Fauci Cautions Against Declaring Victory In COVID Fight ‘Prematurely’ As Cases Drop In US

I’ll believe that when I see it inasmuch as the numbers have dropped here precipitously.

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That’s a terrible thing but there are blocks on the left too. Vaccination rates among Latinos is currently picking up somewhat, but the numbers are still too low. Same thing among the African American population too. The reasons in these cases aren’t seamy and awful like the pigheadedness on the right is. But, with the vaccines we have available in abundance, the numbers of those getting them in this country is a disgrace.

The good news is that young people are lining up for them. Since they were undoubtedly drivers of infection before, maybe the drop in numbers has a lot to do with their willingness. And that may be what’s going on in Texas, @tena.

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There is definitely a push to get them vaccinated. The age of the people hospitalized has gone way down - people in their 30s and 40s.

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And they’re responding to that at the moment. But so are way younger kids.

I think they want to go to parties and dance and get laid and they don’t want to hear from their parents about it. And I don’t blame them. I feel very sorry for kids that age in the middle of all this. I mean the ones who do think about it. The yahoos, well they’re yahoos.

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True. But I would differentiate between people who’ve historically been abused and disregarded by their government from those making a political statement. Black people, in particular, have every right to be cautious. I think numbers are showing, however, as they receive information and empirical evidence, many are responding by getting vaccinated. That’s all I can reasonably expect.

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I’m sure that’s so and I don’t blame them either. I’d feel the same if I was that age and I would ignore my parents since I did anyway. hahahahahaha

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I did differentiate, but thank you for expanding on it.

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California’s summer case curve was very similar to Texas’s case. Nearly everywhere that didn’t get hit hard in March and April saw their case numbers increase over the summer, go down a bit or hold steady through September, then everyone went through the roof starting in mid-to-late October. I don’t want to claim that GOP half-measures were good public policy, but they’re probably much less of a factor in the spread than plain old stupid human behavior like gathering together for holidays.

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Not entirely false…This article captures the relative risk changes pretty well. The WAPO article indicated declining infection rates for the unvaxxed but much higher than for the vaxxed while death rates among the unvaxxed are fairly similar to a few months before. It’s quite possible that as COVID restrictions are fully lifted across the country and ‘normalcy’ is normalized by the population (i.e., they actually take off their masks and gather, something which hasn’t actually happened yet in much of the country despite the CDC) then the infection rate among the unvaxxed might increase.

We’re at slightly over 50% of the entire population vaxxed with at least 1 dose. While that’s an impressive feat, that still leaves a lot of people who are still vulnerable. Getting to Biden’s target of 70% of adults vaccinated with 1 dose and vaxxing kids under 12 will be key to preventing a resurgence of some kind. The UK is starting to tackle this as they’re experiencing an increase at the moment. We’ll see if their strategy can contain it reasonably well.

"The rate of Covid-19 cases among the unvaccinated is 69% higher than the standard national rates, according to the Post , though it is declining. Meanwhile, the death rate among the unvaccinated is about the same as it was two months ago, and the hospitalization rate is as high as it was three months ago.

Unvaccinated people “think it’s safe to take off the mask. It’s not,” Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University , said. “It looks like fewer numbers, looks like it’s getting better, but it’s not necessarily better for those who aren’t vaccinated.”

https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-briefing/2021/05/24/unvaccinated-cases-rates

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I can still remember when for a week or so the reporting on the precipitous drop in influenza case this winter, and then the “masks don’t work” crowd came roaring back.

I really don’t know what to believe. When the vaccine became available here in MO Gov. Parsons sent it first to pretty much every county that wasn’t near KS or StL. People in the two major metropolitan areas tried to get appointments in the counties where vaccination events were being held. At first they were told “no”, and then after about week or two they opened them up to eligible by age people from KC and StL. People were driving sometimes 3 hours to and then from a vaccination site.
And all of this is because the people in those counties didn’t want the vaccine. And because the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines needed to be stored really cold, but where they were sent weren’t using up the doses sent, that’s why the Governor opened them up to the more populous counties. He didn’t move the events there, just allowed people to drive 3 hours one way to get their shot.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but at some point we may have to go all Republican on them and say “we gave you every opportunity to protect yourselves and you chose to believe lies”, now we’re moving on, and your chances of getting COVID is on you.

