikely to obliterate Covid in the foreseeable future.

With decisions more like the UK or Israel, we would be down to under 5,000 cases per day and under 50 deaths per day by July 1. For a truly normal summer.

Once everybody has the opportunity to be vaccinated, nearly all who die will die because they opted not to be vaccinated. I don't really care if there are 50 deaths a day or 50,000 deaths a day at that point. In 99.99% of cases it will have been the result of their choice.

 

[Touchdown]

It’s no longer hard to book in many places. Through NY, same day appointments now tend to be available.
In many parts of the country, walk up is now available.

But the GP doesn’t know that yet, it needs to be advertised.

 

[havoc315]

Once everybody has the opportunity to be vaccinated, nearly all who die will die because they opted not to be vaccinated. I don't really care if there are 50 deaths a day or 50,000 deaths a day at that point. In 99.99% of cases it will have been the result of their choice.

That's not how virology works.
Already, dozens of fully vaccinated Americans have died. If uncontrolled spread continues then hundreds, even thousands, of fully vaccinated people will continue to die every year from Covid in the US.
Further, uncontrolled spread will increase mutation -- more variants, potentially leading to a time when vaccines are useless. Further, uncontrolled spread will continue to create a burden of likely annual vaccinations.

On the other hand, if we do it right..... then Covid largely goes away. Instead of thousands of fully vaccinated deaths per year, we have maybe 5-10 fully vaccinated deaths per year. We may get to a point where we don't need annual vaccinations anymore.

Anyway, you can say you don't care if vaccinated people continue to unnecessarily die from Covid as long as the numbers are fairly low. Only 1,000 fully vaccinated people dying per year instead of the 500,000 deaths from the last year.
But returning to Gottlieb's quote -- with the right societal choices, which we aren't on track for, we could eliminate Covid as a threat.
You may prefer living with the threat, so be it.

 

[havoc315]

But the GP doesn’t know that yet, it needs to be advertised.

Depends where. In plenty of places, it is being more and more advertised.

We will likely see greater proliferation of walk-in clinics by May/June.

 

[disneygeek90]

Also, we need to rethink vaccination availablity to make this go faster. Unlike when we were vaccinating old people, the people left work. Workers do not want to have to use a sick day to get a shot or stay home due to side effects. We need to increase staffing on Fri-Sun for the rush and othertimes just start offering walk ups. It’s time to make this process more easy to do and eliminate the excuse of it being too hard to book.

To be fair, OCCC just opened up appointments for next week and there are times as early as 8am and late as 8:45pm.

 

[Patcheslee]

That is exactly my fear based on them not being able to answer the question on when things might change. There HAS to be some type of return to normalcy incentive to getting these shots if they want more to take them otherwise we are going to hit the end of the demand soon and be sitting with a lot of population who won’t get one hearing about side effect risks and still needing to mask up and social distance regardless

Look at the backlash Kentucky governor is getting though. He's said 2.5 million vaccinated is when he will lift capacity restrictions and people don't like.

 

[Touchdown]

To be fair, OCCC just opened up appointments for next week and there are times as early as 8am and late as 8:45pm.

Good! That’s what should be happening.

 

[Incomudro]

But the conclusion from the CDC is: "In most situations, cleaning surfaces using soap or detergent, and not disinfecting, is enough to reduce risk. Disinfection is recommended in indoor community settings where there has been a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 within the last 24 hours. "

So in a environment like Disney where thousands of people are touching surfaces daily, how do you know if COVID infected person has been there or not?

Yes, and remember - in an environment like Disney, or say the NYC subway system - people touch the same surfaces someone else touched, immediately after the previous person exited.
And there is a turnover of thousands of people doing that all day long.

 

[GoofGoof]

I hope you're right. I think we'll get back to normal with numbers higher than that. I would prefer your target though.

