If you're in your mid 30's, that means I have at least 10 years on you and my quality of life is certainly no worse than it was in my 20's or 30's...except I go to bed at a more reasonable hour. No reason if you're healthy now, take care of yourself and have the genetics that you shouldn't have another 25-30 years of good quality of life.

I think my 50s and 60s were my best 2 decades by far. I didn't have to work, was healthy and financially comfortable. It was good times.

My work was interesting and challenging but frankly I love getting up in the morning knowing I can do anything I want all day long (including staying in bed as late as I want). And having the time to travel anywhere, anytime although I pretty much got traveling out of my system during my working years.

More evidence that it's a tragedy the monoclonal antibody "cocktails" aren't being used more. With these drugs and the vaccine, it should be rare to end up like those early patients in an ICU on a ventilator. It should be uncommon to even need hospitalization.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-1...d=hp_lead_pos2

The difference in cases/100k between SF & Detroit highlights the importance of masks and social distancing even more than the vaccine. Presumably many Detroiters like San Franciscans have been vaccinated, but such a stark difference means masking in public is just as important.

^
What’s your point about masks? You think people in Detroit aren’t wearing masks? I assure you they are, I was just there a couple of weeks ago. If anything it shows that masks are largely pointless. Otherwise in the whole country, cities would have less cases per 100k as everyone in cities are made to wear masks, while in small towns outside of cities, lot of people don’t wear masks when inside businesses.

^ Actually, the overwhelming majority of young people have had nothing of the sort. This is just selection bias.

Reality is, most of our major viral upper respiratory illnesses that folks likely never paid attention to caused chronic disease in a small subset of people, it's just that everybody is now tuned into COVID and attribute to it characteristics that many incorrectly believe are unique, I'm guessing because most average people are hearing about these things for the first time.

There is no disease out there in recent memory that gets a daily case & tally, daily headline news, daily reports of every single side effect and death, daily updates on this, that, and the other thing. If you did that with other communicable diseases prior to March 2020 you probably would've been scared shitless to leave your home.

Now, I'm not downplaying how deadly this disease is/was. But we need to focus on WHAT made this deadly, and to not give COVID mysterious & magical powers. It was deadly because 1) it's HIGHLY contagious, and 2) it is particularly lethal to the elderly and people with health conditions. That's it. There is really nothing else unusual or peculiar about this virus.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/recent-...=hp_lead_pos13

Presumaby even 30-somethings who believe themselves extremely healthy are potentially at risk if they engage in risky behavior and aten’t vaccinated.

I'm almost certain that San Francisco has a higher vaccination rate than Detroit. SF County has an overall vaccination rate of 30% vs 18% in Wayne County, MI. The vax rate for the city of Detroit might even be below the county's, particularly for the under 65 population. The current outbreak in MI is skewed much younger than the previous waves.

I doubt there is much difference in mask usage in Detroit and SF. I think it has more to do with what MI has allowed to reopen/resume, particularly in the past two months. Indoor high school sports is believed to have been a major source of spread in MI, for instance.

^^
Down here in Brazil, for the first time since the beginning of the pandemics, people below 40 y/o are now over 50% of the patients on ICUs.

That's big deal, specially as the second wave is much bigger than the first one, with a 7 day-moving average of 3,100 deaths as yesterday, and above 1,000 for the past 85 days as opposed a 1,000 7 day-moving average of the first wave, that lasted "only" 32 days.

As I said originally, these tremendous differences between certain cities are puzzling. I’m not sure it says much about masks one way or the other. Part of the issue is that testing shows that about 1% of people test positive in SF vs. 13% in Detroit. That would seem to mean in one’s daily activities one is 13 times as likely to be exposed to someone who is infectious. Even if masks cut the risk substantially, it’s likely not enough.

But the real question is how and why things got this way and how/why, for example, Los Angeles had a similar outbreak a few months ago but now doesn’t.

Sure, if you define at risk as having a 0.1% chance (if that) of a seriously bad reaction. People take more risks than this on a daily basis.

I don’t disagree with any of this. But that’s why I want to enjoy it now, so that I haven’t lost the opportunity forever if in 10 or 20 years I am in poor health for some reason and life sucks.

