Covid Vaccine Distribution

[Mmm Rrr]

I listened to the latest Youtube update by Dr. John Campbell today and found two things very surprising:

1, In the UK they are suggesting that the 2nd dose could be postponed to the maximum (12 weeks) in order to get more people protected by at least the first dose as quickly as possible; and

2. That it could be efficacious to follow the first dose of one vaccine with a second dose of a different one, if that is what is available.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out...

Here he is on a news channel talking about the single dose aspect:

 

[gerntz]

Amazing that CDC COVID Tracker site hasn't tracked for 2-1/2 days. Net, no reason to believe anything they say about where we stand. And some think Fed Gov should be running the vaccination program. LOL.

 

[Chuckanut]

Quotes Without Comment:

Scott Gottlieb, MD
@ScottGottliebMD
7h
Israel has vaccinated 11% of its population, including 41% of people over the age of 60.

Carlos del Rio

@CarlosdelRio7
Dec 31, 2020
Replying to @ScottGottliebMD

Agree 100%. Vaccinating as many as possible > 65 years-old as fast as possible is key to stem the surge in hospitalizations and deaths we are currently experiencing. Where is the sense of urgency? What are we waiting for?

Walid Gellad, MD MPH
@walidgellad
Dec 31, 2020
It is worth getting back on twitter to engage in this debate. Agree with @ScottGottliebMD
There are 10million vaccine dosages sitting in a warehouse. There are 10million people who live in LA county, where pandemic is raging. We could effectively end pandemic there if we wanted

Scott Gottlieb, MD
@ScottGottliebMD
· Dec 31, 2020
We need to use vaccine aggressively as a tool to reduce death and suffering during current wave. This doesn’t mean delaying or forgoing second dose. It does mean pushing out more supply now, not stockpile 55% - understanding more supply will come on line in Jan for second doses.

My rolling 7 day average of deaths in the USA is at approximately 2450 per day. - Chuckanut

 

[Ronstar]

Agree 100%. Vaccinating as many as possible > 65 years-old as fast as possible is key to stem the surge in hospitalizations and deaths we are currently experiencing. Where is the sense of urgency? What are we waiting for?

Our friend's mother passed away last week in a nursing home - while workers in the hospital less than a mile away were being vaccinated.

It makes sense to me to first vaccinate the group that contributes the most to hospital overruns and death numbers. And that's old people - not health care workers.

 

[harllee]

Our friend's mother passed away last week in a nursing home - while workers in the hospital less than a mile away were being vaccinated.

It makes sense to me to first vaccinate the group that contributes the most to hospital overruns and death numbers. And that's old people - not health care workers.

I have to disagree--we need to protect the health care workers first--without them more will die. Then the over 75, then in my opinion the teachers should come next.

 

[Aerides]

I have to disagree--

You might, and no doubt everyone has their own well-thought out opinions on how to tackle the prioritization. And all of them are different, and none of them are wrong. And none of them are going to change what will actually happen.

 

[eytonxav]

I support vaccinating our healthcare workers and first responders first and then the elderly, especially those in nursing homes. But putting prisoners ahead of the elderly seems nuts to me.

 

[Alan]

A week or so ago a teacher asked the health minister here in England at a press conference why teachers couldn’t be moved up the priority list. The order here is healthcare workers, care home residents then strictly by age, going down in 5 year bands. We are still at the over 80s.

His response was that the order of vaccinations is set by the JCVI where their modeling is aimed at saving the most lives and teachers with no co-morbidity constitute a tiny minority of deaths and the students they teach have virtually no deaths. 75% of all deaths in the UK are among the over 75 year group and 90% are over 65.

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation

I think there are many viable scenarios for the order of vaccinations and I doubt we will ever know which approach is best.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54908177

 

[cbo111]

The current outcry by counties and states regarding lack of funding to ramp up their local vaccination programs can be addressed in a simple but perhaps controversial way. I would personally be willing to pay $1000 to get the vaccine ASAP. I can easily afford that amount and so can a bunch of other folks who are anxious to get the shot. The money collected by local agencies can be directly applied to ramp up their free vaccination programs for the remaining population. No need to get bogged down in federal red tape. While this idea would be rightly perceived as the rich getting better health care that the poor, we can all acknowledge that is probably happening anyway.

