covid

J&J Vaccine Halted, Statistics Don’t Agree

One of the difficulties with any public health situation is that you have to weigh the costs and benefits of treatment. When it comes to the J&J vaccine, the statistics don’t support a stoppage.

So far, there have been 6 blood clots, including one blood clot related death with almost 7 million doses given. That means if you vaccinated the entire U.S. there would be approximately 300 blood clots and 50 deaths. So far over 500,000 people have died from Covid.

Even if the true rate was 20 times higher, the statistics would say it is far better for the population to vaccinate. This isn’t even counting other COVID related issues or side effects from a continued shutdown.

While some may argue, well we have Pfizer and Moderna, there are three things to consider:

  • J&J shot gives its full response in 2 weeks, not 6.
  • Many people are likely to skip the second dose of Pfizer or Moderna. J&J is one shot.
  • J&J is easy to distribute since it doesn’t need super cold storage.

I obviously feel for the families and individual affected, but the math doesn’t support stopping vaccinations now.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago

Let’s get (Is)rael about the US COVID Surge

Many in the media are pushing the idea that the US is having another surge in COVID cases. There is no real surge and this is just a pause. How do we know? Let’s look at Israel’s data, who is a few weeks ahead of us in the vaccine game.

You can clearly see the plateau Israel hit for a couple weeks as the vaccine was taking hold and things started to reopen. We are currently in that stage. There is no real surge here in the U.S. Here’s our case data:

you can see we are more in a pause than a surge. But just give it time because vaccines are surging.

171 million strong and growing (cue the Flintstones vitamin commercials).

Bottom line: Cases will start to decline again soon and we’ll be parting in 1919.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago