1. Ynetnews said,
Researchers at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital on Thursday announced it has seen positive results in preliminary trials for a cure for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Joseph A. Ladapo wrote,
while scientists argue that widespread vaccination will prevent variants from taking hold, lessons from the past year should make it abundantly clear that our ability to stop the spread of variants is extraordinarily limited.
So there is still a low-probability scenario in which We will quietly give up on a vaccine. But keep in mind that neither the Ynetnews piece nor Lapado’s op-ed should be treated as reliable.
2. I am pretty close to declaring Mr. Biden a failure as a virus-war President. To succeed, he needs to fight the bureaucracy much harder.
–declare the vaccine distribution system a failure, and put a military person in charge.
–take the vaccine approval process out of the hands of the FDA. In addition to FDA input, get input from a scientific advisory panel, consisting of folks like Michael Kremer, Scott Alexander, Bret Weinstein, and Balaji Srinivasan.
–create a treatment-protocol study group to evaluate current knowledge, disseminate best practices on an ongoing basis, and see that trials are conducted as rapidly and reliably as possible.
3. Our county’s vaccine appointment systems are ridiculous. Pointer from Tyler Cowen. But my wife got her first shot Friday, and I got mine Monday.
–Even though some occupations under age 65 are eligible, I don’t see how anyone with a job could possibly get an appointment. Trying to navigate/game the appointment systems is a full-time job, involving checking multiple web sites, learning what time is best to check a particular web site, hitting the “refresh” on your computer continually, and so on.
–Because it takes so much social capital to work the system (local list-servs are buzzing with tips on how to get an appointment), I was not surprised when a white person told me of getting an appointment at a grocery store in a mostly-black neighborhood and finding that all the other people with appointments were white. So on top of everything else, it exemplifies systemic racism.
–If a private firm operated like this, no one would put up with it.
4. You can’t die now–it’s the Super Bowl! Total COVID deaths for February 7-8 were under 3000, the lowest two-day total this year. Doctors do have a lot of discretion to keep someone alive for a day or two longer if that is more convenient for the family. I’m expecting a bounceback today.
“ I am pretty close to declaring Mr. Biden a failure as a virus-war President.”
On my personal list, I would add a fourth bullet point:
– unwillingness or complete inability to deal with the teachers’ unions. Time for the kiddos to go back to school in the blue states.
In got an email from the health department saying that they were “required” to give 50% of vaccines to 65+. Based on the statistics on the health department website, it seems they would provide even less to the old if they could. Luckily before he left Trump made vaccinating 65+ a requirement to get vaccine allocation.
A lot of the vaccine allocation in our state is going to teachers. My parents still can’t get an appointment. These young healthy teachers are holding children hostage to get a vaccine they don’t even need and that all private school teachers haven’t needed in order to operate. They are trash human beings who deserve no sympathy.
My wife (45 yo) got the vaccine yesterday here in North Texas. She is a “healthcare worker,” but many many layers removed from the front lines. They did not check her paperwork to substantiate her healthcare worker status so I’m sure that there are probably some cheaters that are violating the honor code.
N=1, but no problems getting an appointment online. She had to wait like an hour from start to finish once she arrived at the mega facility.
My parents (75+ yo) got the vaccine two weeks ago in California, but with more frustration as Arnold described.
65-75 were at the back of the line in my state for some time, so there is a lot of backlog to work through before they get it.
There is no way to get an appointment for them through an employer. I don’t have any moral qualms with defrauding the system but I’ve yet to see a reliable pragmatic way for me to do so.
I can assure you that my wife did not go through her employer. She went to the county website just like everyone else, but she definitely qualified as a healthcare worker. See my tip above on violating the honor code, but no clue if the same strategy would work in your state or whether you have any moral concerns with that approach (I would).
To my knowledge my county requires you to present proof of employment when you go for the shot (and I think before as well). Beyond that, I think my parents are genuinely afraid to commit such blatant fraud with an obvious paper trail and an open and shut case against them.
There is also the question of getting the second shot, even if you can trick someone into jabbing you the first time.
Moreover, the county doesn’t allow you to schedule appointments, you just “get on a list”. You can’t see the list, you don’t know where you are on it, and you don’t know how people move through the list.
The CVS appointment I made today was a lot more clear (book a specific place and time, get a confirmation).
“I was not surprised when a white person told me of getting an appointment at a grocery store in a mostly-black neighborhood and finding that all the other people with appointments were white.”
If it’s like DC system, that’s because all of the vaccine has been allocated to black zip codes. However, blacks don’t want the vaccine (they think the fact that white people are trying to give it to them means it’s dangerous), so whites get the appointments. You can’t blame whites for the fact that blacks don’t want it. The state is going out of its way to make it easier for them.
