(2021-10-07) Zvi M Covid1007 Steady As She Goes

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 10/07: Steady as She Goes. For the second week in a row little has changed.

Executive Summary
Merck has a new anti-viral pill that’s promising but not a full solution.
Cases continue to decline.

The Numbers

Vaccinations

There’s been a clear uptick in vaccinations, presumably due to mandates having an effect, but it’s also possible a lot of this is disguised booster shots.

Johnson & Johnson gives data overwhelmingly supporting booster shots, files for boosters. Those boosters remain technically forbidden

Vaccine Effectiveness

New study out of the United States shows immunity to infection (but not hospitalization or death) waning over time

Even if we take the result at face value, one must presume that most of these new infections are quite mild (since they result in essentially zero hospitalizations) and probably not that infectious, which is how the math is then able to work out.

Vaccine Mandates

In Other News

It’s a sad state indeed that the CDC is not worthy of our trust, but it is less sad, given that, that we no longer trust it. We’re less likely to make mistakes as a result, and more likely to do more sensible things, and perhaps more likely to fix the problem. (2021-10-02) Gelman I Can't Quite Say I'm Shocked That People Aren't More Shocked About Harvard And The CDC