28 Comments

The FB debacle must have been upsetting. However, I'm loving your new format, coming straight to my email. Thanks for all you do.

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I fear that, because of the hassles in finding vaccines and actually getting shot(s), people will give up and remain unvaccinated.

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I’m very disheartened and would love some information to lift my spirits. I have a chronic illness that makes me very vulnerable to a negative outcome if I contract COVID, and my area is very anti public health measures. On top of that, my condition is rare and my physician (and other experts in the field) recommend me waiting to get a vaccine until more data is available on conditions similar to mine. I have been housebound since March of last year. I miss my family so much, especially my grandchildren. Is it ever going to be safe for me to at least hug my grandchildren again and have them spend the night at my house? When might that happen? The loneliness is becoming excruciating. Thank you for any information you can provide. And thank you for all you do.

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Doesn’t this all hinge on the vaccines reducing transmission which we don’t know yet? I don’t see why we are even talking heard immunity in this way if the vaccine could only reduce symptoms and death rather than person to person transmission. That is the 5 trillion dollar question at this point.

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What if life never returns to the way that it used to be? What if the pandemic will be worse? What if the pandemic will last forever? What if we all become an endangered species of this as humans? Or is that too irrational to think? I have had these anticipations for many months! I’m scared that life will never be the same again! Is that really true? Or am I just being overly fearful? I’m an anxious person, and sometimes grumpy. Will this virus be an endless pandemic? Will we have billions of deaths?

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These calculations assume no overlap between groups (particularly the cohort of those with natural immunity and the combined cohorts of those with 1 or 2 shots in arms). Is there a thought to estimating overlap between those with natural immunity who have been vaccinated and how that affects gap to herd immunity? Or is it not a useful exercise?

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Is there any reliable data about vaccinated persons being able to infect others?

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Am I wrong in assuming that if everything follows the current path, and assumes no variants get in the way, this model would land us in the middle of July for 70%?

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What are your thoughts with cases going down suddenly at rapid rates? Is that due to vaccinations and natural herd immunity or do you think there’s some political aspects to it?

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I loved how you broke up your posts into bite size info before. It helps

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Dr Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health recently wrote an article saying we will have heard immunity by April (https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731). What are your thoughts on this? IS this realistic?

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What are your thoughts on the duration of immunity from the mRNA vaccines based on what we know about them so far? Three months doesn’t seem like very long which is all the CDC has mentioned with regard to duration of immunity. I’m referring to their recommendation that vaccinated individuals don’t need to quarantine after exposure, but only for 3 months after vaccination.

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Since a large portion of children can’t get vaccinated, what percentage of the population do they account for? In other words, to reach 70%, we would have to remove those unable to get vaccinated from the table...what does that leave us with?

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