The prevailing news about Covid-19 has been so bleak for so long. But the facts have changed – faster, perhaps, than the main news narratives have changed.
Vaccines are showing “spectacular” results, to use a recent phrase from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hospitalizations are declining. The variants are complicated, but “they just double the idea that we need to vaccinate people as soon as possible,” says Sanjay Gupta of CNN.
The new government is activating what it calls a “government-wide response”. Government experts speak freely with the press and the public. Conspiracy theories are no longer being retweeted by the president. Cautious optimism is justified on this point – with an emphasis on caution, of course, but without losing optimism.
Some observers have pointed to a disconnect between the data and the public discussion of the pandemic.
“For most of us, the best thing is to stop the apocalypse from rolling over detailed discussions of what falls in neutralizing antibody titles etc. mean from Twitter topics,” Zeynep Tufekci
wrote last week. “We have to face the harsh winter – take care of yourself – but the news about the future has been good for months.”
This news about the future is mainly about vaccine effectiveness.
David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote on Monday: “The news about vaccines remains excellent – and the public discussion about it remains more negative than the facts justify. Here is the key fact: all five vaccines with public results were eliminated deaths from Covid-19. They also drastically reduced hospitalizations. “
Sometimes, detailed clinical trial data obscures the big point, which is that vaccines are largely effective in preventing symptomatic diseases – “which means fewer hospitalizations and, subsequently, fewer deaths,” as the executive producer for CNN Health said. , Ben Tinker, on Wednesday night. “Additional preliminary data on the AstraZeneca vaccine – developed in conjunction with the University of Oxford – suggests that it may also be effective in preventing the transmission of the virus. This would be even more welcome news in the urgent effort to stem the tide of new ones. cases. “Each update just underscores the need to deliver more doses to more people as quickly as possible …
WH briefings three times a week
Technical difficulties affected the first briefing of the WH Covid-19 response team on January 27, but videoconferencing has been working well ever since. Covid-19 chief Jeff Zients Fauci, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and other employees held briefings last Friday and all three days of the week so far this week.
Zients said on Wednesday: “I hope that, in five briefings, we are beginning to set a standard for providing the American people with the facts they need about the crisis and our response, driven by our experts and scientists.”
Lockhart’s view
Quoting the new column from Clinton’s WH era press secretary, Joe Lockhart to CNN.com: “Something unusual is happening in Washington, DC: media briefings, and many of them. Actual live briefings, where the press can do questions to the government and spokespersons and senior officials really answer them. “Read …
Partisanship drives vaccination hesitation
Of course, the scale of the crisis is staggering. As Zients said, “vaccinating everyone in America is one of the biggest operational challenges we have ever faced and we will not stop working until this mission is completed”.
At the moment, the demand for the shot far exceeds the supply. But at some point there will be a gap between supply and demand. New research from Monmouth University found that 50% of Americans plan to “get the Covid vaccine as soon as it is allowed” and that 6% have already done so. (This last number is already out of date, as more than a million doses are being administered every day.) Monmouth found that “another 19% say they would prefer other people to receive it first to see how it goes,” and “24% say it is likely they will never get the vaccine if they can avoid it. “
>> “The reluctance to get the vaccine is motivated more by partisanship than by any single demographic factor,” commented the director of the research institute, Patrick Murray. “It says a lot about the depth of our party division that it could impact public health like this.”
>> Matt Gertz, senior member of Media Matters: “Steve Doocy should get the COVID vaccine live on the air.” He has other suggestions for Fox …
One death per minute?
As any “Rent” fan knows, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. There may also be so many deaths from Covid-19 in the United States by March. Newsletter reader H. Steven Moffic, MD, did this to me on Wednesday. His latest contribution to the Psychiatric Times is about measuring death per minute and “Covid-19 prolonged pain.”
>> According to CNN’s Ben Tinker, “a forecast published on Wednesday by the CDC now projects that there will be 496,000 to 534,000 deaths from coronavirus in the United States by February 27.”
>> On Wednesday, the death toll in the U.S. exceeded 450,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. The USA went from 400,000 to 450,000 deaths in a period of just 15 days. Since deaths are a lagging indicator, “the recent decline in hospitalizations gives us hope that the number of deaths is likely to start decreasing in the coming weeks,” Walensky said on Wednesday.
