Yes, many other diseases show asymptomatic spread and post-viral syndromes.
Though it’s heavily researched and not hard to find the information, most people aren’t aware because those diseases don’t have the magic combination of being highly contagious and (relatively) frequently serious like COVID
You get shingles, shrug your shoulders, and say “oh right, it’s the chickenpox I had 40 years ago.” It’s not very contagious and you don’t die, so you never give it another thought. But it’s quite common.
I don’t see anything in the Israel graphs, cases or deaths, that looks all that different from the US’s: a large peak around the holidays which has tapered downward but is still higher than it deserves to be, especially deaths which are still pretty high (for Israel).
I’m not sure what I’d expect to see in the data graphs from vaccinations. If deaths are overwhelmingly from older people, and you vaccinate all older people, I’d expect deaths to drop precipitously to a very low level while cases might remain high as the less death-prone groups wait to be vaccinated. I can’t say I see that pattern anywhere.
It’s a reactivation of varicella zoster from an earlier infection. It has a post-viral syndrome called postherpetic neuralgia.
My point is that features of COVID such as asymptomatic transfer and post-viral symptoms are commonly known in other diseases. COVID is far from the first disease to show it. It’s only notable because it’s a new disease that has several problematic features.
Is the number of people eligible for vaccines the bottleneck to getting everyone vaccinated? From what I’ve been hearing, there are still way, way more people trying to get vacinated than available doses. Like on the CVS vaccine schedule site, there are hardly any appointments available. Either states are fully booked or there are just a few cities in the states with available appointments. One problem I foresee of prematurely expanding eligibility is that people will get frustrated and give up looking if they can’t easily get an appointment. Most people aren’t going to spend hours or days calling around and clicking refresh on scheduling sites looking for appointments.
No, I don’t think so. I’m slightly worried that a lot of eligible but low-tech folks (many of them older and poorer) are getting bypassed because they can’t or won’t scramble hard enough. I was able to intervene with my mother, but it was an serious pain in the ass for awhile. The vaccination process, such as it is, unfortunately heavily favors the technologically competent, highly motivated, highly mobile and very flexible.
That said, I get why its being opened up as quickly as feasibly possible. The more people you vaccinate quickly, probably the faster you knock down transmission generally and the better it is for the population as a whole. At a certain point it becomes a question of delaying for and spending resources on difficult-to-reach stragglers when you have a large cohort available to get it now and willing to get it any which way they can. It becomes a problematic numbers game and of course eventually political pressure would mount.
I don’t doubt there is some gun-jumping going on, but I get the sense of urgency.
My mother for example has no relevant medical offices - she hasn’t seen a doctor in years due to failure to sign up for Medicare B (she was given some shitty advice by a Soc Security agent) and falling through the cracks on Medicaid. She’s on nobody’s radar and would be informed by nobody - no internet, no newspapers and little TV news as she refuses to pay for or let me pay for cable. I had to tell her there was a pandemic starting up, she didn’t have a clue .
Unfortunately I doubt she was unique especially when you start thinking about poorer immigrant communities with weaker English skills.
Montana announced yesterday that they will open vaccinations to everyone over 16 on April 1. Currently in Bozeman the health department is offering 400 spots this entire week (for a population of 100,000). We have not received any information from our PCPs, even though the hospital was a partner in the Pfizer trials. Unless vaccine supply is dramatically increased this is going to be a shitshow. The next phase was supposed to be front-line workers and they’re going to get lumped in with everyone else. I’d be pissed! We drove to Billings (2 hrs one-way) Monday and got our first shot. There are lots of rumours swirling that distribution is being affected by politics–new Republican Governor and Bozeman voted heavily Democrat.
Yeah, some sort of queue, even a non-ideal queue, keeps us from all trampling each other. Unless the supply of vaccine ramps up VERY QUICKLY I don’t see all these expanded eligibility rules helping any.
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