“So on top of everything else, it exemplifies systemic racism.”
Unless you mean systematic discrimination against white people. It’s ridiculous that people are waking up at all hours of the night to press refresh hoping to have to travel across town for a vaccine that could just as easily be delivered to their local pharmacy. Allocating vaccine to black neighborhoods because they are black is discrimination against whites, period. Don’t try to turn this around.
https://www.wric.com/health/coronavirus/joy-beyond-measure-midlothian-couple-registers-for-covid-19-vaccine-with-cvs-minutes-before-appointments-fill-up/
My Mom got an email saying that appointments would be available at 5:15 am. So she woke up early to get an appointment. However, in the middle of the night, after I had gone to sleep, another email went out saying that appointments wouldn’t be available till Thursday. So my mom was tired and miserable all day for nothing.
Then later I found out that the second email was wrong, and that people could make appointments, but at 6:15am instead of 5:15am, but people who hadn’t been deterred by an hour of refreshing and the fact that the email said it wouldn’t be available that day snapped up all the appointments in 15 min, so when it opens up on Thursday they are already full.
P.S. I’ve found a legal but obviously not spirit of the law way to get them vaccine for $6,250, but they haven’t secured second doses and its the other vaccine and not what my county uses. That’s what we are reduced to.
I think deaths were on a downward trend as we moved past the effects of the holidays. I’d expect to see a Super Bowl bump in fatalities about ~4 weeks from now.
There wasn’t a notable Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years rise in cases in the U.S. so no reason to expect a Superbowl increase. Kling is forgetting 1) reported Covid-19 deaths almost never occur on the day one is looking at and 2) Covid-19 deaths have been lower than the Jan 10 to Jan 16 peak and this week will have a major decline just as cases declined from early January.
If you look at a chart of US cases or deaths, there was a rise that starts just before Thanksgiving, presumably because it’s getting cold in the northern US and people were gathering indoors again. That rise continues into early to mid January (deaths lag cases, of course), and is starting to fall. I don’t think this is a case of doctors extending lives for the Super Bowl, I think it’s a mix of cold weather and gatherings that led to the rise, and now that we’re past the lag from New Years, it’s been falling again.
I think its less “gatherings” and more “case growth burns itself out as the riskiest people get it and we are starting to see some benefit from vaccines”.
Yes. By coincidence, the peak for Covid-19 occurred in early January, the same week the peak occurred in the bad 2017/2018 flu season where 70,000 Americans died from the flu (not with the flu…)
The NLF released info showing that not a SINGLE case of COVID transmitted during actual play, including across the scrimmage line with two NFL linemen and one later being found to have a positive case at the time.
The thing just does not transmit outdoors, and the super bowl and its partiers won’t have an effect.
The winter surge began before the holidays, and basically tracks places that started getting cold first. Extreme temperatures force people indoors and that increases transmission of the virus. That simple. The guilt trip on people seeing their families is a side show.
I of course was not implying that a big spike in covid cases would results from a handful of players on the football field. I was referring gatherings to watch the Super Bowl.
I thought you were referencing the people at the game or partying in the streets.
I doubt people gathered for the Super Bowl any more then they gathered most of the year.
If u want to hear from the creator of Covid here he is on 2015:
https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-364/
What happens if GoF test leaks? Quarantine blah blah blah it will be bad cold
Summary: this was 20 year old highly infectious western technology (not Chinese junk) with NIH pouring $10m per year into Baric’s Wild Wild West lab post SARS/MARS. Baric published the GoF guidebook, O banned test 2014, Baric outsourced test to Wuhan ‘counterparts’. He and his protege Vineet (now at UTMB Galveston which was in news) talk of the human lung lining as a “barrier” to overcome so they learned to add ACE2 (from Baric ‘humanized’ mice) and furin cleavage (Vineets invention)
“You can’t die now–it’s the Super Bowl!”
Fact check: 99%+ true. And, it has been this way from the beginning.
Let people live their lives according to their own personal risk tolerance levels provided that the hospital system does not get overwhelmed. Florida gets it. But, do the libertarians or will they just continue to pile on?
I hate to say it, but Tom Brady is the GOAT quarterback. Took a nothing team to a Super Bowl victory and made it look easy. That’s crazy.
“Let people live their lives according to their own personal risk tolerance levels provided that the hospital system does not get overwhelmed.”
Why should our rights be dependent upon how well the hospital system is able to manage itself? I find this notion to be absolutely perverse and I reject it completely. Individuals have an inherent right to self-ownership and self-determination, full stop; the number of hospital beds available within a certain radius is entirely irrelevant.