 

[kcowan]

That's great news that we could get some sort of determination that soon. One of the reasons I read as to why some health care folks don't want the vaccine now is if the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, they would rather potential patients get the vaccine rather than worry about getting it themselves (since they have avoided CV this far).

Yes that is the crux from my perspective! Sure I want to be protected but if that just makes me asymptomatic then I will continue to wear a mask to protect others.

But the results of the study quoted by Alan should prove wether that is a real concern.

 

[Jerry1]

I support vaccinating our healthcare workers and first responders first and then the elderly, especially those in nursing homes. But putting prisoners ahead of the elderly seems nuts to me.

At a gut level, I couldn’t agree more, but I saw a stat the other day that a very high percentage of prisoners that got it died from COVID, I think around 25%. There was also a lot of prison workers that died. Not sure what order they should be in but we shouldn’t let our feeling about the individuals cloud our judgement about the best course of action to abate the virus. They affect other people that had no involvement in crime. They probably end up in hospitals. Probably any “housed” population needs to be in the first wave.

 

[cathy63]

Amazing that CDC COVID Tracker site hasn't tracked for 2-1/2 days. Net, no reason to believe anything they say about where we stand. And some think Fed Gov should be running the vaccination program. LOL.

Yesterday was a Federal holiday. People who file reports from local hospitals mostly don't work on holidays and weekends. Administrative tasks like data collection and reporting happen during normal business hours. I'm sure the CDC admin staff also gets Federal holidays and weekends off, but even if they were there, any data they got this weekend would be pretty sparse and publishing it would just give a false picture of what's happening, so it would be reasonable to wait until at least Monday evening EST before updating.

I expect all the backlogged reporting on vaccines, cases and deaths will be fully caught up just in time for the next Federal holiday on MLK Day.

 

[gerntz]

Yesterday was a Federal holiday. People who file reports from local hospitals mostly don't work on holidays and weekends. Administrative tasks like data collection and reporting happen during normal business hours. I'm sure the CDC admin staff also gets Federal holidays and weekends off, but even if they were there, any data they got this weekend would be pretty sparse and publishing it would just give a false picture of what's happening, so it would be reasonable to wait until at least Monday evening EST before updating.

I expect all the backlogged reporting on vaccines, cases and deaths will be fully caught up just in time for the next Federal holiday on MLK Day.

Furthering my point that keeping the data up to date isn't a priority & so we shouldn't rely on it.

 

[Ronstar]

I have to disagree--we need to protect the health care workers first--without them more will die. Then the over 75, then in my opinion the teachers should come next.

You make a good point, but DW’s gynecologist got the vaccine before any nursing home patients in our town. That’s not right.

 

[sengsational]

The CMO in England said that frontline healthcare workers who have been vaccinated will continue to have regular Covid tests done which will show if they become asymptomatic Covid spreaders. If the vaccine does or does not prevent the vaccinated from becoming spreaders should be known by end of February. Meanwhile the assumption is that a vaccinated person may catch Covid and become a spreader so normal mask wearing and social distancing should be practiced.

I'd put serious money on the vaccinated health care workers not being spreaders, because when you look at who is spreading, it's all about viral load. The virus uses the unvaccinated host for unfettered, exponential replication. That exponential multiplication opportunity is gone in a vaccinated individual (well, in the 95% that mount a proper immune response). The devil will be in the details, though, because if they amplify the crap out of someone's snot and find they had the very, very tiniest amount of virus, and call that person a spreader, they'd be wrong. What they've found is a viral particle that wasn't dealt with, yet, but would have been. Ah, the joys of interpreting the data!

 

[Amethyst]

My understanding is that people in nursing homes, and now prisoners, aren't being prioritized over, say, teachers, because anyone "cares more" about them.

They are simply the groups who produce the greatest number of seriously ill patients, who then take up critical care resources that may be needed for conditions other than just COVID-19.

That is how a government looks at things.

