I am enjoying a couple of weeks away from paid writing gigs. My main focus is on family issues. I’ve been filling in the gaps of time with the book selling side hustle. We also took a long weekend in Philadelphia with the kids. I’m in between big ideas, so no big blog posts today. Just some links and quick observations.
Two of my son’s college classes this semester consist of professors reading powerpoint slides on YouTube. So I called the chancellor’s office to complain. Not sure if it will make a difference, but it was satisfying. After that, I had some long conversations with other higher ed folks. One person told me that “Remote is here to stay! This is great. We never have to go to campus again!” Not great. Not awesome. Some faculty plan to never enter a lecture hall again.
Dark Academic fashion.
Two tweets got a lot of attention last week:
- If we close public schools for over a year, don’t offer a clear plan for opening even after teacher vaccinations, belittle parents who can’t manage, then we shouldn’t be surprised that folks are ready to talk about charter schools and vouchers.
- “We should just be pro-excellent school, and [stop] saying that this entire category of school is somehow problematic,” Yang also lays blame on teachers union for sluggish pace of school reopenings
There’s been lots of gossip on Harry and Meghan lately. More signs and gossip about Meghan Markle running for political office; maybe she’ll try to replace Feinstein. I guess Harry got a gig at a Silicon Valley start up, where he’ll be monetizing mental illness. One of gossip blogs made a snarky comment about the only reason that he got a job there was because there’s way too much money out there right now. I think that’s true. Investors have been sitting on their cash for a year and are itching to spend it. This is going to be a great time to graduate with a computer science major. Or any major. The economy is going to boom in September.
Did you gain weight or lose weight this year? I gave up wine and am running again. I lost a couple, but I feel like I should have lost more.
Picture: “Lillies” in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. As the boys slept in, Steve and I roamed around the city, so I could play with my camera. We did 18,000 steps that day.
Apt. 11d 
University students will vote with their feet … or keypads. In other words, if faculty are given permission to choose, and they opt for teaching online when students want in-person courses, then their courses won’t fill, and their sections will be cut, at which point they will have to come onto campus to teach something else in order to make their workload credits. If students want online classes, then the faculty who have opted to teach in-person will have to offer remote or hybrid instruction for future semesters. If whole departments get to choose, and they opt for online when students want in-person, then they will see a decline in majors and thus won’t get lines renewed. Ultimately student enrollment choices will drive mode of delivery once states are no longer mandating social-distancing rules for classrooms.
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The flaw in this market theory is required courses. I did go to undergraduate in a school in which three courses were required for all freshman who all took them. They were large lectures. I do not know if those courses will be offered in person at my undergraduate university, but the only way to walk would be to choose another university and I don’t know that the status of the course will be made available.
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As chief academic officers, provosts have the authority to mandate in-person for required courses. Given the research on high-impact practices, if the university sees, through enrollment management data and/or surveys, that students want first-year experience courses and required courses to be taught in-person, they will not leave the choice up to the faculty members. They will instead allow faculty to decide about upper-level electives to placate faculty senates and unions. If students prefer remote, that is what the uni will mandate.
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Christiana said, “As chief academic officers, provosts have the authority to mandate in-person for required courses. Given the research on high-impact practices, if the university sees, through enrollment management data and/or surveys, that students want first-year experience courses and required courses to be taught in-person, they will not leave the choice up to the faculty members.”
A number of colleges that have been mixed remote/in-person for 2020-2021 have been prioritizing freshmen for in-person. That seems a good way to go.
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It’s all going to be very complicated. I practically cried the first time I was back in the classroom this semester, it made me so happy. A few students really wanted to be there. I know other faculty who feel the same way. But others (both students and faculty) are either still nervous, or are more comfortable elsewhere. At a public university like mine, a lot of students work, and the flexibility of Zoom or asynchronous classes helps them have a viable work schedule. We were already at 10-15% online pre-pandemic and were constantly debating how much farther to go.
One faculty member got COVID a year ago and is still suffering some effects. Still, she thought she was ready to come back F2F in the fall, but then we had to set our schedules a month ago and at that point we were still going to be at about 30% capacity, which would mean underenrolling her classes by quite a bit, so she went back online. (This was with 6ft distancing.) Right now we’re up at about 50-60%, with 3 ft distancing. But even though it’s technically possible to change now, students hate it when they sign up for an online class and then it switches to F2F, or vice versa.
Everything cascades into everything else. If a student has 3 classes that are online, they may pick the next 1-2 online even if they prefer F2F, because then they can live at home. (They may not particularly want to live at home, but the cost is a big lure. And then when they live at home, sometimes it’s harder to be focused on school.)
My guess is the chancellor’s office didn’t care about your call, unless a) you told them you were a journalist or b) you made a realistic threat to withdraw your student. They have your money. Pre-pandemic, those professors would have stood in front of the class and read powerpoints. Boring classes don’t constitute professional misconduct. If Jonah wants more contact, he should go to Zoom office hours, ask the professor questions via email or the course management system – and if the professor doesn’t hold office hours or doesn’t respond, Jonah (not you) should complain to the department chair. A student who has tried to get everything out of a class that he can and been frustrated is much more important than a cranky parent (absent the threat to withdraw).
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Someone must have googled me, because within 12 hours, I got groveling phone calls from a provost and a department chair.
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I also set a landline on Facebook parent page. Which was fun.
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Laura wrote, “Someone must have googled me, because within 12 hours, I got groveling phone calls from a provost and a department chair.”
Hee! I don’t think Jonah would have gotten that kind of service!
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Wow, not what I would have predicted. But, now, is there a story to be told?
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Fascinating! I’ll be interested to see how it filters down to the classes. I wonder what would have happened if you were an ordinary parent and not a journalist – maybe the same thing.
My advice to parents who want to helicopter is to helicopter during registration, or during the first two weeks of the semester, before the full-refund drop deadline; or monitor the work of your student week to week. After the end of last semester we got a tale of woe from a parent about how their student signed up for an asynchronous online class (not one that changed format over the semester) and failed it, because it turned out that format didn’t work for them, and could the provost please fix that? I checked with the faculty member and a) the student was failing because he hadn’t turned in work, not because he got low grades; and b) she had offered to all students that they could take a no-penalty incomplete and finish the work after the end of the semester, and gotten no response from this student; and c) had repeatedly offered to meet individually with students and this student hadn’t (and I know she does this all the time – she has tons of contact with her online students). Also, our late withdraw deadline last semester was extended from halfway through the semester to Thanksgiving to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
But maybe if parents (especially ones who are journalists!) make enough noise, they will allow students to retake a bad class (or a class the student didn’t do well in) for free.
Since I failed at my first guess, I’ll make a second one: the grovelling phone calls will be followed up by a faculty announcement at the start of class encouraging students to do what I said, talk to the professor during office hours or via email or the the course management system if they are having difficulty understanding the material, but there won’t be a change in format. Or: the professor will add an optional live session where they take questions, and 3 students out of 50 will show up. I look forward to seeing in which way I’m wrong!
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Texas is opening up COVID vaccine eligibility to 16+. My husband just put himself and our 18-year-old on the county health department’s online COVID vaccine waitlist. We will see how long that takes..I got through the waitlist very fast for my first shot.
We haven’t yet had a chance to put the 16-year-old on a list. 16-17 means you need to do Pfizer, but the local hospital that handles the Pfizer vaccine does not do an electronic waitlist. Instead, they have a Tuesday sign-up for their vaccine day later in the week, and you have to keep trying until you get an appointment. Husband and I don’t approve of this. The massive county health waitlist is a lot more efficient and fair.
Here’s a really interesting chart:
https://mobile.twitter.com/CohoKelly/status/1374780207916273669
17.9% of people in the US 18+ are fully vaccinated, 33% of 18+ have had at least one shot, 43.8% of people 65+ are fully vaccinated, and 70.3% of people 65+ have had at least one shot.
Our college freshman will be signing up for Calculus 3 this summer. We haven’t yet figured out if it’s going to be synchronous online or asynchronous online, those being the choices. I think online will be fine for a math class, especially with parents around who realize that that she should be doing math every day for a month and a math PhD dad within yelling distance…The freshman has had all in-person courses during the fall and spring, aside from mandatory freshman assembly, which is online.
We notice that there’s a pretty linear relationship between the length of professors’ commute and their eagerness to be remote.
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Wow, this is irritating–my husband tells me that the local hospital that is doing Pfizer had a 3-hour block of unused appointments today.
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I read “the Naked Mind” while I was doing ‘dry January,’ and after reading it ended up completely giving up alcohol in 2021 (so far, at least) so I lost weight.
But now Wisconsin is opening up vaccines to everyone with a BMI over 25 so not sure of the benefit of being fit, at this moment in time! (And for the record, I think 70% of WI has a BMI over 25, we are not a svelte state) At least when it is my turn, there will be less competition???
My kid’s small MN college is almost completely back to in-person classes. So far, so good. (fingers crossed it continues – she is so happy to have actual labs and connections with her professors!) Our high school, however, is still all virtual. Hoping to go back in late April (for 2 mornings a week…) Sigh.
