Gah! Thank you for calling me out on that. I could have sworn I remembered reading that they were in use in livestock back in March, but now I can’t find that reference, and everything I CAN find disagrees. Sorry for getting your hope up 
but I still think this is fairly promising
If you want to give it to people most likely to spread it, don’t go with health care workers in general. Give it to people who work in nursing homes.
And also to people who spend a lot of time going to bars, restaurants, gyms, and big family gatherings, if the articles from the past month or two are an accurate picture of where people are getting it now.
Said another way, get the people who aren’t taking COVID seriously or who actively believe it’s a hoax to accept being given by government edict two semi-experimental vaccinations 3 weeks apart that give very sore arms. And are next to useless if the second dose is skipped.
May I interest you in a large bridge? It’s on special this week. 
I understand that you understand the problem here, the line above is meant as a joke.
And this is a large part of what’s going to hamper the effectiveness of the vaccine at the population level, despite its evident success at the individual level.
Between the people who can’t have it, the people who won’t have it, and just the time it takes to get enough folks vaccinated, we’ll be 12 to 18 months into vaccinating “everybody” before the infection rate drops enough to be unequivocal.
Add in a few well-publicized adverse reactions and infections among the vaccinated, and the whole effort collapses under the shrieking derision of RW media & the RW social media echo chamber.
COVID is smarter than Americans. And it intends to prove that.
Yes. I am slightly nervous about a brand new technology being rolled out to quite so many people, quite so quickly. But in theory, injecting people with encapsulated mRNA is sorta between injecting them with antigens directly, and injecting them with a disabled virus, both of which have been done successfully. The mRNA can be thought of as a man-made virus that completely lacks the ability to reproduce itself, and just chugs out antigen until the immune system cleans it up.
Like the space race, I expect we’ll get a lot of useful technology out of this massive effort. The teams working on these vaccines had been working on immunotherapy for cancer, a universal flu vaccine, and a vaccine for HIV (among other things) and my guess is that this effort (and money) will ultimately accelerate those, not delay them.
The news this morning is that the preliminary results on the Moderna vaccine (also a messenger-RNA vaccine) shows nearly 95% effectiveness. That’s clearly in the same ballpark as Pfizer’s. But it can be stored at much higher temperatures. In fact, once it gets to a pharmacy, a refrigerator is enough. Whether it is easier or harder to manufacture was not made clear.
I think that a lot of the anti-maskers and hoaxers will still get the vaccine (assuming, for the moment, it’s not forced on them). I think a lot of those people, not all, just a lot, are using all this as an excuse to not wear a mask and avoid restrictions. I think a lot of those people, even if they don’t act like it, understand what’s going on and understand that the vaccine, not politics, is going to get rid of the virus and get us back to normal.
In any case, here’s what I’d like to see: You get the vaccine and once you’re, for all intents and purposes, immune from the virus, you’re given a special ‘I’m immune’ card. That card now exempts you from current covid restrictions. No mask to walk into a store, you can go to a bar or restaurant and you don’t count towards their reduced capacity level etc.
IMveryHO, this make sense and will push people to get vaccinated. And, even better, it’s the people that think all the restrictions are a bunch of BS that are going to be at the front of the line. They’re the ones that are going to love having the 'I’m immune" card to rub in people’s faces.
More on my earlier post. The Washington Post is normally paywalled, but they have opened this up to the public.
Some salient facts. It is stable at freezer temperatures for 6 months and refrigerator temperatures for a month. It also requires 2 doses. And quite obviously no one knows how long it is effective. They expect to have 20,000 doses by the end of the year and between 1/2 and 1 billion doses next year. They expect ordinary zhlubs will be able to get it starting in April.
And possibly pushing people who should be higher on the list off of it. I wouldn’t mind such a get out of mask free card if the vaccine were readily available to anyone who wanted it.
For some reason I can’t pinpoint I feel differently about quarantines. The vaccinated shouldn’t have to quarantine themselves when going to another state. Letting them go to bars and restaurants doesn’t feel right to me for some reason when there isn’t yet enough vaccine to go around.
It doesn’t feel right to me because no vaccine is 100% effective, and especially when a lot of people won’t be vaccinated, I think we will still need belts and suspenders. Crowded restaurants are going to be a problem until the incidence of the virus drops on a population level, i think. And how can you tell whether that person in the supermarket who isn’t wearing a mask was vaccinated? “Wear a mask unless you were vaccinated” isn’t enforceable. If masks mostly protected the wearer, well, each person could pick their own risk. But it doesn’t work that way, they mostly help other people. It’s going to be rude and aggressive to walk around in public without a mask until everyone can get vaccinated.
