CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity

[whatbogsends]

From the LA Times:

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That's when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out.

Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over.

Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are "very complicated," said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.
...
The CDC's new approach will reflect this uncertainty. Instead of specifying a vaccination target that promises an end to the pandemic, public health officials hope to redefine success in terms of new infections and deaths — and they'll surmise that herd immunity has been achieved when both remain low for a sustained period.

CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity

Glad the CDC is finally catching up to the reality that the vaccines we have aren't going to create herd immunity for the spread of SARS-COV-19

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.

Well of course they are! Herd immunity is antithetical to the ability to continually milk an issue to lobby and social engineer society according to your preferences. For over a 115 years and counting, Progressives have been looking for a cause that would mobilize society other than war (A Moral Equivalent to War), and now they found it and they will not be able to let it go.


William James - The Moral Equivalent of War

 

[cow451]

Well of course they are! Herd immunity is antithetical to the ability to continually milk an issue to lobby and social engineer society according to your preferences. For over a 115 years and counting, Progressives have been looking for a cause that would mobilize society other than war (A Moral Equivalent to War), and now they found it and they will not be able to let it go.


William James - The Moral Equivalent of War

Cannot achieve any definition of control of the pandemic because too many foolish people are anti vaccination or sympathetic to the said foolish ones.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

You would think we would need to have a vaccination rate at least a little higher than the abysmal 55% or so we’ve been hanging around for several weeks now before we can say with a doubt the vaccines aren’t working.

 

[cow451]

The vaccines work fine. It’s the refusnicks and their enablers that aren’t.

 

[Mayzoo]

You would think we would need to have a vaccination rate at least a little higher than the abysmal 55% or so we’ve been hanging around for several weeks now before we can say with a doubt the vaccines aren’t working.

I am pretty sure some folks stated they aren't working and aren't going to work immediately after release. So, no they do not have to wait.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

From the LA Times:

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That's when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out.

Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over.

Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are "very complicated," said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.
...
The CDC's new approach will reflect this uncertainty. Instead of specifying a vaccination target that promises an end to the pandemic, public health officials hope to redefine success in terms of new infections and deaths — and they'll surmise that herd immunity has been achieved when both remain low for a sustained period.

CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity

Glad the CDC is finally catching up to the reality that the vaccines we have aren't going to create herd immunity for the spread of SARS-COV-19

Who didn't see this coming?

 

[stevil]

Glad the CDC is finally catching up to the reality that the vaccines we have aren't going to create herd immunity for the spread of SARS-COV-19

There was a significant difference in spread rate between Delta variant and all that preceded it.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Well, yeah, because they basically had to shift their goals away from it...

I'll be balanced here...

Part of that is due to unrealistic expectations regarding an airborne, highly-transmissible virus. (the odds were stacked against being able to eradicate it completely)
Part is due to a subset of the population who basically wore it like a badge of honor to actively go against any and all mitigation measures against it


For instance, if I had the goal of eradicating drunk driving deaths, and 30% of the population either said "drunk driving is no big deal", or believed "if you take zinc and vitamin D after drinking 5 beers, it'll cancel out the negative effects, there's no need to change your behavior", or went even further and that thought "calling a cab to drive you home is just Soros and Gates trying to microchip you!"... I'd have a hard time trying to get rid of the problem.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death

 

[whatbogsends]

Well, yeah, because they basically had to shift their goals away from it...

I'll be balanced here...

Part of that is due to unrealistic expectations regarding an airborne, highly-transmissible virus. (the odds were stacked against being able to eradicate it completely)
Part is due to a subset of the population who basically wore it like a badge of honor to actively go against any and all mitigation measures against it


For instance, if I had the goal of eradicating drunk driving deaths, and 30% of the population either said "drunk driving is no big deal", or believed "if you take zinc and vitamin D after drinking 5 beers, it'll cancel out the negative effects, there's no need to change your behavior", or went even further and that thought "calling a cab to drive you home is just Soros and Gates trying to microchip you!"... I'd have a hard time trying to get rid of the problem.

Other countries, with much higher vaccination rates and no political group who ascribes to what you call out are experiencing higher rates of transmission now with 80+% vaccinated.

The vaccines do little to prevent transmission, and those (such as the CDC) who have been claiming that the vaccines do significantly limit transmission are finally admitting the obvious that it's not the case.

Singapore is now at 86% fully vaccinated (and have been there since ~Oct 20). They've been over 80% fully vaccinated since the beginning of October.

