Per the New York Times, they have a graph predicting about 50% be partially vaccinated by June and 90% by October, at our current vaccination rate.
I am expecting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine coming online to accelerate that prediction.
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So what carrots and/or sticks can we use to try to increase the number of people who get the vaccine?
Carrot: the obvious answer is a direct payment. Once you’ve gotten your second shot the medical personnel who vaccinated you send your name and address to the government, and a little while later you get a check. A similar approach would be to add a tax deduction in 2022 for anyone who has proof they were vaccinated. Both these would be mildly annoying for anyone who is medically unable to receive the vaccine (compromised immune system, allergy to an ingredient) but accepting even a doctor’s note is too vulnerable to fraud unless the penalty for giving a fraudulent note was severe (suspension of medical license for some period of time, perhaps.)
Stick: a fine for people who remain unvaccinated is the flip side of the obvious carrot. Another probably controversial stick would be denying drivers license renewal to people who aren’t vaccinated (and don’t have a medical reason for it.) Imprisonment, unless the person in question is actively and/or knowingly attempting to spread COVID (along the lines of Typhoid Mary), would be legally problematic.
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My plan: everyone is required to get an injection. It’s either the vaccine or the virus itself, take your pick.
Ok maybe that won’t fly.
New plan: Everyone is required to get an injection, either the vaccine or saltwater taffy.
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Make it a condition for school attendance and employment. My kids can’t go to public schools without a vaccination record and I have to get periodic TB tests to stay in my job, so there’s no reason they couldn’t do something similar for Covid.
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In a world where we had a coherent notion of identity and record keeping, the carrot could just be participating in regular life: going to the movies, restaurants, sporting events, travelling interstate, etc.
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Until we have 8 billion doses, the world is not in oversupply. Viruses are not interested in national borders.
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Keep it simple. If you get vaccinated: free carrot! If you don’t get vaccinated: anybody who wants gets to hit you with a stick!
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It’s not being talked about much since we’re still in emergency mode to get the first round done, but it’s likely we’ll need additional booster doses in another year or two. With so many people unwilling to get the jab in the US, those extra doses will work out in favor of the vaccinated.
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Also, I would HAPPILY get both the J&J jab and either of the two-dose jabs just to be extra sure I’m covered.
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That’s % of the whole population (331 million), not eligible adults (256 million). 50% of everybody is about 70% of adults.
Not sure when, but there are ongoing trials for the J&J vaccine (and potentially the other two-dose vaccines) for the under 16 crowd which may be conditionally approved in time for that phase.
That graph may include that projection…
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Viruses are not interested in national borders, but national borders can be interested in viruses.
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But what about the increasingly-likely scenario in which variants that can resist the vaccines spread so quickly and crowd out older versions, we’re permanently playing catch-up, and the pandemic just becomes the new normal, and having a vaccination just doesn’t make a ton of difference, both individually, and en masse?
Call me glass half empty on COVID. We’re not even going to hit herd immunity for the original version, at the rate we’re at — and I don’t actually care what a chart in The Times shows. If only 175 million Americans are willing to even be vaccinated, there’s a hard limit, no matter the supply.
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I mean really, “we’re in the middle of a deadly pandemic so let’s leverage the power and influence, and deep pockets of the United States government to help accelerate research and development of a vaccine” is pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel of the bare fucking minimum I’d expect of any president. But to hear Trump spin it, he was the one in the lab synthesizing the fucking vaccine himself.
It’s worth noting that the Pfizer vaccine which was the first to get approved didn’t even get any funding from Operation Warp Speed.
So, yeah, despite the constant self-sabotage and massive amount of continual not to mention completely preventable huge fuck-ups that led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and suffering of millions more, he managed to at least get one thing right. Stopped clock principle and all that.
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All of the vaccines we have now are ~100% protective against hospitalization and death for all of the variants we have now. Some might work more or less well against symptoms, but they will all keep you out of the morgue.
Nobody knows what the actual limit for herd immunity is, and nobody knows how many people will refuse to be vaccinated when all is said and done. Vaccines will be authorized for children this summer, and some of the people who are currently reluctant will come around when all their neighbors are vaccinated. But we don’t need herd immunity to stop the development of new variants — getting 75% of adults vaccinated will reduce cases sharply, and fewer cases means fewer opportunities to mutate. We need to have better surveillance worldwide, and better vaccination programs, but right now nobody should be underselling any of the vaccines we have. The mRNA platform in particular is astonishing — Moderna has already submitted a phase I trial for a booster against one of the new variants.
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I’ve been fighting with my mother to get the vaccine. She’s worried that her allergy booster would interfere. I’ve told her that an allergy booster, isn’t a vaccine. That the sooner she get the vaccine the better off she will be.
I don’t know why she didn’t call her allergist immediately and ask them.
Both mRNA vaccines were ready for testing last February. It just took about a year to prove that they worked, and were safe.
If needed a new mRNA vaccine can quickly be adapted cover any new variants.
I agree, a direct payment seems likely.
On the stick side, I expect that anyone who wants to travel Internationally will be required to vaccinate. This means trips to Mexico, possibly also Hawaii, and Alaska.
It could go as far as if you leave the country to get back in you are required to show you have been vaccinated.
Nope they didn’t do anything. Just made noise and took credit. They didn’t do any planning for how to distribute the vaccine!
Literally this post is about how the Biden Administration used the Defense Production Act to speed up production of vaccines. Reading between the lines, if the T*** Administration hadn’t been such a cluster fuck. We could have been ahead of this by an month or more.
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And I will. Your posts about Covid have been consistently doom mongering. Even if you were completely right: people need hope, you know. And for the record, I see no indication that you are right.
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Would love a reference for this if you wouldn’t mind sharing — I haven’t seen any reporting to this effect, and have seen reporting (mainstream sources) that indicates differently.