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I’m actually quite fret up about what remote education will look like in the fall. Even in high school, some educators have gotten intrigued by the model and the marketing benefits it offers. One private HS in our area has already promised remote education availability for the 2021-2022 school year for families when they signed their enrollment contracts in March. The school is already modeled on a limited view of HS — core academics and “learning to learn” but no arts or sports. Now they are promising remote (which might attract students who would find getting to the physical campus difficult) all during the next academic year.
Other private schools that have offered remote are now grappling with the issue of students who drop in and out of remote (i.e. remote when they are not feeling up to coming to school, or traveling, or want to take a family vacation). In practice, it’s the rich kids who decide to take the week off to go to Hawaii around thanksgiving and it was already disruptive to the schedule. Now, if remote is always an option, it’s even easier (though still disruptive).
And there is the ever present dream of administrators to scale up in ways that makes them think they can expand revenues and have a broader reach.
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I also think that large urban high schools might well benefit from offering a remote model. And, I think “virtual academies” or a virtual school is the right model, not housing the option within neighborhood schools or asking people to teach hybrid classes. But, that model depends on how many students would opt to not come to school in person.
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And, in colleges, I do think there’s a significant amount of chatter about the right model for large lectures. More and more, lectures are being recorded, and when they are, students are less and less likely to show up. I’m worried about what it means in the longer run when students find it easier not to show up in communities.
Ad, that exposes the divisions AF mentions — what happens when some schools switch to a significantly online model? who gets left behind? and, what does the job look like? I would predict further shrinking of the academic workforce, including colleges buying course content and not paying professors. The professors don’t have to be dead, but they don’t have to be teaching the course anymore. And facilitators/tutors/tas can be drawn from a broad pool, including from far away.
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Yes to bj’s comment about the right model for large lectures, and this is not new. For a while there was talk about how great the “flipped classroom” was, on the assumption that students would watch hourlong lectures before class and then do active homework in class. But apparently they will only watch lectures of up to 15-20 minutes, but not longer.
Part of this relates to expectation about workload. I expect students to do two hours of reading and writing before class. If they write something for every class, then I can pull in their responses to the readings as I lecture – and this works both in person and online. (I check the discussion board the hour before class, pull up their quotes and questions and put them on powerpoints, and then during Zoom class, say, “Jill, you talked about Jerome’s quote on virginity; can you say more about what you were thinking?”) This is only feasible with classes of a certain size – best for under 20, workable for up to 40 – and type (I don’t know how math/science people handle this). But it also requires that the student do some reading and thinking before class. Sometimes I can do polling to prompt discussion (e.g.: talk for a few minutes about Acts, and then say, “how appealing does it seem to live in a communitarian religious community?”) – they can answer without knowing too much, and sometimes there’s good discussion.
The problem is even harder for asynchronous online, because not only do students have to do work in advance, they have to write out their answers and engage each other in the discussion threads, or at least write something clear enough that I can engage it in my responses. Asynchronous online works best for the A student – just like all of those MOOCs that worked great for mature adults who already had bachelor’s degrees and were motivated to learn something new.
I’m sure this is more you want to know but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and constantly this year!
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Interesting (leaked) announcement that Britain will be ready to vaccinate children starting in August (school year starts September there – think that’s the same as you guys).[It’s all children 6+ – not just teens as you would think from the headline]
Contingent on the successful results from the Oxford trial – due June (I think) – but planning beginning now.
But considerable ethical debate. Is it OK to vaccinate children for a disease which has very mild effects on the vast majority of them (like well over 99%) – just because they might spread it to adults (who have a greater risk of harm).
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/children-vaccine-coronavirus-teenagers-under-18s-august-b925900.html
Original Telegraph article here – but behind a paywall.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/23/exclusive-children-line-covid-vaccines-august/
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Ann said, “Interesting (leaked) announcement that Britain will be ready to vaccinate children starting in August (school year starts September there – think that’s the same as you guys).[It’s all children 6+ – not just teens as you would think from the headline]”
Wow, that’s a game-changer!
“But considerable ethical debate. Is it OK to vaccinate children for a disease which has very mild effects on the vast majority of them (like well over 99%) – just because they might spread it to adults (who have a greater risk of harm).”
There’s also the problem that Astrazeneca has been screwing up their PR.
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As Laura tweeted, Rutgers is planning to require in-person students to be vaccinated before they come back to campus, with some exceptions for medical or religious reasons. Faculty and staff are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated. NJ Gov. Murphy says there should be enough vaccine for “almost everybody” by May.
“Rutgers plans to open a vaccine center once more doses become available. Dory Devlin, a university spokeswoman, said the college was still developing plans for how vaccinated and non-vaccinated students will interact.”
It gets a bit weird here:
“Even with the new requirement, students on the Rutgers campuses will be required to practice social distancing and use face coverings, the university said. All faculty, employees and students on campus will be required to participate in the university’s testing program. And the university expects to continue offering some hybrid courses to prevent crowding in classrooms next school year, Ms. Devlin said.”
Is there ever going to be a finish line? Is Rutgers going to explain at what point masks, social distancing, testing and hybrid courses will no longer be deemed necessary?
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I don’t think there’s a clear answer to that question unless we basically eliminate the virus (which means, it is not really circulating and is not causing deaths). If the vaccines don’t result in eliminating the virus or the disease, we’ll be talking about how many deaths we are willing to tolerate. Flu usually averages 30-60K/year (an estimate). This year, with the stay at home orders/closures/mask wearing/school closures flu seems to be 1/2 that. About 550,000 people have died of COVID in the US. We’re still averaging 1000/day, with 27%/14% vaccinated (and 71%/45% 65+, who are 80% of the deaths). Hopefully the deaths will decrease with more vaccination, but how many deaths are we willing to tolerate? If the vaccines are insufficiently effective, we won’t be able to be closed to the level that we need to eliminate deaths (or potentially even bring them to flu levels of 60K). So, is 365K (the current rate stretched out good enough)? 200K? 100K? As we continue past the crisis mode, we’ll be making those decisions — is masking in class worth saving x deaths? (I’m presuming we get better data, too, so that we can balance the mitigation with the costs).
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bj said, “how many deaths are we willing to tolerate?”
Probably something in the neighborhood of flu–30,000 to 60,000 deaths a year? That’s an average of 165 deaths a day, so it’s going to take a while to get there from the current level (about 1,000 deaths a day).
I’m really curious how Rutgers is planning on getting 80,000 vaccinated students to comply with social distancing and masking rules when students are in the privacy of their dorm rooms or off-campus housing, particularly if there’s little COVID circulating, minimal hospitalizations and few deaths. I get that Rutgers (and other colleges) can enforce almost perfect compliance in public areas–but that’s not where people are going to get sick.
“As we continue past the crisis mode, we’ll be making those decisions — is masking in class worth saving x deaths?”
There’s the added complication that a lot of the fatalities going forward are going to be among people who refused vaccination.
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I think it’s quite interesting that Rutgers, a public university, has stepped into this space of “requiring” the vaccine and loo forward to the discussions on whether they’ll be able to enforce it, and while the vaccine is still approved under only emergency authorization.
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bj said, “I think it’s quite interesting that Rutgers, a public university, has stepped into this space of “requiring” the vaccine and loo forward to the discussions on whether they’ll be able to enforce it, and while the vaccine is still approved under only emergency authorization.”
Yeah, that may be a problem.
We were talking about this stuff over dinner, and I heard the following from my husband:
–He’d talked to a STEM sophomore who has been having a really dismal time with hours of Zoom lectures, accompanied by online “labs.” The online labs are apparently not great. Our freshman has had all of her classes masked and in person this year and it’s been an academically pretty normal year for her, but she’s not a lab science kid, and freshmen have been prioritized for in-person.
–It looks like the summer classes at Hometown U. are going to be online this year. Our freshman is going to be taking Calculus 3 this summer, and she has the exciting choice of either synchronous remote or asynchronous remote.
–Husband says that Hometown U. is planning to have Fall 2021 be perfectly normal. I can’t find any information on that online, but I see that Hometown U. is already exempting fully vaccinated students and staff from the weekly COVID testing requirement, at least for the 15-90 days after vaccination.
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Bj said: “As we continue past the crisis mode, we’ll be making those decisions — is masking in class worth saving x deaths?”
Also, if you are not requiring people to be vaccinated; how can you require them to be masked? Surely both are just as much an infringement on the rights of the individual.
If A chooses not to be vaccinated, why should s/he be entitled to demand that B be masked, in order to protect him/her?
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Amy said: “I’m really curious how Rutgers is planning on getting 80,000 vaccinated students to comply with social distancing and masking rules when students are in the privacy of their dorm rooms or off-campus housing”
And also when teens/young adults are one of the lowest risk groups for getting Covid; and if they do get it, are highly likely to be asymptomatic – with very little chance of any long term effects (absent, of course any serious co-morbidities).
