COVID COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[WWGD]

The average individual is behaving in a way that reflects the perception of risk. Specifically, wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowds. Not everybody, obviously, but there is enough avoidant behavior to affect P.

If the risk of infection, even for vaccinated individuals, approaches 100% in cases of high exposure then it seems likely that it will remain prudent to continue social distancing and mask wearing for... well, probably for quite a long while into the future. I hope I'm wrong!

Well, disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day. Not too great, but much better than runaway exponential growth. Still exasperating when I see people feeding the pigeons. Specially during this pandemic. " But there's no one else to feed them". I reply: Same goes for rats and roaches. Seems like a good thing, doesn't it?

 

[JT Smith]

Well, disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day. Not too great, but much better than runaway exponential growth.

Yes, it's better. And I think it's likely to get a lot better still. But given the human factor of vaccine refusal coupled with lack of availability in some parts of the world it seems to me that the risk will continue to be there at some level. If you're old or otherwise susceptible it may be too much risk. Hopefully they will develop treatments to keep people from dying and to help those who have long term disabling symptoms. The latter actually worries me more than death.

 

[bhobba]

The disease has stabilized at around 500k cases and 10k deaths /day.

IMHO that is still WAY too high, even without the vaccine. Look at Aus, Taiwan, Iceland and NZ. I know all countries do not have the natural advantage of being an island or island-continent, but when you read about Brazil (for example), you shake your head:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04...unger-patients-admitted-to-hospital/100048674

They can do what we in Aus do - one case - lockdown and tracing, which we now have down pat, starts. We are now so good that the lockdown usually lasts only 3-4 days, and they have traced everyone. Sure, it causes economic problems, but we are talking about a genuine full-blown pandemic here. I am reminded of the town in Italy that got it right at the start of the pandemic:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ed-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo.

Iceland got it right too:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03284-3

What places that got it right show you can't let your guard down for a second. In Aus, due to bonking untrained security guards, there was a second wave in Melbourne, and something similar happened in Iceland. You must lockdown and trace, or you will suffer later, with even one case. The only discussion (sometimes quite heated) in Aus is the lockdown's extent. New South Wales does locally targeted lockdowns and is generally considered to have the gold standard in tracing. Where I am in Queensland, they do wider lockdowns, and while tracing is good, we likely could learn from NSW. In fact, we need a hi-tech Australia wide tracing system.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

The average individual is behaving in a way that reflects the perception of risk. Specifically, wearing masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowds. Not everybody, obviously, but there is enough avoidant behavior to affect P.

If the risk of infection, even for vaccinated individuals, approaches 100% in cases of high exposure then it seems likely that it will remain prudent to continue social distancing and mask wearing for... well, probably for quite a long while into the future. I hope I'm wrong!

I don't know how high an exposure is needed to approach 100% for vaccinated individuals. It's possible that that level of virus exposure would not be reached in any real life circumstance. Furthermore, vaccines don't just protect against infection. In the case a person gets infected, the vaccine gives the immune system a head start on fighting the virus such that the vaccine prevents infections to progressing to severe disease and death. If the vaccine is not effective at preventing infection but does prevent hospitalizations and deaths, it would still be possible to return to normal life without social distancing (assuming everyone can get vaccinated).

 

[PeroK]

Yes, it's better. And I think it's likely to get a lot better still. But given the human factor of vaccine refusal coupled with lack of availability in some parts of the world it seems to me that the risk will continue to be there at some level. If you're old or otherwise susceptible it may be too much risk. Hopefully they will develop treatments to keep people from dying and to help those who have long term disabling symptoms. The latter actually worries me more than death.

After full vaccination (in the UK say), COVID will be just another minor/negligible risk in the business of living your life. In 2022, I would expect far more deaths and serious injuries from road accidents (*) than deaths and serious illnesses from COVID.

It will be interesting to see what governments do about people who refuse to be vaccinated. They may pose a risk mainly to themselves and health-care workers rather than the general public - although it will be interesting to see the attitude of coworkers.

(*) In 2019, there were 1750 deaths, 26,000 serious injuries and 153,000 total casualties in road accidents in the UK. And, unlike COVID, these are people of all ages.

