COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

COVID-19 continues to rage in the USA.  Over the next 4 weeks, 92k Americans will die due to cases and hospitalizations already in the queue.

Effective vaccines are available to slow the spread but distribution bottlenecks will likely delay herd immunity for many months.  In the meantime, the government has changed its guidance today to permit people 65+ and those with pre-existing conditions to get the vaccine now to reduce hospitalizations and the overall case fatality rate (CFR = deaths/cases).  This makes lots of sense. 

The mRNA vaccines level the playing field for older Americans.  It probably doesn't reduce your chances of being infected by SARS-CoV-2, but if and when you do, you are more likely to be asymptomatic than without it.  That means you are more likely to survive the infection and your likelihood of dying from COVID-19 could decrease by roughly 95%.  This will reduce the extraordinary demand for hospital and health resources.  In fact, the CFR for all age groups could fall below 2%.  The strong caveat though is that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will remain highly contagious until 80% of the population is vaccinated and herd immunity is achieved.

Demand for vaccines will outstrip supply for months so I would recommend that everyone who qualifies sign up for the vaccine sooner rather than later and avoid the Florida fiasco.  Moreover, releasing vaccines reserved for second doses means that inventory and distribution management will have to be extremely well-tuned to avoid missing second doses at the recommended times.   This is a well-studied problem in business supply chain and inventory management.  However, given the government's track record to date, this will not be a slam-dunk.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Tale of Two Chinas and COVID-19

Image
SARS-CoV-2 is still ravaging the world 2.4 years after it first appeared in China.   For the first 2 years, many countries were vigilant in the defense of their people against the spread of COVID-19 but since early this year many countries have given up the fight assuming that with the wide availability of effective vaccines Omicron is mild enough to live with and too contagious to resist.   Taiwan and mainland China were both hit with the latest Omega subvariant BA.2 in March.  While China has continued with its zero-COVID policies, Taiwan gave up on its zero-COVID policy 4 weeks ago along with most other countries.  The results show how rapidly and explosively the virus can spread with few mitigations in place. Cases are growing exponentially in Taiwan with 17k new cases reported yesterday while China reported 7.4k.  If China had dropped its zero-COVID policy a month ago, it could have reported 1M new cases yesterday (scaling u
Read more

Could Florida be the Next Epicenter in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Image
Florida Governor DeSantis has failed to recognize the seriousness of the exploding Covid-19 Pandemic in Florida.   His slow response and poor judgment have already cost many Floridians their lives and may cost many thousands more if he fails to act now.   State Infections/M Infections Deaths Mortality Mortality Coincident Lagged5 NY            2,361 45934 604 1.3% 3.6% NJ               994 8825 108 1.2% 5.1% LA               591 2746 119 4.3% 12.7% WA               486 3700 175 4.7% 8.8% MA               466 3240 35 1.1% 5.1% MI               366 3657 92 2.5% 8.4% CT               362 1291 27 2.1% 8.2% CO                  301 1734 31 1.8% 5.3% IL       
Read more

US Gives Up Controlling the Pandemic

Image
The US government's response to the novel coronavirus has been poor from day one.  And now Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff says the federal government has given up trying to control the Pandemic .  This admission of defeat is highly irresponsible and borders on the criminal.  Governments are elected to serve and protect the people and when they fail to do their number one job, they should be voted out.   The President and his national security advisors knew in early January, and the President  understood the seriousness of the novel coronavirus by late January – way before the public or other government officials knew.  (1)   Even if he did not want to panic the public, he should have convened a meeting of federal officials, governors, and top local officials secretly and warned them about the coming crisis.   A Manhattan Project for the Pandemic should have been set up in January to help the USA deal with this crisis.   He downplayed the virus.   (2)   The Pres
Read more