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Wanted to send you 2 articles today that indicate when an epidemic can be downgraded to endemic for an infectious disease. What is an epidemic? An epidemic is when a disease affects a large number of people within a community, population, or region. That is what was happening in
the UK prior to their mass vaccination program. This study in UK looked at 373,402 participants aged ≥16 years who had mass swabbing (even when asymptomatic after vax) Dec 1, 2020-April 3, 2021. In fact, 1,610,562 PCR swabs as vax rolling out. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.22.21255913v1
Whether AztraZeneca (which is like J&J in being an adenovirus/DNA vaccine) or Pfizer (mRNA vaccine), symptomatic infection massively reduced after even 1 dose and importantly so was asymptomatic infection with CT<30 on PCR (at which point extremely hard to transmit).
So, by incorporating CT thresholds into their PCR analyses, they really show us the power of the vaccines in limiting the ability of a vaccinated person who has virus in their nose to transmit to anyone else in this large study. See https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6512/22.summary
This is likely why UK now has <200 people in the hospital with COVID-19 in a country of >66 million. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/uk-daily-covid-admissions
Which is why the UK has downgraded the status of the COVID-19 epidemic to endemic (low circulation of cases; not causing high hospitalizations or deaths) as of today (even with country opening) at about 50% 1st dose ( https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations) https://news.yahoo.com/covid-pandemic-over-britain-144132492.html
And at 62% rate 1st dose vax in Israel ( https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations), that country had 0 daily COVID-19 deaths for 1st time in 10 months (again with mingling, etc.) leading country to fairly conclude they will reach herd immunity without vaccinating children https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-reports-no-new-daily-covid-deaths-for-first-time-in-10-months/
And when it comes to San Francisco & the definition of an epidemic versus endemic, with <10 people in the hospital now (900K people) with #covid19 after excellent vax rate (65% 1st dose), we can turn to true epidemic (3x as many OD deaths than covid here) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/us/fentanyl-overdoses-san-francisco.html
