Quick update...
Several COVID19 developments popped up in the past 24 hours. Here’s my attempt to keep you up to speed…
-Data are stabilizing and we are starting to see the impact of the holidays. For the second day in a row the United States had more than 4,000 deaths per DAY. This is about what we, epidemiologists, expected because 22 days ago there were 239,795 daily cases. Today, 131,889 people are hospitalized and 7,900 people are on ventilators. We are hitting new records across every metric.
-There is NO scientific evidence of a new US variant (this is different than the UK or SA variant). This misinformation stemmed from a document circulated yesterday that speculated the increase in winter cases (compare to summer) must be due to a new variant. In Nov and Dec, 5,700 samples were collected and analyzed by the CDC and there is no evidence of this. However, the more this thing spreads, the more opportunity this virus has to mutate. Can we agree to start wearing masks and stop seeing friends?
-The Biden administration announced that they will not withhold the second dose. This is still a highly debated topic in public health (maybe the most debated since the pandemic began). My scientific opinion: Supply isn’t our issue right now; capacity and logistics are. As of this morning 22.1 million vaccines have been sent off; only 6.68 million Americans received their first dose. Yes, some of this discrepancy may be due to reporting lags, but this doesn’t explain it all. Our federal priorities should be setting up vaccine surveillance, setting up mass vaccination sites, and clear, consistent communication. Way too many people are in the dark. Now, if we get off the ground from this rocky start, then we can talk about the second dose.
-Every Friday the CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is updated. The more people that get vaccinated, the closer we get to the “true” rate of adverse events. 6.68 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed and 3,907 adverse events have been reported to VAERS. The most common symptom is headache, nausea, and pain. 30 people/physicians reported anaphylactic reactions. On Jan 6, CDC published a report describing 21 of these cases in 1.89 million doses. Of which, 71% occurred within 15 minutes of vaccination. There are limitations to VAERS data (which I’ve posted about before).
Okay, I think that’s it for now.
Love, YLE
Data Sources:
Graph 1: Covid Tracking Project
Graph 2: Made by yours truly with VAERS data
Vaccine tracker: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
CDC report: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7002e1.htm