Yep

Don’t these antibody treatments generally need to be administered in a hospital (or at least outpatient clinic) setting?

I have not spoken to clinicians about it but would expect the problem is partly that people don’t seek medical attention until it’s too late. You’d need to administer mAbs almost as a preventative measure, after exposure or a positive test but before the onset of serious symptoms, and then cost/benefit becomes a consideration.

The monoclonal antibody “cocktails” are infused I.V. and carry a bit more risk than vaccines because they are foreign proteins (i.e. potential antigens). But it’s not that different than outpatient cancer chemotherapy infusions for which we have “infusion centers” all over the U.S., usually in the outpatient departments of hospitals. And that’s the approach being taken some places with these COVID drugs. In Tucson, for example, Tucson Medical Center has set up an “infusion center” just for these drugs.

Although the research I posted just above is about using them preventatively in people having high risk of exposure (specifically, a family member with COVID), their first use was in people mildly sick but at high risk (obesity, high blood presdure . . . You know the list) for severe disease and in those cases they need to be given within 10 days of onset of symptoms (really the earlier the better).

The problem as I see it is first that many ERs just don’t want to be bothered taking up space with somebody laying around getting an IV infusion for a couple of hours so they don’t actively encourage that option. Second, if there’s an infusion center available, it may mean leaving the ER and driving to another location which may be some distance. The typical patient feels ill but not terribly ill (or they’d have been hospitalized). They just want to go home. So they are reluctant to go get the infusion. It’s too inconvenient but once they do begin to feel sick enough to be motivated it’s too late.

the antibody therapy also prevents you for getting the vaccine for a while, right?

I think so. It was on the questionnaire to evaluate eligibility.

yeah, although I don't know what happens if you say yes... lol.

In regards to LA, I really think the post holiday surges were due to people getting together in large groups for the holidays. There were COVID spikes after Thanksgiving and X-mas. LA County is the most populous county in the US after all, and plenty of transplants live here, and many traveled during the holidays and came back. And I'm sure a lot of mensos in SoCal got together in large family/friend gatherings.

Anecdotally, 2 people at my job caught COVID (that we know of), but both about a month apart. One of them talked to me and told me that he knows he got it over Thanksgiving, because he and his family and his in-laws all gathered at one house, and they all ended up getting it (most of the adults did, including his parents and his wife's parents, and some of his siblings). The other guy got it after X-mas, and yeah, he also went to a large family gathering. Maybe not coincidentally, both of them live outside of LA County, where people were less apt to wear their masks, and where in the beginning of the pandemic, they were less strict about the mask requirements---or didn't even have the mask requirements until it became a statewide thing or until their own numbers started surging.

Makes sense. If you have exogenous antibodies floating around they are going to take out the vaccine antigens so they can’t do their job of stimulating the immune system. But remember—the first use is somebody who already has COVID so they aren’t vaccine candidates anyway. And the new use is somebody with daily intimate exposure so at very high risk of getting it before any vaccine could work (typically weeks after the first shot).

From the Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles County’s daily coronavirus cases continue to decline, as transmissions appear to slow

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...tier-01.FO.jpg
Jasmine Aguilar and Adam Ziegenhals, both of Echo Park, have drinks at the Ham and Eggs bar in Los Angeles. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

By ALEX WIGGLESWORTH, RONG-GONG LIN II
APRIL 11, 2021 3:13 PM PT

Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday recorded 546 new cases of the coronavirus and 10 related deaths amid signs viral transmission was continuing to decrease.

Both numbers are an undercount because there are reporting delays on weekends, officials said. Still, they welcomed the encouraging trend of declining case rates, hospitalizations and deaths.

There were 470 COVID-19 patients in L.A. County hospitals as of Saturday, a drop of nearly 28% from two weeks before, when there were 647, officials said.

Statewide, there were 1,799 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, a decline of about 22% from two weeks before.

California has also observed a dramatic slowing of the average number of deaths being reported daily. In recent days, California has reported an average of 105 to 120 COVID-19 deaths a day — the lowest such number reported since the autumn-and-winter wave began. At its worst, in late January, California was recording as many as 562 deaths a day, on average, over a seven-day period.

On Saturday, the state reached the latest milestone when the COVID-19 death toll exceeded 60,000, according to a Times tally of fatalities reported by county.