We’ve seen here in NZ – that when there is no community transmission of Covid (or no ‘apparent’ transmission – i.e. no one you know is getting sick, let alone dying) – that people bounce back really rapidly to normal ‘in person’ interactions.
Yes, there are exceptions – but the numbers wearing masks in public places have trailed right off again (just been out shopping today – and I think I saw one mask). The numbers using the Covid app (scan a QR code to show where you’ve been and when) have dropped through the floor again.
And this is NZ where we are (by and large) a fairly conformist, law-and-regulation abiding, population.
I’d also like to know if having ‘had’ Covid gives you sufficient protection against the new variants (making them a ‘dose of the flu’ nasty would be sufficient – anything else is a bonus). Of course I’d like to know if the current vaccine does as well, but we probably don’t have sufficient data on that. We *should* have it for the Covid/New variant scenario.
In terms of ‘requiring’ the vaccine, we’re grappling with this in NZ. It seems unlikely that anyone will be required to take it. Though there will be very heavy pressure on front-facing immigration and health staff – and those that don’t are likely to be re-deployed.
Interesting conversation with a friend who’s a primary teacher. She tells me that, from staffroom discussions. around half of the teachers at her school plan to *not* take the vaccine. Both she and I are appalled at this…..
For travel, though. Unless you come from a Covid-free country (some Pacific Islands) you are highly unlikely to be able to travel to NZ without being vaccinated. Some discussion about medical exemptions, but religious ones are unlikely to be approved….
My understanding is that this is going to be required by the airlines for all international flights – and will be about protecting them from being sued if someone catches Covid on their flight, and by insurance companies who will only cover Covid in travel insurance if the person is vaccinated.
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Speaking of COVID passports, a pediatrician I follow on twitter makes the point that the COVID cards that they hand out to people upon vaccination are very low security.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JoeSilverman7/status/1375918428716945415
“Folks, even if someone wanted to make immunization mandatory for some sort of activity that barn door is long since open. Tens of millions of people have printed index cards filled in with ball point ink as their only proof of immunization. It’s over.”
“The idea that a card you can download and fill out yourself would be used as a “passport” doesn’t make any actual sense.”
This is going to be a bummer and a hassle for people who want to do international travel.
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From the discussions I’ve seen, no physical document is going to be worth anything. It’s going to be digital, and have to be authorised by a medical professional – although you’ll carry it on your phone or other digital device. I’m assuming that this will be linked to your Govt ID number – to match the correct person with the passport. Though it won’t be automatic (you’ll have to ask your medical person to do it if/when you want a vaccine passport).
So the physical card you have – will simply remind you of who you need to talk to do get your passport.
It’s sort of passive-aggressive. No one *says* you have to have it, but you won’t be able to fly internationally (for at least the next few years) without it.
Some countries won’t let you in at all without ‘evidence of vaccination’. Others will put you in quarantine for 2 weeks. And some places (where Covid is rife) won’t care – your infection status won’t have any impact on their health system (or lack thereof) – but you’re unlikely to want to go there as a tourist.
However, some countries are now talking about using digital vaccine passports *internally* as well (Britain has floated the idea that you’d need one to go to mass events (sports stadiums, concerts, etc.) – and even bars (though that is fairly controversial – especially as the ‘oldies’ will get vaccinated well before the younger mass-event-going crowd).
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/digital-health-passport-will-i-need-proof-of-vaccine-to-travel-abroad.html
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Ann wrote, “From the discussions I’ve seen, no physical document is going to be worth anything. It’s going to be digital, and have to be authorised by a medical professional – although you’ll carry it on your phone or other digital device.”
The problem is, tens of millions of us Americans just have the paper card, received at one of these mass vaccination sites. While it’s true that we register online and get checked off a list as we arrive, I have no idea how feasible it’s going to go back and turn that into a digital passport. Also, a bunch of states are (quite reasonably in terms of local public health) not requiring photo ID for the COVID vaccine, so even just the existence of an electronic record for John Doe getting a vaccine does not demonstrate that it was actually John Doe who was vaccinated.
I envision that a lot of Americans are eventually going to need a second set of shots to prove that they were vaccinated, if they got their first set of shots at a mass vaccination site.
Oops!
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I can see that it would be reasonable to expect some extra hoop-jumping for international travel, but given the logistical issues of converting a somewhat dubious piece of paper into a bonafide digital vaccine passport, I don’t think vaccine passports are going to become a daily necessity in the US.
Also, by the time it would be reasonable to expect ordinary people to have been vaccinated, so many people will have been vaccinated that it will be largely a moot point.
Hmmm–I wonder how the Israelis are doing this? They already seem to be having a really good time.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3126233/why-israel-partying-its-2019-while-most-asia-stuck
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The problem is, tens of millions of us Americans just have the paper card, received at one of these mass vaccination sites. While it’s true that we register online and get checked off a list as we arrive, I have no idea how feasible it’s going to go back and turn that into a digital passport.
Most states have a centralized vaccination registry and, for those that do, the CDC is requiring that the Covid vaccinations be reported. For instance, Texas is recording them in ImmTrac2. That is the case for all the vaccination sites, even the mass-vax sites. In my state, the mass-vax sites are being run by the national guard and they are checking people in with iPads, so I have no doubt that the data is automagically being fed to our own registry.
This data is also being kept by the providers (so they can coordinate the second dosages, as every first dose is being matched to a second so they can guarantee that it is there when they need it) and also by the health insurance providers, who are being faithfully billed by the providers when they can.
It is true that people will be slipping through the cracks, but as most of them are people living in backwards Trumpy-moron states without vax registries getting shots from fly-by-night providers, I doubt that this is the demographic that will be wanting to visit New Zealand any time soon anyway.
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Jay said, “Most states have a centralized vaccination registry and, for those that do, the CDC is requiring that the Covid vaccinations be reported. For instance, Texas is recording them in ImmTrac2. That is the case for all the vaccination sites, even the mass-vax sites. In my state, the mass-vax sites are being run by the national guard and they are checking people in with iPads, so I have no doubt that the data is automagically being fed to our own registry.”
That’s encouraging. I won’t believe in the vaccine passport regimen until I see it working, though…
Don’t get me wrong, it would be nice if it went off without a hitch, but we haven’t seen that many 2021-2021 pandemic response measures that worked perfectly from the word go. Almost everything has taken several months to get up to speed.
My sister’s kid is studying in Germany right now (he’s been a full-time student there for several years) and heaven only knows what it’s going to be like getting him back to the US for a visit and then back to Germany.
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How many deaths are we willing to tolerate? That’s really the question. Even with vaccination and general herd immunity, people will still get sick and die. I think it’s pretty clear that people have decided that this year is over. Even jobs, like Steve’s, which transferred to home without a hitch, are going to go back soon. (I’m actually really sad about that.) So, we’re going to be living with death for a long time. I think we’re going to see major decreases in life expectancies in certain communities.
I am fascinated by India’s ability to keep COVID death rates very low. I think we need to look closely at its lifestyle and see what we can replicate in a colder climate.
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How many deaths are we willing to tolerate? That’s really the question. Even with vaccination and general herd immunity, people will still get sick and die.
I think the more important question at this point is *whose* deaths we are willing to tolerate.
I am perfectly happy with the idea that if anti-vax morons don’t want to get a jab they can just go die in a ditch. But there are many people who have medical conditions which make them unable to get a vaccine and the idea that they should be forced to continue to assume this risk just to participate in society because other selfish morons want to selfish moron is just risible to me.
So I have no trouble requiring vaccine passports for those without medical exemptions. If you want to fly, get a shot. If you or your kids want to be in public school, get a shot. If you want to continue to work in a place where an employer doesn’t want to assume this liability, get a shot.
The people who should be sitting at home should be the ones who refuse to get the shot, not the people who would suffer consequences because others are too self-centered to get the shot.
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Yeah. I totally agree. The second that I’m eligible and the vaccine is available, I’m going to get the jab. It’s a no-brainer for me. I honestly don’t understand those who are afraid.
I’m not sure how well vaccine laws will stand up in court. I know that we require MMR shots for kindergarten in public schools, but there are still pockets of the country that find ways to evade those rules.
It’s not just Trump-types who oppose vaccinations. I see it in progressive communities around here, where middle class women really believe that the shots cause autism. Also, the conservative Jewish communities here.
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I already got my first shot. No risk factors, but they had extras that were going to waste otherwise.
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Laura wrote, “I’m not sure how well vaccine laws will stand up in court.”
One of the possible hitches is that our COVID vaccines are currently only under emergency use authorization, and I believe that as long as that is the case, the government can’t compel anybody to get it.
“I honestly don’t understand those who are afraid.”
Don’t you remember all the vaccine fear-mongering that Democratic politicians engaged in this past fall? As I recall, the governors of NY and CA were saying that they would insist on an independent vetting process to make sure that vaccines were safe before accepting them for use in their states.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris also engaged in some fear-mongering.
If people are reluctant to be vaccinated, some of that is due to those chickens coming home to roost.
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Jay said, “If you want to fly, get a shot. If you or your kids want to be in public school, get a shot.”
Some problems:
–This isn’t currently feasible for adults, because the vaccine supply doesn’t exist yet. We can’t reasonably penalize people for not doing something that isn’t yet possible. Also, I’m not sure the airlines and employers can afford to be strict.
–There would need to be a medical exception available.
–Would you want to force pregnant and breastfeeding women to be vaccinated against their will if they want to work or fly or study? It’s probably safe (and even beneficial), but we don’t really know that for sure yet. (I suppose this is a subset of the medical exemption.)
–There are jobs that are so hard to fill that employers may not have a lot of leverage. For example, while it would be nice if all nursing home employees got vaccinated, nursing homes don’t have the luxury of firing vaccine-refusers, and there have been a lot of refusals. In this particular case, I think the feds should consider using a carrot instead–get vaccinated, get a $500 bonus. It’s kind of maddening that we haven’t done this already, given how much money the US has been spending on much less essential things.
–Kids are also a huge problem. Currently, 16 and 17-year-olds are eligible in some parts of the country, but they can only do Pfizer right now, so that limits the pipeline of vaccine available to them.
–There’s some hope of a vaccine for 12-18 by the start of the fall 2021 school year, but who knows? The timeline for younger kids is probably sometime in 2022. Are we planning to keep their schools closed until then? That would be two years with no school for a lot of kids. Also, do we plan to keep families with little kids from flying until 2022?
–A paradox here is that we can’t be that strict right now about requiring vaccines, because we don’t have the vaccines, while on the other hand, once there’s enough vaccine for it to be feasible to be strict, it may no longer be necessary to be strict.
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My response to all of your objections except the medical ones is “so what, by next year all these problems will be solved.”
And at least one of the vaccines has been approved for pregnant women.
As far as people’s *feelings* about the vaccines, my response is the same as all those Trumpy T-shirts: F*** your feelings. If people are vaccine-squeamish that is fine. It is just that *they* should be the ones who have to sit at home and do nothing, not the people they would otherwise inconvenience.
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I see it in progressive communities around here, where middle class women really believe that the shots cause autism.
These people are disproportionately visible, but the Los Angeles-esque GOOP community is actually not all that large, numbers-wise. The vast majority of the upper-middle class suburbs will get the vaccine and those numbers will go up even further if they can’t do things like travel.
. Also, the conservative Jewish communities here.
Again, Hasidic Jews are quite visible, but also numerically very small. Plus, they keep themselves to themselves, so they are at the bottom of the list in terms of people who need to be vaccinated in order for immune-compromised teachers and grocery store workers to be able to safely do their jobs.
I know that we require MMR shots for kindergarten in public schools, but there are still pockets of the country that find ways to evade those rules.
When California tightened their laws to eliminate religious and conscience exemptions two things happened. The medical exemptions went way up and the vaccination rate also went way up. There are currently several investigations pending against doctors with very high numbers of exemptions being issued and I think pulling a few medical licenses will go a long way towards fixing that particular loophole.
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https://www.techrepublic.com/article/phony-covid-19-vaccine-certificates-are-now-selling-on-the-dark-web/
Already.
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Here’s another contributor to vaccine hesitancy:
The public health establishment’s messaging on the benefits of COVID vaccination has often been terrible.
The public health establishment (at least initially) was offering people no perks for vaccination. Vaccinated people were supposed to keep on social distancing and wearing masks and staying away from grandma and avoiding travel, i.e. vaccination gets you nothing in terms of quality of life improvement. There were some dodgy explanations offered that made it all worse–vaccinated people supposedly needed to keep masking and social distancing because “we don’t know” if they might not still be capable of infecting people, even if they themselves were protected.
Say that a few hundred times and, yeah, it drives down people’s eagerness to get vaccinated, and it has probably contributed to teacher anxiety about returning to the classroom.
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https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2021-03-28/biden-companies-working-to-develop-vaccine-passports-it-wont-be-easy
“Other countries are racing ahead with their own passport plans, with the European Union pledging to release digital certificates that would allow for summer travel.”
I wonder if they’ll have enough people vaccinated by summer to make that realistic.
“U.S. officials say they are grappling with an array of challenges, including data privacy and health-care equity. They want to make sure all Americans will be able to get credentials that prove they have been vaccinated, but also want to set up systems that are not easily hacked or passports that cannot be counterfeited, given that forgeries are already starting to appear.”
“One of the most significant hurdles facing federal officials: the sheer number of passport initiatives underway, with the Biden administration this month identifying at least 17, according to slides obtained by The Washington Post.”
“Federal officials defended the pace of the project. Taking time to get the credentialing project right “is very, very important because this has a high likelihood of being either built wrong, used wrong or a bureaucratic mess,” said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The official said some of the considerations include how to adjust for the spread of variants, how booster shots would be tracked and even questions about how long immunity lasts after getting a shot. There’s “a lot to think through,” the official said.”
Who knows what the timeline is on this.
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Here’s what my guy Vinay Prasad (MD MPH) thinks about unvaccinated kids attending school:
https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/03/kids-dont-need-covid-19-vaccines-to-return-to-school/
“For kids, the risk of missing school dwarfs the risk of Covid-19. Kids are less likely to acquire SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, than adults. Several meta-analyses confirm that in contract tracing studies, kids are approximately half as likely to acquire the virus as other household contacts with the same exposure.”
“In addition, the risk of death or other bad outcomes is low for children. Between March and October of 2020, among those between the ages of five and 14, the risk of dying of Covid-19 in the United States was 1 in 1,000,000. To put that in perspective, in that same age group during non-Covid times, the risk of suicide is 10 times higher. For young adults ages 15 to 24, the risk of dying from Covid19 was 9.9 in 1,000,000, and they are also generally 10 times more likely to commit suicide.”
“Contrast these outcomes with those of adults. For the sake of comparison, imagine 100,000 infected people at different ages, using data from a meta-analysis conducted by an international team: two of those age 10 might die compared to 1,400 adults aged 65 and 15,000 adults aged 85. In other words, the risk of an 85-year-old dying from Covid-19 is 7,500 times greater than that of a 10-year-old.”
“For kids to return to school, I support teachers being vaccinated (though this is not essential), the use of indoor masks, capping classroom size at 20, quarantining students if symptomatic cases occur, and distancing between classes.”
Regarding emergency use authoritzation:
“There’s no question that Covid-19 is an emergency for adults, a catastrophic disease that becomes more deadly with advancing age. But it isn’t that for children. For them it is a respiratory pathogen with a rate of harm that is comparable to other, annual respiratory pathogens like influenza. I hold that an emergency use authorization is not appropriate for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for children, which should instead proceed via traditional FDA approval pathways.”
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NY is apparently developing a vaccine passport, which venues like Madison Square Gardens are thinking of requiring.
I am really quietly freaking out about the increasing cases, visible in my own county and a number of states. I hope the vaccines really do prevent deaths. But we won’t be able to tell yet..
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We are not yet at a vaccination/immunity level that would make a meaningful difference, except in a few localities. Until we are over 60-70% vaccination it is too early to be concerned about vaccine efficacy and transmission. It is also still unclear how long natural immunity lasts if you have become infected, which is why they are advocating that previously infected people also get vaccinated and why we will possibly need boosters. (I have received part of my two shot mRNA regimen but if I am offered the J&J or another viral vector vaccine as a booster I will definitely take it.)
People who are saying “the vaccine must be working” every time the infection rate dips are innumerate idiots who don’t understand numbers and science. Until the vast majority of people in an area are vaccinated, vaccination does nothing to stop transmission. The dip in February/early March was, in all likelihood, the holiday recklessness just working its way out of the system.
Given the number of Trumpy morons who are going to refuse the vaccine we may *never* know if the vaccine stops community spread. The worst case is that it might keep spreading in the Trumpy moron community until it mutates into something that gets past the vaccines.
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It could make a difference for deaths in areas where a high proportion of 65+ year olds & other vulnerable people are vaccinated even without a decline in transmission (that’s why I’m leaving hope that transmission can disconnect from deaths). Transmission rates in our county started trending upwards in mid March and are now up to the levels they were in early February. Deaths are still flat (and low, at 1-3). But, deaths lag increases in transmission a lot, so I am still worried.
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bj said, “It could make a difference for deaths in areas where a high proportion of 65+ year olds & other vulnerable people are vaccinated even without a decline in transmission (that’s why I’m leaving hope that transmission can disconnect from deaths).”
I think this is happening.
In Israel, there was a very clear pattern where (as the vaccine campaign continued), vaccinated age groups started having fewer hospitalizations. We are starting to see the same thing in the US.
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At the rates of vaccination we have now, getting a vaccination seems potentially more similar to getting a vaccine (say, for yellow fever) to travel to areas where the disease is endemic than the way we think of vaccines in the US. For measles, we break the train of transmission and the disease is mostly not present (and, smallpox is gone and polio still almost gone). For travel vaccines we hope to protect ourselves when traveling to areas where the disease is present.
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bj said, “I am really quietly freaking out about the increasing cases, visible in my own county and a number of states. I hope the vaccines really do prevent deaths. But we won’t be able to tell yet..”
I think there are some hopeful signs in the German and French stats on the NYT pages for those countries.
On the one hand, you have a nasty surge in new COVID cases in both France and Germany, but on the other hand, there’s not a matching surge in deaths. And those countries are significantly less vaccinated than the US is at this point. If you click on this, you can see that New Jersey (the worst state right now) has a somewhat similar set of charts:
On the one hand, NJ has a significant surge of new cases and hospitalizations are slightly up–on the other hand, deaths are continuing to trend down. Over the past two weeks, NJ cases are up 21%, hospitalizations are up 10%, but deaths are down 35%. There are more cases, but even in NJ, the impact is getting blunted.
For the last several days, the US has been vaccinating roughly 1% of the population every day.
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I read some report that places like LA, which was hit particularly hard by the virus, has hit herd immunity between the shot and people who were already infected. I have no idea.
But it doesn’t really matter. My guess is that Steve will back to working in Manhattan in the next six months. Death will be with us for years. People are done.
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I do agree that people are “done” and have decided they can’t continue to live the way we did for the past year anymore.
Interesting that you’re predicting Manhattan offices opening up again in six months. As I’ve mentioned, Microsoft opened up to let people back a week or so ago. The head at Expedia says that only 60% of employees were at the office even before the pandemic (they’d moved to new fancy digs) and have flex spaces (lockers, reservations for desks, etc.). Expedia head thinks people will come back (even if they don’t have to) because he thinks they are going stir crazy.
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Steve’s been a major help with all the Ian chores this year. It will be tough to be the only one doing that next year. And with Ian taking evening classes at the community college, there’s going to be lots and lots of driving. I’m not sure if he’ll ever be able to drive, because of the epilepsy. He’s been five months without a seizure though, so that’s great.
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“I read some report that places like LA, which was hit particularly hard by the virus, has hit herd immunity between the shot and people who were already infected”
If that were true, the results should be visible in declining death rates and time will tell. I think it’s fine to believe that we simply can’t sustain the restrictions we now face as a society, but we have to be careful about the data we rely on to argue that our changes in behavior won’t have consequences. For example, based on age demographics alone, one would expect Italy to have nearly 4X the deaths that India has (and the US to have 2.5x), because 80% of COVID deaths are in those over 65.
WA is moving ahead on opening up even though we have among the most cautious leadership. But I think there might be consequences in increased transmission — we can only hope that there won’t be increased deaths as well.
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bj said, “I do agree that people are “done” and have decided they can’t continue to live the way we did for the past year anymore.”
I was just at a school coffee for my 2nd grader’s grade (this is a moderate-sized private school).
I was thinking that the coffee would move outside, but everybody stayed inside. On the one hand, EEK! On the other hand, I made some interesting discoveries.
I was sitting at a table with five other moms:
–me (got 1st Moderna shot 16 days ago)
–a mom who had gotten her 1st shot, also about two weeks ago
–two doctor moms (vaccinated, presumably completely)
–a school administrator mom (had COVID about a month ago)
–an unvaccinated mom who just became eligible today (I think she probably could have gotten vaccinated via the 30+ BMI rule, but she didn’t know that).
So, that’s 5 out of 6 at the table who had had at least one shot, despite the fact that Texas only officially opened up to healthy people under 50 today. I talked to another dad later, and he’d also had his first shot.
A pediatrician mom of four said (gesturing with her mask) that as of June, she is DONE. At that point, if you haven’t gotten a shot, that’s your business. (That mom mentioned that in her pediatric practice, she does not keep patients whose parents don’t let them get vaccinated.) The pediatrician mom also said (and I have no idea if this is true or not) that there is a possibility of COVID vaccine being available for kids 2 and up by August.
One of my contributions to the conversation was to say that we’ll know it’s over when HEB says it’s over.
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bj said, “If that were true, the results should be visible in declining death rates and time will tell. I think it’s fine to believe that we simply can’t sustain the restrictions we now face as a society, but we have to be careful about the data we rely on to argue that our changes in behavior won’t have consequences.”
It is true that people have cried wolf with regard to herd immunity quite a few times.
Regarding California, I don’t know what to think:
On the one hand, cases look fantastic and hospitalizations aren’t bad–on the other hand, deaths are somehow ticking up? I don’t get it. Here’s my guess about CA and herd immunity–it may genuinely be close in Southern California, which has had a lot of cases, but I do not believe that Northern California has had enough cases for that to be true.
“For example, based on age demographics alone, one would expect Italy to have nearly 4X the deaths that India has (and the US to have 2.5x), because 80% of COVID deaths are in those over 65.”
On the other hand, older Americans are largely vaccinated at this point. I can’t find a good source for this right now, but somebody on twitter was saying 75% of people 75+.
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In a group here where the question about vaccines was asked, we had 6 not vaccinated, 6 with 1st shot and 3 with both shots. No doctors in the group and we’re in a state that is only opening to people with 2 comorbidity this week (no doctors, though a few educators,so, the younger, healthier crowd in this group might be less vaccinated than in TX). But, even here, that’s 9/15 with a start on their vax. I am not yet eligible, so I wouldn’t drink coffee indoors with the group, but some plan to get together in person, fully vaxxed in mid April.
Spouse got his first shot and hopes he can have poker in person late April (though maybe outdoors, but he may schedule with the plan of being indoors if it rains, rather than planning outdoors no matter what).
I hope the family will be vaxed by June, or at lead mid June (we’ll be aggressive about hunting for appointments, but don’t become eligible until May 1). So, I’m “done” by July — meaning, I expect people to be protecting themselves through vaccinations. Will still wear a mask in grocery stores, but plan to limit indoor gatherings with people I know are vaccinated.
I won’t believe it’s over until I see the deaths decline far below 1000/day, which is what they are now.
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Not happy to be sharing the impending sense of doom with the head of the CDC. It would be better if it was just me.
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bj said, “Spouse got his first shot and hopes he can have poker in person late April (though maybe outdoors, but he may schedule with the plan of being indoors if it rains, rather than planning outdoors no matter what).”
I just heard that my husband (age 48) is scheduled for a Pfizer shot later this week offered via Hometown U. for teaching staff (including TAs).
He was thinking of getting our 18-year-old a shot tomorrow at a small town HEB, but I didn’t feel up to driving her 40 miles one way for that, so we passed. We’ll start trying for a Pfizer shot for the 16-year-old tomorrow.
“I won’t believe it’s over until I see the deaths decline far below 1000/day, which is what they are now.”
I think that’s coming soon.
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bj said, “Not happy to be sharing the impending sense of doom with the head of the CDC. It would be better if it was just me.”
I’m like SHUT UP LADY.
It’s her job to keep that feeling to herself and point people to the exit. Hopelessness will keep people from getting vaccinated. You gotta have hope for the future in order to make sacrifices seem worthwhile.
(I’m not telling you to shut up, but people in high office need to filter a bit more.)
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Her impending sense of doom should incentivize vaccination, rather than not. It’s having that effect on me — if cases are going up, the only way I can really protect myself is to get vaccinated (can’t count on reducing the prevalence of the virus).
Emily Oster tweeted that she’s hearing from a number of people who are saying doctors are telling them to wait for the vaccine (including older people), which is terrifying. But, if someone really could isolate, then it might be rational to think one’s own personal risk is low enough. Earlier in the pandemic, I said that about the flu vaccine (though out of inconvenience rather than concern about the safety) — I was seeing no one but two people, pretty much, and if those two got vaccinated, my own very small herd would be vaccinated.
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We had an interesting development here yesterday: Hometown U. announced that they have just received some federal vaccine. By my count, it’s enough to do a full 1st round of vaccinations for almost all Hometown U. staff (although probably not contractors). My husband now has an appointment for Wednesday. He says, “It’s good to have a large employer!”
Hometown U. is prioritizing staff right now, but it sounds like they’re planning on vaccinating students as their vaccine allotment comes in. Hometown U. has said that vaccinated employees and students will no longer be subject to the weekly COVID testing requirement. We will miss the $3 vouchers, usable at campus food trucks, that Hometown U. has been handing students when they do their weekly test…
Our college student now has a place both on the health department waitlist and the Hometown U. waitlist. My husband will be working on getting our 16-year-old an appointment today. Unfortunately, the local entity that is closest to us and does Pfizer does not do a waitlist, just a weekly scramble for appointment slots, so today my husband will be doing the scramble.
We have noted that local wait lists seem to move a lot faster than you would expect–I presume that this is because people sign up (or wind up on) multiple wait lists and then give up the unneeded ones.
It feels like everybody is getting vaccinated right now.
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A lot of people (30%) say they don’t know if they are eligible to be vaccinated:
https://mobile.twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1376867793702940674
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Great idea about the food vouchers for testing. Our rural university is doing a vaccine clinic later this week for faculty, staff, and student employees (not all students yet). Most faculty I know have gotten their vaccine already, either at a mass site an hour away (as I did) or at a local pharmacy. The mass site was easiest to sign up for and extremely well-run, and doing the J&J. I think the pharmacies have Moderna. The “scramble” was necessary there for a while, but I think it’s getting easier now.
In a couple of weeks everyone in the state will be eligible. I’ll be curious to see when the rate slows down, as we start hitting the resisters and the low-information people.
I’m also curious to see what universities and states decide about requiring students to be vaccinated in the fall. Rutgers is a very early adopter for that.
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af184793 said, “Great idea about the food vouchers for testing.”
It is! My freshman has been really enjoying the boba tea and BBQ sausage and churros.
“In a couple of weeks everyone in the state will be eligible. I’ll be curious to see when the rate slows down, as we start hitting the resisters and the low-information people.”
I’d like Krispy Kreme (or similar) to show up actually at vaccine sites with free donuts…
“I’m also curious to see what universities and states decide about requiring students to be vaccinated in the fall. Rutgers is a very early adopter for that.”
Hometown U. has decided to release vaccinated people from their weekly testing obligation, which is a pretty big perk.
We’re going to miss the subsidized boba, though…
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My husband has just hit his first roadblock with regarding getting our 16-year-old vaccinated.
The clinic that is the only local source of Pfizer, the only vaccine currently approved for 16 and 17-year-olds, is only accepting 18-and-up–or at least that’s what the registration system says.
Texas just opened up to 16+ yesterday, so this may just be a glitch.
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My university’s clinic this week has just today been opened up to all students – apparently they got more doses of Moderna. One student I talked to before had been worried that they would need to get a dose here and then figure out where to get the second dose at home, but this will solve that – they are setting up a second clinic in late April for dose #2.
The only people I know who are really pessimistic now have a young son who had serious health problems as a baby and is now very high-risk (though healthy). Vaccines for preschoolers and gradeschoolers seem to be at least months off and possible a year. They are very worried that there will be a push to open up with zero precautions, and their kids (they have an older boy too) are going to be locked out.
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I’m eligible to pre-register. That’s it. So I’m not vaccinated, and have no idea when there will be enough vaccine for my cohort.
On the other hand, there are reports that the federal government might “surge” vaccine into New England, as there seems to be a burgeoning upswing in cases: https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/03/28/massachusetts-coronavirus-cases-spike-again-as-push-is-on-to-surge-vaccine-into-state/
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states
I had the strong impression that one of my book club friends lied about her age to get a vaccine. How does the group feel about this ethical dilemma?
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Cranberry said, “On the other hand, there are reports that the federal government might “surge” vaccine into New England, as there seems to be a burgeoning upswing in cases.”
That’s not a bad idea.
“I had the strong impression that one of my book club friends lied about her age to get a vaccine. How does the group feel about this ethical dilemma?”
Not great, but there are a lot of ways to legitimately skin that cat. The average state has so many eligibility criteria, not to mention the method of just lurking around a site at closing time.
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The Washington Post wrote on this topic a couple of days ago, which I think is some kind of jumping of a shark (Slate, too). And, the topic appeared on my FB page, when a friend, who would not, ostensibly, be eligible under our eligibility rules posted that she had scored what she thought was an extra appointment. I don’t know how (I did not comment), but she realized that the appointment might have been a mistake, apologized on FB, and cancelled her appointment. Some discussion ensued, including a number of people who were not taking any grey zones in their favor (I am like that, and, I’ll admit, superstitious about eliding the truth). https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/03/25/vaccine-line-jump-lie-coronavirus/
I feel better about my friend, a lot, for her FB post (and, presumable followup). I try not to judge when I am suspicious, because you really can’t know. For example, I was feeling troubled by one friend, but then realized her 90+ year old other lives in a cottage on her property (I’d forgotten). And, you can’t know what medical conditions someone might have (say, being annoyed and realizing the person has just been diagnosed with ALS).
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I am apparently going to be in the last 7% of the group to be eligible to be vaccinated with the current vaccines in our state (on May 1). I’d like to think that makes me the 7% least at risk (not impossible, but I am old enough to get a senior discount at our garden store on Thursdays!). Folks are starting to openly strategize, which I think means we are reaching a breakdown in the trust in waiting turns (especially strong, I think, among us middle aged folks).
In my rough calculations, I think as of today (before more eligibility, to those 16 and older with 2 or more comorbidities & 60+ year olds opens up), over 70% of eligible people in the state have been initiated vaccines.
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bj,
Aren’t you technically a 50+ person in a multigenerational household?
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No, because ones own child doesn’t count. A nephew would count, but not my child. It’s a weird eligibility criterion.
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bj said, “No, because ones own child doesn’t count. A nephew would count, but not my child. It’s a weird eligibility criterion.”
Meh.
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“I had the strong impression that one of my book club friends lied about her age to get a vaccine. How does the group feel about this ethical dilemma?”
It’s pretty much inevitable — and probably says more about the person than the systems. With the current flow of vaccines just about everywhere in the US – she probably wasn’t ‘stealing’ someone else’s – there are plenty left at the end of the day for walk-ups.
Have a lot less sympathy for the celebrities using ‘push’ to get personally administered vaccines at home….
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If that were true, it would be a strong argument for generally opening up eligibility. I had a friend who used to say that giving money to people who asked for, say money for bus fair, was a stupid person tax. He didn’t think you shouldn’t give money to people asking for it, but that if you gave it to them, believing they needed it for bus fair, you were stupid.
Having eligibility rules that some people lie to get around while others (like me) are unwilling to lie (really, I just can’t do it), rewards those who lie. Better to open up eligibility. If my state has data that shows that they are prioritizing more vulnerable people, I understand their justification. But, if those who lie are taking vaccines from those who don’t, our state is being stupid.
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PS: I think vaccines going hunting for arms is happening in some states more than others. But, I do think states need to be ready to respond when it happens and not just stick to highly planned plans that don’t make sense anymore.
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My husband, 18-year-old and 16-year-old suddenly all have appointments this week for 1st shots, which leaves only our 8-year-old. I’m penciling in lunch or dinner plans with my husband once he’s been vaccinated two weeks.
I just made plans to meet my BFF for brunch Easter Monday. I was initially planning to take my 8-year-old but then remembered that I probably shouldn’t, so I’ll go alone, but she can join in on some backyard fun after brunch.
Here’s a bit of a text conversation after I told BFF about our three shot appointments for this week.
BFF: We’re still on the fence about it.
Me: Can’t hurt! It would be good for [Disabled Kid] if you did.
Me: Krispy Kremes!
BFF (who is not an anti-vaxxer) is holding out for a non-mRNA vaccine.
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The data lover in me is really hoping that we have thorough analyses of all of these different statewide experiments some day. Lightly searching the internet, I think about 73% of 65+ year olds in WA have received 1 shot, and 53% have received their second. In TX, those numbers, according to a news report, are 52% and 30%, and, the same report quoted a health official as saying they think 30% of 65+ are vaccine hesitant. I wonder what that number is in WA state?
But, I guess that provides some of the extra vaccines for the rest of Texans.
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bj said,
“Lightly searching the internet, I think about 73% of 65+ year olds in WA have received 1 shot, and 53% have received their second. In TX, those numbers, according to a news report, are 52% and 30%, and, the same report quoted a health official as saying they think 30% of 65+ are vaccine hesitant.”
I came across that Texas stat in a news release from March 10 (nearly three ago), so presumably the TX numbers are a bit better by now.
https://dshs.texas.gov/news/releases/2021/20210310.aspx#:~:text=More%20than%20half%20of%20all,its%20peak%20in%20mid%2DJanuary.
Texas had really good trends following the big freeze in February:
New cases have flattened out a bit and may be rising, but it’s not very pronounced yet. The two week trend is new cases down 17%, hospitalizations down 25% and deaths down 39%.
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Texas’s daily new cases per 100k are at 13 right now, very close to Washington’s 12. (I’m working off the NYT state pages.)
My county is right on track with the state of Texas with regard to new cases per 100k. County positivity is bopping around at 4-5%, which was last seen here in mid-June 2020, at the start of the summer surge. I haven’t kept close track of hospitalizations, but I believe it’s about 1/6 of what it was for the winter peak, and about 5% of hospital beds are currently occupied by COVID patients. The number of COVID patients in the hospital has been slowly trending down. I’m also noticing that the number for deaths isn’t moving much these days. People just aren’t dying like they used to.
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WA is one of the states that’s showing a 4th wave. Cases in our county reached a min around March 10th and have now been trending back up and we’re now back where we were at the beginning of February, on the downward swing from the 3rd wave. It’s bad news, but, hopefully enough vulnerable people are vaccinated that we won’t see significant increase in deaths.
Yes, the news article on vaccines I found was for 3/11, so a couple of weeks ago. The WA numbers are from 3/27. WA updates the vaccinations by age on the DOH site three times a week. I’m starting to see a flattening of the number of 65+ going up (say, last week, the percent of 65+ who got their first shot went up 3% while the number of 65+ who got their 2nd shot up went up 7%, which I’m interpreting as a slwo down. But, there are Washingtonians who are getting vaccines who are not reported in the DOH total, I think: those getting vax at the Indian Health Service & through the VA. So we could be flattening the number of 1st shots because others are getting shots elsewhere.
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The numbers for Mar 10th for WA are 61% first shot 36% 2nd shot. I’m using the ratio of the two to detect a slow down and potential vaccine hesitation (though it could also be access). On March 1, WA was 50/25. Now there has to be a slow down. In WA now that 54% fully vaccinated 65+ year olds are vaccinated, the number with one shot can’t be more than 46% :-). (it’s actually 19%)
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bj said, “But, there are Washingtonians who are getting vaccines who are not reported in the DOH total, I think: those getting vax at the Indian Health Service & through the VA. So we could be flattening the number of 1st shots because others are getting shots elsewhere.”
I’ve been noticing that some of the really stand-out states in terms of vaccination speed have large Native American populations, like New Mexico and Alaska. That’s true of South Dakota, too, somewhat less so of North Dakota.
Here’s a table with state vaccination info taken from the CDC:
https://rationalground.com/u-s-vaccine-tracker-for-seniors/
Some highlights:
The national stats are that 73.5% of 65+ have had at least one dose, and 50.8% are fully vaccinated.
South Dakota has given at least 1 shot to 84% of 65+ and has fully vaccinated 68.7%.
Vermont has given at least one shot to 87.4% of 65+ and has fully vaccinated 50.8%.
WA 65+ is 78.5% 1+ dose and 58.4% fully vaccinated. Looking at South Dakota and Vermont, there is some room for pushing those numbers up.
Texas has given at least one shot to 71.2% of 65+ and has fully vaccinated 46.4%. This is, weirdly, almost identical to New Jersey’s stats for those categories.
New York State (not sure if this includes NYC) has given at least one shot to 66.7% of 65+and has fully vaccinated 42.2%.
Hawaii is at the bottom with 62.5% of 65+ having had 1+ shots and 38.2% fully vaccinated.
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AmyP said “People just aren’t dying like they used to”
Morbid sense of humour here, but I can’t help hearing that in a backcountry grandma voice “People just don’t make cheese like they used to”
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Cheese mostly sucked when I was growing up. Much better now.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1377130533012955136
“people who want to wait until vaccines have a formal non-emergency authorization from the FDA are not crazy people, stop treating them like crazy people.”
“If your problem is that some people don’t want to take a vaccine that hasn’t had formal approval from the FDA, then your problem is with the FDA
Yell at them. I’ll join you.
Stop yelling at people who trust the FDA’s vaccine approval process as if they are the stupid people.”
That’s a fair point!
In other vaccine news, it looks like Pfizer may soon be available for 12-15:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pfizer-says-covid-vaccine-100-effective-on-ages-12-15-eyes-fda-approval/
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In our news, as well: with info about the Moderna vaccine also in trials in the US for 12-17 year olds.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/300267068/covid19-pfizer-says-its-vaccine-protects-younger-teens
Although, you have to wonder about the priorities: When large chunks of the world have people in the *most seriously affected* age-groups who haven’t had the opportunity to be vaccinated; should vaccinating children and teens (the vast majority of whom don’t have any serious consequences from Covid) be a priority?
And, yes, this is directly relevant to us in the First World. Variants, some of which may be more contagious, more serious, and (potentially) not covered by the existing vaccines, will continue to develop in countries which don’t have vaccination protection.
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Ann said, “And, yes, this is directly relevant to us in the First World. Variants, some of which may be more contagious, more serious, and (potentially) not covered by the existing vaccines, will continue to develop in countries which don’t have vaccination protection.”
On the other hand, if you look at the list of COVID fatalities per million, the 1st world has been mostly the hardest hit:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
The first 14 countries on the list are either the US or in Europe and you don’t get outside those categories until you get to #15 (Peru), #16 (Mexico) and #17 (Brazil). After that, you you a mixture of European and Latin American countries on the list for quite a while. Of course we really don’t know what poorer countries mortality stats are–Mexico has been revising its death toll upward and may wind up pretty high on the list.
The US is still sitting on a big pile of unwanted, unapproved Astrazeneca, and I think we should hand the rest of that over now, with first dibs going to Mexico. It is genuinely piggy to be holding onto it with no intention of using it. I frankly don’t even understand the thought process behind that decision.
(The US has given Mexico and Canada about 4 million out of 30+ million doses, last I heard.)
However, here’s the case for a bit of “vaccine nationalism”:
–Some of these vaccines need finicky handling that will be hard to provide in poor countries
–India has a lot of vaccine manufacturing capability.
–A lot of poorer countries are also very young. The median age in India is about 27 and the median age in Nigeria is 18. Meanwhile the median age in the US is 38, it’s 40.5 in the UK and 47 in Italy.
–The US is currently in the middle of a pretty nasty surge, focused in the North. While a lot of other states are doing pretty well right now, there was a sunbelt surge in the summer of 2020, and it’s not crazy to expect at least a muted repeat of that surge in 2021. Coincidentally, a number of Southeastern states (and especially Georgia and Alabama) have relatively weak vaccination numbers, with lower vaccine coverage than the states up north that are currently suffering the worst surges.
–The US is still averaging about 1,000 deaths a day and is experiencing a plateau in terms of hospitalizations.
–This is more of a political reason than a medical one: a number of US states have teachers unions who are likely to fight a return to school unless kids are vaccinated. Whether this is necessary when the teachers and other adults in the community are vaccinated is debatable, but this is the world we live in. Hundreds of thousands of kids may wind up even more educationally deprived if vaccination is delayed.
–Lastly, in two months, we’re going to be looking at a completely different political situation. Every adult who wants vaccine will have had a shot at it, and the US is likely to be in a very generous and festive mood.
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My husband got his shot on campus today and reports that at least some of the people coming for shots were graduate and undergraduate-looking.
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WA will open eligibility to everyone April 16 (I was predicting this, because I think vaccine availability is going up & I think we are starting to reach the limits of the people we can reach using the current methods). Things are moving fast. I do hope I’ll be able to schedule appointments for soon after April 16th. This morning, there were appointments available in a week for people who are currently eligible (even though the pool was increased today).
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I get my second hit on 4/15. Three weeks after that, I can stop washing my hands.
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“Three weeks after that, I can stop washing my hands.”
Ha! It’s interesting to see that starting to happen in public toilets (restrooms?) here (well, I’m sure in private ones, too – but I don’t exactly carry out covert surveillance!). I’ve definitely noticed a drop-off in women washing their hands in mall toilets (for example). Can’t comment on the men for obvious reasons.
Don’t know how much is people dropping back into previous habits. And how much is people deciding that touching *anything* in a public bathroom is a fast track to infection!
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While, I, naive me, was hoping that hand washing would be one of the lasting silver linings from the pandemic. Boy all of you are strangely blind to all of the viruses/bacteria out there. I believe in handwashing. I have decreased my frequency at home, but still try to wash my hands whenever I come in from outside before I prepare/eat food (and, it goes without saying, in the bathroom).
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We sanitize the bathroom so I don’t need to wash my hands for that.
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Ann said, “And how much is people deciding that touching *anything* in a public bathroom is a fast track to infection!”
I think/hope it’s not much of an issue for COVID, but the more I think about the mechanics of those new hand dryers that blast the water off your hands (presumably turning all the germs on your hands into aerosols), the less I think it’s a great idea for public health.
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Automatic flush, automatic water, automatic soap, automatic paper towels. And, no door. That’s the style for airports and it should be for any other place where there’s significant geographic mixing (stadiums, concert venues, convention centers). Other places should have all of the above (they are, I think quite affordable now), except the doors. But, I’d like there to be a trash can outside the door, so that a paper towel can be used to open the door to leave.
Can you see that I think about this?
Also, I think the last time I used a bathroom outside my home was over a year ago, in a convention center, where I attended a flower show.
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bj said, “Automatic flush, automatic water, automatic soap, automatic paper towels. And, no door.”
“But, I’d like there to be a trash can outside the door, so that a paper towel can be used to open the door to leave.”
Are we related?
Nowadays, you also occasionally see foot pulls on restroom doors for hands-free use, but they are a bit awkward to use and I bet not everybody knows what they’re for.
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Thought this was interesting research about super-spreaders. 20% of people (all adults) were responsible for around 85% of Covid transmission.
Children were the least likely to spread Covid (as well as least likely to catch it)
Now, if we could only figure out what makes someone a super-spreader, then you could take some real preventive measures.
Remember this is NZ research – so not looking at the multiple viral load situation that you had in NY for example.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/124728251/covid19-superspreaders-responsible-for-85-per-cent-of-transmission-study-shows
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I have read, but now can’t find a good link, the hypothesis that the difference is how much air the person breaths. Children are smaller so they breath less air in and out, leading to less infection to and from them. On the other end, some of the most severe super spreader events involved choirs, where of course the are breathing a lot.
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MichaelB said, “I have read, but now can’t find a good link, the hypothesis that the difference is how much air the person breaths. Children are smaller so they breath less air in and out, leading to less infection to and from them.”
…which would partly account for bigger kids being higher risk.
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AFAIK the reasons children aren’t super-spreaders are still not known – there’s theories, but nothing confirmed as yet. One is in relation to the numbers of receptors in their lungs, and another is lung size. Which would make sense in a single super-spreader event (like the famous choir practice) – but not in the regular school environment (when the kids meet and mingle all day – but still don’t seem to spread the virus)
Iceland study reported in National Geographic – covers the theories (towards the middle of the article)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/we-now-know-how-much-children-spread-coronavirus
And a BMJ review of studies which is basically saying ‘get those kids back in school, they are not the problem’
https://adc.bmj.com/content/106/2/e9
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Both Mr 13 and I are down with colds – really nasty ones. He brought the infection home from school, and kindly shared it with me. The infection spread has stopped at this point, since we haven’t left the house since (and won’t while we’re contagious)…. [Really wrecked my Easter break, not a happy camper]
Apparently, there are over 300 kids out of school with this (or a similar) virus. Under the current Covid-prevention regulations, if you have *any* respiratory symptoms, you may not go to school. So kids stay at home (or are sent home) rather than soldiering on through.
But it doesn’t look as though this policy has had any significant effect on the spread of the cold virus – 300 (minimum- as of Thursday) off sick out of a school roll of 1100 is a significant chunk.
And, contrasting this with the transmissibility of Covid by the same age bracket. Where we’ve had one or two cases infected by teens, rather than hundreds.
Yes, I know that colds are more infectious than Covid (for which we should all be profoundly grateful) – but even so, the ‘lack’ of transmission by kids and teens is a highly significant factor.
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I got my 16-year-old vaccinated at the hospital with Pfizer this morning. He’s due back in 3 weeks for his next dose. Some notes:
–They open up sign-ups on Tuesday afternoon for Thursday appointments rather than doing a wait list.
–We had to iron out the question of whether or not the 16-year-old could get a shot, because initially the online system would not accept an under 18 application.
–There’s no online map of which part of the sprawling hospital complex to go to. (My husband got me some verbal directions, and I found it by just starting to circle the building.) There was no COVID-19 VACCINE HERE signage outside the right building.
–There was a lot of paperwork compared to the stadium drive-thru (insurance, permission to put info on Texas vaccine registry, etc.) and we spent a lot of time being herded from room to room. If I hadn’t gotten my first shot almost 3 weeks ago, I would have felt really nervous about spending so much time indoors with people, especially given all of the nice older ladies at the vaccine clinic who lean in close to talk. (My son pointed out to me that they were probably all vaccinated.)
–There were a lot of people, but no waiting around, except during the 15-minute allergic reaction wait. It was mostly an older crowd and there were a lot of volunteers.
–I got the 16-year-old some hospital cafeteria pecan pie on our way out.
–There was about a half-hour where I believed that I had thrown out my own vaccine card by mistake and kept the informational card. Once I got home, I took my purse apart and found my card, but there was a short period of time where I was feeling really dumb, because holding on to the card is literally the one thing they tell you to do.
–The 18-year-old gets her shot this Saturday!
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Pass the air-sickness bag! Richard Carranza has a new gig!
https://mobile.twitter.com/elizashapiro/status/1377692376903385089
Eliza Shapiro tweets, “Richard Carranza, the former NYC schools chancellor who quit in Feb, has a new gig as the chief of strategy at an ed tech company in Silicon Valley.”
He quit literally in the middle of the school year.
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It suddenly occurs to me that today is April 1, the most dangerous day in the year for media consumers.
So, I’m not sure that this is for real. If it’s a joke, hats off to the pranksters. If it’s for real–OH MY GOODNESS HOW SHADY.
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https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/on-essays-and-sats-some-students
Freddie deBoer has a very nice piece entitled, “On Essays and SATs: Some Students are Just More Prepared Than Others.”
I suggest reading the whole thing, but here are a few quotes:
“Whoops! It turns out that, far from being a more “holistic” measure that rewards the well-rounded, college admissions essays correlate more strongly with family income than SATs do. (This is in part a function of the fact that, found to be .25 in the largest sample I am aware of, the correlation between SAT scores and family income is vastly overstated by liberals.)”
https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/essay-content-strongly-related-household-income-and-sat-scores-evidence-60000-undergraduate-applications
“I’ve said this many times: our school system is asked to do two flatly contradictory things at once, promoting equality and sorting students into a hierarchy of performance on academic tasks. These are totally contrary goals…”
“The very act of saying “Student A did better than Student B” is identifying inequality, inequality in performance. A degree makes its holder unalike some other job applicants and it’s that inequality that is sold on the labor market.”
“Some kids are better at school than others. Colleges sort the good from the bad and pursue the former. How can we ever make this a progressive project? Well, we can’t.”
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There were 2,677 fewer suicides in 2020 than in 2019.
Those on twitter can read the comments on the tweet by Chris Hayes on this. Many commenting how they, and their loved ones were better off without the pressures of work, school, and the modern economy. Just because the loudest voices hated the lockdowns and the turn homeward of this past year, doesn’t mean it’s true of everyone, or even the majority.
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This is true in general during society-wide calamities. Suicide was drastically down during the Great Depression. Lots of theories about it–the feeling of being in something together, not feeling like an individual failure because others also are suffering, etc. I would add decreased pressure to perform, and not having to comply with societal expectations surrounding early rising. Lack of adequate sleep has a profound impact on mood, and some people are not programmed to sleep in the typical ways, or have insomnia. My husband once went to work having missing three days straight of sleep–completely, not three nights of shorter than usual sleep–because in our society insomnia is not an illness which requires self-care, but a weakness which requires pulling up one’s bootstraps.
If some people were better off during 2020–there will be many beyond the missing suicides who benefitted–what can we learn from this? Don’t we need to listen to those who benefitted this past year–about how we can arrange society to be better for them–as much as those who were harmed? I want a reckoning in mental health that doesn’t assume the answer is make everyone–including those unsuited to it–perform the way our society expected pre-pandemic. Not everyone fits in that world.
(Our department is 75% in-person, 25% online, for fall 2021. The online courses are filling faster than the in-person. IMO college students want college life, and at least some classes, in person; but are quite happy to have a few online. 15 hours per week in class is a lot).
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This is not what I’m seeing at all. First of all, I don’t know who is working less. Everyone I know is working twice as hard. Steve puts in the same hours, probably a bit more, at his job. It takes Jonah a full week to get a professor to answer a simple question, like is the paper supposed to be three pages or five. A full week. Because his professors don’t answer their email. I have been trying to for a full week to sign up Ian for one summer class at the community college. I am now waiting for a help desk to just get him through the account set up. There’s a glitch.
I have not yet met one student who says that online education is the best. Not one. Every single one of Jonah’s friends say that they will never, ever sign up for an online class ever again.
While suicides might be down overall, I hear stories every day from my friends whose kids are a fucking mess. They have totally tuned out of school and are staying up all night playing video games. They say that their kids need massive therapy.
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I think we should be aware of the data — but it can’t be used to argue, say, for keeping everyone isolated indefinitely. In fact, a tricky suicide statistic is the possibility that depressed people are less likely to die by suicide if the means for accessing suicide are harder (i.e. the higher likelihood of suicide when there is a gun in the home or when bridges to jump off of are easier to access).
I have heard students say they are interested in online classes — I asked a HS student currently taking community college classes as part of our “Running Start” program yesterday. The key seemed to be lecture based classes where listening to a video recorded lecture was more convenient, easier to follow, and easier to review than a lecture class in person.
I’m not sure this is good for them — they may interact with the material differently, learn it differently. The HS student also said she would not have said that before experiencing the online class and seeing its benefits. She wouldn’t have chosen the online version before the forced experience of the pandemic.
As with changes in workplaces (remote work, zoom meetings, less travel, . . . .). I think we will have to figure out what we want to extract from the experience. Some changes will also be pushed. I am concerned about online classes being pushed in lower cost colleges (i.e. community colleges, directional state colleges, and even flagship states) as a way of mitigating costs. That might make online the only option without the resources to pay.
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“I have not yet met one student who says that online education is the best. Not one.”
I had a meeting with a student this morning about her fall schedule, and she is planning to take all but one course online. She has 5 classes to take: one independent study, one capstone class in her major, and 3 other free electives. She’s taking all the free electives online, by choice.
Just a data point.
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lisasg2 said, “There were 2,677 fewer suicides in 2020 than in 2019.”
One of the MD/MPH guys I follow on twitter was noting mordantly that we are starting to have mass killings again, which suggests that the pandemic is almost over.
(It’s not true to say that there were no mass shootings in 2020–there were many–but it’s true that there weren’t a lot of “traditional” mass killings in the US.)
My guess is that–at least for a while–the pandemic itself was so absorbing and so obviously external that it kept adults very busy and focused on things outside of themselves. I don’t know about you all, but I was very busy during March/April/May 2020!
The absence of a rise in suicides doesn’t mean that kids are doing great, though.
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We can pat ourselves on the back for the decline in suicides in 2020, but it was also a year that featured an astonishing rise in US homicides.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020
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