Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

“Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.

Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.

The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.

“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.

He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.”

Reuters

Google tells me there is a more common usage for this term but I am appropriating it to describe the tables below.

“That’s what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting as it tracks vaccinations for COVID-19 state by state. The entire nation is behind pace, due in part to the failures of the previous presidential administration to take virtually anything related to the coronavirus pandemic seriously. But Missouri, as of Sunday, is last, with just 3.6% of its population having received the first shot of the life-saving vaccine.”

“Unfortunately, being last in public health is nothing new in Missouri. It’s been that way for a long time. The average state spends $33.50 per person for various public health measures. Missouri, dead last in the nation, spends $6 per person, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“If you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway. But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though.”

— Derek Lowe (In The Pipeline)

Interesting “vaccine tool” from the New York Times.

“Based on (my) risk profile, we believe you’re in line behind 118.5 million people across the United States. When it comes to Missouri, we think you’re behind 2.4 million others who are at higher risk in your state. And in Cole County, you’re behind 31,000 others. If the line in Missouri was represented by about 100 people, this is where you’d be standing:”

Journalist and novelist Molly Jong-Fast calls herself “a pandemic-shutdown champion.”

I sit in my apartment day after day, week after week, focused on getting through the next few hours and not allowing myself to worry too much about, or even think too much about, the future. For this superpower, I have to thank Alcoholics Anonymous.

An older fellow in one of her AA meetings used to say he lived “in a day-tight compartment.” He only concerned himself with the activities in the current 24 hours. Back in March the author had to quarantine for two weeks but didn’t think of it as two weeks:

I thought of it as one day and then another day and another. The two weeks passed, but the pandemic did not. So I continued to live “in a day-tight compartment.” I still do. Every night at 8 p.m., I attend my Zoom AA meeting. Every morning, I think, Today I won’t drink and Today I’ll stay home and not contract the coronavirus.

Ms. Jong-Fast says she’s as obsessed with getting back to normal as everyone else is…

“…but I try not to worry about when that will be possible. I’ll lose it if I think in terms of hanging on until there’s a vaccine. Some people may find it helpful to tell themselves, It’s not forever. It’s just a few months. In my experience, though, when there’s no firm deadline for the end of an ordeal—and no one really knows when the pandemic will end—it’s better to focus on getting through the day. Life isn’t lived two weeks from now, or two months from now. Life exists in the moment and nowhere else.”

She knows this winter will be “one of the hardest, saddest winters of (her) lifetime. We all know it.”

“But it’s not winter 2020; we don’t live in winter 2020 until we do. All any of us have is right now. The only time we can possibly occupy is this moment of this day, and today I can drink my coffee, not my vodka, try to get my teenagers to talk to me, and do the next right thing.”

“If a vaccine against coronavirus becomes available to the public, 49% say they plan to get vaccinated, and 20% say they will not. Another 31% are not sure.”

— Associated Press