I've been thinking about the debate of delayed vs. immediate 2nd dose for some time

Over past week, have become convinced that getting all doses out now is better

Its NOT a no-brainer

Reasonable people can (and do!!) disagree

So here's why my thinking evolved

Thread

Obviously, if you want to stick to the trials (reasonable position), then stay with standard interval

But soon, we'll be confronted with question -- do we give 2nd shot to some people or 1st shot to more people

Is there clinical trial evidence that 1 dose is helpful?

Yes

2/n
Yes

There is compelling data from Pfizer and Moderna trials that after about 10 d after 1 dose, you get 80-90% efficacy

https://t.co/38qlTYP77u

https://t.co/4V8SxM3tU5

So the BIG question is -- is that going to be durable beyond 21 to 28 days?

We don't know for sure

3/n
But while we may not be sure, it doesn't mean we have no idea

Here's one of our nation's most expert immunologists, @VirusesImmunity laying out her assessment of delayed vs immediate 2nd dose

https://t.co/BN7k4Xxx5C

4/9
What I take away from Dr. Iwasaki's thread and broader experience with vaccines is that it its unlikely that a short delay will harm protection

But we can't be sure

So why take this risk at all?

Why not just stay with the clinical trial?

Reasonable question

Here's why

5/9
We are on track to have another 50K to 100K Americans die of COVID in January

And that number again in February

Most 75 year-olds won't get their first dose for many more weeks

And most 64 year-olds won't for months

And the new variant will become dominant in that time

6/9
So what @Bob_Wachter and I are arguing is not -- abandon the science

Its -- look at all the science, the whole picture

The data from the clinical trials
What we know about vaccine durability
What we know about the variant taking off

And think about what saves most lives

7/9
And to us, the answer is, get first doses out immediately

Get 2nd doses into arms as they become available later winter

Now, reasonable to make some exceptions like nursing home residents where you want to maximize protection

But if you listen to Operation Warp Speed

8/10
We will have 100M doses produced by end of January

If we can get that many into arms by mid-February, it will make a huge difference

It won't just protect many more people

If you believe that vaccines will likely slow spread, it'll slow down disease across the nation

9/10
Anyone we can protect now is someone less likely to get infected tomorrow and die in 4 weeks

Bottom line is that I realize we are pushing for something that has risk

But we should not ignore the risk of not doing this at all

Here's the op-ed again

Fin
https://t.co/UWAj9cY08N

More from Government

Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!
Labour Grandees are listed in Sir Keir Starmer's colleague Jeffrey Epstein's ''Little Black Book''; Blair, Mandelson and Alastair Campbell. COINCIDENTLY, Keir Starmer and some of the same people have connections to ANOTHER of the worlds most prolific peadophiles. #StarmerOut


Starmer failed to bring charges against Jimmy Savile for paedophilia. The decision was made despite the Crown Prosecution Service receiving substantial evidence of his crimes from witnesses and victims several years before Savile died in 2011. #StarmerOut
https://t.co/PNyX5uSAkw


With a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility.
In the Eighties Hodge was aware of previous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing about it. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

As leader of Islington Council, a post she held from 1982-92, Margaret Hodge was aware of previous, horrendous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing about it. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut #CSA

She was guilty of rather more than a casual failure of oversight. In an open letter to the BBC after it investigated a range of monstrous abuse (child prostitution, torture, alleged murders), Hodge libelled one of its victims as “seriously disturbed”. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

You May Also Like

THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)