I would normally do my monthly COVID assessment at this point of the month, but I’m waiting a week because I’ve recently added vaccine distribution and administration to my data set and I’d really like to kick 2021 off right by adding vaccine administration to my monthly review.
That's definitely a good question in regards to how we end up counting the doses! In between the time I published this and now, the CDC has updated their dataset to differentiate between total doses administered and people getting the second dose.
I don't expect this data to come in cleanly. Some people will miss their second dose or delay it. Some states will show a high preference for making the first dose more widely available.
My personal expectation is that when we get to May, we'll be substantially higher than 50 million first doses but likely lower than 100 million. But we'll see! We should be able to see some very clear differences in COVID rates in high-vs-low vaccination regions.
Oh dear lord; looks like recent reporting suggests Biden actually meant 100 million doses, which is not an impressive target at all. Should be 100 million people getting at least one dose, which would not have been at least a little stretch given our current rate. He should not be aiming so low.
I think this is a good area for debate: what are our expectations and what should they be? I'm happy to have higher expectations but I want to understand where the frictions are that keep us from doing better and understand how best to remove them.
I'm curious if we'll see the CDC tracking the time between doses administered. I think there is some potential for very interesting analytics looking at states with a short time between doses (those focusing on getting people fully vaccinated) vs. states that prioritize getting as many people as possible the first dose.
I'll have to think through how best to chart this. I *think* the CDC is publishing all the data we would need to make this determination, but I'm not 100% sure
I assume if it does change how track cases it won't be possible to do a historic normalization of covid cases? I haven't been able to find data showing raw test results or cycle counts (or any anonymized population aggregation representations of the data).
As bad as the "fewer than 50% of distributed doses have made it into arms" story is, the way I am looking at the numbers makes worse.
First, it's been reported from multiple sources, including the companies themselves that each of Pfizer and Moderna will deliver 100 million doses in each of Q1 and Q2 2021 (although it appears for Pfizer that really means by July 31). And that doesn't count the doses manufactured and delivered by end of 2020. So, 400+ million doses in the first half of the year. 2.25 million per day, 15.5 million per week. Those are the numbers I had based my hopes for the new year on (discounted, of course, knowing we wouldn't achieve those peak rates on day one).
The CDC data tracker says we are at 31M distributed (as of 1/19). And they showed 12.5M on Dec 30th. So for the first 19 days of the year we are only distributing 1M doses per day (less than half than *I* expected). Maybe the initial holding onto the 2nd doses explains that (although my understanding is that they are shipping those second doses now).
But it gets interesting when you look at the CDC state allocations:
This data shows they are only shipping (counting first AND second doses) about 8.6M per week, or 1.2M per day. So, when we *do* count the second doses we are a bit over a million per day on the allocation plan, roughly consistent with barely under a million per day based on my estimate from the CDC tracker data.
So why *is* the distribution plan is only shipping 55-60% of the contractually promised production capacity of the two suppliers? Because if this is the case then I become pessimistic about both progress AND plan.
Has anyone else dug through this data? Can someone point out where I have messed up?
Both the J&J and Oxford/AZ vaccine are thought to be granted EUA by the end of March, and they can be produced at greater scale than the mRNA vaccines.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you made an error regarding doses vs vaccinations.
100 million doses = 50 million two-dose vaccinations
265 million adults (technically 15+, best data I could quickly find)
90% of that is 238 million
50 million / 238 million = 21% of the population vaccinated if this May goal is hit
That's definitely a good question in regards to how we end up counting the doses! In between the time I published this and now, the CDC has updated their dataset to differentiate between total doses administered and people getting the second dose.
I don't expect this data to come in cleanly. Some people will miss their second dose or delay it. Some states will show a high preference for making the first dose more widely available.
My personal expectation is that when we get to May, we'll be substantially higher than 50 million first doses but likely lower than 100 million. But we'll see! We should be able to see some very clear differences in COVID rates in high-vs-low vaccination regions.
Oh dear lord; looks like recent reporting suggests Biden actually meant 100 million doses, which is not an impressive target at all. Should be 100 million people getting at least one dose, which would not have been at least a little stretch given our current rate. He should not be aiming so low.
But agree, we'll be above 50 million for sure.
I think this is a good area for debate: what are our expectations and what should they be? I'm happy to have higher expectations but I want to understand where the frictions are that keep us from doing better and understand how best to remove them.
I'm curious if we'll see the CDC tracking the time between doses administered. I think there is some potential for very interesting analytics looking at states with a short time between doses (those focusing on getting people fully vaccinated) vs. states that prioritize getting as many people as possible the first dose.
I'll have to think through how best to chart this. I *think* the CDC is publishing all the data we would need to make this determination, but I'm not 100% sure
Do you think the WHO's new guidelines will affect the data on case classification under the new administration? https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05
I assume if it does change how track cases it won't be possible to do a historic normalization of covid cases? I haven't been able to find data showing raw test results or cycle counts (or any anonymized population aggregation representations of the data).
I appreciate the optimism, but...
As bad as the "fewer than 50% of distributed doses have made it into arms" story is, the way I am looking at the numbers makes worse.
First, it's been reported from multiple sources, including the companies themselves that each of Pfizer and Moderna will deliver 100 million doses in each of Q1 and Q2 2021 (although it appears for Pfizer that really means by July 31). And that doesn't count the doses manufactured and delivered by end of 2020. So, 400+ million doses in the first half of the year. 2.25 million per day, 15.5 million per week. Those are the numbers I had based my hopes for the new year on (discounted, of course, knowing we wouldn't achieve those peak rates on day one).
The CDC data tracker says we are at 31M distributed (as of 1/19). And they showed 12.5M on Dec 30th. So for the first 19 days of the year we are only distributing 1M doses per day (less than half than *I* expected). Maybe the initial holding onto the 2nd doses explains that (although my understanding is that they are shipping those second doses now).
But it gets interesting when you look at the CDC state allocations:
https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccine-Distribution-Allocations-by-Juris/saz5-9hgg
https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccine-Distribution-Allocations-by-Juris/b7pe-5nws
This data shows they are only shipping (counting first AND second doses) about 8.6M per week, or 1.2M per day. So, when we *do* count the second doses we are a bit over a million per day on the allocation plan, roughly consistent with barely under a million per day based on my estimate from the CDC tracker data.
So why *is* the distribution plan is only shipping 55-60% of the contractually promised production capacity of the two suppliers? Because if this is the case then I become pessimistic about both progress AND plan.
Has anyone else dug through this data? Can someone point out where I have messed up?
Both the J&J and Oxford/AZ vaccine are thought to be granted EUA by the end of March, and they can be produced at greater scale than the mRNA vaccines.