- Remained high levels of vaccine hesitancy
- New variants that may lower vaccine efficacy
- Rollout of the J&J vaccine (efficacy ~70%)
- Delayed arrival of the children vaccine
The recent focus on reaching herd immunity through vaccination may be overblown.
My modeling suggests that it is increasingly unlikely that the US will reach the immunity levels required for theoretical herd immunity in 2021.
https://t.co/7jDgND5vE1
(A 🧵 w/ my thoughts)
- Remained high levels of vaccine hesitancy
- New variants that may lower vaccine efficacy
- Rollout of the J&J vaccine (efficacy ~70%)
- Delayed arrival of the children vaccine
Our goal should not be to reach "herd immunity", but to reduce COVID-19 deaths & hospitalizations so that life can return to normal.
But now the messaging has shifted to "getting at least X% of the population vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity".
It seems to ignore the fact that:
1) Vaccines do not provide 100% immunity
2) Nor do they stop 100% of transmissions
3) ~30% of population have already been infected
Even better, I hope we can move away from those discussions & focus on more urgent issues, like how low should hospitalizations/deaths be before restrictions can be relaxed?
Instead, we should encourage vaccinations as a path to a return to normal.
I like to believe that we've learned from the mask debacle.
https://t.co/OK3NHwCVyW
It appears that the US will likely have 600+ million doses by the summer, more than enough for every adult.
— Youyang Gu (@youyanggu) February 5, 2021
If the vaccine can effectively eliminate severe illnesses, as the article suggests, why do we need to wait until "end of 2021" to resume pre-pandemic lives?
https://t.co/8ZRQpBXrm8
Here's a great piece by @sarahzhang that discusses the increasingly likely scenario that we may not reach herd immunity:
https://t.co/CJmPFdqSiM
More from Society
It is simply not correct to point fingers at wind & solar energy as we try to understand the situation in TX. The system (almost) had a plan for weather (almost) like this. 1/x
It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x
There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x
Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x
It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x
Conservatives are using the Texas power chaos to argue against climate policy even as fossil-generated power outages dwarf the amount of renewables knocked offline during the historic deep freeze. President Biden and progressives have been slow to respond.https://t.co/UajKhptEAU
— E&E News (@EENewsUpdates) February 17, 2021
It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x
There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x
Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x
It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x