Singapore Coronavirus Full Vaccination Rate

Singapore COVID: 237,203 Cases and 586 Deaths - Worldometer

 

[FireDragon76]

There's no such thing as herd immunity with COVID-19, because COVID-19 mutates too quickly and the immunity offered by infection or sickness isn't durable enough to prevent reinfection. Eventually, it will become as endemic, and seasonal, as the common cold, and everyone will get it sooner or later, perhaps multiple times in their lifetime. That's not the same as "herd immunity".

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Other countries, with much higher vaccination rates and no political group who ascribes to what you call out are experiencing higher rates of transmission now with 80+% vaccinated.

The vaccines do little to prevent transmission, and those (such as the CDC) who have been claiming that the vaccines do significantly limit transmission are finally admitting the obvious that it's not the case.

Singapore is now at 86% fully vaccinated (and have been there since ~Oct 20). They've been over 80% fully vaccinated since the beginning of October.

Singapore Coronavirus Full Vaccination Rate

Singapore COVID: 237,203 Cases and 586 Deaths - Worldometer

You have to control for other factors when simply zeroing in on particular countries.

For instance, Singapore waited until way late in the game to start relaxing policies.

Singapore’s rocky reopening is still a model for ending the ‘COVID zero’ era of pandemic

So that's what I would expect to see when you have tightly locked down country (that also has rigorous testing procedures in place) moving toward reopening 80% of things between Sept. 1st and October 31st.

It looks like a huge spike on a graph (when only compared to itself), however, if you overlay that onto other countries' numbers and adjust for population sizes, they're actually doing quite well. And thanks to their high vaccination rate, 98% of their cases are mild/asymptomatic.

Singapore averages 50k tests per day for a population of 5.5 million people
The US averages 1.2 million tests per day for a population of 330 million

US testing ratio: 1 test for every 275 people
Singapore ratio: 1 test for every 110 people

If the US nearly tripled our testing volume, we'd be detecting a lot more cases as well.

And even the "peak" in deaths your graph is showing is still basically a drop in the bucket, it only looks like huge peak on a graph because they went a long time having 0-2 covid deaths per day for so long

Averaging 13 covid deaths per day (in a population of 5.5 million), is practically nothing.

We've been averaging 1,300 deaths per day in the US in a population of 330 million over this past week, and if you look at our two major peaks, they were 2100 and 3300 deaths per day, respectively.

...and we're a population that has a lot more natural immunity than theirs due to us reopening sooner so more people have been exposed at some point or another, and we're still doing worse when adjusted for population sizes.


It'd be kind of like looking at a country that had only one murder per year for a decade, and then one year, they had 3 instead of 1...and then trying to report it as "Their murders have tripled in the last year!, their policies must be terrible"

 

[whatbogsends]

You have to control for other factors when simply zeroing in on particular countries.

For instance, Singapore waited until way late in the game to start relaxing policies.

Singapore’s rocky reopening is still a model for ending the ‘COVID zero’ era of pandemic

So that's what I would expect to see when you have tightly locked down country (that also has rigorous testing procedures in place) moving toward reopening 80% of things between Sept. 1st and October 31st.

It looks like a huge spike on a graph (when only compared to itself), however, if you overlay that onto other countries' numbers and adjust for population sizes, they're actually doing quite well. And thanks to their high vaccination rate, 98% of their cases are mild/asymptomatic.

Singapore averages 50k tests per day for a population of 5.5 million people
The US averages 1.2 million tests per day for a population of 330 million

US testing ratio: 1 test for every 275 people
Singapore ratio: 1 test for every 110 people

If the US nearly tripled our testing volume, we'd be detecting a lot more cases as well.

And even the "peak" in deaths your graph is showing is still basically a drop in the bucket, it only looks like huge peak on a graph because they went a long time having 0-2 covid deaths per day for so long

View attachment 308425

Averaging 13 covid deaths per day (in a population of 5.5 million), is practically nothing.

We've been averaging 1,300 deaths per day in the US in a population of 330 million over this past week, and if you look at our two major peaks, they were 2100 and 3300 deaths per day, respectively.

...and we're a population that has a lot more natural immunity than theirs due to us reopening sooner so more people have been exposed at some point or another, and we're still doing worse when adjusted for population sizes.