Never mind that there is (a) no evidence of any hospital system anywhere having been “overwhelmed” to any unprecedented degree; (b) tons of evidence of many hospital systems all over the place having largely been sitting empty and laying off swaths of employees since March; and (c) no evidence that denying people their right to live their lives according to their own personal risk tolerance levels has any effect on hospital capacity.
Silencio por favor!
In an ideal world, I would completely agree with you. But, of course, we don’t live in that world and I’m trying to find a second or third best solution. Most people just won’t tolerate a society in which people die without access to healthcare even if those people voluntarily forego that right in exchange for riskier activities. Watching people die on the streets or in their homes generates a visceral response in the rest of the populace that is likely to be counterproductive. I don’t agree with it, but that’s the world we live in. Example: Italy almost a year ago…did those images of people dying from the virus help or hurt overall? People love visceral images over statistics and they will modify their behavior accordingly even if it’s completely irrational.
Of course, please disagree with me and let me know where I’ve gone wrong. I’m open to your pushback.
2. A military person is already in charge of vaccines distribution, Army General Gustave Perna. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/general-in-charge-of-covid-vaccine-distribution-worries-many-wont-take-it/ar-BB1aLqrf. You know the military was in charge because of the new $12 billion software package that doesn’t work. Maybe go with direct VA distribution to the public. They have administered more total shots than DoD so far and a higher percentage of the vaccines distributed to them.
And why another advisory panel? What about the extant panel that Tabarrok is always gassing about being on? If you have nothing good to say sit next to me.
1. Also potentially hopeful news on Ivermectin out of Peru. Quite a few potential cures being studied elsewhere. https://t.guardian.ng/features/science/advances-in-covid-19-therapies/ Hopefully some avenues for medical tourism will open up. Perhaps cruise ships could serve as offshore hospitals while we wait around for the FDA to think about reviewing cures approved elsewhere.
(I’ll just point out Manhattan Project Lieutenant General Leslie Groves Jr. was a US Army Corps of Engineers officer. Engineers know logistics.)
Fair enough. Thank you for mentioning the Manhattan Project. You inspired me to read the fascinating and lengthy Wikipedia entry on it and it was indeed an impressive and challenging feat. Yet, at a total cost of about $22 billion (in 2019 dollars) through the end of 1945, one might wonder whether the defense budget of today at about $500 billion (net of a lot of the non military spending larded into defense) are we getting anywhere near 23 Manhattan Projects worth of value in return per year?
“a mostly-black neighborhood and finding that all the other people with appointments were white. So on top of everything else, it exemplifies systemic racism”
Does systemic racism just mean racial disparities in outcomes now? In this case, the “system” did explicitly locate vaccine distribution sites in mostly-black neighborhoods. Whites ended up with appointments due to more “social capital”. The term “systemic racism” would imply that the facially race-neutral system was designed, perhaps unconsciously, to favor those with more social capital, namely whites. Do we have any reason to believe that, had more black officials been involved in designing the system, a facially race-neutral system would have emerged that did not favor those with more social capital?
What would be an example of a system with racial disparities in outcomes that did not exemplify systemic racism? If none, then why coin the term “systemic racism” instead of using the less ambiguous term “unequal outcomes”?
Biden ran as the official candidate of the bureaucracy. Did you expect otherwise?
On November 9, Andrew Cuomo, a leading Democrat, who is endorsed by the Biden White House, as a leading authority on COVID, said:
The Trump Administration’s plan to have the private industry and the drug market chains lead the vaccine distribution effort was a reasonable one.
Problems aside, at least the system for the pharmacies involves a system as simple as “log onto website and book appointment.” If I lose the lottery to refresh faster in the 15 min those appointments are available, so be it. If I manage to get through, I now have an appointment.
By contrast, I’m on the counties health department “list”. They tell me that I might get a call with an appointment sometime in the next 6-12 weeks. I can’t see my spot in the que. I don’t know how they allocate in the list. Etc. Its a black box.
Note that Balaji Srinivasan has left the US for a pair of countries that are on better trajectories: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1355088787286544384
It is remarkable how well that June 1 2020 essay holds up. I think, in the end, even the prediction of giving up on vaccines will turn out to be true.
Totally a side note, but my grandfather was in intensive care with multiple organ failure, under heavy sedation, and according to his doctor in intense pain. But he held on long enough to see his Steelers beat the Seahawks in the superbowl. He died a few hours later.
PS don’t give vaccine delivery to the military. Give it to CVS or Target or whoever.