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It's becoming clearer that delaying the second dose is the right strategy but it was the right strategy back in December when I first started advocating for First Doses First. Waiting for more data isn't "science," it's sometimes an excuse for an unscientific status-quo bias.
Approximately 16 million second doses have been administered in the US. If those doses had been first doses an additional 16 million people would have been protected from dying. Corey White estimates that every 4000 flu vaccinations saves a life which implies 4000 lives would have been saved by going to FDF. COVID, of course, is much deadlier than the flu ten times as deadly or more going by national death figures (so including transmission and case fatality rate) so 40,000 deaths is back of the envelope. Let's do some more back-of-the-envelope calculations. Since Dec. 14, there have been approximately 10 million confirmed cases in the United States and 200,000 deaths. There are 200 million adults in the US so 1/1000 adults has died from COVID, just since Dec. 14. If we use 1/1000 as the risks of a random adult dying from COVID, then an additional 16 million vaccinations would have saved 16,000 lives. But that too is likely to be an underestimate since the people being vaccinated are not a random sample of adults but rather adults with a much higher risk of dying from COVID. Two to four times that number would not be unreasonable so an additional 16 million vaccinations might have avoided 32,000-64,000 deaths. Moreover, an additional 16 million first doses would have reduced transmission. None of these calculations is very good but they give a ballpark.
Latest polls I have read say 35-40 percent of Americans don't want one. My wife, boy, and myself don't want one. My daughter has already gotten hers. I believe what you say is true.PartyBear said:
I saw a report the other day that indicated that by April there will actually be more supply than demand for the vaccine. Sounds like by then anyone who wants one can go get one, if true.
PartyBear said:
I saw a report the other day that indicated that by April there will actually be more supply than demand for the vaccine. Sounds like by then anyone who wants one can go get one, if true.
fadskier said:
I'm on the list in my county...700 ahead of me
Same thing happened for me. Storms last week wiped out the appointments at the CVS across from Baylor. I stopped in after dropping of some of my wife's homemade soup for a Baylor student who was quarantined because he had COVID, ironically. Just looking for milk. Store manager said he had 130 doses he had to get into people's arms. Got mine, hit my phone and several acquaintances got theirs.Canada2017 said:fadskier said:
I'm on the list in my county...700 ahead of me
Got my first shot today .
Pure luck
A friend called to say how the local Safeway got a few cases of vaccine .
Signed up online and got a spot .
