779 COVID-19 Cases Added Sunday

Cottage is ordering for Cottage and related; who's ordering vaccines for the rest of Santa Barbara? What's going to be the charge/vaccine for the general public?

Obviously there is no urgency in administering the vaccine. They are hoarding the vaccines and appear to be more interested in shaming and blaming the general public.

It's Cronyism 101. Where's the watchdog? There are reports from the rest of the country that vaccines are being distributed improperly. How do we know it's not happening here? The lack of transparency, obfuscation and the slowness of the distribution borders on the criminal.

Cottage claims to have vaccinated more than 2,900 employees representing 2/3 of their staff, from a Jan 6 Noozhawk article. There is also a good percentage with a good percentage refusing to be vaccinated. According to their website they employee 3,500 people. Given these numbers they are certainly vaccinating more than just the front line works covered in 1A.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions. This is infuriating. We need new leadership, accountability and a watchdog.

The population of Santa Barbara County is 447,218, and Dr. Van Do-Reynoso hopes to vaccinate 5,000 people by the end of the month. Everyone should be outraged by this plan. We need to ramp up the amount of vaccines purchased and distribute them quickly and equitably.

Where is the urgency? What are we waiting for? More bodies to pile up in the morgues? The incompetence is, quite literally, breathtaking.

Spot on L C.

Please don't let this misinformation 'confirm your suspicions' without actually doing your own research. I know many people in Santa Barbara working at small clinics or in the field who have already received their vaccination (as of last week) thanks to Cottage.

Cottage and Sansum have been providing to the other smaller clinics and unassociated medical staff.

CitizenSB, it will take 7.6 years to vaccinate the entire county at that rate. Seems like there's no rush at all. They've only had about a year to figure this out...

"The biggest problem is each person who gets a vaccine has to be monitored for 15 minutes after getting it. You can only do so many per day.... keep up the good work though, you are really on to something".

This is a no-brainer. Do mass vaccinations at Earl Warren, SBHS football stadium, and other venues with big parking lots that can accommodate a lot of people at one time.

California has vaccinated 1.5% of its population, one of the worst rates per capita in the country. Just below Puerto Rico.

Turn over the vaccinations to the pharmacies they are the ones giving the flu shots and from what I see are less than busy.

Or... how 'bout the Sears building? The one the County decided to lease out in July/August to prepare for a serge in hospitalizations. Hate to see money for a 6 month lease completely go down the drain....

What is your projection on our doubling time from here? And do you have any thoughts on the B117 mutation?

The doubling time hasn't really changed much in the past week, and the slope of the case rate has been relatively constant. As far as lineage B.1.1.7., it's actually a cluster of 23 mutations in the nucleotide coding sequence of the virus. 17 of these changes in nucleotide base pairs are of consequence, either changing the amino acid sequence, or causing the deletion of an amino acid, in one of the viral proteins. 6 of the nucleotide changes do not alter the final amino acid sequence of the viral proteins, as there is some redundancy in the genetic code (UCU and AGC codons both specify the amino acid serine, for example). A few of these amino acid changes are understood. The N501Y mutation changes the amino acid asparagine to tyrosine at position 501 in the spike protein. This single change causes an increase in affinity of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor in our cells. As the binding of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor is how the virus infects our cells, any mutation that increase the affinity of this interaction will increase the likelihood of infections. It's probably one of reasons that B117 is spreading more quickly. These mutations should not affect the effectiveness of the vaccines, as I believe these new vaccines are designed to target multiple epitopes on the pathogenic antigen, the spike protein for example. Each epitope is a sequence of several amino acids that can be recognized by an antibody. A single mutation that changes one amino acid would (hopefully) not allow the viral protein to escape the immune response. I guess we'll have to wait and see how this virus changes over the coming months and years.

Do you see this as a similar divergence as with influenza - two strains with different sub-types? I understand that you feel that any one of the vaccines is capable of creating an overall coverage, but what about the human immune system? I have heard that there is a possibility of vaccinations creating a bigger problem if there are already antibodies, but what if it is for a different strain? Layman here, I apologize if my questions are.... well, you know.

It's less destructive to the lungs with the spike change.

Hi MountainMan, I haven't heard anything serious about what you're describing. In fact, getting the vaccine if you already have antibodies would be like getting a booster shot. The main concern with vaccines that are mRNA or DNA-vector-based is the possibility of an autoimmune response. This is a situation where your healthy cells, which begin to express the viral epitopes encoded by the mRNA/DNA template in the vaccine, may be recognized as foreign by your immune system. To my knowledge this is a rare event, but a phenomenon that has been observed with this new vaccine technology.

If you're using those numbers from the geography tab.... don't. Add the new cases up - you get 719 new cases and 1,965 active cases. The numbers there should match those on the 'Cases' page, but they never do. Also two things to keep in mind - the 'new cases' are from the day the results filter in to the county. There's a seperate 'episode date' on the graph. "New cases" are a cluster of previous tests. The episode date back tracks those numbers to the testing date. Also, the county has said, repeatedly (although buried in their statements) that deaths can take up to two months to report. So when the county reports '6 new deaths'... there's really no telling when they actually occurred. It certainly wasn't the day before.

