Will the vaccines out run the variants?

This appears to be good news. Take a look at the article it has some nice graphs.  I  pay a lot of attention to the daily data from the NY Times. The rapid fall for the last two months leveled off into a slower fall a few weeks ago and now is either plateauing or going up again.  

U.S. COVID cases are climbing again. The same thing happened in Israel — before vaccination crushed the variants.

It’s official: After falling for more than two straight months, the average number of daily COVID-19 cases across the U.S. has begun — just barely — to rise again, inching up from a low of 54,059 earlier this week to 57,322 on Wednesday.

So is this the start of the variant-driven “fourth wave” that Americans have been fearing ever since the end of our horrific holiday surge?

The answer, reassuringly, appears to be no — at least not if America’s path out of the pandemic looks anything like Israel’s.

To date, more than a quarter of the U.S. population (25.3 percent) has received at least one dose of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. In Israel, that number is more than 57 percent. Because of its rapid vaccine rollout — and because the more contagious “U.K. variant” known as B.1.1.7 that’s now spreading in the U.S. has already been dominant in Israel for months — experts have been eyeing Israel for early signs of how the pitched battle between vaccination and variants is likely to play out in America.

When Israel launched its vaccination campaign on Dec. 19, the virus was already surging; a few days later, the country entered its third national lockdown. Over the next month, however, cases continued to climb another 150 percent. By Jan. 25, B.1.1.7 had superseded all other strains in the country.

“The vaccine works against the British mutation, but the virus infection rate is much faster than the vaccine rate,” Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health at the Health Ministry, told the Knesset. “We are at a record number of people on ventilators. It’s unprecedented.”

Before long, the nation’s strict lockdown had its desired effect, and Israel’s curve finally began to bend downward. But that’s when researchers realized something else as well: The curve was bending even more among the first seniors to be immunized. Distancing wasn’t the only factor at play. Vaccination seemed to be working.

But despite moments during the winter when it seemed as if Israel’s case count was leveling off or even rebounding, vaccination access, eligibility and uptake continued to increase — and another wave never arrived. Now more than 50 percent of Israelis have been fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging fewer than 1,000 new daily cases for the first time since November — a number that has plummeted nearly 75 percent over the last two and a half weeks alone.

Crucially, that sharp drop in infections came after Israel partially reopened in February, and it has continued in the weeks since the country fully reopened on March 7. 

My comment: It looks like Israel did more than vaccinate, it also had lock downs that sound like they were more serious than ours have been.  It looks like we will be able to vaccinate everyone who wants it. I am not sure enough will actually take up the offer. 

 Here in the Ohio the State legislature just handcuffed the Governor's ability to issue health mandates by overriding his veto. Not sure we are safe as long as we have Republican majorities in our state legislatures. Legislatures micromanaging pandemics is not healthy.