Fri, May 14, 2021|Whitney Tilson

You can now get your 12- to 15-year-old vaxed; Pandemic dashboard for U.S., world, India & Brazil; First vax down 66%; Vaccine hesitancy; Vaccines work; Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure; The Liberals Who Can't Quit Lockdown

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 are excerpts from the e-mail I sent yesterday. You can read the full e-mail here.

1) As I noted yesterday...

With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") earlier this week approving Pfizer's (PFE) COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 12 to 15, some of my clever friends have already booked appointments for their children to be vaccinated. Here are the various ways they did it:

CVS

Walgreens

New York state

New York City

A friend who lives in New York City said: "I called Weill Cornell at 646-962-2000 and, after sitting on hold for 35 minutes, had no problem making an appointment."

2) Overall, the big picture hasn't changed since my last e-mail nine days ago: Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to trend in the right direction in the U.S., as you can see in these charts (source):

Meanwhile, the trends from around the world are improving slightly, as you can see in these charts (source):

India continues to be a catastrophe, but it's possible we're reaching a peak, as you can see here (source):

Ditto for the other huge basket case, Brazil (source):

3) Keep in mind that the worldwide numbers are surely massively understated. From Axios:

COVID has caused twice as many deaths around the world as have been reported, Axios World editor Dave Lawler writes from an analysis by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

The U.S. has undercounted by over 300,000 deaths, according to the analysis. Death tolls in India and Mexico – second and third on IMHE's list – were found to be nearly three times the official numbers.

What's happening: "Many deaths from COVID-19 go unreported because countries only report deaths that occur in hospitals or in patients with a confirmed infection," the study says.

Many countries have weak health reporting systems, and some – including Russia – have narrow definitions of what they call a COVID death.

4) Given how far ahead we are of most of the rest of the world, this isn't surprising. A friend from Mexico City confirms that every Mexican with the money to do so is coming to the U.S. to get vaccinated, as he and his wife did last week: Vaccines Draw Foreigners Looking for Shots and Shops. Excerpt:

Tourism from Texas to Florida gets a boost as tens of thousands from Mexico and elsewhere arrive for jabs.

5) While Americans overseas (like my parents) and foreigners with the means and an ounce of common sense (like my friend) are coming here to get vaccinated, tens of millions of Americans who could easily get a shot today are refusing.

These folks are endangering themselves and everyone they come into contact with – not to mention hurting their country by prolonging the pandemic. As New York Times columnist David Brooks writes in Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure:

We're not asking you to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima; we're asking you to walk into a damn CVS.

Americans have always been an individualistic people who don't like being told what to do. But in times of crisis, they have historically still had the capacity to form what Alexis de Tocqueville called a "social body," a coherent community capable of collective action. During World War I, for example, millions served at home and abroad to win a faraway war, responding to recruiting posters that read "I Want You" and "Americans All."

That basic sense of peoplehood, of belonging to a common enterprise with a shared destiny, is exactly what's lacking today.

6) The decline in vaccinations in the U.S. is even greater than the total doses administered per day, numbers show, because many of those are second doses. In fact, the number of people receiving first doses has crashed by more than two-thirds, as this chart on the CDC's website shows:

Here's a related article about it: U.S. Vaccinations Are Slowing. What's to Blame?

7) Yesterday's announcement by the Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") is smart for two reasons: a) it's consistent with the research; and b) it's extra incentive for people to get vaccinated! Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the C.D.C. said. Excerpt:

In a sharp turnabout from previous recommendations, federal health officials on Thursday advised that Americans who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus may stop wearing masks or maintaining social distance in most indoor and outdoor settings, regardless of size.

The advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes as welcome news to Americans who have tired of restrictions and marks a watershed moment in the pandemic. Masks ignited controversy in communities across the United States, symbolizing a bitter partisan divide over approaches to the pandemic and a badge of political affiliation.

8) Another day, another sad story of a vaccine skeptic paying the ultimate price for her foolishness: The Totally Preventable Death of a Brooklyn Icon.

9) Speaking of COVID deaths, this Bloomberg chart captures the widespread tragedy here: Social Security Sees Slowdown in Retiree Rolls Amid Covid Deaths. Excerpt:

The rate of growth in retired Americans who collect Social Security has slowed down sharply, and the drop may be due in part to the disproportionate number of deaths from Covid-19 among the elderly.

The number of people who received retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration rose 900,000 to 46.4 million in March, the smallest year-over-year gain since April 2009.

While the Office of the Chief Actuary at the government agency said it is still too early to assess the impact from Covid-19, the year-over-year change appears to reflect excess deaths. About 447,000 people who died from the virus were 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or about 80% of total deaths.

10) This leftist idiocy from The Atlantic drives me crazy – it destroys credibility and, in the case of keeping schools closed, does MASSIVE harm. The Liberals Who Can't Quit Lockdown.

Even now, most of the people walking around outdoors in my neighborhood (the Upper East Side and Central Park) are still wearing masks. Just stop it! I make it a point to immediately remove my mask the moment I'm outside. Excerpt:

For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of deeply felt frustration with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. "If he said, 'Keep schools open,' then, well, we're going to do everything in our power to keep schools closed," Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as "left of left," but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. "We went the other way, in an extreme way, against Trump's politicization," Gandhi said. Geography and personality may have also contributed to progressives' caution: Some of the most liberal parts of the country are places where the pandemic hit especially hard, and Hetherington found that the very liberal participants in his survey tended to be the most neurotic.

The spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads – and how it doesn't. Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information. And in their eagerness to protect themselves and others, they may be underestimating other costs. Being extra careful about COVID-19 is (mostly) harmless when it's limited to wiping down your groceries with Lysol wipes and wearing a mask in places where you're unlikely to spread the coronavirus, such as on a hiking trail. But vigilance can have unintended consequences when it imposes on other people's lives. Even as scientific knowledge of COVID-19 has increased, some progressives have continued to embrace policies and behaviors that aren't supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning.

"Those who are vaccinated on the left seem to think overcaution now is the way to go, which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines," Gandhi told me. Public figures and policy makers who try to dictate others' behavior without any scientific justification for doing so erode trust in public health and make people less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of staying shut down might not justify the potential backlash.