The death toll represents roughly 10.7% of COVID-19 deaths nationwide. California is home to about 12% of Americans.

The pandemic’s effect statewide has varied by region. Of California’s most populous regions, Los Angeles County has fared the worst. For every 100,000 residents, L.A. County has recorded 232 deaths; if L.A. County were a state, it would have the seventh-highest death rate.

The San Francisco Bay Area has fared far better; for every 100,000 residents, the Bay Area has recorded 79 deaths. If the nine-county Bay Area were a state, it would have the 45th-highest cumulative COVID-19 death rate in the nation of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The signs of progress came as the state prepared to dramatically expand the pool of people eligible to be vaccinated against the virus. The state will on Thursday formally open vaccinations to all residents 16 and older. Currently, the statewide criteria say that only people 50 and older, those with underlying health conditions, and workers in certain specified essential job sectors are eligible for the vaccine.

Many local jurisdictions have moved faster than the state.

The city of Los Angeles opened vaccine appointments to everyone 16 and older on Saturday. People who are seeking shots at city-run vaccination sites must provide valid identification and be a resident of Los Angeles County. City-run sites are open from Tuesday through Saturday.

Los Angeles County, overall, expects to receive about 323,000 doses of vaccine this week, a decrease of about 74,000 doses from last week due to reduced supply of Johnson & Johnson vaccine, public health officials said Sunday. Seventy percent of the doses are slated for sites in vulnerable communities, and 57% are needed for second-dose appointments, according to authorities.

Federal partners also send vaccine directly to some sites in the county, including pharmacies, health clinics and FEMA sites. When accounting for those doses, L.A. County vaccination sites were able to dole out about 700,000 doses last week, and hope to administer slightly over 500,000 this week, according to the public health department.

Meanwhile, Orange County health officials on Sunday reported 196 new coronavirus cases and eight additional deaths.

Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ses-and-deaths

I think that's a very unfortunate trend. I'm a Californian but I got my shots in Tucson at Tucson Medical Center, no questions asked about residency. California provides all sorts of benefits even to illegal immigrants (there is even discussion of making up with a state benefit for their lack of eligibility for federal COVID "stimulus" checks). It sounds to me like you can be an illegal resident in LA County and get vaccinated but not an Arizonan temporarily living in the county.

I think all vaccination sites should vaccinate all comers who meet age/occupational criteria. If they are there, they are potentially local spreaders of the disease and users of local medical resources should they get sick.

Let's recall, the federal government is paying for these vaccines for everyone which is why everywhere they are free.

well, i didn't say that it affects an overwhelming majority. i said a substantial number:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/...-2020100821133

Etcetera.

i realize that COVID is not Ebola, but its ease of contagion is precisely why it's so much more dangerous than other common viral infections. and i didn't say that developing chronic illness was unique to COVID. but even if the likelihood of chronic illness, once contracted, is the same or even lower than it is for other viruses, it's simple statistics to deduce that if significantly more people contract COVID, and each of those persons has the same or even a slightly lower chance of developing a related chronic illness, then the raw number of people developing COVID-related chronic illnesses will be higher than for other common viral infections like the flu.

well, Chicago gets its own allocation separate from the state, and suburbanites were gobbling up appointments in the city (some of course were also vaccinated as employees of city hospitals and such). The problem is that most suburbanites have cars and can easily drive to the city, but a lot of people in the city don't have cars and can't easily make it to a suburban site.

Yup, I could have predicted this:

https://notthebee.com/article/40-of-...nt-the-vaccine

Young, stupid, immortal, low-information and testosterone-saturated.

The vaccines were not developed quickly. They were either made by very traditional methods or, in the case of the m-RNA ones, based on a decade of previous research. The discussion of long term effects is a red herring: There's no scientific basis for any long term effects from the vaccine you wouldn't get in spades from COVID infection. Most such effects would likely be auto-immune: That is, parts of both the vaccine antigen and the virus are similar enough to human proteins that the antibodies you make against the one also attack the other. So if you want to avoid the vaccine and take your chances with the virus, I suppose you can go ahead. What I really don't understand is the military making this voluntary. It affects readiness. Nothing else that effects readiness is voluntary including other shots.

