For end of March, I have in millions:
I agree with your premise that we should move the goalposts to serious illness, not any illness. But I think we could consider avoiding the phrase “vaccines don’t work” in any context until while we’re still trying to convince people to vaccinate.
That’s why I said they “don’t work as well.” And that is certainly true. None of the vaccines do.
Yes, and if we are lucky, they’ll start coming out in the fall and it will take a year to vaccinate the world against the S. African strain. New variants will develop in that time.
We cannot compare to the flu even this way. Some vaccines are effective against the S African variant. We actually have a shot at eliminating the virus.
I don’t know about not working well. We have no evidence that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines don’t work well against the S African variant. We know in a limited study the AstraZenneca one isn’t effective. We also know that JnJ had a site in S Africa for their trial and while the efficacy was lower than in the US it was still north of 50% effective against even mild infection and 85% effective in preventing severe infection.
For the world, it’s going to take a while. Pfizer and Moderna can produce a booster that is highly effective vs whatever variant is the flavor of the week this summer/fall. They could easily delivery enough doses for every American to get the booster this Fall or Winter. That wouldn’t be the worst outcome. For the world we really need AstraZenneca and JnJ to vaccinate places without cold storage. There are other options on the table too. JnJ was already discussing altering their formula to be more effective against the S African variant too. Many of the doses delivered outside of the US, UK, EU we’re not expected until summer of Fall so there’s time to alter them to fight these variants.
I was just at the dentist today talking about this. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to who gets it worst. Though most there seemed okay with arm pain mostly. I hope the same for you!
My boss got his first shot on Saturday and was still feeling the effects today. He gets a flu shot every year and said he’s never had a reaction outside of a sore arm. He said Saturday was just a sore arm but then woke up yesterday feeling a little off and then got chills and flu like symptoms that were still going on today.
Add my wife to that mix. She was functional, but not “normal,” for 2.5 days. Mostly tired after 18-24 hours.
And Moderna is pulling slightly ahead in doses shipped per week.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s demographic based too. Pfizer needs a deeper freezer and came out sooner so maybe has been more focused on hospitals and larger medical centers with the proper equipment. Since healthcare workers skew younger (and more female) maybe a more robust immune response. If Moderna has been used in more mass vaccination sites and pharmacy rollouts maybe skews a little older demographic so maybe less robust immune response. I have no facts to support that assumption, just a pure guess based on what we know of the rollouts. In the trials the adverse reactions seemed pretty close to the same so it seems odd to have that large a disparity.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s demographic based too. Pfizer needs a deeper freezer and came out sooner so maybe has been more focused on hospitals and larger medical centers with the proper equipment. Since healthcare workers skew younger (and more female) maybe a more robust immune response. If Moderna has been used in more mass vaccination sites and pharmacy rollouts maybe skews a little older demographic so maybe less robust immune response. I have no facts to support that assumption, just a pure guess based on what we know of the rollouts. In the trials the adverse reactions seemed pretty close to the same so it seems odd to have that large a disparity.
On the gender bias I would have assumed men would have had more recorded events since my wife says we tend to be big babies when sick and complain about everything
It’s like Disney and Universal competing to build better theme parks....we all win if a little healthy competition pushes production up.
