I wish more people in NC would chose to get one of the three safe and effective vaccines. Unfortunately, it is not happening fast enough. Despite all of my past criticism of Gov. Cooper,I do believe he set very reasonable and clear targets for reopening. His targets are sound and based on the results of data we are seeing from other parts of the world.

For example, in Israel and the UK, there is clear data that an inflection point can be reached when 50% of the population or 67 to 70% of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccines. In these countries, where they have achieved these vaccination levels, they have seen case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths drop drastically. In the case of the UK, these numbers are now at the level of yearly flu. I have consistently said when we reach levels of the flu, in cases and hospitalizations, we should open up.

Why is this happening? It is not due to seasonality. It is not due to the virus just giving up. It is due to "herd immunity." We know there are two ways to develop herd immunity - through past infection and through vaccination. Given the levels of past infection in the population, vaccinating 2/3 of the adult population with at least one dose, combined with the population with past infection, moves us to the levels of protection needed to achieve herd immunity.

In some states and locals, they are very close to achieving these vaccination levels. In California for example, they are expected to reach head immunity by mid-June. In San Francisco, they have now given at least one dose to 72% of their population and as a result, they have seen cases and hospitalizations reach the same levels as the flu.

In NC, our hospitalizations remain too high. We have been stuck at a little more than 1,000 total people hospitalized a day and are still admitting more than 100 people each day to the hospital from complications of Covid. While daily cases are down some, they still are averaging over 1,500 per day. Due to lags in the data, it is harder to report the average number of deaths each day, but they remain significantly higher than in those states and countries I mentioned previously. By my rough estimation, we are seeing between 7 to 10 deaths daily from people infected with Covid. The vaccines have definitely caused a drop in the number of people hospitalized who are aged 65+ and their hospitalization rates are more inline with the other age groups.

If more people continue to get vaccinated, we will eventually get the key statistics to the levels of flu and likely, even lower. To do this, we need more people to get vaccinated. The chart below shows how we are doing in NC with regards to the goal of having at least 2/3 of the adult population receive one dose. Currently, NC needs approximately 1.3M additional people to get at least one dose of the vaccines to reach this target. At the current rates, it will be August before we achieve these levels and the governor lifts the mandates on masking and full occupancy at restaurants and indoor/outdoor sporting events.

NCDHHS is now showing the vaccinations by age group for those administered through the Federal system separate from the general population's vaccinations. Combining this information now gives a much clearer picture of how we are doing vaccinating people by age group. In particular, you can see there has been good progress vaccinating the 65+ age group (close to 80% first vaccination) and the 50-65 age group is making good progress toward the 70% target. Where there needs to be a focus is the 24-49 year old age group. These are the age groups where significant gains toward herd immunity can be made.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb was on Face the Nation today and had this to say about where we are as a nation and the lifting of mandates. I have also linked the entire transcript below.

JOHN DICKERSON: So I- every time we talk, we talk about where things are and then you kind of tell us where we're going to be. A few weeks ago, you were saying, you know, they should change the mask restrictions for outdoors if you're vaccinated. Your feeling now about maybe changing those mandates for indoor masks? You- you think they should be lifted, do you?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, look, COVID won't disappear. We're going to have to learn to live with it, but the risk is substantially reduced as a result of vaccination, as a result of immunity that people have acquired through prior infection. And so I think we're at the point in time when we can start lifting these ordinances in a wholesale fashion and people have to take precautions based on their individual risk. They have to judge their own individual risk and decide whether or not they're going to avoid crowds or wear masks based on their circumstances. But we've always said from a public health standpoint that we would set as a metric maybe when we get down to 10 cases per 100,000 people on a daily basis. Well, half the country's there right now. If you want to be more conservative and say five cases per 100,000 people, well, this week, by this week, probably about a quarter of states will be there. So we're at the point right now where we could start lifting these ordinances and allowing people to resume normal activity. Certainly outdoors, we shouldn't be putting limits on gatherings anymore. We should be encouraging people to go outside. In the states where prevalence is low, vaccination rates are high, and we have good testing in place and we're identifying infections. I think we could start lifting these restrictions indoors as well on a broad basis.

Link to full transcript

wilmwolf80 said:

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Seems counterintuitive for hospitalizations to be staying the same as the number of the most vulnerable population being vaccinated continue to go up. I know there has been chatter about new strains affecting younger people more severely, but I haven't seen any indication that new strains are the reason here in NC. The detailed hospital data that you want seems to have been lacking the whole time.

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I agree and it has puzzled me as well. Based on the daily admit numbers, I assume the discharges are approximately 100 to 110 per day. The total number (when percent of hospitals reporting is constant) hovers around 1,000 to 1,050 hospitalized. Only a few times has it dropped below 1,000 (I do not count those days when reporting dropped below 97%). We are basically at a point now where the age ranges contributing to hospitalizations is roughly the same. Older people still make up a slightly higher percentage, but nothing like it was before the vaccines started to kick in.

I think we need to hit the inflection point on vaccinations to make a bigger dent in hospitalizations. Currently, the case rate in NC is approximately 12 cases per 100,000 people. To see a significant drop in hospitalizations, we need to see a case rate below 10 cases per 100,000 and it really needs to be below 5 cases per 100,000 people. In San Francisco as an example, they are now seeing case rates below 5 cases per 100,000 people and they achieved this by getting 72% of their population vaccinated. Additionally, they have had several days where they have had no deaths of people with Covid.

Wayland said:

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Daviewolf83 said:

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NCDHHS is now showing the vaccinations by age group for those administered through the Federal system separate from the general population's vaccinations. Combining this information now gives a much clearer picture of how we are doing vaccinating people by age group. In particular, you can see there has been good progress vaccinating the 65+ age group (close to 80% first vaccination) and the 50-65 age group is making good progress toward the 70% target. Where there needs to be a focus is the 24-49 year old age group. These are the age groups where significant gains toward herd immunity can be made.

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I still think if they could get 10-15% more in the 50-64, it would make a lot more difference in overall negative outcomes than the younger focus. Allthough the sub 50 would get the population number up there.

I've been watching the CDC ED CLI number every day, they delay reporting for 3 days (so this goes through May 6th) and there may be some slight backfill at times, but NC has mirrored the overall US and since mid April this number has absolutely cratered.

It makes me kind of skeptical at times about how accurate some of the reporting coming out of NC hospitals have been since they are showing such a level number of ED admits and overall census. I would love to see some discharge and length of stay numbers.

Either way, hope this continues to trend down.

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I agree on the vaccination numbers. If we can get overall first vaccine percentages for NC above 60%, I believe it will go a long way in reducing the cases and hospitalizations further. To do this, we need the 50-64 to get to roughly 70% vaccinated with their first dose and some additional increases in the 40-50 age group.

I am hopeful we get their by late June, since it would make the next wave of cases less impactful. I am reasonably confident we will see another wave from late June through mid-August, when the weather gets really hot and people head inside to escape the heat Having a vaccination level above 60% should be enough to prevent a large impact to hospitals and deaths should be lower, due to higher vaccination rates of the 65+ population.