Consider This from NPR - Optimism About Case Rates, Vaccines, And Future Of The Pandemic

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

After more than 500,000 deaths and nearly a full year, experts say there are a growing number of reasons to be optimistic about the direction of the pandemic. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have all fallen dramatically in recent weeks. Among those falling numbers, a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson that may be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration this week. Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University explains why the shot is just as desirable as already-authorized vaccines from Pzifer and Moderna. Here's NPR's tool for how to sign up for a COVID-19 vaccination in your state. The Biden administration has promised to ramp up vaccination efforts even more as soon as Congress authorizes more money to do so. NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell has an update on the $1.9 trillion rescue package speeding through the House. Additional reporting on the drop in COVID-19 case rates in this episode came from NPR's Allison Aubrey and Will Stone. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Across the country, COVID-19 case rates are falling faster than almost anyone expected. The question is why. Look, this has taken a tragic toll on the United States, but we should be optimistic in my view. That's former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on CBS this week. In the U.S., the number of new daily cases has fallen more than 40 percent over the last two weeks, and hospitalizations are down 30 percent. But the rate of decline varies a lot depending on where you are. I think we're going to continue to see infection rates decline into the spring and the summer. Right now they're falling quite dramatically. Experts say a few different things are going on. Vaccination,

especially in long-term care facilities, may be starting to show in the data. Our winter surge led to more masking and social distancing as Americans watched the dire situation in hospitals around the country. Less stress on hospitals means better outcomes for individual patients. And in some parts of the country, Scott Gottlieb said, enough people have already been infected to give the local population a kind of partial immunity. You don't have herd immunity, meaning that this won't transfer at all. It will continue to transfer, but it will transfer at a much slower rate. And that's what we have right now around the country. Consider this. After nearly one year and half a million Americans dead, there are a growing number of reasons to be optimistic

about the direction of the pandemic. More of those reasons coming up. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Tuesday, February 23rd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. In recent mass shootings, people have been targeted for who they are or who they worship. But on June 28, 2018, people were targeted for the job they do, at a newspaper. Listen to the new series from NPR's Embedded about the survivors at the Capital Gazette. It's Consider This from NPR. And one reason the pandemic is looking better in the U.S. than it did two months ago is that things were really bad two months ago. 500,071 dead. A ceremony Monday evening at the White House to mark half a million U.S. deaths was a reminder of how the pandemic has been uniquely devastating in America.

That's more Americans who have died in one year in this pandemic, than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. That's more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth. And it's not even close. The number two country, Brazil, has less than half the number of deaths. And the number three country, Mexico, has about a third of the U.S. total. So this improvement is somewhat relative. The slope that's coming down is really terrific. It's very steep and it's coming down very, very quickly. But we are still at a level that's very high. That's Dr. Anthony Fauci on NBC this week. Just weeks ago, there were 3,000,

4,000 people dying every day. In recent days, the seven-day death average dropped below 2,000 for the first time since early December. What I don't and none of my colleagues want to see is when you look at that slope to come down, that is say, wow, we're out of the woods now. We're in good shape. We're not because the baseline of daily infections is still very, very high. It's not the 300 to 400,000 that we had some time ago. But we want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we're out of the woods. Getting out of the woods means more vaccination, and there may be good news on that front soon. There are two coronavirus vaccines being distributed in the U.S. right now, Pfizer and Moderna's. This week, an FDA advisory committee will vote on whether a third should join them. This one from Johnson & Johnson.

Now, a couple weeks back, when the first efficacy data for the J&J shot emerged, one headline you may have seen was that it was about 66% effective at preventing moderate and severe disease. Whereas the two existing vaccines, well, they're more like 95% effective. 66%? Pretty much the D student of the vaccine world. Not failing, but we'd really like to bump that average up to a C plus by next semester. The lower number made for an easy punchline. But scientists say that is not the right way to think about this vaccine. So most importantly, people have to compare apples to apples. And that 66 to 95 isn't the right comparison for a couple of reasons.

Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NPR this week that the J&J vaccine has gotten a bad rap. He spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro. Johnson & Johnson was tested in very different settings. It was tested in South Africa while that South African variant was spreading. So that 66% number really represents an amalgamation of a variety of different clinical trials. Moderna and Pfizer were not tested in those circumstances. And even if you just look at the US data, the Johnson & Johnson number then starts getting much closer to the Moderna and Pfizer numbers. But I think all of that actually misses the most important point,

which is what you care about is hospitalizations and deaths. And Johnson & Johnson appears to be just as good as Moderna and Pfizer at preventing those. So I just want to be clear. It's possible that when all of these vaccines are in circulation for a longer time with greater populations of people, the differences among them will seem to be much smaller than they seem right now? Absolutely. They've been tested in different populations.

They've been tested at different times. We get slightly different numbers, but we shouldn't focus on that. What we should really focus on is the most important issue, which is do they save lives? And the Johnson & Johnson vaccine seems terrific at that. This is really remarkable, by the way, that across every vaccine that has reported results, almost all of them have been close to 100% at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, which is terrific. Are there other significant differences among the vaccines?