We are all becoming pussies (especially the Marines).

Ped (former Regimental Surgeon, 12th Marines).

I thought the same thing--it could be about how the vaccines are allocated. It's entirely possible that LA County is being issued only enough vaccinations for its 10 million residents. Considering there are another 8 million residents of the greater metropolis, it would be problematic for proper allocation if there was an unexpected surge in demand for vaccines in one part of the region and a bunch of unused vaccines in another.

The only reason I can think of that it's voluntary for now for the military is that they want to wait until supply is less constrained. But given that soldiers often live in congregate housing, it seems completely insane...

If I were a suburbanite and got COVID, I'd quickly make that drive to one of the country's best hospitals in Chicago--U. of Chicago, Rush etc--and take up a bed that could have gone to a city resident. So there's no percentage for city residents in keeping the vaccines from those suburbanites IMHO.

Besides, this time of year Arizona is full of Chicagoans. My next door neighbor is one such. And they are getting shots in Arizona. We are all one country. County by county selfishness is stupid.

These requirements aren’t really enforced.

When you make an appointment in Florida, it says you must be resident or seasonally resident and provide a driver’s license or other government issued ID. But in the confirmation email, it says that patients who are “unable or unwilling” to provide such ID will not be turned away from receiving the vaccine.

They want to dissuade overt vaccine tourism but it’s toothless. I’ve been here since early Feb so I’m getting it here. If you’re at your house in AZ you should be able to get it there. The number of people who would be willing and able to get on a plane just to get the vaccine is irrelevantly small anyway.

For every non-LA resident getting a shot in LA, there's likely an LA resident getting one somewhere else. What goes around comes around. Silliness.

Well, it's still much harder to find a vaccine in the city than outside the city, even with the restrictions. Part of it may indeed be that more of the doses are gobbled up by institutions. I got vaccinated through work at UChicago, which is not checking that we're Chicago residents (though most of us are).

the thing with lokum aka turkish delight is you have to get it fresh and the only way to do that is in turkey. it's a different treat altogether when its fresh. :tup:

Chicago is allocated a certain amount of vaccines from the Federal government based on population. 1/3 of Chicago's vaccines so far have gone to non residents of Chicago.

It is near impossible to get a vaccine in Chicago. I would have to go to the suburbs and rent a car I guess. A large percentage of Chicagoans don't own a car. Lakeview where I live is 60%.

With regards to vaccine hesitancy. I'll be the get one the second I can. But I do admit I'm not surprised there is so much vaccine hesitancy in the US. We were lied to about everything last year.

I think you're misinterpreting the quote in the article. At least the way *I* interpret it, "The city of Los Angeles opened vaccine appointments to everyone 16 and older on Saturday. People who are seeking shots at city-run vaccination sites must provide valid identification and be a resident of Los Angeles County."

But, any resident of any county can get their vaccinations wherever else they can get them. On April 1st, when California opened up vaccines to residents 50 and older, when I made appointments for myself and my partner online through CVS (not an LA City-run vaccination site), we couldn't choose which CVS was available, each time I refreshed, using our ZIP code and my parents' ZIP code, different CVS locations popped up, or none popped up. I had to keep refreshing, and you can only book one person at a time. So, for my partner, he ended up getting an appointment at a CVS in Monterey Park (in the SGV), and I ended up getting an appointment at a CVS in Buena Park, which is in northern Orange County. We ended up both skipping work and making a day of it, because his appointment was before noon, and mine was around dinnertime. So yes, even though I'm an LA County resident, the CVS I went to for my vaccine was in Orange County. Our appointments for the 1st shot were last Monday, and we'll both get our 2nd doses on May 4th, and at the same separate CVS locations.

Incidentally, there's currently a federally-run vaccination site on the campus of Cal State LA.

Oh totally. Or, if it's homemade, and you eat it within a number of days. Obviously, it's not the same when mass-produced by the British arm of Cadbury. :yuck: :haha:

If you already qualify (via employment, age or medical condition), I recommend you set up autorefresh on the Chicago zocdoc site. That's how I snagged an appointment for my wife at Rush.

I've also heard that there's a vaccination site in Gary that is easy to find appointments for. Unfortunately it's 2.5 miles away from the Gary South Shore Line stop, but if you have a bike it might be a reasonable option (commuter rail is pretty safe since the conductors do an alright job of enforcing mask usage, although I don't know if that's the case on the SSL since it's Indiana...)

Thanks for the info! But I don't qualify for the conditions - work, age, and no health conditions, set in Chicago until April 19. But the rest of Cook county is open and so is the rest of the state as of today. The reason Chicago isn't now is because of the vaccine allotment given to Chicago and it being all used up.

What knucklehead came up with these stupid allotments?

The largest, most densely populated city in the state by an order of magnitude? What the hell, let's short 'em.

Meanwhile, if you're willing to drive down to effing effingham, they apparently have enough surplus vax to throw it around like tootsie rolls at a parade.

The allotments are generally to the state, which is supposed to further distribute them, with a small amount being shipped directly to federally run vaccination sites. As of today, Illinois has injected "only" 80.9% of its allotted doses (which is actually about average for the states): Source = https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...-distribution/

In CA, those federally run vaccination sites are in the major urban areas--LA and the Bay Area. I don't know about Chicago but I'd bet there is or has been one there.

If Chicago is out of vaccine while other parts of the state are not, target the blame at Springfield (that's the state capital as I best recall). Somewhere in Illinois is almost 20% of the state's allotted doses. But they may be being reserved as second doses for people who've already received the first dose. Unlike the UK, for example, which decided back in December to give as many people as possible one dose before cycling back with second doses even if that means those second doses will come months after the first, in the US we are trying to give second doses on the same schedule as the manufacturers tested them and got them approved (a 3-week interval for Pfizer, 4 weeks for Moderna). As a result, while the UK has given one dose to 48.2% of its people, only 11.5% have gotten the second dose and are therefore considered "fully vaccinated" while in the US 36.4% have gotten at least 1 dose but 22.3% are considered "fully vaccinated" because they've also gotten the second dose (same source as above = Bloomberg).

PS: I bet the stories you hear about surplus vaccine in this or that far flung part of the state are largely fiction though there's bound to be some unevenness in the availability. Again, in CA there's an intentional effort by the state to target extra vaccine to the lowest income zip codes in the state which meant the Bay Area didn't get as much as places in the Central Valley or the poorer stretches of Southern California and that caused some hard feelings. But it's all in what you consider fairness. Generally, the wealthier areas are finding a way to get vaccinated in higher percentages anyway.

And finally, we are being assured by the feds (Biden Administration) that in another month or so there'll be plenty of vaccine everywhere. Then according to Tony Blanken, we'll be handing it out to Mexico and Canada (if they still need it).

Please recall, if I may delicately mention it without talking politics, that during the previous administration there was a constant refrain that what we needed was federal coordination. That in fact is what we have over the vaccine supply, at least as far as how much goes to each state, and what we've always had.

I think over the last year people have simplified every single situation.

I keep pointing this out because it is important:

Arkansas currently has the lowest amount of cases per 100k yet has pretty much been open since May and has had zero restrictions in the last month to include no mask mandate. Schools are even dropping mask mandates.

Mitigations are not some Golden Bullet that stops this.

As of this morning, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi have the least amount of cases per 100k ( 6, 6, 7 respectively).

Michigan, New Jersey, and Minnesota have the most (73, 42, 42).

The whole "mitigations are the issue!" is not true. It simply isn't. Real-world data is showing that.

Top three states fully vaccinated: New Mexico, South Dakota, Alaska (29%, 28, 27).

Lowest fully-vaccinated states: Georgia, Alabama, Utah (19%, 21, 22).


Alabama certainly bucks conventional wisdom when it comes to Covid; very lower percentage of people vaccinated, very little mitigations (they may be lifted right now but that wouldn't show up in the numbers yet) and yet very few cases.

That's because "cases" are EXTREMELY dependent on how much a given state is testing.

covid deaths give a much clearer picture of the extent of an outbreak in a given area.



Alabama doesn't test. It has the 4th LOWEST testing rate in the nation.

Yet it has is the 10th HIGHEST covid death rate in the nation.



