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Medicine United States

Half of All US Adults Are Now Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19 (npr.org) 328

According to the Biden administration, half of the country's adults are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. NPR reports: "This is a major milestone in our country's vaccination efforts," Andy Slavitt, a White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response, said during a midday briefing. "The number was 1% when we entered office Jan. 20." Nearly 130 million people age 18 and older have completed their vaccine regimens since the first doses were administered to the public in December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Another 70 million vaccine doses are currently in the distribution pipeline, according to the agency.

The U.S. is pushing to add millions more people to the ranks of the vaccinated. President Biden said this month that his new goal is to administer at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to 70% of U.S. adults by the Fourth of July. Nine states have given at least one vaccine shot to 70% of their adult population, Slavitt said at Tuesday's briefing. Acknowledging the welcome return to a more normal life taking place around the country, he urged more people to get the vaccine: "Unless you're vaccinated, you're at risk."

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Half of All US Adults Are Now Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19

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  • by RevDisk ( 740008 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @06:29PM (#61425834) Journal
    Having multiple vaccines with amazing levels of efficacy with very new tech is flat out amazing.

    I do hope we keep the trend going and try to keep up on our vaccine funding. Lot of folks did amazing work, and it was a global effort.
    • by Bodie1 ( 1347679 )

      The work done with mRNA for these vaccines will allow a lot of near-term breakthroughs for a wide variety of things.

      • Actually, most of the work on mRNA was done long before anyone had heard of COVID - they've been working on it for a decade or two, with a particular eye on treating cancer and other diseases that traditional medicine is decidedly ineffective against.

        What the COVID vaccines did was give the potential of mRNA medicine a phenomenal chance to shine in the public eye, and get fast-tracked through approval processes that might well have otherwise taken decades more.

    • by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Thursday May 27, 2021 @06:29AM (#61427076)

      Having multiple vaccines with amazing levels of efficacy with very new tech is flat out amazing.

      The idea of Warpspeed was to fund everyone who might be able to develop a vaccine and hope that at least one of them succeeds. As it turned out, a couple failed but several succeeded. Money well spent.

      That's how Trump ran his businesses too, some failed and went into bankruptcy, but enough succeeded to make him billions.

      • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        That's how Trump ran his businesses too, some failed and went into bankruptcy, but enough succeeded to make him billions.

        Sort of - anytime he tried a business outside of real estate or selling his name it pretty much failed. Trump isn't some genius businessman for investing in vaccine technology during a pandemic

  • Vaccinations are critical, and we need to be at 80% of the population over 12 by August, so we can start school. But we also need to help states where people are still dying. The US is down to about 1 death per hundred thousand per week. Texas and California is below that, the later half the rate. But states like Colorado, and especially Florida, are above. I have seen no analysis of why the discrepancy exists or what can be done to help the states that canâ(TM)t cope.
    • Vaccinations are critical, and we need to be at 80% of the population over 12 by August, so we can start school. But we also need to help states where people are still dying. The US is down to about 1 death per hundred thousand per week. Texas and California is below that, the later half the rate. But states like Colorado, and especially Florida, are above. I have seen no analysis of why the discrepancy exists or what can be done to help the states that canâ(TM)t cope.

      Simple explanation: Florida and Colorado are where stupid people go to die.

      • by Geekbot ( 641878 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @08:01PM (#61426128)

        Simple minded explanation maybe.

        Florida has an old population on average. You would expect them to see more deaths per capita from a disease which is mostly fatal to those of advanced age. I don't know if that is the answer, but it is easy to come up with better reasons than insulting people who died from disease.

        Not sure why you have to cast hate on people that died from a disease but it reminds me of all those people who cast hate and bigotry on the victims of HIV early in that pandemic. That's a shameful comment in 2021. It's disgusting and belongs on /b/, not on slashdot, even if the article is a nonscience political flamebait.

        I'm sure if you want to make political commentary you can find a more appropriate forum, but if you want to insult those who have died during the pandemic I think you should go find the grieving families and have enough guts to say it to their faces or keep your mouth shut.

        • Florida has an old population on average.

          Also the Florida government refused to acknowledge any problem existed at all or do anything about it then, instructed their scientists to lie about the numbers then minted a brand new judge to write warrants so they could use the police to threaten and intimidate the scientist into not telling the truth.

          I wonder if that had any effect.

    • by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @06:51PM (#61425882) Journal
      Dying from COVID may not be the worst [cdc.gov] of your problems [cdc.gov].
    • Vaccinations are critical, and we need to be at 80% of the population over 12 by August, so we can start school.

      This part seems straightforward - require proof of COVID-19 vaccination before allowing the student to attend school.

  • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @07:36PM (#61426022) Homepage
    Cases in which someone has gotten Covid-19 after full vaccination are called "breakthrough" cases.

    One of the stories:
    Here’s what breakthrough infections reveal about COVID-19 vaccines [sciencenews.org]
    ScienceNews.org, May 4, 2021

    "Of the more than 95 million people in the United States who were fully vaccinated, only 9,245 — or 0.01 percent — have been infected with the coronavirus as of April 26, according to the CDC."

    Government agency reporting:
    COVID-19 Breakthrough Case Investigations and Reporting [cdc.gov]

    Now the number is closer to 0.001 percent, judging from the numbers in that article.

    "Information and resources to help public health departments and laboratories investigate and report COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases."
  • by rapjr ( 732628 ) on Thursday May 27, 2021 @01:12AM (#61426650)
    And the USA has hit herd immunity at 50% vaccinated (plus natural infections, some of whom also got vaccinated)? I do not think we know what is going on right now, it is very strange that infections are receding. It is not due to weather, the USA South had spread last Summer while the NorthEast receded. We have been experiencing waves but it is not entirely clear what is causing them. 50% vaccinated is not enough to stop the spread so something else is. My theory is that there is much more asymptomatic spread than we know of and the waves are due to variants. Each new variant spreads and burns itself out till the next takes over. People who were naturally infected may be more susceptible to variants; what happened in the Saychelles may support that idea.

    https://www.channelnewsasia.co... [channelnewsasia.com]

    If that is not the cause of the waves were the epidemiologists just wrong about herd immunity? If variants are the cause of waves we could see another wave in the USA in several months.

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