I think we see the start of relaxing of restrictions well before we hit those numbers, we are already seeing it now with way too many cases. Once we get below 10,000 cases a day or 3 per 100K people that’s probably when we remove all restrictions and get a ”return to normal”. To level set that‘s the FL equivalent of 650 cases a day. On deaths, in theory with so many people vaccinated we should be able to get well below the average flu season numbers so that death per day number may actually be high.

You should continue to wear a mask even after vaccination. At this time all that is known is the vaccine should prevent you from developing symptoms, but there is still an unknown if you might still be infectious to others.

Multiple studies have been released from the UK and Israel and also more recently from the US that confirm that vaccinated people are not only protected from symptomatic Covid, but also from asymptomatic and so there’s very little chance of being able to spread Covid once vaccinated. That’s why the CDC changed their guidance to say vaccinated people can now spend t8me indoors without a mask with unvaccinated people. Unlike in your home, in the public it’s impractical to know who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t so everyone still wears a mask.

 

[ABQ]

That's not how virology works.
Already, dozens of fully vaccinated Americans have died. If uncontrolled spread continues then hundreds, even thousands, of fully vaccinated people will continue to die every year from Covid in the US.
Further, uncontrolled spread will increase mutation -- more variants, potentially leading to a time when vaccines are useless. Further, uncontrolled spread will continue to create a burden of likely annual vaccinations.

On the other hand, if we do it right..... then Covid largely goes away. Instead of thousands of fully vaccinated deaths per year, we have maybe 5-10 fully vaccinated deaths per year. We may get to a point where we don't need annual vaccinations anymore.

Anyway, you can say you don't care if vaccinated people continue to unnecessarily die from Covid as long as the numbers are fairly low. Only 1,000 fully vaccinated people dying per year instead of the 500,000 deaths from the last year.
But returning to Gottlieb's quote -- with the right societal choices, which we aren't on track for, we could eliminate Covid as a threat.
You may prefer living with the threat, so be it.

You're making a large assumption though on how many deaths of fully vaccinated people there could be. Just wondering how you are getting to "thousands of fully vaccinated deaths per year" when, at this time it is literally, and I mean that in the truest definition of the word, not the way all the cool kids use it willy nilly, a 1 in a million case that someone fully vaccinated has died. https://www.businessinsider.com/inf...on-cdc-numbers-breakthrough-infections-2021-4

 

[GoofGoof]

Fauci said this week to Congress that that number would be somewhere below 10,000, if I remember correctly. Which leads me to think he's been consulting with @GoofGoof . We (as in humanity, including scientists) simply don't know a fixed number because these are organisms that do interesting and unpredictable things, like a typical Disney guest. As long as vaccines work and number get low, we can loosen up. What and when is a prediction at best, and based on current conditions and knowledge, at most.

Rumor mill here in NJ is that things will look *very different* (i.e., better) at the end of May or in June. We need people to get vaccinated. That's the focus right now.

He stopped taking my calls when I got critical of his “no return to normal until 2022” statement which he later walked back.

I think under 5 cases per 100K is a reasonable target assuming we are doing enough testing. 10,000 per day is just a nice round number.

 

[SamusAranX]

You're making a large assumption though on how many deaths of fully vaccinated people there could be. Just wondering how you are getting to "thousands of fully vaccinated deaths per year" when, at this time it is literally, and I mean that in the truest definition of the word, not the way all the cool kids use it willy nilly, a 1 in a million case that someone fully vaccinated has died. https://www.businessinsider.com/inf...on-cdc-numbers-breakthrough-infections-2021-4

Yep. Unless there is some incredibly dangerous variant that pops up and is resistant to vaccines in ALL three categories (symptomatic cases, serious complications / hospitalizations, and death) then it’s time to stop the “we’ll never know when this ends”. Once the vaccine is available to all ages IMO, at the point it becomes a personal choice to vaccinate or not. I am no longer responsible for mitigation’s to protect you from your personal choice. As many are so fond to point out; you’re free to make decisions. You’re not free of consequences

 

[ImperfectPixie]

If anyone in MA is having a hard time finding an appointment to be vaccinated, I HIGHLY suggest pre-registering on the Mass dot gov website...they'll text you when you can book and you get to choose your appointment.

