“...The slope of decline of deaths began in January before there was any sort of wide vaccine distribution. That slope has not steepened....”
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Look, You can do some research on vaccine distributions by the week and you’ll see that many millions of doses were distributed starting in the week of December 4th and accelerating into January. The elderly and folks in nursing homes were major priority targets during that time. You can convince yourself that the vaccines haven’t had an impact, but the facts say otherwise.
On the contrary, the slope should have steepened, even if you revise history of rollout. There were only a few million out in early Feb, and many of those were NOT the elderly, they were “essential personnel”.
Have a look at the death count curve shape of last year from the Northeast, about April. It looks much the same. You’re going to be hard pressed to revise history to a vaccine rollout in April 2020.
Look, I have no doubt at all they did great work on the vaccines. They are likely very effective against the original strain. But that’s not what’s in society now.
It’s useful to examine the death curve of other countries. The UK DOES have a very steep descent. They were very strict about border control/travel and South Africa/Manaus/California variants didn’t get in. Their descent is near vertical.
Ours should be. It’s not.
Have a look at France and Russia. They were no less aggressive about vaccinations, and their death decline is even more shallow than the US.