Coronavirus week 50: When do we get herd immunity?

Shorter answer? Not for a while.

• Counting Puerto Rico as well as DC, but not even smaller outlying territories, Tex-ass is up to 42nd out of 52 jurisdictions in percentage of fully vaccinated residents. With that, we MAY be up to "herd immunity" (at 75 percent) by the time school starts in the fall. (New York State, at about the national average, is estimated to hit 75 percent in five months.)

 

• And, none of this includes whether we're whack-a-mole, and whether we recognize vaccines are just one leg of a four-legged stool, per this in-depth piece from Nautilus, by former long-time NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell. We remain behind on testing, Abbott has given his guv's imprimatur to ditch masks and by implication social distancing, and medical treatment for the infected still sucks if you're not rich. Meanwhile, we still don't know how much protection the vaccines offer in the long term for either getting sick or for spreading it.

This is all why I've said that a COVID that becomes endemic at 3x the death rate per year for "just the flu" is a public health nightmare.

• Another long read, from David Wallace-Wells, notes the complexity of COVID case and death rates around the globe. It also notes that part of why both the US, and the EU in general (including the UK, since Brexit only became official this year) failed is because of some anti-Chinese racism over things like "exotic" wet markets. (That said, the Chinese gummint encouraged the belief that COVID came from wet markets. WW says that, if the EU and US had noted the Wuhan lockdown and that it had NOT been done before, just maybe, the EU at least would have paid attention. That said, other EU nations didn't learn a lesson from Italy, either, nor other US states from Washington State or New York.

This pull quote needs to be noted:

“Clearly, the West was betting on a magic bullet,” (Adam) Tooze says. “Developing the vaccine has to be understood holistically as part of our reaction, if there’s any kind of rationale behind that reaction at all.

So, not just the US seeking magic bullets.

 

WW then takes a hard look at Fauci, and by extension, Messonnier and others of America's public health establishment.

WW closes by talking about how individual-patient focused health can never be truly public health, riffing on Teynep Tufecki.

One final thing is several American thinkers, whether trained in public health or not, noting America hadn't felt "discomfort" in a while.

There may be something like "EU exceptionalism" or "Western exceptionalism," but what you really hear about is "American exceptionalism."

• What this really means, between WW's angle and Bazell's four-legged stool, is that herd immunity is a somewhat limited concept.

• Speaking of, the Skeptical Raptor has an update on the various vaccines and how they might be tweaked for new variants on COVID-19.

• The Raptor also turned to guest contributor Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, talks about a lawsuit in New Mexico over the state requiring the vaccine for state employees. He's noted before that the EEOC has already issued initial guidance that employers can require vaccines. The plaintiff claims that you can't require a vaccine that's only been released under an EUA. At the same time, the plaintiff ALSO argues that an EUA, being federal, overrides a state-level vaccine mandate. No wonder he says the suit isn't well formed. (There's yet more reasons beyond that.)

• SocraticGadfly has a group of COVID-related posts that he offered to the Texas Progressives' weekly roundup. First "Galveston Karen" went on to make herself "Texas City Karen" last week. Second, his weekly coronavirus news roundup from the previous week talked about the one-year anniversary of COVID awareness first really spiking in the US. Related to that, he addressed the NBA as capitalist COVID hypocrites. Finally, on hypocritical PR, he looked at masklessness at a Kroger and corporate response.

• Remember the idea of shining UV light directly into your lungs? Healight, the company that pushed the idea and has a light to do just that, now, nearly a year later, finally has a study out. Orac finds it to be "underwhelming." Yeah, with only five patients and no control group? That's putting it sarcastically-mildly.

• Retraction Watch says retracted papers on COVID issues are now at 89. Most are conspiracy-theory driven, whether by wingnuts or certain subtypes of leftists. When you see "5G" and "coronavirus" in the same header, or "traditional Chinese medicine" or "sound vibrations" (no, really) as a cure, you know where you are.

• Texas Roadhouse's CEO committed suicide after being unable to shake COVID symptoms.

• Houstonia talks to restauranteurs, chefs, and bartenders about their year in COVID.