COVID vaccine shortage

Sven

In New York, the country’s most populous city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city has vaccinated about 300,000 of its more than 8 million residents, but was on course to run dry next week because it was burning through vaccines faster than they were being replenished.

“We’ve been getting resupply right now at a very paltry level of about 100,000 doses a week,” de Blasio said on WNYC radio. “We went through 125,000 in the first four days of this week, and our numbers are increasing every day.”

De Blasio has said the city would be on track to meet its goal of vaccinating 1 million New Yorkers by the end of January if it is able to get supplies.

“If there’s no supply, we’re going to have to freeze the appointment system,” he said.

Also there is shortage of syringes and PPE for frontline workers. This points to utter failure to execute the Defense Production Act since March 2020. That is over 10 months ago!

https://reuters.com/article/idUSL1N2JQ1YT

LewisBraham

The shortages will be rectified I imagine within the next few months. What might be harder is to rectify people's psychologies so that everyone is willing to take the vaccine. My impression is this will only really work if something like 80% to 85% of the population is willing to get vaccinated.

Observant1

"President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., racing against a surge in coronavirus cases and the emergence of a new variant that could worsen the crisis, is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to the vaccine while using a wartime law to increase production."

"But the president-elect’s expansive vision is colliding with a sobering reality: With only two federally authorized vaccines, supplies will be scarce for the next several months, frustrating some state and local health officials who had hoped that the release of a federal stockpile of vaccine doses announced this week could alleviate that shortage."
Link

LewisBraham

Fair enough. My mistake. That makes a bad situation worse.

Sven

Yes. 80%+ vaccination of general population is required in order to achieve herd immunity as verified by Dr. Fauci.
https://cnn.com/videos/health/2020/12/27/fauci-coronavirus-herd-immunity-range-estimate-shift-intv-sotu-vpx.cnn

Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require a second booster given shot several weeks later. So the shortage may delay the second booster shots. In addition, the states need funds to hire enough personnel to deliver the shots. Retired doctors and nurses are requested to help out similar to UK last year.

Good news is that Joe Biden oversaw the development of the pandemic plan during the Obama administration. You are seeing him bringing in all the experienced people to help in launching this vaccination program. Also he is enacting the Defense Protection Plan to produce medical supplies. Can't believe there is a shortage of quality syringes. Ones they are using now cannot extract the last one or two dosage from the vial.

A third vaccine from AstoZeneca is coming online but it has not been approved by FDA.

Observant1

LewisBraham said:

The shortages will be rectified I imagine within the next few months. What might be harder is to rectify people's psychologies so that everyone is willing to take the vaccine. My impression is this will only really work if something like 80% to 85% of the population is willing to get vaccinated.

I agree that people's willingness to get vaccinated will be a major issue.
Here are some key findings from a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Link

"About a quarter (27%) of the public remains vaccine hesitant, saying they probably or definitely would not get a COVID-19 vaccine even if it were available for free and deemed safe by scientists. Vaccine hesitancy is highest among Republicans (42%), those ages 30-49 (36%), and rural residents (35%). Importantly, 35% of Black adults (a group that has borne a disproportionate burden of the pandemic) say they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated, as do one third of those who say they have been deemed essential workers (33%) and three in ten (29%) of those who work in a health care delivery setting."

We don't know with certainty what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated in order to attain herd immunity, but Dr. Fauci believes the range is 70% - 90%. Link

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Sven

Disinformation in social media is the root cause of not taking the vaccine. Let hope that Dr. Kessler who headed FDA in Clinton administration will instill more confidence on the doubters. The other is the past dark history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment that the government must owe up to their mistake.

It is quite remarkable that these COVID vaccines are developed in such short time frame. Using mRNA approach to target the DNA sequence of the spike protein will help to cover mutation of the virus. Traditionally vaccines take over 10 years to develop with less than 25% successful rate at Phase III trial testing.

Crash

And Salk, I understand, took no profit for being the one to develop his polio vaccine...