Yeah, absolutely. So Johnson & Johnson has the huge advantage of being one shot. So that's, of course, really helpful. There are a lot of differences in storage. Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be stored basically in any refrigerator. So transportation, widespread availability, much easier. But I certainly think for most people, the idea of a single-shot vaccine should be attractive for a lot of folks, and that also makes it easier for people to get. As people organizing this vaccination effort look at which vaccine should go where,

does the sort of ease of administering a one-shot vaccine that can be kept in a refrigerator determine where the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is going to go, as opposed to one that requires two shots and has to be kept super cold? Yeah, I think you're going to see that play out. I mean, the two-shot Pfizer vaccine, particularly hard to manage in, let's say, rural settings, hard to reach places, doable, but harder. J&J vaccine, much, much easier on that front. There are also certain people who may just decide they'd rather get a single shot than

two shots. And, you know, and that may also influence who ends up getting one. Some people are expressing concern that the vaccine that appears to be more effective, Moderna, Pfizer, is going to go to constituencies that have more political power, more clout, a louder voice, and that the quote-unquote less effective vaccine, Johnson & Johnson, is going to go to more disenfranchised groups. What's your response to that? Yeah, well, first of all, I want to make the case that the J&J vaccine is not a lesser vaccine. And second is we absolutely should not

be distributing these things based on socioeconomic status or any of those things. We should really be getting all these vaccines out everywhere. We should be focused on disenfranchised groups actually for priority because they've been hit so hard. And on a personal level, you know, what I've been saying to my family is as soon as the J&J vaccine is authorized, if that's what you can get, you should get it as soon as it's your turn in line. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. By the way, if you actually need help finding out when it's your turn in line or where that virtual line exists, Well, we put a dozen researchers on a project doing just that. They cataloged how to sign up for a vaccine in every state and built an online tool that walks you through the steps for getting an appointment where you live. So there's a link to the vaccine finder in our episode notes or just Google NPR vaccine finder.

Of course, in many places, there's still not enough vaccine supply. You may be left signing up for a wait list or finding the right link to keep checking over and over again each day. Some vaccine shipments were also delayed by last week's winter weather. But supply has been gradually ticking up, with 17% of the country's adult population now receiving at least one shot. The Biden administration has promised to get that number higher and faster once Congress approves a new $1.9 trillion relief package. Now that package contains, among other things, billions for vaccine distribution, and it was approved by the House Budget Committee Monday. It's headed for a vote in the full House later this week, with Democrats racing to pass it before unemployment benefits run out mid-March. NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, well, she's been following the details of this package, and she spoke to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. So I want to start with some of

the items that we have been talking about all along, stimulus checks, unemployment insurance. What exactly is in this version of the bill to address those programs? Yeah, those are really familiar programs at this point. And what this new bill includes is $1,400 checks added on top of the $600 checks from the end of last year. Democrats say that will reach the full $2,000, which is a figure that former President Trump adopted at the end of his term. And then Democrats embrace saying, well, sure, we'd love to do that. This would phase out. The checks would phase out for individuals earning over $75,000 and couples earning more than $150,000.

And there are more checks for dependents, adults and kids. And the unemployment portion of it that you mentioned will go from $300 a week to $400 per week. And that would start in the middle of March and end at the end of August. It does create another unemployment cliff, though. It creates so much uncertainty for people who are collecting this unemployment. And it raises the question of how Democrats will address it in the summer. Lots of ideas are out there for how to do this, like one that would make federal unemployment automatic and dependent on local unemployment levels. But there's really not a lot of consensus on what to do once they get to the end of August. Okay. Now, meanwhile, Democrats say one of the things they're trying to do right now is speed relief to those people who were hit hardest in the pandemic.

They're pointing to women, to workers of color, people in service jobs and so forth. What specifically is in this bill for them? I think the most interesting change here, something I've been watching really closely, is a big change to the child tax credit. They're trying something entirely new. They're basically experimenting with basic income for families. The idea is to send parents $300 per month per child from July to the end of the year, and they'd be increasing the existing child tax credit. And then they're doing something that really is very different. They're making it what's called advanceable and refundable, meaning it doesn't matter if you owe taxes, you can get the money. And you would be getting it on a monthly basis,

which is also completely new. It's targeted at couples earning $150,000 or less and individuals earning $75,000 or less. There's also a more generous earned income tax credit for low-income workers without kids, more money for food security, and some additional money for rental and utility assistance. Okay. And then one more piece that we've been talking about, this $15 minimum wage, where does that stand? Well, it is in this bill, but it's not entirely guaranteed that it will make it past this bill, in part because Senate rules may mean that it just can't be included. They're using a complicated budget process to get this bill through, and that may mean the $15 minimum wage can't make it.

But there are also big political divides among Democrats about whether or not they should be actually pursuing a $15 minimum wage. So we're going to be watching that pretty closely. That's NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.