Great news regarding the pandemic, especially vaccinations
I continue to closely follow the pandemic, sending lengthy e-mails to my coronavirus e-mail list roughly once a week. If you'd like to receive them, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com.
Below is an excerpt from the e-mail I sent to my readers on Wednesday (you can read the entire e-mail here)...
1) For the first time in a long time, there is lots of good news to report. First, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all ticking downward (source) – a trend that I think is likely to continue:
The positivity rate is also falling (source):
2) There is even better news across the board regarding vaccines and vaccinations.
Though there have been a lot of well-publicized problems, our vaccination rate is rising rapidly and is among the best in the world (source):
And the number of vaccinations given per day is rising rapidly and just exceeded one million (source), as you can see in this chart:
And the outlook for vaccinations looks even brighter, for a variety of reasons, including a huge federal effort by the new administration. Here are comments from two of my friends:
I believe that we will soon be doing 4 million to 5 million vaccinations per day, meaning that most of the U.S. will be vaccinated by April. This will accelerate the collapse of the pandemic, which would have happened anyways due to population immunity (vaccinations will save lots of lives, however, as many people would have died even as the pandemic receded, and the vaccines will cause the pandemic to dissipate much faster).
My other friend agrees:
If we can get approval for two more vaccines and really utilize chain pharmacies well for delivery, I think 4 million to 5 million vaccinations per day is feasible. The U.S. only has about 50 million adults who are 65 years or older and 42 million who are 55-65 years of age. Those 65-plus account for about 80% of COVID deaths and another 12% are among people 55-64 years. The pandemic would be in our rearview mirror if we got at least 100 million vaccinations done in the next 100 days. I bet we can beat that number.
More vaccines should soon be approved: Fauci: Approval of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines likely 'weeks away.'
To read the rest of my e-mail – in which I discuss vaccines in more depth, President Joe Biden's COVID-19 plan, and why the death toll is even worse than it looks – click here.
Best regards,
Whitney