I get this view but to be honest if we don’t have widespread vaccine availability in May then this is all a bit moot. https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1356235716460765184

The only reason we will have to wait beyond April for widespread vaccines is that the FDA is run by domestic terrorists who like to watch people die in the thousands.

Approve
Every
Vaccine
With
Any
Trials
Anywhere

This is like back when people were like “THERES A MASK SHORTAGE!!” but there wasn’t a mask shortage there was just a “public health idiots not advising people about substitutes” situation.

It’s like when people still said travel bans were racist

It’s that, all over again.

And every time it’s inexcusable. The costs are obvious. The responsible authorities are acutely aware.

They don’t care!

What we need is to flood the country with every single vaccine we can possibly get our hands on. If some people get doubled up or are out of priority order, fine! Focus on just maximizing pace of production and administration.

Honestly that neither Trump nor Biden seem interested in just overruling the FDA and doing whatever they think best continues to be inexplicable to me. The country is not going to punish a president for a violation of statute that saves 250,000 lives.

Doing pandemic UI until September is probably a good idea and all

But folks there is absolutely no *rational* reason why we can’t have the adult population at 75% vaccinated by the end of April.

Here's how population immunity compares to herd immunity thresholds (crudely calculated) for each major variant, based on vaccination and prior exposure thus far, and early results of trials on each variant.

We are *seriously close* to beating old COVID. With a hard push on vaccines, we can hit that HIT by the end of March. And we should shoot for that.

Dealing with the new variants is a lot harder. But I'm hoping vaccines prove more effective than we expect.

Because if we don't get a booster approved soon and if the vaccines really are just 75% effective against new variants then we basically have to vaccinate every single soul in order to beat them and that.... will be hard.

The goal should be to vaccinate 200 million people by April. That is achievable.

CDC says we've done 25 million since December. We're now doing about a million 1st doses a day. That means 175 million first doses in 59 days, or 3 million first doses a day.

This.... is trivially easy to do. *EVERY* autumn, the US distributes flu vaccines at the pace of 2-3 million/day without anybody even noticing anything unusual.

With the motivation we have now, 6 million/day should be perfectly doable.

Seriously I don't even get how this seems unusual to people.

In a *normal* flu season we dose at a pace of 2-3 million/day like it's nothing, and then in the middle of a massive pandemic we pat ourselves on the back that we can vaccinate at.... 1/3 that pace?

When the weather warms up and we get a reprieve, here's what's going to happen:

The dam will burst, social distancing will end no matter what policymakers say, and the virus will rip through the population unrestrained.

Reasons:
1. About 25% of the population is already exposed and so has less motive to self-defend
2. A critical mass is immunized, and will also have less self-interested motive
3. Exposure/immunization is concentrated among very vulnerable people, reducing protective motives

People will do this mental calculation, and "normal" will return. And hundreds of thousands more will die unnecessarily. And the reason will be that experts in the government thought 1 million doses a day was pretty good.

This is all a roundabout way of saying....

Extended pandemic UI is fine and good sure yes do it.

But if we still need it then, we're screwed.

Everything needs to go into vaccinating people.

Once we have single dose vaccines available, we should be dosing people at shopping malls and restaurants and churches and truckstops: fan out and get shots in arms.

The whole "we really need to get vaccines into more doctor's offices."

No.

We need to remove the destructive power the health establishment has wielded over this whole process and just jab jab jab jab.

Setting summertime targets is surrendering to a huge amount of preventable death.

Kill it in the winter.

I mean look if we need to spend $500 billion to get 200 million people dosed by April, that is a very low price to pay for avoiding the alternative.

I just don't think people realize how nightmarish life with the new variants could become. The South African variant in particular would literally mean doing all of 2020 over again from scratch.

The South African variant will grow in prominence as selection factors favor varieties with reinfection potential, which means the more "old COVID" spreads NOW, the more the South African variety is likely to spread LATER.

I don't know how to explain to you all how awful that is. It's a viral variety which basically just hits you repeatedly while you're down.

But by strangling the life out of "old COVID" NOW, we reduce the population share with acquired resistance to "old COVID," and so reduce the selection pressure on the South African variety, and reduce the odds it becomes predominant.

Anyways.

I continue to think that the problem in the COVID response was framing it as "public health" rather than "war footing," and this is exhibit 397.

Also I'm sick and tired of "but muh cold storage"

Go to your kitchen

Set your freezer temperature to 0.

Put the vaccine in it.

Done.

Alternatively:

Go to your kitchen.

Set your refrigerator temperature to 40 degrees.

Put the vaccine in it.

Use it ***sometime within 30 days***.

Done.

That's for Moderna. It literally only requires temperature ranges you can achieve in almost any new-model residential refrigerator.

For Pfizer, there's an equally simple solution.

Go to Wal Mart.

Buy some of those big styrofoam coolers.

Buy some dry ice.

Put the dry ice in the cooler.

With a pocket knife, punch holes in the top of the cooler to vent.

Put the vaccines in the cooler.

Jab folks.

This isn't like some unfathomable science wizardry folks. The OOOOOONLY reason you need precise storage conditions is if you plan on vaccinating *slowly*.

But if you're instead, say, Wal Mart, and you just set up a booth outside saying, "Free vaccines here!" I guarantee you, you are not gonna need long-term storage.

The fact that people to this day seem to think that storing these vaccines is some kind of crazy complicated science project just shows the extent to which Scientism has replaced actual science knowledge.

Actual science knowledge means pharmacists go, "wait a second. my pharmacy doesn't have a freezer to store the Pfizer vaccine.... but dry ice is not that expensive. We can totally do this. Gimme like two hours and $30 and we've got a vaccinate freezer."

Unfortunately, regulations, liability, targeting and prioritization, completely limit the ability of people to actually apply science to solve the problem.

I know "3 million people dosed a day!" sounds crazy to people....

But here's actual people-dosed-per-day, and what it will look like if *all we do* is continue the current trend, vs. what I'm proposing we should do. It's not an unreasonable ask!

Here's those charts again, but this time showing the ***actual pace of flu vaccines***.

Right now, we are on pace for our COVID vaccination campaign to *underperform* the flu vaccination campaign.

I'm proposing that it is reasonable to demand that policymakers do *whatever is necessary* to achieve a moderate *overperformance*.

Whether that means approving on shorter timelines, getting it to retail and employer providers, or even **paying people** to get vaccinated, it needs to happen.

I still don't support *mandatory* vaccination without long-term trials, but I think offering incentives is fine.