Here are the latest vaccination updates for the US and NC (Data Source: Bloomberg Vaccination Tracker):

US Vaccinations:
Total Vaccination Doses Available: 180,645,277
Total Vaccination Dose Administered: 140,180,735 <== 27.6% of population have received 1st dose
Percentage of Available Doses Administered: 77.6%

NC Vaccinations:
Total Vaccination Doses Available: 5,684,315
Total Vaccination Dose Administered: 4,456,503 <== 27.7% of population have received 1st dose
Percentage of Available Doses Administered: 78.4%

In other Covid news (good and bad):

1. In a new CDC report on school re-openings, researches found in Florida, out of 2,809,553 students they followed from August to December of 2020, less than 1% of kids got Covid at school. Of those who did get Covid, 101 (.004% of those followed) were hospitalized and no deaths were reported.

2. In Oakland, CA , the teachers union is saying they will not return to classrooms for instruction, even after being fully vaccinated. If you are not sure - this is bad news and absolutely ridiculous.

3. A Bloomberg article about a new anti-viral drug from Merck (molnupiravir) should give us some hope about a potential treatment for those who become infected with Covid-19 (and other coronaviruses) in the future. The drug is still in clinical trial, but shows promise in helping to reduce the viral load and shorten the time someone is infected. There are approximately 246 drugs of this type in development, but the Merck drug is furthest along. You can read more about it at this link:

Merck's Little Brown Pill Could Transform the Fight Against Covid

4. The Biden administration is projecting by mid-May (maybe sooner), supply of the vaccines will be greater than demand. Personally, I do hope they send the excess vaccine supply to those countries that have little supply right now. When we reach this point, it will be important to help those countries and people most in need.

The graphs below show how the US and NC are doing with regards to the new goal of the Biden administration to administer 200M doses the first 100 days of his presidency.


US Cumulative Vaccinations Administered (Data Source: Bloomberg Vaccination Tracker):



NC Cumulative Vaccinations Administered (Data Source: Bloomberg Vaccination Tracker):




The chart below shows the percentage of those partially and fully vaccinated in NC, by age group.

Mormad said:

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And that's such an insightful and important observation. Thanks, civ. NPIs for respiratory viruses were in place well before flu season and didn't allow it disseminate as it normally would, whereas NPIs didn't have such luxury with covid. And covid has the unfortunate advantage of being highly transmissible with a much longer incubation period. The R0 of unmitigated fully integrated sars-cov-2 would be pretty impressive?

Luckily, effective vaccines developed by really intelligent people are helping us turn the tide. They really seem to be working great in the near term. Near term being the kicker and the reason for caution being exercised for seemingly oppressive and unscientific reasons. Wear masks after vaccinated? Seems crazy based on what we think right now, but are we convinced enough that we're ready to potentially expose the masses to a poorly understood enemy and even more poorly understood long term efficacy of vaccines against the enemy? Idk. Tough call. Our understanding of this thing is so fluid.

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Based on the info I am seeing from ID doctors (I quoted one on masks yesterday and reference her below) in the press and on social media with regards to the effectiveness of the vaccines, I am convinced that masks mandates should go away in the coming months as more and more people get vaccinated. I have been quite adamant in my past posts that once we get to 50% or more of the population vaccinated, the mask mandates should end and I stand by this view. I recognize people will be scared to remove their masks in public, but at some point you have to believe the science behind the vaccines and trust the results of the studies and data that are now being published.

The science says the vaccines should stimulate strong responses from the immune system, by stimulating key antibodies and more importantly, T-Cell production. The evidence coming from the clinical trials and now from studies of people who are receiving the vaccines indicates the science is correct.

For example, using data from two healthcare setting studies, a biostatisticians has calculated the following:
- Without vaccination, you would expect 26 infections out of 1,000 people
- With full vaccination, you would expect 0.5 infections out of 1,000 people

Here are the links to the two studies:

SARS-CoV-2 Infection after Vaccination in Health Care Workers in California

Early Evidence of the Effect of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine at One Medical Center


There is also evidence that vaccination can lead to low viral loads in people who do become infected after vaccination. In one study, they estimate that "vaccination reduces the viral load by 1.6x to 20x in individuals who are positive for SARS-CoV-2."

Initial real world evidence for lower viral load of individuals who have been vaccinated by BNT162b2

I found the following thread from Dr. Monica Gandhi (infectious disease doctor I have referenced before) to be very informative with regards to the reduction of transmission and long-lasting immunity from T-Cells after vaccination.

Transmission reduction and long-lasting immunity for Covid-19 after vaccination

As I have mentioned in the past, the continued downplaying of the effectiveness of the vaccines to return us to normal (yes, normal includes no mask mandates) is extremely frustrating and can be counter-productive. It is basic marketing. If you ask people to do something, but tell them conditions for them will not change (see my Rutgers University example from yesterday), you will have difficulty in getting those on the fence to get vaccinated.

Personally, I tell everyone I know to get vaccinated and in the coming weeks, I hope to do so myself. They are safe and effective in protecting you from becoming severely infected by Covid and are the best thing we have to reduce hospitalizations and deaths. At the same time, I also tell them it is our one ticket to returning to normal.

Update on vaccination in my household:

1. My wife got her second Pfizer dose yesterday morning. She had a little headache overnight and said she felt slightly chilled briefly, but no other side-effects to report. She out running errands right now and feels fine. Interesting story, the nurse that gave her the vaccine dose yesterday is a former high school classmate of my daughter and son.

2. My daughter received her first dose of Moderna this past week and other than a sore arm for a day, had no other side effects. We were interested in how she might react, since she believes she may have had Covid last February (all her symptoms matched perfectly). She is also immuno-compromised, so we were not sure how her body would react. She had to go to Fayetteville to get her dose, since she could not find any appointments in Raleigh and gave up on the wait-lists she was on.

3. My son is still scheduled to receive his J&J dose tomorrow at the university. He is excited, since it means he will be able to leave campus (go further than 30 minutes away) without having to quarantine for 7 days upon his return. This is the requirement for all athletes who are not vaccinated and who have not been infected.

4. I become eligible for vaccination the on April 7. I gave up on local wait-lists. I had zero success in getting any leftover doses. I have no health conditions and did not fall into any of the other group classifications.

Mormad said:

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Daviewolf83 said:

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Mormad said:

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And that's such an insightful and important observation. Thanks, civ. NPIs for respiratory viruses were in place well before flu season and didn't allow it disseminate as it normally would, whereas NPIs didn't have such luxury with covid. And covid has the unfortunate advantage of being highly transmissible with a much longer incubation period. The R0 of unmitigated fully integrated sars-cov-2 would be pretty impressive?

Luckily, effective vaccines developed by really intelligent people are helping us turn the tide. They really seem to be working great in the near term. Near term being the kicker and the reason for caution being exercised for seemingly oppressive and unscientific reasons. Wear masks after vaccinated? Seems crazy based on what we think right now, but are we convinced enough that we're ready to potentially expose the masses to a poorly understood enemy and even more poorly understood long term efficacy of vaccines against the enemy? Idk. Tough call. Our understanding of this thing is so fluid.

---

Based on the info I am seeing from ID doctors (I quoted one on masks yesterday and reference her below) in the press and on social media with regards to the effectiveness of the vaccines, I am convinced that masks mandates should go away in the coming months as more and more people get vaccinated. I have been quite adamant in my past posts that once we get to 50% or more of the population vaccinated, the mask mandates should end and I stand by this view. I recognize people will be scared to remove their masks in public, but at some point you have to believe the science behind the vaccines and trust the results of the studies and data that are now being published.

The science says the vaccines should stimulate strong responses from the immune system, by stimulating key antibodies and more importantly, T-Cell production. The evidence coming from the clinical trials and now from studies of people who are receiving the vaccines indicates the science is correct.

For example, using data from two healthcare setting studies, a biostatisticians has calculated the following:
- Without vaccination, you would expect 26 infections out of 1,000 people
- With full vaccination, you would expect 0.5 infections out of 1,000 people

Here are the links to the two studies:

SARS-CoV-2 Infection after Vaccination in Health Care Workers in California

Early Evidence of the Effect of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine at One Medical Center


There is also evidence that vaccination can lead to low viral loads in people who do become infected after vaccination. In one study, they estimate that "vaccination reduces the viral load by 1.6x to 20x in individuals who are positive for SARS-CoV-2."

Initial real world evidence for lower viral load of individuals who have been vaccinated by BNT162b2

I found the following thread from Dr. Monica Gandhi (infectious disease doctor I have referenced before) to be very informative with regards to the reduction of transmission and long-lasting immunity from T-Cells after vaccination.

Transmission reduction and long-lasting immunity for Covid-19 after vaccination

As I have mentioned in the past, the continued downplaying of the effectiveness of the vaccines to return us to normal (yes, normal includes no mask mandates) is extremely frustrating and can be counter-productive. It is basic marketing. If you ask people to do something, but tell them conditions for them will not change (see my Rutgers University example from yesterday), you will have difficulty in getting those on the fence to get vaccinated.

Personally, I tell everyone I know to get vaccinated and in the coming weeks, I hope to do so myself. They are safe and effective in protecting you from becoming severely infected by Covid and are the best thing we have to reduce hospitalizations and deaths. At the same time, I also tell them it is our one ticket to returning to normal.

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Yeah, i get it. I get all of Monica's stuff and I'd read all of that. I agree with her (and you) and therefore that is the direction i take my family now that we're vaxed. But i can appreciate the more cautious stance of policy makers and decision makers as there is a difference between community health care decisions and personal health care decisions in terms of risk assessment. I hope all that Monica is saying is true, and i hope the studies in these very early days of vaccinations are also true, but medical studies and assessments, science if you will, has been wrong before by jumping to too early conclusions, so i can understand the caution. For example, the study we both cited above only followed the health care workers for less than 2 months. The data is exciting and certainly suggests that vaccinations are working great! But it is enough to make wide sweeping conclusions about vaccine efficacy and sustainable, lasting immunity to put the health of the nation at risk based on conclusions of one study at 2 institutions conducted over 2 months? Likely not. Enough for me and my personal actions, but not powerful enough to put myself in a situation where I'm completely comfortable making decisions on a community level knowing the repercussions if I'm wrong have consequences maybe i can't accept. That's the point i was making.

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At some point we are going to have to shift public policy from what is safe to one that is based on risk. Up to this point, the focus has been on safety and it is what has lead to many school systems continuing to be closed. Teachers say they will not return to classrooms until it is safe and they define safe as no cases.

Risk is more nuanced and is harder to convey to people, but it is what the policy makers should have shifted to months ago. It requires policy makers to make decisions based on overall risk, recognizing it will never be safe. If we applied the what is safe policy to automobiles, we would no longer be driving on the road. We recognize their is a risk of injury and even death every time we drive a car, but we assess the risk and decide it is safe enough for most people to drive, so the risk is low.

This is what should have happened with the decision to open schools in the Fall. We knew the science. We had very good evidence that kids were "safe" in school and having them attend school in-person would not greatly increase the risk to them or their teachers. Yet, policy makers decided to ignore what we knew and in most states, they kept kids out of school. The damage these policy makers have done to an entire generation of people will be felt for years. What they failed to consider in their decision was the damage done to those kids who come from underprivileged households, with little in the way of internet or support systems to insure a positive outcome. Many come from households where they see abuse and the schools are the place where they can escape the abuse and where the abuse is most often identified.

We can all say that school boards did not have enough information to make a decision to open, but this was not the case for all states and school districts. In Florida, they opened schools in the Fall and were attacked by the liberal mainstream press and politicians who said that Florida did not care about the health of kids. In actuality, they looked at the data at hand and balanced this against the very negative effects of online instruction. In the end, they said the risk to open was lower than the long-term risks to the greater student population.

We are now at a point where health policy makers need to look at the available evidence regarding vaccines and based on their understanding of the science behind the vaccines, make some decisions about how we return to normal. The data will never be perfect. We will constantly face new variants. A large percentage of the population (20-25% based on recent polling) will not be vaccinated. They will have to consider the on-going damage being done to the population through unemployment, social isolation, physical abuse, and economic disruption and decide it is time to open up fully.

This past week the governor and the head of NCDHHS were pressed on what the metrics need to be to fully open and to also end the mask mandate. They could not answer the question. What does this lead to? It leads to a distrust of those in power. At this point, they know the damage being done by continuing the restrictions on the state and they have to be able to state what metrics need to be reached to end those restrictions. People are smart, they can see conditions getting better with respect to hospitalizations and deaths, even with the fear and dread stories coming from the media. We will get to a point where people who have followed the rules will decide to stop following the rules. I will not judge these people and I will not blame them.

Sorry for the long rant and it is not aimed at you specifically. What you are seeing is my ongoing frustration with a lack of clear messaging and metrics for when the restrictions and limitations on personal freedom will end.

Civilized - Thanks for the link to the article on the origins of the coronavirus. It was very good and summarized many of the ideas I have considered about the virus' origin. It is interesting how political the whole discussion became with regards to the virus' origin and how this shaped the investigation.

I was just reading through the transcript from Face the Nation today and they talked about the WHO investigation in China and the pending report. I have bolded the interesting part of the transcript for emphasis. Basically, the Chinese did the investigation and presented it to the WHO. So much for transparency.

I thought everyone would be interested in the comments in the transcript, following on the article Civilized provided in a previous post.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. We'll watch what happens in that space. On the report that's forthcoming from the World Health Organization, it's supposed to be about the origins of COVID. And the Biden administration has been clear that they are concerned that Beijing helped write it. I want to play for you a sound bite from a scientist named Dr. Jamie Metzl, who spoke to 60 Minutes and said the WHO did not even ask for key samples of the virus.

(ROLL CLIP)
DR. JAMIE METZL: It was agreed first that China would have veto power over- over who even got to be on the mission. Secondly--
LESLEY STAHL: And WHO agreed to that?
DR. METZL: WHO agreed to that. On top of that, the WHO agreed that in most instances China would do the primary investigation and then just share its findings with these international experts. So these international experts weren't allowed to do their own primary investigation.
STAHL: Wait. You're saying that China did the investigation and showed the results to the committee, and that was it?
DR. METZL: Pretty much that was it.
STAHL: Woah.
DR. METZL: Not entirely, but pretty much that was it. Imagine if we had asked the Soviet Union to do a co-investigation of Chernobyl. It doesn't really make sense.
(END CLIP)

PackMom said:

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Wow, though not surprising. Beyond unprofessional.

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Hopefully, you and others had a chance to watch the 60 Minutes story on the WHO "investigation" tonight. If not, I encourage you and others to find a replay. The transcript I posted is just a small sample of the entire story. Bottom line, the CCP does not want the truth to come out. If they did, they would provide greater access and transparency.

ncsualum05 - No need to apologize for the rant and I understand your frustration. When I saw you mention my name, I was worried I did something to make you mad at me.

As far as the media is concerned, I have been frustrated, since they began reporting on the pandemic. I try not to generalize and some in the media, both on the left and the right have done some solid reporting. When I say solid, I mean based on facts and not intended to panic people or to act as activists instead of journalist. Unfortunately, we have a lot of journalists who believe it is their duty to not only dig into the facts and expose corruption in government and institutions, but activists who are pretending to be journalists. They slant the reporting to fit a narrative and to back a particular party or personal interest.

For this reason, I try to consume my news from lots of sources. As I have said before, where they agree is likely the truth and where they disagree, it is usually due to opinion and bias. This method is the best I can think of to try and ferret out the truth. I have found many on Twitter I can trust and when I do, I mention them here. Unfortunately, Twitter is a cesspool and you have to be careful to be sucked into the cesspool.

Through the reporting this year, I have found some publications have actually done a decent job of reporting on the pandemic and in cases their reporting has surprised me. For example, the NY Times, for all of his issues, has done some good and fair reporting. For example, they were the first in the mainstream media to expose the PCR testing issues associated with CT and the fact many labs (including our own in NC) were using CT cycles that were likely reporting cases that were no longer infectious. I have also found some good reporting by The Atlantic and by Bloomberg.

On Twitter, I highly recommend you follow a couple of people. One is Alicia Smith who is a journalist that has done outstanding work reporting on vaccines, their development, and the rollout across the US and the world. Another I highly recommend is Monica Gandhi. She is an infectious disease doctor, located in San Francisco. Her primary area of expertise is HIV, but she reports daily on the vaccines, their efficacy and effectiveness (yes, as I learned from her there is a difference), and she offers hope that the vaccines will most assuredly return us to normal. I really look forward to their daily Tweets, since the most always have very good information.

As far as the media that have done the most to spread alarm and panic, I point to WRAL news in Raleigh and to a lesser extent, the News and Observer. WRAL has been particularly horrible with their daily alarmist Tweets that often completely ignore information that is very easy to find, in a purposeful attempt to spread misinformation. I have Tweeted at the weekly and sometimes daily, using actual data to counter their horrible reporting. They claim to employ "data trackers" as they call them, who supposedly look at and analyze data. In actuality, I am not sure the could perform much above high school level math and they certainly do not have the ability to analyze data. As an example, I Tweeted back at them for months in response to their horrible and misleading headlines regarding deaths and cases. Their reporting completely ignored the lagged reporting of deaths and cases, reporting those statistics based on the daily reported cases by NCDHHS. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, they finally reported that their "data trackers" had discovered that the deaths reported on a given day, did not all take place on this day. Something I had been responding to them for months.

I was definitely happy to see CBS' 60 Minutes report last night on the Wuhan lab and the horrible job the WHO is doing in getting to the bottom of where the virus originated. Tonight, NBC news also ran a story on the pending WHO report on where the virus may have originated from and they provided some more information that CBS did not provide. It turns out, they found out the Wuhan lab not only has been housing coronaviruses they collected from expedition back in 2009, but they also found evidence he Wuhan is actually raising bats at the lab so they can study the coronaviruses. The Chinese government have denied ever "harvesting" coronaviruses in 2009 and denied raising bats in the lab. As I said in my previous post, if the Chinese government has nothing to hide, why are they being so secretive? I am sorry, but it absolutely smells of a cover-up.