We now have a one-dose vaccine that we are confident is reasonably effective on younger people while, as usual, being somewhat less confident that it is effective on older people. Moreover, not only does the J&J vaccine require only one dose, it has no fancy requirements for transporting it. Even more, reasoning by analogy with … Read more
As I write this more than the equivalent of a 9/11 catastrophe happened yesterday (12/10). It’s horrible and it’s going to get worse. The head of the CDC predicts this level of deaths for the next 60-90 days and even the conservative model used by the IHME says it is likely we will have more … Read more
Both the UK and the FDA have released enough information so that one can make a good bet on how the Pfizer vaccine worked. (See https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download for example). It makes for fascinating and informative reading. I am not competent to comment on the medical aspects described there other than to say that when I first … Read more
Efficacy in the 18-55 year old group much higher than expected! That augers well for seniors even without efficacy data. But we are a long way from home free. Issues to keep in mind: Only 25 million people (50 million doses/2) worldwide can be treated in the first few months. Only 500 million people worldwide … Read more
Another election, another massive screw up by the “best” pollsters in the business. Yes, excuses will be made about how margins of error are only 1/20 and while rare 1/20 events do happen occasionally (it’s roughly like getting two pair in a five card poker hand on your initial deal), they really don’t happen twice … Read more
You have been probably seeing a lot of polls lately. They all end by saying something like “we sampled 1,000 people and our margin of error is 3.8% or 4.5%” or some other weird percentage. I thought I would take some time to explain where this number comes from and what it means. I want … Read more
Herd immunity is all in the news but in many cases the news media is not really describing the concept clearly. While technically the concept of herd immunity derives from mathematical models of disease transmission, when you drill down, it is just generalizing common-sense thinking about disease transmission. Let’s start by imagining only one person … Read more
(Cross posted with Medium) The risk of both hospitalization and death from Covid 19 increase greatly with age. Approximately 80% of the deaths from Covid 19 are people over 65 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/older-adults.html). The unfortunate truth is that a vaccine that is proven highly effective for seniors is not likely for a very long time, unless we dramatically increase the number … Read more
As I’ve said before, the actuarial concept of “excess deaths” together with analyzing the numbers of excess deaths is the only way to figure out how many Americans have really died from Covid 19. The following, very interesting paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771841 begins the process. The paper is mathematically sophisticated but the tables are useful for all. … Read more
My last post was pretty much a downer but I have been thinking about it more and there is a way to fix the problem if we act quickly: enlarge the trials with more seniors no matter what the cost and difficulty to do so. More later.