Latrinsorm
09-10-2021, 09:52 PM
President Biden yesterday advanced six simple common sense prongs to help us push back the rapidly rising tide of the coronavirus swallowing the unvaccinated and vaccinated at accelerating rates, among which was a vaccine mandate kind of for about 100,000,000 (https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-executive-branch-18fb12993f05be13bf760946a6fb89be) Americans. Great! Any elementary school student can look at the spiking graphs and tell that we could sure use all the help we can get...
..but how much, specifically, can we expect this to help?
We know about 75% of adults have volunteered to do the right thing so far, but we also know there is a very strong age effect: bins range from 85% vaccinated for 65 and older to 55% vaccinated for 18-24. If everyone obeys the extension from the dozen or so vaccine mandates that already exist to the dozen or so plus one, we can therefore expect between 25,000,000 (if no old people retired) and 45,000,000 (if all old people retired) Americans to join the overwhelming majority of the vaccinated, bringing us to about 73% of the total population. This is notably above the lower bound of 70%-85% to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus...
...but we also know there is no "the" coronavirus, we know there are "variants" on the coronavirus, including a "Delta" variant that is significantly more contagious and dangerous. How high might vaccination need to get to keep Delta cases specifically from rising?
.
And so, we turn to the Republic of Singapore, who despite trailing us by about a month in beginning vaccinations (we passed 20% in mid March and they didn't until mid April) blew past us in June and recently hit 80% (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-vaccinates-80-population-against-covid-19-2021-08-29/) of the total population vaccinated. Notably, to achieve that mark in the United States would require our 12+ population to be 100% vaccinated, which includes somehow magically removing the immunocompromised status from millions of Americans. Both of those things are literally impossible, but we have believed in a lot of literally impossible things lately so let's keep it rolling and ask: how are they doing?
306 cases occurred in Singapore three weeks ago.
826 cases occurred in Singapore two weeks ago.
1356 cases occurred in Singapore one week ago.
1379 cases have already occurred in Singapore this week, and they are on track for about 3000.
That would be their highest in over a year, breaking the record set...
...the previous week.
https://imgur.com/tPx1J11.png
That's not the graph we want at all! We want the graph that goes down a lot, not up! Sheesh!
We know vaccines work insofar as they make the vaccinated less vulnerable than the unvaccinated. But we also know, unequivocally, incontrovertibly, without a shadow of a doubt, that vaccine mandates alone will not, can not, see these United States through this crisis - the best case scenario sees us worse off than a place seeing exponential growth... and that's all of us, folks!
209 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in June,
298 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in July,
1003 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in August.
Would someone wake us up, now September comes?
.
Once, there was a frontier.
Once, there was a mission.
Once, we sought out a new civilization.
Once, we boldly went where no one had gone before.
Now... we plaintively insist on indoor dining and packed football stadiums?
This is not the limit of our ambition.
This is not the limit of our imagination.
This is far from the limit of our courage.
In jolly old England they rebuilt every association soccer stadium in the country after a hundred Englishmen died.
We can't figure out how to rebuild our society until a million Americans die?
Really?
Really?
..but how much, specifically, can we expect this to help?
We know about 75% of adults have volunteered to do the right thing so far, but we also know there is a very strong age effect: bins range from 85% vaccinated for 65 and older to 55% vaccinated for 18-24. If everyone obeys the extension from the dozen or so vaccine mandates that already exist to the dozen or so plus one, we can therefore expect between 25,000,000 (if no old people retired) and 45,000,000 (if all old people retired) Americans to join the overwhelming majority of the vaccinated, bringing us to about 73% of the total population. This is notably above the lower bound of 70%-85% to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus...
...but we also know there is no "the" coronavirus, we know there are "variants" on the coronavirus, including a "Delta" variant that is significantly more contagious and dangerous. How high might vaccination need to get to keep Delta cases specifically from rising?
.
And so, we turn to the Republic of Singapore, who despite trailing us by about a month in beginning vaccinations (we passed 20% in mid March and they didn't until mid April) blew past us in June and recently hit 80% (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-vaccinates-80-population-against-covid-19-2021-08-29/) of the total population vaccinated. Notably, to achieve that mark in the United States would require our 12+ population to be 100% vaccinated, which includes somehow magically removing the immunocompromised status from millions of Americans. Both of those things are literally impossible, but we have believed in a lot of literally impossible things lately so let's keep it rolling and ask: how are they doing?
306 cases occurred in Singapore three weeks ago.
826 cases occurred in Singapore two weeks ago.
1356 cases occurred in Singapore one week ago.
1379 cases have already occurred in Singapore this week, and they are on track for about 3000.
That would be their highest in over a year, breaking the record set...
...the previous week.
https://imgur.com/tPx1J11.png
That's not the graph we want at all! We want the graph that goes down a lot, not up! Sheesh!
We know vaccines work insofar as they make the vaccinated less vulnerable than the unvaccinated. But we also know, unequivocally, incontrovertibly, without a shadow of a doubt, that vaccine mandates alone will not, can not, see these United States through this crisis - the best case scenario sees us worse off than a place seeing exponential growth... and that's all of us, folks!
209 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in June,
298 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in July,
1003 vaccinated Americans died of COVID in August.
Would someone wake us up, now September comes?
.
Once, there was a frontier.
Once, there was a mission.
Once, we sought out a new civilization.
Once, we boldly went where no one had gone before.
Now... we plaintively insist on indoor dining and packed football stadiums?
This is not the limit of our ambition.
This is not the limit of our imagination.
This is far from the limit of our courage.
In jolly old England they rebuilt every association soccer stadium in the country after a hundred Englishmen died.
We can't figure out how to rebuild our society until a million Americans die?
Really?
Really?