The mainstream news regarding Covid-19 has been so grim for so long. But the facts have changed – faster, perhaps, than the mainstream stories have changed.
Vaccines are giving “spectacular” results, to use a recent phrase from Dr Anthony Fauci. Hospitalizations are down. The variants are a curved ball, but it “just doubles the idea that we need to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” says CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta.
The new administration is activating what it calls a “whole-of-government response.” Government experts speak freely to the press and the public. Conspiracy theories are no longer retweeted by the President. Cautious optimism is warranted at this point – with an emphasis on caution, of course, but without losing optimism.
Some observers have pointed out a disconnect between the data and the public debate on the pandemic.
“For most of us the best thing to do is to stop scrolling through the ruins on detailed discussions of what the drops in neutralizing antibody titers etc mean on Twitter feeds,” Zeynep Tufekci
written last week. “We have to get through the dark winter – warn you – but the news about the future has been really good for months.”
This news about the future is above all about the effectiveness of vaccines.
David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote on Monday: “The news about vaccines continues to be great – and the public debate about them continues to be more negative than the facts warrant. Here’s the key fact: The five vaccines with public results wiped out Covid-19-related deaths. They have also significantly reduced hospitalizations. “
Sometimes detailed clinical trial data obscures the bottom line that vaccines are widely effective in preventing symptomatic disease – “which means fewer hospitalizations, and therefore fewer deaths,” as I told me. CNN Health executive producer Ben Tinker said Wednesday night. . “Additional preliminary data on the AstraZeneca vaccine – developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford – suggests that it may also be effective in preventing transmission of the virus. This would be even more welcome news in the urgent effort to contain it the wave of new cases. “Each update simply highlights the need to deliver more doses to more people as soon as possible …
WH briefings three times a week
Technical difficulties hampered the first briefing of the WH Covid-19 response team on January 27, but since then video conferences have been working well. Covid-19 chief Jeff Zients Fauci, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky, and other officials held briefings last Friday and the three weekdays so far this week.
Zients said on Wednesday: “I hope that after five briefings we begin to establish a model to provide the American people with the facts they need about the crisis and our response, spurred on by our experts and scientists. “
Lockhart’s point of view
Quoting the new column by Clinton-era Press Secretary Joe Lockhart for CNN.com: “Something unusual is happening in Washington, DC: briefings, and many more. Real briefings in direct where the press can ask questions of the administration and the senior officials answer them. “Continue reading …
Partisanship makes vaccination hesitate
Of course, the scale of the crisis is staggering. As Zients said, “Vaccinating everyone in America is one of the biggest operational challenges we’ve ever faced, and we won’t stop working until this mission is completed.”
At present, the demand for shooting far exceeds the supply. But at some point there will be a gap between supply and demand. A new survey from Monmouth University reveals that 50% of Americans plan to “get vaccinated against Covid as soon as they are authorized”, and that 6% have already done so. (The latter figure is already exceeded as over a million doses are given each day.) Monmouth found that “another 19% say they would rather let other people get it first to see how it works. is happening ”and“ 24% say it’s likely they will never get the vaccine if they can avoid it. “
>> “The reluctance to be vaccinated is motivated more by partisanship than by a single demographic factor”, commented the director of the polling institute, Patrick Murray. “It says a lot about the depth of our partisan divide that it could have a public health impact like this.”
>> Matt Gertz, Senior Member of Media Matters: “Steve Doocy is expected to receive the COVID vaccine live.” He has other suggestions for Fox …
One death per minute?
As all “Rent” fans know, there are 525,600 minutes a year. There may also be as many deaths from Covid-19 in the United States by March. Newsletter reader H. Steven Moffic, MD shared this with me on Wednesday. His latest contribution to The Psychiatric Times is about measuring death per minute and “prolonged grief from Covid-19”.
>> According to CNN’s Ben Tinker, “an ensemble forecast released by the CDC on Wednesday now predicts that there will be between 496,000 and 534,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by February 27”.
>> On Wednesday, the death toll in the United States exceeded 450,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. The United States went from 400,000 to 450,000 deaths in just 15 days. With deaths being a lagging indicator, “the recent drop in hospitalizations gives us hope that the number of deaths should start to decline in the coming weeks,” Walensky said Wednesday.