If you don't test your population, you're not gonna find much covid.

but if the people are still dying at higher than average rates, then you've got a lot of covid going around,

it just ain't being discovered at the same rate it is in other places that are all-in on testing.

Over the last 7 days Alabama is at #19 for deaths.

Its also #24 for hospitalizations over the last 28 days.

Nobody should be using Alabama's COVID response as a standard for anything. It has been an absolute joke.

Alabama currently has the 10th highest COVID mortality rate per capita of any state, but this is based on deaths that the state itself reports as COVID. If Alabama reported COVID deaths like New York, it would have double the number of deaths from COVID, and the state's COVID per capita rate would be almost double New York's. New York currently has the second highest COVID fatalities per capita in the country.

Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi are also among the least dense states and literally at the bottom in terms of visitors. So wayyyy less COVID coming in (than say CA or NY) and less COVID being spread due to being rural. Essentially, they function as islands, so not surprising they might have cases/deaths as low as say Hawaii or Alaska.

Actually, in spite of that Arkansas and Alabama are 10th and 13th in terms of most cases per capita. And 10th and 16th in terms of deaths per capita. Mississippi is 5th. Hawaii is 50th and 50th, respectively. So despite being functional "islands", they're not doing so hot.

Yeah, we shouldn't be talking about population density in terms of COVID susceptibility anymore. That should've never been brought into the conversation. It was extremely damaging in how people perceived the threat.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Are herd immunity and the California coronavirus variant preventing a West Coast spring surge?

By RONG-GONG LIN IISTAFF WRITER
APRIL 12, 2021 UPDATED 2:18 PM PT

With coronavirus cases and related hospitalizations climbing nationwide, is California also headed for a fourth wave in the COVID-19 pandemic?

Coronavirus cases have risen in the Midwest, New England and the New York area, and there’s concern that Los Angeles County could be — as it has been in the past — only a few weeks behind trends coming out of New York. In the last week, average daily coronavirus cases nationally are up 3% over the previous week and daily COVID-19 hospital admissions are up 7%.

But so far, California remains in good shape, relatively speaking. California had one of the lowest average daily coronavirus case rates in the nation over the most recent seven-day period, while Michigan’s case rate — the worst in the nation — was 12 times higher than California’s, placing growing strain on hospitals there.

One factor that may be helping California — for reasons not fully understood — is the presence of the California variant. The California variant here might be helping to keep a lid on the U.K. variant, which is believed to be more transmissible than the conventional strains of the coronavirus and likely results in more severe illness and, as a result, a greater chance of death.

Here are some reasons why Michigan might be doing so badly while California — so far — seems to be doing far better.

The U.K. strain is dominating the Midwest outbreak

Michigan’s current wave has become nearly as intense as at the height of the state’s winter surge, said Dr. George Rutherford, a UC San Francisco epidemiologist, at a recent campus forum. Michigan’s recent wave was spurred on by youth athletic events, including large outbreaks involving hockey teams, Rutherford said. Minnesota is also seeing a cluster of new cases.

A big factor in the Midwest surge is the presence of the U.K. variant, which now accounts for about 70% of Michigan’s and Minnesota’s new coronavirus cases, Rutherford said. Michigan is now seeing its hospitals under pressure from surges of patients, and some hospitals in the state are canceling nonemergency procedures and enacting pandemic surge plans, the Detroit Free Press reported.

One bright side, however, is that the cluster in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut seems to be “starting to turn the corner a little bit,” Rutherford said.

An outstanding question is whether the surge in COVID-19 in the neighboring Canadian province of Ontario is affecting the surge in cases in the Midwest and Northeast, Rutherford said. “The borders are closed, [so] I’m not quite sure what that all means. But it’s something to be cognizant of,” Rutherford said.

Doctors in Ontario have started to plead with government officials to send more intensive care unit nurses to the Toronto area “to avoid a triage situation,” the Toronto Star reported Saturday.

The California variant may be keeping the U.K. strain under control

In California, the U.K. variant now probably accounts for 40% of new coronavirus cases, Rutherford said, but unlike in Michigan, “it hasn’t driven the overall epidemic curve.”

Part of the reason for that is that the California variant may be dominating the U.K. variant in the state. Of virus samples that have been genomically sequenced cumulatively, more than 12,000 cases of the California variant — also known as the West Coast variant (B.1.427/B.1.429) — have been identified in California, compared with 980 of the U.K. variant (B.1.1.7).