 

[JT Smith]

...(assuming everyone can get vaccinated).

After full vaccination...

That's the problem though. Full vaccination isn't likely to be a reality anytime soon, if at all. Some countries will do much better than others. Here in the U.S. there may very well be a large percentage of holdouts. And worldwide it will take a long time.

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

At present, the CDC is ambivalent on this point.

 

[russ_watters]

IMHO that is still WAY too high, even without the vaccine. Look at Aus, Taiwan, Iceland and NZ. I know all countries do not have the natural advantage of being an island or island-continent...

They can do what we in Aus do - one case - lockdown and tracing, which we now have down pat, starts.

The problem is vastly different for countries that aren't geographically isolated than for Australia. My home state of Pennsylvania has about half the population of Australia and our best week of the pandemic was roughly equal to your worst and our worst was around 50x worse. Nobody in Australia commutes daily to New Zealand for work. Your border is much more real than the national borders in Europe and state borders in the US can ever be. That isolation limits the spread and opens-up opportunities we just don't have.

The lower baseline enables contract tracing to actually be a thing, for example. There's just no feasible way to manually contact trace 70,000 cases per week in a population of 13 million, and even though we hired thousands, we just couldn't do it.

Similarly, while I don't know if we would have even accepted military-guarded quarantines, it is a lot more difficult to guard a hundred thousand people that way than 4,000, and their complaints are much louder. But sure, maybe if we were only force-quarantining 10 or 50 people at a time, the populace would have accepted that.

The lower baseline also means the shutdowns can be used more like a surgical tool than a sledgehammer. Yes, we of course did shutdowns, but there was never an opportunity for a short duration shutdown because we never had case counts low enough to target them that way. And the longer they go, the harder they are to keep.

So while I'm happy for you guys, I don't think there is much we can learn from your model.

 

[PeroK]

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

I think you are exaggerating the risk. Last year when all this started people were commuting normally into London: packed onto trains, tubes and buses. If the virus spread that easily, then almost everyone would have caught the virus last February/March.

It also depends on the rate of infection around you. Let's say that 1 in 50 people has the virus, then there may still be a signifcant risk of being infected even if you've been vaccinated - although much lower than if you were not vaccinated.

But, if we get to 1 in 5000 people carrying the virus, then the chance of a vaccinated person being infected is very low - and the chance of getting seriously ill is even lower.

The other question is whether you should fly with an airline that does not require its passengers to be vaccinated. Personally, I won't fly this year if unvaccinated passengers are allowed on board.

 

[JT Smith]

I think you are exaggerating the risk. Last year when all this started people were commuting normally into London: packed onto trains, tubes and buses. If the virus spread that easily, then almost everyone would have caught the virus last February/March.

I'm not exaggerating the risk. I think it's actually pretty low even now where I am. And as more people are vaccinated it will get lower still. If the case rate drops to a minuscule level then I won't worry about the cumulative risk of numerous unprotected encounters. But if 25% of the population remains unvaccinated I'm not confident that will happen, not soon anyway.

I hope I'm being paranoid. But I have given up trying to forecast the trajectory of this pandemic. I keep seeing the horizon recede, like a mirage.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That's the problem though. Full vaccination isn't likely to be a reality anytime soon, if at all. Some countries will do much better than others. Here in the U.S. there may very well be a large percentage of holdouts. And worldwide it will take a long time.

So there you are, sitting next to someone on a long flight. Or in a restaurant on a vacation somewhere. Or on a subway. There is some risk that you will be exposed. Will your vaccine protect you?

At present, the CDC is ambivalent on this point.

In this case, the risk is greater to the unvaccinated individuals. It looks like the vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and in the case that a vaccinated individual does get infected, the vaccines are very effective at preventing hospitalizations and death. In that situation, the unvaccinated individuals would be risking catching the disease and having a bad outcome from the disease. Vaccinated individuals would be much less likely to catch the disease and if they did, the vaccine should make the infection lead to only a mild or moderate cold.

 

[JT Smith]

It looks like the vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and in the case that a vaccinated individual does get infected, the vaccines are very effective at preventing hospitalizations and death.

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Vaccines aren't perfect, we all know that. I'm just curious how good they are. Could I slam dance with a group of contagious people without too much worry or would that be really dangerous?

 

[vela]

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Are you talking about vaccines in general or the COVID-19 vaccines? In the Moderna clinical trials, none of the vaccinated individuals developed serious illness after the initial 14 days needed for the immune response to develop. I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

 

[JT Smith]

Are you talking about vaccines in general or the COVID-19 vaccines? In the Moderna clinical trials, none of the vaccinated individuals developed serious illness after the initial 14 days needed for the immune response to develop. I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

COVID-19. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were other cases I only know about the ones in WA state. It's expected that some people will get infected, some experience more serious illness, and some die. It's a very small percentage in the report I read. But it conflates risk of exposure with risk of infection/illness/death. And that's the crux of my question: Assuming significant exposure, what is the risk?

Out of one million fully vaccinated individuals in Washington state, epidemiologists report evidence of 102 breakthrough cases since February 1, 2021, which represents .01 percent of vaccinated people in Washington. Breakthrough cases have been identified in 18 counties. The majority of those in Washington state with confirmed vaccine breakthrough experienced only mild symptoms, if any. However, since February 1, eight people with vaccine breakthrough have been hospitalized. DOH is investigating two potential vaccine breakthrough cases where the patients died. Both patients were more than 80 years old and suffered underlying health issues. Further investigation will help to identify patterns among people who have COVID-19 after vaccination, such as if a virus variant may have caused the infection.

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Newsroom/Art...ne-breakthrough-confirmed-in-Washington-state

 

[bhobba]

So while I'm happy for you guys, I don't think there is much we can learn from your model.

Valid counter-argument. The circumstances are entirely different. What I will say is our debt spike per person from Covid measures is the greatest in the world. I suspect that is something peculiar to our culture and other counties citizenry may not tolerate such debt.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

I seem to recall the story was similar with Pfizer and J&J.

See:
https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/...hing-you-need-to-know-about-covid-19-vaccines

There was one case with the Pfizer trial of severe Covid. The rest none. Actual use in the UK, where they have done millions, is basically all are equally effective. Pfizer has an advantage in the frontline and aged care home residents group because the second dose is 3 weeks later, so they have maximum immunity quicker. This, for example, allows frontline workers to resume all duties quicker, bearing in mind where I live, only fully vaccinated front line workers can do so. There is also an issue with the Oxford vaccine and blood clots, but I will do a separate post about that.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That was my question though. How effective are the vaccines when challenged with exposure? Vaccinated people have been infected, some have become seriously ill, some have died.

Vaccines aren't perfect, we all know that. I'm just curious how good they are. Could I slam dance with a group of contagious people without too much worry or would that be really dangerous?

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor.

Based on my understanding of the vaccine, the vaccine should protect you if you were to socialize with contagious people. Of course, as you state, the vaccine is not perfect, so there is some risk of infection. However, that level of risk is certainly lower than the risk of getting infected if you are not vaccinated (~90% less risk, in the case of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines). Furthermore, even if you do get infected, the vaccines lower the risk that the infection will lead to hospitalization or death.

It is difficult to calculate the exact risk because there are too many unknown factors and those factors can change over time (e.g. as the prevalence of various variants changes). The vaccines won't completely eliminate risk, but they can reduce it to very low levels (maybe to the extent that the most dangerous part of a trip to a slam dance might be the risk of dying in a car accident while driving to or from the slam dance rather than the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19).

Here's a good picture of what a "return to normal" might look like:

Even if widespread vaccination can’t halt the spread of the virus, it promises a major step back toward normal. Preventing severe disease and death in the elderly and people with comorbidities such as obesity and hypertension—the most vulnerable—is still a resounding victory over the virus, many epidemiologists say.

Large swaths of the population might still become infected and develop minor disease or asymptomatic infections. That prospect worries some scientists and clinicians, who note that even mild cases can lead to the “long COVID” phenomenon of lingering symptoms. Hospitals, though, will not become overwhelmed with emergency cases and deaths will become increasingly rare.

To Corey, those metrics are the most relevant. “When will the ICU use and all of this decant so that we’re at the point where, yes, we can sort of tolerate this?” he asks.

“We’re not going to shut down this virus and end transmission,” agrees Nicole Lurie, an adviser to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. “We have to make a decision as a society about how much of this we can and want to live with.” Society lives with influenza, after all, which remains endemic despite a vaccine. But Lurie stresses that flu is not an appealing model. It kills up to 60,000 people per year in the United States alone—a toll she would not want to accept from COVID-19.

Still, immunologist Brigitte Autran, a member of France’s Scientific Committee on COVID-19 Vaccines, says herd immunity isn’t needed to bring back normalcy. “The first goal is to have individual protection, and by summing the individual protections, to have a protection of the society that will allow countries to come back to almost real, true lives.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/how-soon-will-covid-19-vaccines-return-life-normal

 

[Astronuc]

From NY Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html (Updated daily, so information will be replaced)

At least 956 new Coronavirus deaths and 81,769 new cases were reported in the United States on April 9. Over the past week, there has been an average of 67,923 cases per day, an increase of 12 percent from the average two weeks earlier. As of Saturday morning, more than 31,107,200 people in the United States have been infected with the Coronavirus according to a New York Times database.

The cumulative total for deaths in US due to Covid-19 stands at 560,531 as of April 9.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-cases.html - note the clusters at universities and colleges.

 

[mfb]

Chattahoochee, Ga had 34,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 and it's still a hot spot?

Israel vaccinated over 60% of the population. New vaccinations (first dose) have slowed down significantly as most eligible people interested in getting a vaccine have one by now. New cases are down dramatically.
The UK seems to follow the same pattern at close to 50%. Clear downwards trend here as well.

For comparison: Germany, Italy and France added another peak in early April and Spain might be heading towards another peak.

Global vaccination doses will reach 10% of the world population in the next two days (but many of them are two-dose vaccines).

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

 

[pinball1970]

I received an alert regarding a study about wearing masks in school. The study used fluid dynamic models.

https://scitechdaily.com/new-resear...p-covid-spread-better-than-social-distancing/

Paper here.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0040755

 

[russ_watters]

Chattahoochee, Ga had 34,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 and it's still a hot spot?

That has a question mark at the end, but is worded as a statement. Can you say where you heard of it, what the criteria is for being a "hot spot" and if that's really a question, what the question is? I've never heard of Chattahoochee, Ga., so I googled it, and I see that it isn't where the Master's Tournament is being held.

 

[OmCheeto]

That has a question mark at the end, but is worded as a statement. Can you say where you heard of it, what the criteria is for being a "hot spot" and if that's really a question, what the question is? I've never heard of Chattahoochee, Ga., so I googled it, and I see that it isn't where the Master's Tournament is being held.

I'm guessing I mentally inserted the commas and inflections differently, and interpreted what mfb said as 'why is it still a hot spot?'. Having also never heard of Chattahoochee, Georgia, US, I spent several hours yesterday analyzing their numbers.
Results:

1. They were #2 in the world for "Cases/Million/Day" for the week averaged from 3/28 thru 4/4. Guessing this is where "hot spot" came from.

2. They were also #2 in the world for "% Case total" as of April 4th.

3. Since I almost never look at cases, this kind of surprised me, and I looked at their "% death total", which showed a number 3 times too low. I thought that was very strange until I looked them up in wikipedia and found:

4.

a. "As of September 23, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the county had the highest infection rate of any county in the US, with 14,908 cases per 100,000 residents."

b. "The median age was 24.0 years."

c. "Although its population has declined, the county was notable in 2016 for having the highest proportion of millennials (persons 15–34 years old) of any county within the United States: 59.7%"
​

4.b. kind of answered my question as to why their case fatality rate was so far off, as their median age was lower than even the lowest of our territories.

------
Edit:
As usual, the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University was my data source.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That has a question mark at the end, but is worded as a statement. Can you say where you heard of it, what the criteria is for being a "hot spot" and if that's really a question, what the question is? I've never heard of Chattahoochee, Ga., so I googled it, and I see that it isn't where the Master's Tournament is being held.

Looks like the data are from the NY Times link posted by @Astronuc in the post directly preceding the post you quoted:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

 

[russ_watters]

Looks like the data are from the NY Times link posted by @Astronuc in the post directly preceding the post you quoted:

I'm guessing I mentally inserted the commas and inflections differently, and interpreted what mfb said as 'why is it still a hot spot?'. Having also never heard of Chattahoochee, Georgia, US, I spent several hours yesterday analyzing their numbers...

b. "The median age was 24.0 years."

c. "Although its population has declined, the county was notable in 2016 for having the highest proportion of millennials (persons 15–34 years old) of any county within the United States: 59.7%"

Thanks. This media fascination with identifying teeny-tiny outliers is bizarre to me, and while I've no interest in spending hours on their "case", I did see that the county is underfoot of Fort Benning, which is an Army base 10 times the population of the county itself. It's huge, a training center, populated by younger people, houses them in close quarters, and then sends them traveling throughout the country and world. So that would explain the weird demographics and high case load. But Crozby, TX, stand by because we're coming for you next!

 

[mfb]

I did see that the county is underfoot of Fort Benning, which is an Army base 10 times the population of the county itself.

That probably answers the question how the county can maintain so many nominal cases per capita: The population number in the denominator is not the number of people there.

 

[russ_watters]

That probably answers the question how the county can maintain so many nominal cases per capita: The population number in the denominator is not the number of people there.

Well, I don't think the soldiers get counted in either - that would be a big mismatch if they did. I did see a link where the Army said they weren't going to report their caseload anymore. So I do think their numbers are really townspeople - it's just that they have a lot of interactions with soldiers and their families.

 

[mfb]

I don't see how that would lead to a maintained high per capita rate. What's the scenario here?
Soldiers have a lower capita rate? Why would they preferably infect the civilians?
Soldiers have a similar or higher per capita rate? Why didn't they run out of infectious people already?

If that base doesn't enter the statistics directly, how would that base differ from a random other high population county nearby with a similar demographics?

 

[russ_watters]

I don't see how that would lead to a maintained high per capita rate. What's the scenario here?
Soldiers have a lower capita rate? Why would they preferably infect the civilians?
Soldiers have a similar or higher per capita rate? Why didn't they run out of infectious people already?

If that base doesn't enter the statistics directly, how would that base differ from a random other high population county nearby with a similar demographics?

I don't know either. I was guessing it is because soldiers have a high per capita rate and high "churn". Being somewhat of a training facility, they continuously circulate new infected people through the base and town. But there could also be a numerator/denominator issue. Even a tiny fraction of families (girlfriends?) living off-base, and turning-over every 2-3 years (for the long-term population) or more often could add significantly to the pool of "infectables". 1/3 reported infected is a really high number that is hard to achieve given the large number of missed infections in the early days of the pandemic. Regardless, the base demographics themselves are going to be weird and it is impossible for us to know for sure what they are or what their infection profile looks like.

 

[russ_watters]

Updates to my projections in this March 18 post:

• The Biden administration's current goal is to produce enough vaccines for every adult by the end of May. That's a touch vague, as current guidance is for the vaccine to be administered to at-risk teenagers 16+. If it includes everyone 16+, that's 260 million people. Figure 4 weeks for the emptying of the distribution pipeline and we could have every adult vaccinated by the end of June.

On track, but people declining the vaccine will of course prevent that from being achieved.

• The J&J vaccine is not currently ramping-up. There was an initial stockpile of 4M doses starting to ship on 3/1, but only 1.9 M have been administered so far, and over the past week the vaccination rate has actually dropped a bit. So I modeled that based on the assumption of a smooth ramp-up until J&J's projection of 95M doses shipped by the end of May is administered two weeks later (same link).

We're a bit behind what I was predicting overall, mostly due to the J&J vaccine continuing to not ramp up. It just started to ramp at the beginning of April, from about 100,000 doses administered per day, to 350,000 as of a few days ago. If it continues that ramp rate, it won't meet the 95M goal.

• 2nd doses of the Moderna & Pfizer vaccines are also not ramping-up. It's been fluctuating between 0.5 and 0.9 million per day for more than a month.

Now starting to ramp-up: currently about 1.2M per day.

• I have the total administered (1st + 2nd + J&J) continuing its current ramp rate. By the 2nd week in June it would reach 6 million per day if we don't run out of people to vaccinate. Currently it's about 2.5 million per day.

As I said, we're trending a little below my projections mostly due to the J&J vaccine, by about a week. But again, 6 million doses/day won't happen because we'll run out of people to vaccinate first. We could reach 5 million/day by the end of May, but that probably won't even happen. We're at 3 million/day now.

• There's 30 million doses of the AZ vaccine stockpiled. AZ has not applied for emergency use authorization yet, so there's a decent chance these doses don't factor into the USA's vaccination picture until we're well into the "everyone else" group if at all (more on that in the projections...).

The AZ vaccine will almost certainly not factor into the first wave USA vaccination picture.

Projections:

• By April 10, 131M will have received at least a first dose and 75M will be fully vaccinated.
• When the vaccine is opened up to "everyone else", that will include me. I'll be aggressive about scheduling, so I'll expect I can get at least the first dose (if a 2-dose vaccine) by April 10.
• By April 20, 155M will have received at least a first dose and 114M will be fully vaccinated. We will need to have transitioned to the "everyone else (>16)" eligibility by then or we'll start running out of people to vaccinate.

Actual April 10 numbers are 121M at least one dose, 74M fully vaccinated. These will go up by a couple million, as the CDC lists totals by date reported on their dashboard, but updates by date administered in a spreadsheet. Despite the 72hr required reporting time, the numbers for a particular date continue going up for weeks.

Biden wants everyone eligible by April 19. My state just announced they are opening-up eligibility to every adult tomorrow (so I was off by 3 days on that). I've seen in my graph of the running totals that the distribution pipeline is starting to lengthen, which may be a result of starting to "run out of people to vaccinate" in Phase 1.

• By May 10, even at 90% uptake we'll start running out of adults to vaccinate (everyone who wants one will have at least a first dose), and the rates will start to flatten or drop. I haven't modeled how that will look.
• By May 30, every adult who wants to be vaccinated will have been fully vaccinated (234 M) if everyone lines-right up for them (so the rates don't drop).

These are looking a week or so behind, but again we'll run out of people to vaccinate anyway before we get to them. We'll start to find out in a few weeks just how much vaccine hesitancy there is.

Side note: My area has been re-opening, too quickly. Case rates are too high, and they've been flat for the past few weeks even as restrictions are easing. As close as we are to the finish line, I think that's dumb and I'm not easing up on my protocols. I won't be doing any indoor dining, traveling, going to the gym or permanently returning to my office, etc. until I'm fully vaccinated or the case rates drop another order of magnitude. What's another month after 12? I believe tomorrow's my 1-year anniversary of work from home.

That remains my opinion. But I did go out to dinner for my dad's 78th birthday on Saturday.

 

[Astronuc]

Reuters - Majority of Brazil COVID-19 ICU patients aged 40 years or younger - report
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...aged-40-years-or-younger-report-idUSKBN2C02UB

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The surging COVID-19 outbreak in Brazil is increasingly affecting younger people, with hospital data showing that last month the majority of those in intensive care were aged 40 or younger, according to a new report.

The report, released by the Brazilian Association of Intensive Medicine (AMIB) over the weekend, is based on data from over a third of all the country’s intensive care wards. It found a significant increase in younger people being admitted to beds in Intensive Care Units (ICUs).

For the first time since the outbreak reached Brazil last year, 52% of ICU beds were filled by patients aged 40 or younger. That is a jump of 16.5% compared to the occupancy of that age group between December and February.

I have a friend who still believes SARS-Cov-2 (and Covid-19) is not a serious threat. He believes he is young enough (late 50s), and he states that many acquaintances have had Covid-19 and survived. He believes the vaccine and precautions are unnecessary, so he takes chances. We still don't know who is and who is not vulnerable, but age and comorbidities are factors. I won't take a chance.

 

[mfb]

It's a relative statement. Vaccinate older people first and the fraction of younger people in ICU increases, without anything negative happening. Without absolute numbers this isn't telling us much.