It'd be kind of like looking at a country that had only one murder per year for a decade, and then one year, they had 3 instead of 1...and then trying to report it as "Their murders have tripled in the last year!, their policies must be terrible"

They opened up socially with nearly full vaccination rate and Covid started spreading freely. Sweden took their lumps early (fewer social restrictions), has a lower vaccination rate (a good bit higher than the US, but significantly lower than Singapore), and has had lower Covid numbers - both in transmission and deaths - than Singapore is now experiencing. They've been really good since June from rate and deaths, an pretty good since March from a deaths perspective.

Obviously, we can't attribute all the transmission/death from one factor, such as vaccination rate, but that's precisely the point. Vaccination rate is not correlating strongly with transmission rate among populations. In fact, most highly populated populations have had their highest recorded transmission rates after attaining a high level of vaccination.

I agree that natural immunity prevalence plays a significant factor (as it would with Sweden's lower numbers in 2021), but that is precisely why it's so infuriating that the US isn't allowing natural immunity to be a factor in one's status regarding mandates.

I'd wager that one of the major drivers of US death rates from Covid being what they are are factors such as obesity (US has north of 40% of population being obese, while Singapore has ~10%). We know that Covid impacts the obese significantly more, yet that is never really taken into consideration.

We still have a large number of people in the US who are attributing the ongoing pandemic to the unvaccinated, when the vaccinated can and do continue to spread the virus. Even as the CDC admits that the vaccines don't significantly block transmission, we have people who are holding tight to the narrative that the vaccines do block transmission significantly.

They promoted the vaccine as providing immunity which would last years.

Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, the principal investigator who has led the clinical trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, said “the early signals suggest that it should last longer than a year, assuming no new variants that evade the vaccine-induced responses.”

“We don’t have all the answers yet,” he said, but, “we think, based on the trajectory, that it should provide protection for a year or even longer … possibly two or three.”
...
“We’re starting to have more data suggesting the vaccine does have significant protection,” he said. In a study in Israel, there was 94 percent protection from transmission, he said. “We think that the vaccines protect against having symptoms, but they also protect against transmission robustly,” Ogbuagu said.

MSN

I know that the science evolves, but those of us who treated these claims with skepticism were roundly criticized at the time, and even now, when that skepticism has been shown to be correct, are being told to trust that what they're saying now is definitely correct - despite those people telling us these things having been wrong (including intentionally misleading) with their earlier claims.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

They opened up socially with nearly full vaccination rate and Covid started spreading freely. Sweden took their lumps early (fewer social restrictions), has a lower vaccination rate (a good bit higher than the US, but significantly lower than Singapore), and has had lower Covid numbers - both in transmission and deaths - than Singapore is now experiencing. They've been really good since June from rate and deaths, an pretty good since March from a deaths perspective.

...but "how big are the lumps you have to take in order to get to lower transmission" is a valid part of the conversation.

Within our own country, even according to the CDC covid advisory map, Florida is currently the only yellow state on there.

...but they had to absorb a pretty high case and death toll (for months) to "let it run its course" in order to get there.

Obviously, we can't attribute all the transmission/death from one factor, such as vaccination rate, but that's precisely the point. Vaccination rate is not correlating strongly with transmission rate among populations. In fact, most highly populated populations have had their highest recorded transmission rates after attaining a high level of vaccination.

Well, that's to be expected, as vaccination rates got higher, countries (that were previously tightly locked down) began to get the confidence to open up.

Opening up (after a tight lockdown) equates to higher cases. But not all cases are equal. Mild/asymptomatic cases aren't in the same ballpark as cases that take up hospital beds and lead to death.

I agree that natural immunity prevalence plays a significant factor (as it would with Sweden's lower numbers in 2021), but that is precisely why it's so infuriating that the US isn't allowing natural immunity to be a factor in one's status regarding mandates.

Even though I'm on the the pro-vaccine side here, I would agree that natural immunity should be considered.

As someone who's had both the virus and the vaccine, according to my titers test (semi-quantitative antibody test) back in late September, my nucleocapsid protein antibodies (which are derived via natural infection) are holding up longer and stronger than my spike protein antibodies (which can be acquired from natural infection or vaccination)

I've said on numerous occasions I'd be in favor of a titers test showing moderate-high immunity (a score > 320) being considered as a valid replacement for vaccination.

I'd wager that one of the major drivers of US death rates from Covid being what they are are factors such as obesity (US has north of 40% of population being obese, while Singapore has ~10%). We know that Covid impacts the obese significantly more, yet that is never really taken into consideration.

Well certainly, but whether or not someone made the dumb decision to eat fast food every day and balloon up to 300lbs is of little consequence to hospital systems when it comes to capacity vs caseload.

The end result is the same.

And the obesity problem isn't something that can be addressed in short order.

If a person is obese (and has been for decades), them switching to chicken breast and broccoli now (instead of Big Mac and Large fries) is unlikely to yield any meaningful results in the short term.

That outcome took years to create, and would take years to un-do.

We still have a large number of people in the US who are attributing the ongoing pandemic to the unvaccinated, when the vaccinated can and do continue to spread the virus. Even as the CDC admits that the vaccines don't significantly block transmission, we have people who are holding tight to the narrative that the vaccines do block transmission significantly.

The impact on the hospital systems is due to the unvaccinated.

I personally don't care if someone has the sniffles and mild congestion for 3-5 days, that's of little consequence.

However, if they have to take up bedspace, then it becomes a larger concern.

They promoted the vaccine as providing immunity which would last years.

Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, the principal investigator who has led the clinical trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, said “the early signals suggest that it should last longer than a year, assuming no new variants that evade the vaccine-induced responses.”

As I've said before, they may have been setting their sights a little too high on that one. The idea of sterilizing immunity (based on short-term data) was ambitious goal.

The fact of the matter is, if a person is overweight (as probably over half of our population is), vaccine induced immunity (even though imperfect) is a better option than "I trust my immune system" with regards to not flooding hospitals and not dying.

 

[stevil]

They opened up socially with nearly full vaccination rate and Covid started spreading freely. Sweden took their lumps early (fewer social restrictions), has a lower vaccination rate (a good bit higher than the US, but significantly lower than Singapore), and has had lower Covid numbers - both in transmission and deaths - than Singapore is now experiencing.

Population
Sweden 10.35 million
Denmark 5.82
Norway 5.48 million
Singapore 5.68 million
NZ 5.08 million

Covid deaths
Sweden 15,051
Denmark 2,772
Norway 951
Singapore 594
NZ 35

Sweden is a complete failure
Singapore is pretty successful

 

[KCfromNC]

Vaccination rate is not correlating strongly with transmission rate among populations.

Is there any evidence to back up this claim? Seems like there would need to be data from more than one country presented to take this assertion seriously.

They promoted the vaccine as providing immunity which would last years.

Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, the principal investigator who has led the clinical trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, said “the early signals suggest that it should last longer than a year, assuming no new variants that evade the vaccine-induced responses.”

Yep, and guess what happened. I mean,I get the post is trying to ignore that the delta variant exists and blame higher case counts on the vaccine failing, but this quote undermines that entire narrative.

 

[whatbogsends]

Is there any evidence to back up this claim? Seems like there would need to be data from more than one country presented to take this assertion seriously.

I've supplied data from a large number of countries. Instead of burying your head in the sand and asking where the data is, why don't you find data that supports your position and present it?

Yep, and guess what happened. I mean,I get the post is trying to ignore that the delta variant exists and blame higher case counts on the vaccine failing, but this quote undermines that entire narrative.

Your rebuttal ignores that the delta variant existed several months before Dr. Ogbuagu made his claims about the efficacy of the vaccine.

Moreover, it's not delta that caused him to be wrong about the durability of the protection provided by the vaccines.

 

[whatbogsends]

Population
Sweden 10.35 million
Denmark 5.82
Norway 5.48 million
Singapore 5.68 million
NZ 5.08 million

Covid deaths
Sweden 15,051
Denmark 2,772
Norway 951
Singapore 594
NZ 35

Sweden is a complete failure
Singapore is pretty successful

Take a look at trajectories.

Denmark, Norway, and Singapore are all currently spiking. Sweden is the lone country which has not had a wave since March 2021. New Zealand is doing very well overall, but is currently in their highest rate of spread of the pandemic (by more than a factor of 2, and appears to still be in increasing).

 

[KCfromNC]

I've supplied data from a large number of countries. Instead of burying your head in the sand and asking where the data is, why don't you find data that supports your position and present it?

Ah, yeah. Claim the evidence is out there but fail to say where. And then blame others for pointing out the fact that it hasn't been seen. Sounds convincing. Or made up. One of the two, at least.

Your rebuttal ignores that the delta variant existed several months before Dr. Ogbuagu made his claims about the efficacy of the vaccine.

The article you posted is from March. When are you claiming delta became widespread enough to impact vaccine numbers?

Moreover, it's not delta that caused him to be wrong about the durability of the protection provided by the vaccines.

Piling more assertions on to previous ones isn't exactly convincing.