Coronavirus Outbreak

[mike]

The only remaining state mandate in Pennsylvania is the mask mandate, which is going away on June 28 or when 70% of the state is vaccinated, whichever comes first.

The vast majority of customers in my store aren't wearing masks anymore. Even during the special senior hour we have for 55+ on Thursday mornings, most of them aren't wearing them. So we're discontinuing offering the special shopping hour after over a year of doing that. We started by offering 7AM-8AM shopping six days a week, then gradually dropping it down to one day per week.

It is truly unbelievable how long this whole thing has gone on.

[Ken]

The only remaining state mandate in Pennsylvania is the mask mandate, which is going away on June 28 or when 70% of the state is vaccinated, whichever comes first.

The vast majority of customers in my store aren't wearing masks anymore. Even during the special senior hour we have for 55+ on Thursday mornings, most of them aren't wearing them. So we're discontinuing offering the special shopping hour after over a year of doing that. We started by offering 7AM-8AM shopping six days a week, then gradually dropping it down to one day per week.

It is truly unbelievable how long this whole thing has gone on.

Yes, but also at the same time pretty unbelievable how fast we have reached widespread vaccination. Vaccines used to take half a decade or more to develop and deploy.

[violet]

.....which is why some people have expressed concerns about long term safety issues.....


There is some interesting talk about teens as well as children now only taking one vaccine instead of two. I think the narrative will change/ebb and flow/ for some time.

[mike]

The only remaining state mandate in Pennsylvania is the mask mandate, which is going away on June 28 or when 70% of the state is vaccinated, whichever comes first.

The vast majority of customers in my store aren't wearing masks anymore. Even during the special senior hour we have for 55+ on Thursday mornings, most of them aren't wearing them. So we're discontinuing offering the special shopping hour after over a year of doing that. We started by offering 7AM-8AM shopping six days a week, then gradually dropping it down to one day per week.

It is truly unbelievable how long this whole thing has gone on.

Yes, but also at the same time pretty unbelievable how fast we have reached widespread vaccination. Vaccines used to take half a decade or more to develop and deploy.

Yes. I assume the things learned from this crisis will have far-reaching effects. I heard a doctor being interviewed early on in the pandemic and he said that virology will never be the same. I would guess that more money is going to flow into medical R&D for instance.

[mike]

I haven't looked at excess deaths in awhile. Interestingly, although we aren't seeing as many excess deaths, the deaths numbers have not dropped below expected rates yet. It's only happened once, a week in April. That's something I have assumed will happen within the next year or several. I think I've seen some folks post excess deaths charts where it was assumed that was happening, but clearly that's been premature as the numbers don't really get accurate until a number of weeks after the fact.

[RZehr]

Two Mennonites passed away this week from Covid that I know of. One older lady, I know her children and grandchildren.
One healthy, strong, husband and father in his 40’s. I had talked to him about Covid three months ago. He was asking how it was for me when I got it.

[Ken]

From the AP Yesterday: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... 54f5d5e187

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 0.1%.

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

The AP analyzed figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data.

Among them: Only about 45 states report breakthrough infections, and some are more aggressive than others in looking for such cases. So the data probably understates such infections, CDC officials said.

Still, the overall trend that emerges from the data echoes what many health care authorities are seeing around the country and what top experts are saying.

Earlier this month, Andy Slavitt, a former adviser to the Biden administration on COVID-19, suggested that 98% to 99% of the Americans dying of the coronavirus are unvaccinated.

And CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday that the vaccine is so effective that “nearly every death, especially among adults, due to COVID-19, is, at this point, entirely preventable.” She called such deaths “particularly tragic.”

Deaths in the U.S. have plummeted from a peak of more than 3,400 day on average in mid-January, one month into the vaccination drive.

About 63% of all vaccine-eligible Americans — those 12 and older — have received at least one dose, and 53% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. While vaccine remains scarce in much of the world, the U.S. supply is so abundant and demand has slumped so dramatically that shots sit unused.

Ross Bagne, a 68-year-old small-business owner in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was eligible for the vaccine in early February but didn’t get it. He died June 4, infected and unvaccinated, after spending more than three weeks in the hospital, his lungs filling with fluid. He was unable to swallow because of a stroke.

“He never went out, so he didn’t think he would catch it,” said his grieving sister, Karen McKnight. She wondered: “Why take the risk of not getting vaccinated?”

The preventable deaths will continue, experts predict, with unvaccinated pockets of the nation experiencing outbreaks in the fall and winter. Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said modeling suggests the nation will hit 1,000 deaths per day again next year.

[mike]

I wonder how many, if any, deaths are occurring in people who previously had COVID. It would be interesting to see how actually having had the virus compares in terms of preventing infection and death with the vaccine. We would need to know the data from these four groups of people who have gotten infected:

People who have had neither the virus nor the vaccine.
People who have had the virus but not the vaccine.
People who have had the vaccine but not the virus.
People who have both had the virus and the vaccine.

[Ken]

I wonder how many, if any, deaths are occurring in people who previously had COVID. It would be interesting to see how actually having had the virus compares in terms of preventing infection and death with the vaccine. We would need to know the data from these four groups of people who have gotten infected:

People who have had neither the virus nor the vaccine.
People who have had the virus but not the vaccine.
People who have had the vaccine but not the virus.
People who have both had the virus and the vaccine.

That is an excellent question and I haven't seen any reporting providing any answers. It would be very informative to see an actual legitimate scientific comparison of the efficacy of vaccines vs the natural immunity conferred from having had the disease.

[mike]

I wonder how many, if any, deaths are occurring in people who previously had COVID. It would be interesting to see how actually having had the virus compares in terms of preventing infection and death with the vaccine. We would need to know the data from these four groups of people who have gotten infected:

People who have had neither the virus nor the vaccine.
People who have had the virus but not the vaccine.
People who have had the vaccine but not the virus.
People who have both had the virus and the vaccine.

That is an excellent question and I haven't seen any reporting providing any answers. It would be very informative to see an actual legitimate scientific comparison of the efficacy of vaccines vs the natural immunity conferred from having had the disease.

I would assume that both having had the virus and the vaccine would bring the likelihood of contracting the virus down to almost nothing. But it would be interesting to see data. My guess is that as the virus passes, so will the interest in collecting data, so we may not ever get the numbers. As the article you posted says, some states are more aggressive in pursuing data.