Here's an onion in the Covid ointment:

[grantcart]

22. Lol, gloomy, absurd and not up to date

To begin with your original point is not that there is some reason to be worried but that you cannot perceive why people are celebrating getting vaccinated, that is absurd. Three months ago thousands of people were dying a day, the intensive care system in American hospitals was near collapse and death by Covid 19 was the number one cause of death in the US. In three months all of those trends will be wiped out. Death from Covid 19 is expected to decline by 95%. Hospitalization rates are plummeting but so far the efficacy performance of the vaccinations is out performing the original high expectations.

The best data in hand right now is that if you get the vaccine you have eliminated the risk of dying from Covid, even if you were to get it.

Three more specific points:

1) The news on the variants is improving, not getting worse. (Not surprised that Forbes is, again, off the mark). From the NYT today

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwLsmpJSnNSpfzRgPDWsRrgNWhM

The variants look a little less scary
I recommend you keep two different ideas about the variants in mind at the same time: First, one or more of the variants could create terrible problems — by being highly contagious, by reinfecting people who already had Covid or by causing even more severe symptoms. A British study released yesterday, for instance, found that the B.1.1.7 variant increases the risk of death in unvaccinated people.

But — here’s the second idea — the overall evidence on the variants has been more encouraging so far than many people expected. The vaccines are virtually eliminating hospitalizations and death in people who contract a variant. Reinfection does not seem to be widespread. And even if the variants are more contagious, they have not caused the kind of surges that seemed possible a couple of weeks ago.

In Florida, where B.1.1.7 has spread widely, “there’s no sign of any increase in cases,” Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote. In South Africa, where the B.1.351 variant was first detected, cases are nonetheless plunging:

https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/N44Q53v1zDAdNAJNcMx1ivQJV4I8SzaylDk-9x1r1SY5CPU1reNsgAZrweLqPMgl4TWvJ4JfbCL1lQfg4P7ysMMTbH3nhxI9TsI31kbc8BBJKOqzRPGbx959neFGrugxrjTmwHuKw32wtchfljO6hnpjWuetie9Qx8A36BuhpO66ZRfGVHGm=s0-d-e1-ft#

It’s a remarkable decline, given the variant. What explains it? Growing natural immunity appears to be part of the reason, The Financial Times has reported. Rising vaccinations are also helping. So did the restrictions that South Africa imposed in late December and January, including “a ban on alcohol sales, the closing of all land borders and most beaches, and an extended curfew,” Bloomberg explained.

2) The efficacy paradigm is real. The facts are that vaccine is radically reducing the severe caseload not only in Covid 19 but also in the variants. Let us assume your most gloomy interpretation (which the most recent facts don't share but could happen) that a more contagious and virulent variant takes hold that is resistant to the current vaccine.

The most logical prognosis would be that if the scientific community could come up with such an effective vaccine with no head start and being basically blind sided that the likelihood of the world scientific community developing an omnibus vaccine that could combat all variants is high given the attention and leadership we now have.

3) We now have a functioning public health system. We now have a government that is committed to science and public health. Just the fact that PODs are giving vaccinations at a single site is a positive sign. It means that instead of spit balling Lysol treatments that when the next public health challenge comes, and it will, that we will have a better educated public and more effective government to deal with it.


Talking to other people who got vaccinated I found that virtually everyone I know has felt an unexpected emotional response to it. The reality is if you get the vaccination you are not going to die from Covid 19.

Some folks seem committed to misery, I hope that you are not. The best objective medical news today is that getting a vaccination, and the general trends are reasons for celebrations as today's summary from the NYT times (which has been very pessimistic at times):

When I last gave you an overview of the U.S. situation — two weeks ago — I highlighted a mix of positive trends (declining nursing home deaths and encouraging vaccine news) and negative ones (rising caseloads and falling vaccination numbers). Since then, the good news has largely continued, and the bad news has not.