 

[Freedom56]

In order to increase the inoculation rate, there has to be a coordinated drive from the top to recruit retired and active doctors, nurses, dentists, and veterinarians and anyone else trained to use a syringe (we can exclude drug addicts). Companies capable of managing large amounts of data like Google need to be involved in contacting people and tracking the rollout. Malls all over the country have empty store spaces that can be set up as temporary inoculation sites. Most of those spaces will stay empty until around the next Halloween. Until that happens, the rollout will be a slow trickle like we are seeing today. Relying on CVS and Walgreens to work things out on their own will result in the same debacle as the testing program.

 

[Chuckanut]

I Relying on CVS and Walgreens to work things out on their own will result in the same debacle as the testing program.

+1

We have empty school buildings in my county. Why not use them?

Frankly, I think our elected political leaders should be among the last to get the vaccine. Sort of like the captain is the last person to leave the sinking ship. Instead they have been among the first, even if they are young and healthy with an infinitesimal risk from CV. What else is new?

Maybe I should start a side hustle selling buttons saying - I'm not yet vaccinated and I VOTE.

 

[anethum]

The Washington Post has a very good free online page (no subscription required) showing the numbers for each state & DC of vaccines which have been allocated, received, and scheduled for reception over the next week. Also the number of vaccines administered, including percentages of the state's prioritized individuals who have received a vaccine, and the percentage of a state's population. I believe it is updated at least daily.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...es-distribution-doses/?itid=hp-top-table-main

 

[ivinsfan]

Man, threads like this make me lose my faith in humanity.
Regarding prisoners, not everyone in jail in an axe-murderer. Our populations in jail skew heavily to minorities and we know for a fact they are at a greater risk for COVID morbidity. Any there is literally no shot at social distancing in prison. The inmates have made mistakes, so we just say, never mind about you? Let them have their vaccine, they already have enough problems in life.

As for the idea of people paying to get an early shot

And then there are the critics who think we all should have been vaccinated yesterday..

I'm starting to get a whiff of Lords of the Flies, not just here but nationwide.

Happy New Year.

 

[CaptTom]

I would imagine the inoculation stations could be set up the same way (but a lot faster than) the testing centers were. You don't need much infrastructure. A lot of traffic cones, some place for the workers to shelter out of the weather, and a small enclosed drive-through area.

As for politicians, I do see the value of "influencers" getting publicly vaccinated. Especially among the communities most likely to harbor anti-vax sentiments. I'm seeing some doing that, and applaud them. As for politicians quietly getting theirs and then publicly pandering to the conspiracy theorists, I agree that's disgusting. But frankly that's the way our (US) political system works today.

 

[RetireBy90]

The Washington Post has a very good free online page (no subscription required) showing the numbers for each state & DC of vaccines which have been allocated, received, and scheduled for reception over the next week. Also the number of vaccines administered, including percentages of the state's prioritized individuals who have received a vaccine, and the percentage of a state's population. I believe it is updated at least daily.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...es-distribution-doses/?itid=hp-top-table-main

Just checked it and last update was Thursday, the 31st. I checked 2 other sites and they were updated today.

 

[RetireBy90]

The current outcry by counties and states regarding lack of funding to ramp up their local vaccination programs can be addressed in a simple but perhaps controversial way. I would personally be willing to pay $1000 to get the vaccine ASAP. I can easily afford that amount and so can a bunch of other folks who are anxious to get the shot. The money collected by local agencies can be directly applied to ramp up their free vaccination programs for the remaining population. No need to get bogged down in federal red tape. While this idea would be rightly perceived as the rich getting better health care that the poor, we can all acknowledge that is probably happening anyway.

There is funding for the vaccine distribution. Over $400M has already been approved and there was $8B in the latest bill.

 

[harllee]

You make a good point, but DW’s gynecologist got the vaccine before any nursing home patients in our town. That’s not right.

This would not be allowed in my state. In my state nursing home patients are next in line right after medical people who work directly with Covid patients. Then comes over 70 patients and then front line workers. Then over 65. I think that is a good order. My gynecologist has not had the vaccine and is only doing virtual appts until she gets the vaccine and that does not really work.

 

[anethum]

Just checked it and last update was Thursday, the 31st. I checked 2 other sites and they were updated today.

Could you please provide links to the 2 other sites since they're updated more frequently.