Diplomatico

Let's hope so.

This all seems to depend upon where one lives. My 80 year old parents still can't get a vaccine in Texas. My mother-in-law is in CA and has received her first shot.

The announcement today that the FDA will meet on 26 Feb (3 weeks from now) to discuss the J&J vaccine approval is maddening. Seriously? Is there something that's more important right now?

chococat

An application to the FDA for emergency authorization can be many hundreds of pages long (I’ve seen documents for full approval that are thousands of pages). It will include everything from cell and animal test results to clinical trial design details to manufacturing and labeling specifics. Every page gets read and critically reviewed by scientific subject experts. You really want a pair of commercially unbiased eyes to make sure that everything is as the manufacturer claims it to be. It takes time.

alex67500

Slightly off the COVID topic, but a study on the impact of measures taken in France in relation to seasonal flu, norovirus and bronchiolitis. Sorry the article is in French, but the graphs speak for themselves.

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https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs...6_4355770.html

Stgermainparis

Agreed. However for households with some vaccinated and others not, it’s still frustrating.

Boggie Dog

I live in Texas. My county of ~150,000 only opened its only vaccination center this month. The state sent 500 doses for the first week of operation. I'm no expert on these matters but it seems to me that the county is several months behind the planning and implementation of vaccine administration

TTT

Interesting regarding your parents. My 69 year old father-in-law, also in Texas, had his first shot today.

My parents, same age, are many many weeks away in their county in Montana.

The discrepancy is frustrating.

vanillabean

I was reminded of

Now That Grandma Has Been Vaccinated, May I Visit Her?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/h...s-vaccine.html

which suggests that "ideally, the visitor would also be vaccinated as well.” The reasoning is not specified though.

JNelson113

I live in Texas and many people who are 70+ or have serious health issues have gotten the first shot, at least among the people I speak with. May be different in different areas.

My parents are 75+ and live in Nebraska. They've been told that it may not be until March or April. However, my friend's parents still live in the small town in Nebraska where I grew up, and they've received both doses. I can't figure it out.

rhwbullhead

I was only able to secure a first shot appointment for my mother (who is 85) after trying multiple websites for ten days: Walgreens, Jewel, DuPage county sign up, cook county sign up (not even sure if they would have taken her though her primary care physician is in cook county next town over), and Meijer. I literally tried 4-6 times a day at various times including 3-4am. I finally kicked into an appointment at Jewel when I checked at 11pm. The location I got must have just loaded appointments and all were gone within ten minutes.

I sent to several friends of hers that are 65+ and no one else was awake so they weren't able to sign up. They haven't been able to get any appointments but they don't have someone checking as often as I was for my mother.

I hope they can increase vaccination.

Also, while I'll feel better with her vaccinated, I don't see myself getting vaccinated until summer. County says phase 1b will be completed in three months but I'm guessing on the "over" plus who knows when I'll get in during next phase.

I won't feel comfortable taking more risks (I basically only go out to run essential errands) until I'm vaccinated.

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Loren Pechtel

Here in Nevada it's not hard to find an appointment in the 70+ category--and we have a pretty low vaccination rate. What's up with the places that are far behind us?!

yerffej201

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/w...th-africa.html
AstraZeneca’s Vaccine Does Not Work Well Against Virus Variant in South Africa
The bad news, coming nearly a week after a million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine arrived in South Africa, was a big setback for the country.

rip

fransknorge

Now instead of looking at a media summary with a clickbait headline, let's look at the actual data (or the few there are): this was a RCT designed to show efficacy against symptomatic disease on young people (18-65 yo) without HIV or other severe comorbidites. It was not designed to assess against severe disease, as the ~1700 volunteers were healthy: no hypertension, no diabetes, no respiratory issues. 42 cases of COVID occured, mostly mild and some moderates. So no significant reduction for moderate/mild illness but with a very large confidence interval (-50 to 59.8), due to the small sample size.



Conclusion: this study suffers from a small sample size, thus is inconclusive.

doctoravios

I don't have access to that article but I think you would expect there to be lower risk for an elderly person if the younger people they have contact with have been vaccinated, but the issue is we cannot yet properly quantify the risk reduction. It may be minimal, or it may be substantial. My gut feeling is that it is likely to be closer to the minimal end of effect.

That said, I think older people shouldn't necessarily wait for their younger relatives to get the vaccine as long as they have had it themselves.* In some states/countries, it could be several months/over a year before everyone has access to a vaccine and I think people need to make their own decision on risk being mindful that isolation, in itself, is an established risk factor for poor ill health/mortality in the elderly.

*The caveat is, whether vaccinated or not vaccinated, everyone ought to continue to take precautions with respect to other non-pharmaceutical interventions in other aspects of their life (e.g. masks/distancing on public transport, in workplaces, supermarkets etc) until all vulnerable/elderly people have been offered the vaccination. At that point, given that we know the vaccines are pretty effective at preventing serious illness, we ought to start planning to reduce some of the physical distancing that is in place, although we will likely keep masks etc in public areas for some time.

littlefish

Thanks fransknorge.
For starters the %age is wrong. 20 / 714 is 2.80 per cent.
I'd read yesterday the study group was just over 2,000. So presumably something in the detail to explain why this dropped to 1,467.

As always, likely this contains useful data so a valuable exercise. Unfortunately, not for the first time, the headline conclusions drawn feel to me to have drifted from the underlying data.

Is the Study saying that 0 South Africans, from 1,462 followed, developed severe Covid although 39 tested positive for the variant?

NewbieRunner

According to Matt Hancock, Health Secretary for England, Covid vaccine uptake among UK’s older age groups is very high. So far:

• 91% of over 80s have had the vaccine, and 93% of care home residents
• 95% of people aged 75-79 have had it
• and around 75% of people aged 70-74 have received a first dose

the last group is still being contacted/vaccinated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55980053