What breaks my heart is that I have a friend who used to live here but moved to IA some years ago when her parents moved. She has MS, is immune compromised, and yet her younger brother and his family don’t believe in wearing masks, taking precautions, and because of him my friend’s chances of getting COVID increases. Her brother goes up to visit to visit the parents, and her parents do the whole quarantine thing after the brother leaves, but she does need their help for some things.
Whenever I hear of one of these assholes shouting about their Liberty! I think of my friend and what about her liberty to live as independently as she can and still go out in public?

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The Des Moines Opera company is pretty amazing. Tiny and excellent. They run a short season of great productions in the summer. It’s not even in Des Moines. It’s about 15 miles outside of town at a college you’ve never heard of. The auditorium is quite small, but the staging always works. They have a knack for picking rising stars, too. Opera fans come from all over the place to be there—and it’s really the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, they are going to have their season and going to hyperfilter the air.

!

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I’ve been hearing about the out reach to these communities. It is taking a more personal touch to gain their trust to get vaccinated. And another factor was the pause in the J&J vaccine, that was the preferred choice for both of these communities. But think after J&J was started again their numbers in these communities is getting better.

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Daily deaths topped out at 3,775 on January 14 (7-day average). It was 454 on May 28. So, plainly and obviously, unvaccinated people are not dying at anywhere near the same rate as January.

The UK is planning on opening up fully on June 21.

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I don’t know about the WaPo story, but according to BBC News there is an uptick in the UK and the Indian variant is indeed the strain that’s on the rise, just as @khyber900 said. According to the BBC’s figures, Indian variant cases have just about doubled, in one week.

@tena

The UK is planning on opening up fully on June 21.

But maybe not.

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This is from an article in the London times about the investigation into the lab leak theory. Nobody knows, but this sounds familiar.

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There is indeed a slight uptick in new cases in the UK, but it’s still in the low-to-mid thousands of new daily cases. It was around 2,000 a day a few weeks ago, and now it’s back up to 3-4,000. Something to keep an eye on, but no reason to think it’s getting out of hand.

Japan is a mess right now, and a very low vaccination rate. I hadn’t realized they were struggling so hard with this still.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/with-hospitals-collapsing-unvaccinated-japanese-rebel-against-games-q35kp6d3t?shareToken=530e4938434b5e0af5ce789a688bef61

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Can you provide some links to your info and figures? That’s not been what most of us have been reading. According to the BBC article I linked to, there was an increase of over 3,500 in the Indian variant alone last week, though they were hopeful it might be “topping”, but the UK seems to be very much on the alert right now.

And the death rate always lags the rise in cases. These increases in the Indian variant are of the moment.

We’ve taken a lot of potential cases out of the system through vaccination. Among the cases being recorded now (which only dropped below 40k per day about 3 weeks ago and only 30k per day about 10 days ago), the unvaccinated have a higher test positivity rate than those who are vaccinated by a fairly substantial number. 40k cases per day was about the average on the day of the 1st Presidential debate, so we’ve only now just gone down to the previous plateau point where we can talk about the end of this pandemic over the next 4 to 8 weeks.

If you take out the portion of those folks who are getting a COVID test who are vaccinated, the positivity rate is high. That’s basically what the WAPO article is saying. It’s also saying that among that population the death rate isn’t that different from a few months ago. Those are not controversial statements imho. The US is much more vaccine dependent to drive COVID down because we don’t have the same level of social distancing rigor that countries like Israel and the UK imposed. We have to keep vaxxing and we’re starting to run out of persuadables per the latest polls. That’s what Fauci is referencing when he says it’s premature to declare victory.

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