More Lockdowns

[Scooby Magic]

How things are going in your area? Is your local government planning for another lockdown, again? There is a lot of news recently that there are a number of states that will issue another lockdown closing non-essential facilities/businesses along the way. Washington State banned indoor restaurant dining, as well as gyms, cinemas, theaters, and museums will close. As for the vaccines being readily available, I wonder when will they be distributed to the people so we can flatten the curve the soonest possible.

 

[thebestcpu]

Looking forward to the vaccines as well. My understanding is that initial distribution would be later half of December and prioritized first to front line health care workers and then to highest risk populations such as those in nursing homes and then to those that are older or with underlying conditions. Might be a few months into 2021 for the general population depending on manufacturing volumes and efficient distribution of the vaccine. This makes a lot of sense to me and will help bring down the death rate the quickest both by targeting the most vulnerable and getting hospitals back to spare capacity and better care for those that have to be hospitalized.

To get the total infection rate down is a bit tougher and will take a bit longer. Their best estimate is that without any vaccine or other mitigating measures, each person that gets COVID would pass it on to ~ 2 other people. To level out the infection rate you need to get that down to 1 and to reduce the infection rate you need to get that down to less that one. The recommended ways to reduce that transmission are of course the vaccine when available yet physical distancing and masks are more immediate ways to get the number down.

To help put that in perspective, if all you could depend on was a vaccine, to get the transmission rate down to one, half of the population would need to have the vaccine or have the antibodies. In the US, only 3% or 11 million of the population has been confirmed to have had the infection (might be slightly higher for those that were asymptomatic and never tested). To get to 50% immune, lets say you need another 44% with the vaccine to get transmission down to "1", that would be about 144 Million and the present routine is that you will need a second injection a number of weeks apart so 288 million doses to get half the population immune. Thought sounds tough by Spring so maybe summer?

What I expect is that huge improvements in death rate earlier yet the need for other transmission reducing approaches (e.g. masks and distancing) will be with us until we can get a significant portion of the population immune through the vaccine. What will help though is a known timetable and continual improvement of the situation. That is going to feel a whole lot better

That's my take anyways.

 

[syrupfizzy]

Professors at Georgia Tech put out a model that will show your odds of catching Covid in a crowd depending on where you live. https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/

They took the liberty of assuming that for every diagnosed case of Covid, there are 5x as many undiagnosed (the paper I saw this linked from stated 10x but the link itself states 5x and higher in certain places). Now people, like my local paper, will take these numbers and run with them. It's laughable. Just throwing in random assumptions that make the data look much, much worse in an effort to scare everyone, and "help individuals and policymakers assess risk".

I just found out about this article and I thought I could share and leave it here, a good read for most of us that's trying to maintain our well-being during these days. Always keep yourself safe.

Is Your Life Falling Apart Because Of The Pandemic? - Sensitive NLP Coach

Sugar-coating exists because there are times that it is hard to talk about things. That is if it involves emotional and mental reasons. As we continuously experience the changes due to this pandemic, we accumulate more difficulties along the way. Sometimes, we find ourselves tired, and it feels...

sensitivenlpcoach.com

 

[Scooby Magic]

Getting the vaccine has an altruistic facet to it. Even if you’re not likely to be seriously harmed by the virus, the possibility of unknowingly carrying it and spreading it to those around you should be another part of the decision process, in my mind.

When you get the flu, you know it, so you (should) stay home and away from others until you recover and can no longer spread the virus. COVID-19 differs in two ways: 1) one can be infected, yet asymptomatic, so unknowingly spread it to others, and 2) with the flu when you're done, you're done. COVID-19 has been shown to have a multitude of longer-term effects like permanent damage to the lungs, heart, and brain.

You might be in the demographic with a high survival rate from the virus but can still have fatal after-effects.

One of the things I pray about this vaccine is to be safe for our elderly and the vulnerable once consumed. My mom is part of that age already so I really hope, for the sake of their age, that this vaccine will work on them 100%.