Testing, testing testing You will see all kinds of hype the next few days about success with several potential vaccines in phase 3. This is great news if they work but the real key is testing and identifying carriers of the virus who display no symptoms.
If you have chance and watch 60 minutes from last night.
some of the key points I took away are as follows:
- Prior to election US was hitting record number of Covid cases at about 90,000 new cases per day but there has been little reported after election as we had 24/7 coverage of election results for 5 days.
- News cases have increased to 126,000 new cases per day and are projected to peak at 200,000 new cases daily
- Daily deaths are now 1,000 per day and projected to increase to 2,000 daily
- There are some promising vaccines that could be available in January but some require 2 injections 21 days apart so I believe they stated 50 million doses could be ready but you need to half that number to accommodate 2nd dosing so 25 M doses. The USA has 300 M plus population
- priority will be given to first responders, military, most vulnerable
- 40% of US doctors polled will not take the vaccine
- 60% of US nurses polled will not take the vaccine
- Typical vaccine takes 10 years to develop hence why a high percentage of medical professionals will not take the vaccine
- The virus has already started to show signs of mutating
In conclusion it will take years to inoculate the world population and over time we will see real side effects associated to the various vaccines. The real solution is mass testing and the development of drug treatments for COVID-19 symptoms like inflammation in the lungs and other organs