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Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
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19 Feb, 4 tweets, 2 min read
This is the most sustained drop in new COVID cases in the US we have seen since the pandemic started. I'd say the worst is over if we can be patient with masks and distancing for a few more months and vaccinate as many people as possible. #Hope
Because testing is increasing, & because variants may cause asymptomatic/mild infections even in people who have been vaccinated, we may see case numbers bounce around.

The metric to follow is deaths from COVID. I think we are seeing the beginning of a trend that will continue.
The other metrics to follow to judge success are hospitalizations and ICU admissions. Going by what is happening in Israel where over 50% of the population has had one dose of the vaccine, I have no doubt there will be marked reduction in severe COVID with vaccination.
It is important to stay alert about the variants. And keep up to date. Especially for policy makers & researchers.

For the public it is now important to be hopeful. Get your vaccine when offered.

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Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
19 Feb
It is finally happening. After the expected lag of 3-4 weeks, deaths from COVID in the US are finally coming down. This is fantastic, and I am confident that with ongoing vaccination the drop will be sustained. @ASlavitt #VaccinesWork
The most reliable and meaningful metrics to follow to assess the efficacy of COVID vaccination from this point forward are deaths, hospitalizations, and ICU bed occupancy. Not the number of cases.
With variants emerging, a certain proportion of mild reinfections occurring, and the ease of testing increasing, the number of cases is not a meaningful metric to use for public policy, unless accompanied by rise in severe cases.

This is important.
Read 5 tweets
Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
17 Feb
India has 1.3 billion people.
4 times that of the US.

What’s going on is just amazing and needs in depth immunologic studies. These are raw numbers!
When I adjust to population, the differences are even more striking.
You cannot undercount ten times the death rate. That would also mean also undercounting 20 times the hospitalizations.

With friends& reporters I’m in touch with across the country, India has had nowhere near the deaths the US has per capita. Life is normal even in big cities
Read 12 tweets
Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
16 Feb
We should recognize how consensus medical guidelines are written. It’s a group of individual people discussing and agreeing on something. The bigger the group the more likely you will end up with a laundry list of options meant to keep everyone happy.
Sometimes in order to get consensus, recommendations get diluted to something everyone agrees with. Which may not necessarily be the correct one.

From masks to vaccines we have seen this phenomenon with COVID.
Here’s more to think about.
Read 4 tweets
Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
16 Feb
To set the record straight:

1) Vaccines are not antibiotics.

2) No vaccine can prevent a virus from entering the body. It can only prevent us from getting seriously ill by helping us defeat the invader.

3) Vaccines willget back to normalcy. We are not stuck with this forever.
Vaccines are not the reason we have mutant variants. The reason we have mutant variants is we still have a huge susceptible population who have not been vaccinated and there is uncontrolled proliferation of the virus in millions of hosts across the world. So Mutations happen.
Vaccines are the solution.
Read 5 tweets
Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
15 Feb
If COVID virus or mutant variants cause asymptomatic/mild infection in vaccinated people or reinfection, think of it as a booster dose of vaccine that protects from severe disease/death.

Best protection from reinfection? Vaccines

Best protection from rise of mutants? Vaccines
Think of why COVID wrecked havoc. Not because we had an epidemic of common cold that swept the world.

It wrecked havoc because it caused almost 1 death per 100 people infected. It put 2-3 people per 100 infected in the ICU. It caused deaths in elderly, young, healthcare workers
It made people have long term consequences even if they recovered.

This seriousness combined with easy transmissibility made it a menace. The ability of asymptomatic people to spread a serious disease to a totally immunologically naive susceptible global population made it COVID
Read 8 tweets
Vincent Rajkumar Profile picture
12 Feb
Update from my tweet from last week. Mutants and all, this is what is going on in the UK. Whatever the reasons for the drop, the more vaccinations, the more we sustain the drop and overcome this miserable virus.
Be focused. Be single minded. Let experts worry about the rise of the variants— for which the only practical and sustainable solution is to vaccinate as many people as possible with any one of the approved vaccines.
Do not worry about reports that the vaccines don’t prevent infections or mild disease from some mutant variants. They will work and prevent severe disease and deaths. The immune system works by memory. And vaccines provide it with information to prevent total surprise.
Read 5 tweets

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