Total cases and new infections tells you what we will need in hospital resources. 12% of the infected will need hospitalization, and 12% of those will die. That's about 1.5% of the infected. Just like the Flu, right?

If you honestly think the number being reported represents the actual number of people who have COVID-19 in the county then you are sorely misinformed. These are simply the people who have been tested and then happen to show a positive result. Between the number of false negatives, which is quite high, and the number of people who have the virus and simply aren’t getting tested we should assume it’s up to 10 times higher than this number. In other words this virus is all around us now and we should all remain vigilant about mask wearing and avoiding gatherings.

Current numbers show California statewide COVID positivity rate (7-day average): 15.0% So Yes, it is all around us. Be safe.

WATCHER - the news lists the new cases each day:

"The Public Health Department reported 779 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday" - see above article, along with current cases:

"Santa Barbara County's total case count is now 21,323 with 2,129 of those being active" - again from article that you are commenting on, in addition to ICU capacity:

"Both Santa Barbara County and the greater Southern California Region have 0% ICU availability." - guess where that's mentioned? Yep, in the very short article that, again, you are complaining about. This information is published DAILY. How are you not seeing that?

Duke, what do you get out of attacking the facts? You know I have refs for everything I post, right? While you don't support for anything you post. Because you can't. "In early December, the overall weekly hospitalization rate reached its highest point since the beginning of the pandemic and remains elevated. Although reported rates in recent weeks have declined, these rates are likely to increase as additional data are reported. Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) for week 53 was 14.5% and it remains above the epidemic threshold. "
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

"The new data show 40 percent of diagnosed COVID-19 patients with at least one underlying health condition were hospitalized (including 13 percent in ICU)—versus 9 percent of diagnosed COVID-19 patients without an underlying health condition (2 percent in ICU)."

The truth shall set you free.....but maybe not Duke.

https://www.medscape.com/answers/2500114-197409/what-are-the-us-hospitalization-icu-admission-and-mortality-rates-for-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19

You do realize that percentage of deaths, is completely different than "chance" of death right...those are completely different things. And no, you don't have data for anything...but tell me, do you still think the death rate is 3%?

When refuted, deflect the discussion with non-sequiturs.

It's nice that you (FINALLY!!) retreated from your 3% death rate...but again, nice wild 3 to 4 times exaggeration with your 1.5% death rate. The current death rate of infected is somewhere between .3% and .5%. I sort of appreciate the consistency of your dishonesty!!

1:39 PM - Your replies always seem to exhibit that charming toddler meltdown characteristic of yelling the same old stuff and adding "Because!!!"

You are right, I am yelling "BECAUSE SCIENCE"!! It's interesting, amazing and scary how many people that offends. They have their narrative that they will follow in spite of all evidence to the contrary...

This is a false (and dangerously dishonest post). I corrected it with the real numbers based on actual science. Not sure why Edhat deleted it. (Might have been the use of 417 exclamation points, but whatever). As per the CDC (and EVERYONE!), the death rate is .3% to .5%. That's high and dangerous and life changing...but it's not 1.5% or 3%. To repeatedly say that (even without exclamation points) is obvious and intentional misinformation.

Yet you still have no source references for your claims.

I think I've linked the CDC on this like 400 times...but sure, here you go again!

file:///C:/Users/paul/Downloads/cdc_88617_DS1%20(2).pdf

Parameter values Table 1
Parameter Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5: Current Best Estimate
R0* 2.0 4.0 2.5
Infection Fatality Ratio† 0-19 years: 0.00002
20-49 years: 0.00007
50-69 years: 0.0025
70+ years: 0.028 0-19 years: 0.0001
20-49 years: 0.0003
50-69 years: 0.010
70+ years: 0.093 0-19 years: 0.00003
20-49 years: 0.0002
50-69 years: 0.005
70+ years: 0.054

Overall: 0.034

Thanks for sending me there, I need to update my numbers as the CDC has lowered their estimated fatality rate to .34%. It has obviously been steadily going down, though they had stuck with .5% for the last month or so in spite of most other government health agencies being at .3%.

Bad link...here you go:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

Planning scenario parameters? You do realize from the accompanying text that they vary those parameters to come up with best and worst case plans, don't you? Only a tenuous connection to data collected last August.

Correct...and as per the CDC's worst case scenario, the mortality rate is .5%..and the best current guess is .3%. Which obviously makes sense, no? If you go whale watching and see 3 whales, do you scientifically conclude that there are 3 whales in the Pacific Ocean?

You do realize 0.034 is 3.4% right? I don't think you do.

Latest results (December) from actual clinical data, and not hypothesized parameters:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/

"Our analysis finds a exponential relationship between age and IFR for COVID-19. The estimated age-specific IFR is very low for children and younger adults (e.g., 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at age 25) but increases progressively to 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85."

Pitmix and Duke - you two should totally have an arm wrestling contest when this is over.

Yeah, that link doesn't work for me.

Duke, your math skills need work, but it is confusing as the mortality rate shifts. This breaks it down: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid