IHME Projection of February 25 for California Covid Cases is Steadily Declining.
The Johnson and Johnson single shot vaccine has now been approved by the CDC, and is 86% effective against having a case requiring hospitalization. It is 72% effective against causing a moderate or severe case. It can be stored at refrigerator temperatures.
The weekly average of daily cases is at 7,100, down from 10,200 the week before. Average deaths per day dropped to 330 from 380 the week before. Covid-19 is the leading cause of death, equal to the sum of the next five causes.
As of February 22, the model has 16% of Californians having been infected.
For vaccines, 80% of Californians would accept or probably accept vaccination. By June 1, the model has 20.2 million Californians vaccinated, or about 50% of the population of 40 million. So far, 11.1 million doses have been delivered to the state, and 8.8 million have been given out.
By June 1, the Current projection has 61,000 deaths in California, which has declined 1,000 from last week’s projection. This is 11,000 more deaths from the 50,000 deaths on February 22. The 50,000 California deaths are about 10% of the US deaths, which passed 500,000. The vaccinations are included as saving 14,300 lives in California. The UK, South Africa, and Brazil variants are included where they are active.
Currently, California is 81% masking. If that were increased to 95%, another 1,000 lives would be saved by June 1.
Daily deaths today are modeled to decline at: 261 on March 1; 120 on April 1; 63 on May 1; and 26 on June 1.
Hospital beds, ICU beds, and ventilators for Covid-19 are modeled to decline in the table below.
Date: March 1 April 1 May 1 June 1
Beds: 7,448 3,165 1,654 709
ICUs: 1,754 754 394 167
Ventilators: 914 393 206 87
While this is not a political article, we note the contrast between the CPAC conference, where unmasked crowded attendees were cheering loudly for hours indoors, and the Golden Globes award show, where the movie makers were safely at home, and the few first responders in the audience observed pandemic protocols. Also, the CPAC attendees were the most likely to have gotten infected before attending, and to attend even though ill. And so it goes.
For those still thinking that Covid-19 is still no worse than the flu, the average and median flu deaths per year over the last 10 years is 36,000, compared to the US deaths from Covid-19 of 500,000 after one year.
I always thought that the phrase “shots in arms” was silly, but in a talk last week I learned that in fact the mRNA stays in the arm muscle, and triggers the body developing antibodies from there.
