Maybe, but we have the Superbowl weekend coming up. That may be worse than Thanksgiving.
BMJ article: Covid-19: Moderna plans booster doses to counter variants
In the first approach Moderna said that it would see whether a third “booster dose” of the current mRNA-1273 vaccine added to the approved two dose regimen would further increase neutralising titres against the emerging variants.
In a second approach the company said that it had developed a booster vaccine candidate called mRNA-1273.351 against the emerging South African variant. It said that it was beginning phase I studies in the US to see whether this modified vaccine with variant specific proteins would increase the immunological effect.
In an interview with The BMJ earlier this month Andrew Pollard, a leader of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine trials, explained that modifying the vaccine was not complicated. “For the RNA vaccines and the viral vectors it’s relatively straightforward, because you just have to synthesise a new bit of DNA in our case—or RNA in [the Pfizer and Moderna] cases—and then insert that into the new vaccine. Then there’s a bit of work to do to manufacture the new vaccine, which is a reasonably heavy lift. But the same processes would be used.”
It’s an article rather than a paper, so it’s aimed at the lay reader.
j
I’m having a hard time identifying a real holiday bump. It’s hard to tell because of all the reporting weirdness around the holiday, but I was expecting a real spike a few weeks into 2021, and it hasn’t happened at all.
I guess the fact that the new daily numbers are now falling fast in almost every US state is an indication that the holiday was bringing the numbers up and now people are more willing to be careful and stay home? But the upward trend started in October. I just find the shape of the graph to be strange.
And here’s some more news on possible vaccine modifications to protect against new COVID variants:
Prof Andy Pollard, from Oxford University, said tweaking a vaccine was a relatively quick process and would only need small trials before roll-out.
There is still strong evidence existing vaccines work well against the mutations that have emerged.
Although their overall effectiveness may be weakened a little.
Re Pfizer (and Moderna), I found this:
As mentioned above, the two mRNA vaccines are based on the initial Wuhan-1 virus sequence of the spike protein. Both BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna have publicly stated in media [77,78] that, if necessary, it will be possible to update their vaccines with a new variant. BioNTech indicated it could do this within six weeks. However, this does not take into account production time, which would probably need to be added to this timeline. Manufacturing capacity is currently already being increased in the EU due to the urgent need for further doses both within the EU and elsewhere. EMA is currently exploring options for the timely approval of a vaccine strain update, should this be warranted.
(My bold. Source.)
In re the A-Z comment about small trials, note that in the EU there is already an existing procedure for deferring time consuming studies in a (flu) pandemic:
4.3.1.2. Requirements for applications to change vaccine composition (pandemic
strain change) during a pandemic situationWhere a pandemic situation is duly recognised by the WHO or the [European] Union, a variation application [in effect, a drug licence application specific to the pandemic strain] may be accepted to include the declared pandemic strain [attenuated virus] in the pandemic vaccine (‘pandemic strain update’), if appropriate.
As per Article 21 of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2008, it may be exceptionally and temporarily acceptable that certain non-clinical or clinical data on the declared pandemic strain are missing. In the latter, the MAH [Marketing Authorisation Holder] will have to submit the missing non-clinical and clinical data within the time limit set in the marketing authorisation.
The guideline is specific to flu, so talks in terms of attenuated viruses (which is what you get in flu vaccines) but I assume the same principles would be applied to this generation of vaccines.
j
Not sure if a week ago counts as breaking news, but here’s another opinion on the double mask thing:
Air is going to take the path of least resistance. This makes any discussion about masks more complicated since it is a fluid dynamics problem. A simple recommendation like “double mask” is not necessarily going to be universally better since many in the general public don’t really have an understanding of how air flows through and around the mask. Double masking over a mask which has significant gaps around the edges may actually make things worse, as there is now 2x the resistance to go through mask material and it may be easier for air to flow through the gaps. Double masking can be better, but it takes more of an understanding about compensating for restricted air flow to ensure the air goes through the double mask material rather than around it. Incidentally, this is also relevant with a single mask, since the mask material causes resistance. The people who wear a single mask poorly may actually end up making things worse by double masking. But a properly work double mask should provide better protection than a properly worn single mask.
Here’s some preliminary data on the effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing transmission by the vaccinated, not just their severity of illness.
To summarize mightily, we already knew from the trials that vaccinated people are less likely to die, less likely to be hospitalized, and less likely to have severe symptoms. We’re now starting to see actual evidence of the effects we reasonably expected but that were unproven in the trails: vaccinated people are less likely to have any symptoms, less likely to be infectious, and less likely to be infected at all.
That’s a big dose of good news.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/03/oxford-astrazeneca-data-again
If you look at this graph of hospitalizations data from the COVID Tracking Project, it’s even clearer – you can see where the holidays are on charts of cases and deaths over time because the data lag and catchup is visible, but I would challenge anybody to identify any sort of holiday effect looking at hospitalizations, where we’ve got more or less real-time data.
I mean, it’s possible that we would have peaked much earlier without Christmas. We see the peak right at Jan 6 which is pretty close to where anybody who got infected on Christmas would have ended up in the hospital. So it looks like maybe people got together on or leading up to Christmas, and after that just…stopped?
It could be there, but it doesn’t look anything like I expected.
But if that’s the case, why is the growth rate of new hospitalizations slowing down starting around mid-December, after growing very, very rapidly all through November and early December, and not picking up after Christmas? It is really a very, very smooth curve, and you can see it starting to level off well before the actual peak.
It took months before the 4th of July & Sturgis motorcycle rally infections really began to be a problem.
I’d argue that if it takes months for the effect of a holiday or event to become evident, I’m not sure how you would disentangle that from the holiday or event having no effect at all – but this discussion probably doesn’t belong in the breaking news thread, so I made a new thread for holiday and event predictions with time frames.
104,911,113 total cases
2,278,576 dead
76,635,068 recovered
In the US:
27,150,457 total cases
461,930 dead
16,906,778 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
New Cases have been dropping finally in a real way. Hopefully this keeps up.
For New Jersey I’m worried the big drop off we’ve seen might only be an effect of the big snowstorm. I hope it is real.
105,422,088 total cases
2,294,525 dead
77,114,712 recovered
In the US:
27,273,890 total cases
466,988 dead
17,031,629 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
…its late at night here in NZ so maybe my brain isn’t working: but is that over 5000 dead in the US since yesterday? 
It’s a reporting correction. Indiana normally reports <100 deaths a day, but reported >1500 yesterday. I don’t think 15 times as many people died in Indiana as normal.
Still no new daily reported highs in new cases. And that’s holding for a few weeks now
In fact, nationwide and worldwide new case reports are unmistakeably trending downwards.
Yep. Indiana just did an audit of death certificates going all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic.
Iowa is repealing all mask mandates starting Sunday.
No limits on capacities or distancing.