I just booked hubby and I for the pfizer vaccine first dose on Tuesday about 20 minutes from our house (I was afraid we'd have to drive over an hour to Boston).

 

[havoc315]

You're making a large assumption though on how many deaths of fully vaccinated people there could be. Just wondering how you are getting to "thousands of fully vaccinated deaths per year" when, at this time it is literally, and I mean that in the truest definition of the word, not the way all the cool kids use it willy nilly, a 1 in a million case that someone fully vaccinated has died. https://www.businessinsider.com/inf...on-cdc-numbers-breakthrough-infections-2021-4

Do the math from the article that you posted -- 74 dead, in the first quarter of a year, among fully vaccinated. That's not 74 per lifetime, or 74 per year. That's 74, just in the last 2 months or so. (not too many were fully vaccinated before that). So as I said, that easily equates to hundreds or even more than 1,000 per year. If you vaccinated 200 million, with a death rate of 1/million every 2 months, that's 1,200 deaths. If the death rate is a bit higher (considering the lag time of death reporting, it's likely a bit higher than the 74), easily looking at 1500-2000 deaths per year.
On the other hand, if we use vaccine and temporary mitigation to drive cases down to nearly zero... we would likely see practically nearly zero deaths per year among vaccinated people.

 

[GoofGoof]

Yep. Unless there is some incredibly dangerous variant that pops up and is resistant to vaccines in ALL three categories (symptomatic cases, serious complications / hospitalizations, and death) then it’s time to stop the “we’ll never know when this ends”. Once the vaccine is available to all ages IMO, at the point it becomes a personal choice to vaccinate or not. I am no longer responsible for mitigation’s to protect you from your personal choice. As many are so fond to point out; you’re free to make decisions. You’re not free of consequences

I agree. I think this is the major change in public sentiment that is coming soon. Right now the majority of Americans are not vaccinated and they also support continuing mitigation. As the majority flips from unvaccinated to vaccinated we are going to see less and less people who are accepting of mitigations. There are some people who want to follow what’s in the best interest of everyone and the common good, but most people are also concerned with their own health and the health of their loved ones too. Once the majority of people and the majority of their loved ones are protected people will become anxious to return to normal.

People like to say that we will still need mitigation for a while even after everyone who wants to be vaccinated has gone, but I don’t see public sentiment following that logic. Talk of vaccine resistant variants and return to normal being based on cases and statistics and not how many people are vaccinated may make scientific sense but most people aren’t going to buy it. If we hit July 1 and if 60%+ of the total population and 70%+ of eligible 12+ people are vaccinated we will see public sentiment demand most if not all Covid restrictions are lifted...even if cases don’t go below 10,000 a day or whatever metric is decided. It’s going to be hard for WDW and other businesses to fight that change which is why I think the Summer will look pretty good

 

[GoofGoof]

Do the math from the article that you posted -- 74 dead, in the first quarter of a year, among fully vaccinated. That's not 74 per lifetime, or 74 per year. That's 74, just in the last 2 months or so. (not too many were fully vaccinated before that). So as I said, that easily equates to hundreds or even more than 1,000 per year. If you vaccinated 200 million, with a death rate of 1/million every 2 months, that's 1,200 deaths. If the death rate is a bit higher (considering the lag time of death reporting, it's likely a bit higher than the 74), easily looking at 1500-2000 deaths per year.
On the other hand, if we use vaccine and temporary mitigation to drive cases down to nearly zero... we would likely see practically nearly zero deaths per year among vaccinated people.

You really think the general public is going to agree to continued mitigations to get from 1,200 deaths a year in vaccinated people down to near zero? How long do the continued mitigations last to get cases down to nearly zero? Months? Into 2022? That’s a tough sell, even for people who are interested in following the science.