We have a history in this country that people (especially angry aggressive people) don’t have to prove their assertions. If there really was an “I’m vaccinated” card being issued, I predict thousands of people will claim to have one for every single person who really does have one.
Picture being the Walmart greeter who has to “enforce” seeing the vaccine card and deciding who can and can’t blow off wearing a mask in the store.
American selfishness will prevent this idea from working. Not to mention the fact the card, whatever it looks like, will have convincing counterfeits available on sale online within minutes of the first ones hitting the streets.
I know, I know. That’s one of the reasons I know my idea wouldn’t work well. It’s just that, if someone could prove they’ve been vaccinated and that proof would exempt them from some or all of the restrictions, either right away or even if it’s just earlier than the everyone else, it would make for a great incentive for people to get it done.
One of the other reasons I’m actually not a fan of my own idea is that if we can come up with a way to prove you’re vaccinated for this, we can come up with a way to do it for other things. I can imagine a lot of small businesses refusing to let people in if, for example, they haven’t had a (current) flu shot. As much as I want everyone to get the flu shot, I also don’t know that it’s a good idea if you should have to prove your medical history to get into a business.
Honestly, I think in the end enough people will get the covid vaccine to get our numbers under control and the rest will, like the seasonal flu, either get lucky and avoid it or eventually get it and regret not getting the shot.
Can workplaces require their employees to be vaccinated before letting them come in to work? That sounds like a pretty good incentive - and much more enforceable
Any card will cause “number if the beast!!” screaming.
I would imagine so. I’m nearly positive all health care workers are required to get flu shots and something about regular TB testing. The bigger question is if those businesses can tell their employees the religious or otherwise non-medical exemptions don’t count. If you don’t want the shot, you need a note from a doctor with a valid medical reason for not getting it.
I think an employer can fire someone for not getting vaccinated if it’s a reasonable job requirement, even if the person is medically unable to get the vaccine.
I imagine the True Deniers would all rush off to get exemptions but hopefully the Power of Laziness would cause at least a few of them to say fuck it, lets just get the jab - if getting the jab is made super-easy, right there for your convenience.
And that certainly makes sense. For example, even if you have a legit medical reason not to get the flu vaccine, you probably shouldn’t be working in a nursing home.
There’s a similar thing with drug testing. Generally, testing positive for something you have a valid prescription for is okay (ie, testing positive for amphetamines, but you have a script for adderall). But, it’s my understanding that in some industries, that don’t give you a waiver for that reason. Like, if you’re a truck driver, it doesn’t matter if you have a valid prescription for vicodin, they don’t want you on the road with it in your system…or so I’ve heard.
They should start giving the vaccines in early December to high risk and medical personnel. there are 2 vaccines coming out at the same time with probably 3 more after that. By April there should be a significant number of at-risk people vaccinated which should drive down the death rate.
One thing I was wondering about. The vaccine offers up to 95% protection, and works by prepping the immune system.
But, people who catch covid for reals, it seems have a non-negligible probability of reinfection according to studies now in several countries.
So, is the vaccine somehow better than catching the real virus in terms of preparing the body’s response? Or does the 5% “failure” actually reflect on the proportion of people still susceptible to the virus after defeating it once?
I know there’s probably no clear answer and it’s something to do with the gap between “prepping the immune system” and the complex reality, it’s just something I was thinking.
I don’t think I’ve seen reports that suggest re-infection is in the “non-negligible” category as yet. It seems that it can happen but not at levels that are cause for concern. What I’d infer from this is that naturally occurring immunity is at least good for six months or so.
The initial data from the vaccine studies suggested that the immune response provoked artificially was much higher than the naturally occurring response and so that could mean that protection may be over a year (which I think is the practical lower limit for a workable vaccine program)
The 5%,who knows? there are myriad reasons why they didn’t get full protection. When the full study details are revealed we’ll know more. They may be older people which would be a worry but even so, just testing positive for the virus after vaccination doesn’t tell the whole story. That vaccinated 5% may catch it but generally show a much less severe response which in itself would be a big bonus.
And on top of all that, a 90-95% efficacy means that with a wide enough program you can provide herd immunity that protects that small amount of people for whom the vaccine is wholly ineffective.
Can we promote a large enough uptake of these vaccines? That is the big unknown. We know we can make them, can we get people to take them?