The California variant is believed to be 20% more transmissible than the conventional coronavirus strains, but the U.K. variant is thought to be 50% more transmissible and more likely to cause worse illness.

Some experts have said they would presume that the U.K. variant would crowd out the California variant. But Rutherford said, somewhat counterintuitively, that the California variant may be somehow keeping the U.K. variant at bay.

Rutherford said he couldn’t fully explain it, but, “for whatever reason, they seem to be pushing it out of the way.” An upcoming study of coronavirus cases identified in San Francisco’s Mission District is expected to report almost no cases of the U.K. variant.

It’s possible that California will eventually be dominated by the U.K. variant, Rutherford said. “But for right now, we have way more of the [California variant],” he said.

If you had to choose between the California variant and U.K. variant being more dominant, the California variant is preferable, because it’s relatively less transmissible and deadly than the U.K. variant.

“If it was the U.K. variant [that was dominating California], we’d be in worse shape,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the UC San Francisco Department of Medicine, at the campus forum.

Relatively high rates of immunity may be helping California

The autumn-and-winter surge in California tore through many lower-income and heavily Latino communities, leaving behind a high death toll. These communities were particularly hit hard because many residents live in crowded homes and have jobs requiring them to leave home, exposing them to a higher risk of infection.

The intensity of the autumn-and-winter wave, however, has resulted in a large number of survivors who now have protection against coronavirus infections and COVID-19.

Officials estimate about 38% of L.A. County residents have been infected with the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. And Rutherford said he suspects there are parts of L.A., such as in Boyle Heights and South L.A., in which half of residents have been infected.

Rutherford said it’s possible that California could reach something approaching herd immunity by June 15.

Michigan restrictions are not mandatory

So far, Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has declined to impose new mandatory restrictions to cope with the recent surge. On Friday, Whitmer called for a voluntary two-week suspension of indoor restaurant dining, youth sports and in-person high school classes, deciding against mandatory orders even though some doctors say they’re needed.

“No one wants another lockdown, but we need it,” tweeted Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and author of “What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City.” Hanna-Attisha won the Freedom of Expression Courage Award for her efforts to expose the dangerous levels of lead in the water in Flint, Mich.

On Monday, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said the answer to Michigan’s “extraordinary number of cases” was “really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down, to flatten the curve, to decrease contact with one another.”

Walensky said the solution did not involve redirecting vaccine doses from other states to Michigan. Even if additional doses went into arms today, the effect would not be seen for two to six weeks. “If we tried to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in Michigan,” Walensky said, “we would be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to … actually have the impact.”

Following the autumn-and-winter surge, indoor restaurant dining in Michigan resumed on Feb. 1; L.A. County resumed indoor restaurant dining much later, allowing operations to reopen March 15.

National experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, have long been warning against states reopening businesses too quickly following the winter surge, fearing that a speedy reopening would result in a backsliding into another surge.

At the end of February, Fauci warned against moves by states to reopen too quickly. On CNN, Fauci noted that in past periods of the pandemic, “when we started to pull back prematurely, we saw the rebound. We definitely don’t want that to happen.”

What could cause problems in California?

Problems that could delay the end of the pandemic in California include the introduction of a new variant in California or the discovery of a problem with a vaccine that could undermine confidence in the shots, Rutherford said.

The vaccines now approved in the U.S. have proved themselves to be very effective and very safe, experts say. And the variants that pose a relatively higher risk of being resistant to vaccines — the South African and Brazilian variants — have yet to establish a firm hold in the U.S.

“The numbers of states with more than a few handful of cases of those is really vanishingly small,” Rutherford said. “I really haven’t seen it yet that makes me worry.”

Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-herd-immunity

Yes and no. Population density itself is not really a factor, but reliance on public transportation, which is linked to population density, certainly is.

Expensive real estate in cities like NYC and London is probably a factor as well. For example indoor dining is inherently more problematic because most restaurants are cramped with lots of tables close together, and more people are likely to live in shared housing with roommates.

But aren't restaurants in large cities mandated to have social distancing and capacity limits like anywhere else?