Update: The NYC schools mandate has been upheld by a higher court:
New York City vaccine mandate for school employees can be imposed, judges rule (nbcnews.com)
From what I’ve read about employer mandates imposed by health care providers, most vaccine holdouts see things in a new light when faced with the prospect of going without a paycheck.
Does anyone know if deaths by county are based on the county in which the death occurred or the county of residence of the deceased? Here in Portland, we have a number of patients sent here from the smaller (red) counties with no hospital beds, and I would assume that’s true in WA as well. If deaths are counted where they happen, the actual rates in red vs blue counties could be even worse than reported.
234,571,092 total cases
4,797,604 dead
211,387,558 recovered
In the US:
44,314,424 total cases
716,847 dead
33,721,698 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
I just came in to post the same thing. Here’s the Guardian blurb on it.
They stopped the trial early which is always a strong indicator of excellent efficacy and there were 8 deaths in the placebo side and 0 with the real drug. If that is replicable in wider use then we may be looking at a quantum shift in survivability and not just a halving of hospitalisation.
Fully vaccinated.
This is what it looks like when a country is “fully vaccinated.”
I used WaPo’s “share an article” link, so this might not be paywalled.
LISBON — Portugal’s vaccination campaign is almost over now, and it has exceeded even the wildest goals. Nearly an entire nation trusted in the science, officials say. At mass immunization centers, just the last trickle of teenagers is passing through. Some 85 percent of Portugal’s population is fully vaccinated — aside from tiny Gibraltar, the highest rate in the world.
“We have actually run out of adults to give shots to,” said Lurdes Costa e Silva, the chief nurse at a Lisbon vaccine center that is already half-shuttered.
Portugal’s feat has turned the country into a cutting-edge pandemic laboratory — a place where otherwise-hypothetical questions about the coronavirus endgame can begin to play out. Chief among them is how fully a nation can bring the virus under control when vaccination rates are about as high as they can go.
The emerging answer is promising — mostly. In Portugal, every indicator of pandemic severity is quickly trending downward. The death rate is half the European Union average and nine times below that of the United States.
…But Portugal’s experience is also providing a note of caution: a reminder that 1½ years into this pandemic, the current tools of science still might not be enough. The virus is still causing cancellations, lost work days and sickness — in rare cases severe. It spreads less quickly and less far than it would in places with lower vaccination rates — which benefits everyone, including the 12-and-under children not yet eligible for shots. But herd immunity remains elusive. Daily calculations about risk remain, even without large ranks of unvaccinated people to blame.
…
Not all the news is good.
…
One of the biggest warnings of all has come from a science institute in Lisbon, where researchers have been measuring antibody levels in several thousand people — including about 500 in Portuguese nursing homes. Shortly after those nursing home residents were vaccinated, all with the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, 95 percent developed antibodies, the researchers found. But this summer, when the latest batch of blood samples arrived in coolers, the scientists performed the same tests — introducing the blood to synthetic elements of the virus — and the results were even more worrying than what they had been bracing for.The staff at the nursing home, whose blood was also tested, still had detectable antibodies. But more than one-third of the residents had lost antibodies entirely.
…
But does this mean anything regarding their lasting immunity? My understanding is that T-cell and B-cells have more to do with long term immunity than short term antibodies.
The next few lines from your quote:
Speaking in an interview at her institute, where scientists conduct meetings mostly outdoors, she said the results did not necessarily signal lost protection against severe illness and death. There was still a chance the seniors’ immune systems had been trained by the vaccine to better confront subsequent exposures.
It looks good, but not that good. That 0 death rate isn’t overall; it’s among the survivors after 30 days. There were deaths before that, though significantly fewer of them.
Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill. The study tracked 775 adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were considered higher risk for severe disease due to health problems such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease.
Among patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died at the end of 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those getting the dummy pill. There were no deaths in the drug group after that time period compared with eight deaths in the placebo group
I don’t know, but my interpretation is that the deaths are based on the the counties, and the 100,000 reflects the number of residents in the counties.
Too bad.
Hmmm, there seems to be a bit of confusion here or at least ambiguous wording. In the Guardian report the 30 days were not mentioned in relation to deaths, In the first link that puzzlegal gave (WSJ) it says
In the interim analysis, 28 of the 385 subjects who received the drug were either hospitalized or died after 29 days, Merck and Ridgeback said, compared with 53 of the 377 subjects in the placebo group, resulting in an efficacy rate of about 50%.
Through the 29 days, no subjects who received molnupiravir had died, compared with eight deaths in the placebo group, according to the companies.
So I’m not sure what the actual full story is but when it gets fully published the detail will be there I’m sure.
Plus, even if the 8-0 is talking about post-30 days it is still showing a huge benefit compared to placebo for that period.
Not surprising; the elderly are naturally immunocompromised, and people in nursing homes are presumably that much more compromised. People over the age of 70 will probably need regular boosters, though it is yet unclear as to how often.
I hope this doesn’t greenlight people skipping out on vaccinations. If it’s like Tamiflu, there’s a window of time beyond which these magic pills won’t do much. It’s best to be vaccinated.
It does appear to be like tamiflu. But I don’t think anyone skips a flu shot because tamiflu exists. Some skip it because it’s a nuisance, or it makes them feel sick, or they trust their immune systems without a vaccine – same as covid. But I’ve never heard anyone say, “I don’t need to get a flu shot, I can just take tamiflu if I get sick”.
Right but the flu shot is not mandatory - employers haven’t required that people get flu shots. You don’t need a flu shot to ride on a plane.
Flu shots are required here at the very large medical center, as are hepatitis vaccines. Of course so are COVID-19 vaccine shots.
Right, for healthcare workers - that’s always been true for many in the health fields, but it’s not true for broader society.
New: California will require the vaccine for all public school students as soon as it is fully approved by the FDA for the appropriate age groups.
235,077,026 total cases
4,805,890 dead
211,833,856 recovered
In the US:
44,443,405 total cases
718,984 dead
33,816,494 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: