Yes, I agree that it won't be the approach.

It's the most logical to me and I don't understand why it hasn't gotten more traction.

I guess short term it will be nice to eliminate the death totals, but if you think about it vaccinating people around at risk people should help with that and slow up the epidemic.

If you vaccinate all the workers in a long term health care facility it should protect the people inside.

You are accomplishing several things by going in the order I laid out. You're keeping the economy going and you're protecting vulnerable people.

tysker said:

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AgsMyDude said:

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Well each person needs 2 doses...

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Is 600 million vaccinations worldwide considered enough to make a dent? Yes it reads like a big number but what effect will it really have on the ground?

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Giving it to the most at risk and public-facing folks (first responders, etc.) yes will make a dent in terms of hospitalizations/deaths IMO.

That 1.3 billion doses number is for the Pfizer vaccine only. Moderna is also projecting 500m-1bn doses by end of 2021 as well. There's also Johnson&Johnson, AstraZeneca, Medicago, etc. currently in Phase 3.

yes, that will make a huge dent

how many people in the western world are over the age of 65?

Just out of curiosity I looked up employment numbers in the US

There are 18 million health care workers in the United States. First responders is 2 million so combined that 20 million doses needed for first shots alone.

I looked up grocery store employees and Gas station attendants as well, both combined were 2.7 million.

Fast food employees were 3.7 million.

So roughly 6-8 million give or take in food/gas/grocery

zachsccr said:

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Haven't seen this anywhere. Have they noted the time line from injection to buildup of antibodies? I know the flu vaccine essentially takes 2 weeks to really become effective, so should we assume a similar timeline for this? I get the mechanism of the flu vaccine but this mRNA voodoo is something I don't have a grasp on yet.

I'd think that info would be very important or you're going to have people being reckless as soon as they get the needle out.

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I'm in the Phase 3 trial of the Moderna vaccine and they tested us for antibodies 4 weeks after the 2nd injection.

Texas COVID-19 Vaccination Plan

The link is to a 38 page pdf. It covers a broad range of vaccine availability scenarios.

It does have some good statistics / tables on the state of health of the Texas population, with 9.5MM people have underlying health conditions.

638K Healthcare Personnel

66K EMS

327K Acute Hospital Care Employees

138K Nursing Home Residence

3.9MM Adults 65+

Quote:

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Final decisions are being made about use of initially available supplies of COVID-19 vaccines. These decisions will be partially informed by the proven efficacy of the vaccines coming out of Phase 3 trials, but populations of focus for initial COVID-19 vaccination may include:

Healthcare personnel likely to be exposed to or treat people with COVID-19.

People at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19, including those with underlying medical conditions and people 65 years of age and older

Other vulnerable, frontline workers

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Quote:

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Phase 1: Potentially Limited COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Available

In the initial phase, or Phase 1, of the COVID-19 Vaccination Program, doses of vaccine will likely be
distributed in a limited manner, with the goal of maximizing vaccine acceptance and public health
protection while minimizing waste and inefficiency. Key considerations in planning for this phase are:

COVID-19 vaccine supply may be limited.

COVID-19 vaccine administration efforts must concentrate on the vulnerable and frontline
populations to achieve vaccination coverage in those groups.

Inventory, distribution, and any repositioning of vaccine will be closely monitored through
reporting to ensure end-to-end visibility of vaccine doses.

Texas will prioritize enrollment activities for vaccination providers and settings who will administer
COVID-19 vaccine to vulnerable and frontline populations of focus for Phase 1, and considering those
who live in remote, rural areas and who may have difficulty accessing vaccination services. Allocations
will be equitable among geography and facility types. Simultaneously, Texas will develop operational
procedures for any temporary or mobile clinics planned for Phase 2.

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If you want the economy back the fastest, Retail and food services should be right after front line health care workers (er, urgent care, emt/fire, nursing homes) and before old people in general.

One of the limitations on healthcare resources is all the people that are contracting coronavirus or having to quarantine due to exposure elsewhere. Imagine how much better shape we'd be in to handle large numbers of hospitalizations if we could keep these people working because they've been immunized.

Also, you're double dipping a bit.

Think of all the people working in food/retail/grocery who have pre existing conditions?

Duncan Idaho said:

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If you want the economy back the fastest, Retail and food services should be right after front line health care workers (er, urgent care, emt/fire, nursing homes) and before old people in general.

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Retail won't matter if there are no shoppers.

Why teachers? From what i have seen schools have been shown to not be big transmitters of the disease, why not give it to those who are actually in places where it is?

100 percent agree.

You are also helping in other areas.

People who work these jobs are typically unhealthy and don't have health care or at least good health care.

There folks can also be a strain on the health care system themselves, not including who they could infect as a result of their work.

They also can't afford to be without work, either sick or out due to contact tracing.

take the excuse to close schools away entirely

do we know if the vaccines are providing sterilizing immunity?

The vaccine in my opinion will be initially and mostly for the privileged people in the world living in 1st world countries. That reduces the number of "needed" vaccines by the millions. A sad but true truth. Plenty of people in Africa and India, etc will not have access to these vaccines so 1.3 billion seems like a reasonable amount for the ones who can even get it.

Part of that has to do with the cold chain

I had a good discussion about this with a couple of friends and we discussed a couple of questions about the rollout that haven't been brought up here. One would probably derail this conversation, so I'll share the other.

Do y'all think there will be an antibody test that precedes the actual administration of the first injection? We've seen charts showing the estimated number of unreported and/or asymptomatic carriers. With a finite amount, wouldn't it be worth the effort to weed those that have antibodies out?

Granted, you'll probably have a smaller number that didn't know they had antibodies in those more susceptible populations and many front line health care workers regularly test. But if you're looking a pool of retail, food services, teachers, police, and ultimately the general population, is that something you consider? Do you still vaccinate frontline workers that know they previously had the disease? I would think this would allow us to spread this valuable resource further.

Haven't the "frontline" healthcare workers (those regularly providing direct treatment to active COVID-19 patients) already all, or nearly all, been repeatedly exposed to the virus? Shouldn't they, as a group, have some of the highest naturally developed immunity levels of anyone?

I'd think a more logical course of action in that group would be to antibody test all of them before making them eligible for first in line vaccination.

I think it will be a moot point pretty quickly once manufacturing gets ramped up.

Just look at testing - a couple of months ago there was real concern about the number of tests available and no here we are with everybody getting tested whenever they feel like it.

I don't think distribution is going to be as big of a problem as some suspect.

cone said:

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they're relying on PPE and chance

and likely the most precious resource we have

they have to go first

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This is my point. The chances for most of these people of having been exposed repeatedly in spite of the best efforts with PPE have entered law of large numbers territory.

Duncan Idaho said:

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From an epidemiolical point of view, the value of a vaccine is reaching herd immunity through an artificial means.

Herd immunity is most effectively reached by lowering the R0. One of the most effective ways of doing that is by eliminating junction points between social bubbles.

Retail is one of the biggest of those.

The vaccination of an old person saves far fewer lives in the long run that the vaccination of a single kroger clerk that sees 100 old people a day.

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Could not agree more. Older more at risk in terms of death individuals are more likely not the individuals who stand to be spreaders. If we can vaccinate the "spreader population" first we will see the benefits of a vaccine much quicker and save way more lives in the long run.

My vote for who should receive the vaccines first:
1) The individuals who were in the control group of the vaccine trials (these people deserve it)
2) All Docs, Nurses, First Responders etc.
3) Working-age individuals in customer-facing industries.

I'm no expert, but that seems like the best bang for our buck in regard to the limited supply we will have.

SkiMo said:

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The vaccine in my opinion will be initially and mostly for the privileged people in the world living in 1st world countries. That reduces the number of "needed" vaccines by the millions. A sad but true truth. Plenty of people in Africa and India, etc will not have access to these vaccines so 1.3 billion seems like a reasonable amount for the ones who can even get it.

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While it is a sad truth. An even sadder truth and sort of silver lining are that due to the living and healthcare conditions in Africa and India their avg age in terms of population distribution, there aren't as many at-risk individuals in their populations. The median age of the African population is 20 verse North America of 39.

cone said:

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they're relying on PPE and chance

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Frankly the public is relying on non-ppe and chance. If anything the medical professionals have the facilities, money, training and tools to handle mitigation better than the rest of us. Could a vaccine in throughout the medical community lead to moral hazard whereby they reduce simple mitigation practices like washing hands , staying home when sick, and social distancing thus allowing an even greater spread of other hospital/healthcare-acquired infections (which already account for ~100k deaths per year)?

And not all health care workers are equal. Do radiologists and anesthesiologists get dibs over ER nurses and dental hygienists?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/health/biontech-vaccine-ugur-sahin-intl/index.html

Pfizer will seek EUA on Friday and distribution will being within 24hours of FDA's green light.

AgResearch said:

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https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/health/biontech-vaccine-ugur-sahin-intl/index.html

Pfizer will seek EUA on Friday and distribution will being within 24hours of FDA's green light.

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how long will it take for the FDA to review something that's been top line for 9 months?

surely it's all hands on deck 24/7 sleeping in the office kinda ****

The WHO approved the ebola vaccine in 48 hours. FDA took a month. No way they take that long on this.

normaleagle05 said:

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Haven't the "frontline" healthcare workers (those regularly providing direct treatment to active COVID-19 patients) already all, or nearly all, been repeatedly exposed to the virus? Shouldn't they, as a group, have some of the highest naturally developed immunity levels of anyone?

I'd think a more logical course of action in that group would be to antibody test all of them before making them eligible for first in line vaccination.

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Yeah, that's what I meant. The "smaller number" I meant was, there's probably a smaller number of people among those populations that didn't know they had the antibodies. They're tested more frequently, even if asymptomatic, so those would probably already know they previously had the virus (and therefore antibodies).

Edited my earlier post to make it less confusing.

They only people that need a vaccine are the at risk.

Remember 99.95% of the public doesn't need a vaccine.

Go to the vulnerable and health care people first.

sorry my dude

three weeks, ending on 12-10

Was that announced somewhere? Don't follow you mr cone head

yes

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine.html