I think that’s about inline with how many Americans get the flu shot each year as well. I’m assuming there’s a huge, but not complete, overlap in those groups.
I was thinking about a vaccine requirement earlier and had another thought. Even if we don’t require vaccines, by law, we can still track how many have been given out. If every place that gives out shots, reports to someone (CDC?) how many people have had their second dose, the CDC could loosen restrictions based on how many people have been vaccinated. While still keeping an eye on community spread with a plan to tighten restrictions if it speeds back up. The problem I see, however, is that if their guesses are wrong, people are going to have a fit.
Which leads into my WAG for how I think it’ll actually play out. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing with restrictions based on community spread/burden rate. The numbers will naturally go down as more and more people are vaccinated and the restrictions will be loosened as those numbers reduce. Restrictions (hopefully) totally removed at some point when we get close to herd immunity and community spread very low.
The reason why coronavirus is causing so many deaths is because we have huge outbreaks due to lack of previous exposure, not because in itself it’s hugely more deadly than other diseases that are circulating in the community. Restaurants don’t ask for proof of your measles vaccination before seating you, even though anti-vaxxers have in fact made measles outbreaks a more common thing in some places than they need to be, and people have died as a result.
The problem right now is getting enough vaccine for all the people who want it. Creating infrastructure to encourage or push people who don’t want it towards getting it is a problem for when we have more vaccine than people presenting themselves for vaccination. That’s not going to be a problem for probably years into the future.
Vaccine certification for people doing particular sensitive jobs is sensible under the circumstances. Vaccine certification for people going about their daily lives is really not.
This would handily solve the issue too, as your thirty days in county would require you to be brought up to speed on all your missed vaccinations–gotta safeguard the health of the rest of the inmates, right?
“Elaborate scanners,” really? Here’s a free site that will generate a QR code, which can be read by any smartphone with a reader–and I think that a barcode reader is standard in some phone OSs. If not, I downloaded a free scanner in about five seconds onto my phone, reads all this stuff. Have a QR code generated with every vaccination that includes the doctor’s name and phone number, the name and ID number of the vaxxed person and the lot number of the vaccination they received along with the date. Put that onto a card with a tamper/copy resistant background and Bob’s your uncle at very little cost.
Lack of previous exposure is why we don’t have any type of immunity to it. The reason for the rapid spreading of it (in addition to what you said) is because it’s asymptomatic for anywhere between the first few days to the entire time you have it. You can easily spread it for days or weeks without knowing you’re sick. With something like the flu, the time between becoming contagious and showing symptoms is closer to a day.
Very true. Without so much asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, this would probably be under control already.
I’d like to see a very targetted vaccine strategy, when the vaccine becomes available, that absolutely focusses on getting community risk down, not on individual choice. That means targetting the maximum-spread points (people who encounter lots and lots of other people every day as part of their jobs) and at-risk populations, rather than providing incentives for people in the random general population.
Once we get past the vulnerable and high risk groups (including medical personal), I’d be worried that targeting any specific community is going to become inherently political. Luckily, it sounds like the first doses could be distributed to every state within the next few days. And, with millions more available before the end of the year and something like a billion by the end of 2021. Granted, that’s worldwide, but it still sounds promising enough that hopefully we won’t need to ration them out too much as people who are eager to get it will be knocking on the pharmacy doors and plenty of people are going to be willing to hang back and see how it goes for a few months.
And, every person that gets vaccinated isn’t just protecting themselves, they’re protecting all the people around them as well.
That may or may not have to do with trust in science - depending on what exactly you mean by “science” . I’m not sure if I will get the vaccine as soon as it’s available, but it’s not because I don’t trust science so much as it is that I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies or the current administration. I mean, if what I’m concerned with is that the vaccine is being rushed to the market without adequate testing, it’s not the scientists who are doing that.
FWIW, most insurance companies 100% cover vaccines. I don’t think I’ve ever paid anything for a vaccine. If I have, it was on the order of dollars. Flu shots, I think, are nearly always free. Remember, it’s in the insurance company’s best interest that you don’t get sick. They’d much rather shell out the $20 for a vaccine than have you in the urgent care or spending any time in the hospital.
I believe I read somewhere in the last few days that the government (or insurance companies, or some combination of them) will be footing the bill to pay for these vaccines.
I don’t think people will have to actually pay for this one, but I’m saying that would be a much more likely (if still unlikely) scenario, compared to the government actually paying it.
This. It seems crazy to talk about forcing people to get vaccinated when it will be a while before those who want to get the vaccine can. And at 95% effectiveness, it matters a lot less to the vaccinated whether their neighbor was also vaccinated. Sure, more herd immunity is always better than less. But let’s start by getting it to people who want it, and building up infrastructure, and then see if there’s even a need for a government mandate.
Best part is you can put anything into a QR code you like so an encrypted hash of each medical practice’s government issued ID number would make it basically impossible to counterfeit. The possibilities are endless, but it would be extremely easy to implement without needing to resort to anything that takes money or time or even much effort. The time and effort to fake it, though, would be beyond the will and skill set of the average anti-vaxxer, if their linguistic skills on the internet are anything to go by.
Let’s clear up a couple of misunderstandings here. First, the law did not abolish religious exemptions; it merely ended personal/philosophical exemptions. You need only say your personal religious beliefs prohibit vaccination and get the signature of a physician, nurse-practitioner, or naturopath to get the religious exemption. The latter is no problem, as the vast majority of naturopaths are anti-vaxx.
So no, unfortunately, we don’t make life too inconvenient for people who refuse to vaccinate.
