Texas Jeff

50% of seniors will have at least 1 shot by March 3rd if the past 7 day rate holds until then. Add 3-4 weeks for "both shots" dates.

Texas first shots crossed 10% today, seniors with first shots are at 26%. At the 7 day rate, seniors will reach 50% coverage on March 3rd, everyone over 16 will get to 50% on June 7th. I'm using estimated 2021 Texas population -- the official websites are using a 2018 number.

There are now are more people in Texas who have received their first shot than have had a confirmed case of COVID.

Congrats to the UT CS admits! If your kid wanted UT CS but didn't get in and is dissapointed, fear not. Encourage them to go to another school and code their ass off. After they are done coding for the day, code some more. Learn the tools. Crank out some projects. I interviewed a lot of CS grads and some really could code and some really could not. It might be a little harder to get that first job but a little hustle and sweat will go a long way. Oh, and if your kid has a dream company, tell them to go for it to the point of annoying hiring managers. Eventually they will find one that may want them on the team.

They said they have 188k that are eligible now, but they have a "points" system based on criteria and they email only the people on the list that have points over a threshold. In theory anyone could go claim an appointment if you are eligible but there is no way I have found to claim on if you are 1B and you have not received the "preferred" email. They are not disclosing the algorithm that determines points and there is no way to find out how many points you have.

Regarding the olds .... yeah a lot of olds I know have found a shot and many of them have younger people advocating for them. The ones I know are still connected to the younger generations. Many aren't. The reality is that only 25% of Texans over 80 have had a shot. There are six DKRs of 80+ folks yet to have a shot, more than three million to go over 65. About 50% of the vaccine is going to the senior population across the state and less than 50% in Travis County. They are getting more than their share of the vaccine because of their age, but it's not over for them. Everyone over 65 should have a chance to get a first shot by maybe mid-May. At some point the state needs to focus on these hard to find elderly. They can't compete with younger people for online appointments. They may be shut-ins but they are all one fall away from being in a hospital.

Here's a chart that is my argument for doing it by age, if your goal is to prevent death. I created this from data in late December. Vertical axis is percent of population over 16, horizontal axis is percent of death. For example, the "80+" dot shows that people 80 and over represent about 4% of Texans over 16, but about 34% of all COVID deaths. Just doing the 75+ population should take out half of the death. Get to 50+ and you cut out over 90%. Healthcare workers helping COVID patients should have gone first. After that, just create large vax centers and put a big sign up that says "80 and over". When the line goes down, lower the age on the sign. If the sign in Amarillo says "50 and over" and the sign in Austin still says "80 and over", then give Austin more vax. Do something special for the homebound and hard to reach. You could even have an express line that says "80 and over" when the regular line says "70 and over", for those that can't wait in line. Keep the express line age high enough so that the wait is no more than 10 minutes.

APH and UT are getting almost 100% of the vaccine sent to Travis County. Last week it was 98% of all vaccines sent to the county.

My charts are based on 100% of Texans over 16 years of age. No phases or people who want it or don't want it, just 100% of those over 16.

One more chart, showing overall vaccination rates for Texas. The yellow line shows percentage of Texas over 65 that have had their first shot. The blue line shows the overall percentage of Texans over 16 that have had one shot. The orange line shows the percentage of Texans over 16 that have had two shots. Using the most recent 7 day pace, we will vaccinate: Texans over 65: 50% in 37 days (March 9th) and 100% in 98 days (May 10th). Texans over 16: 50% in 149 days (June 30th) and 100% in 328 days (December 25th).

Here's a peek at vaccination rates as of yesterday. The solid lines show vaccine allocations and the dashed lines show shots in arms. The blue lines are first shots and the orange lines are second shots. You can see the dashed blue line slightly pulling towards the solid blue line. That is great, it means that we are getting a little more efficient at getting first shots in arms. The delay between allocation and vaccination is shrinking. The second shot line headed up right on schedule. Again, that's good because it means that vaccination centers were able to manage the increased second shot volume while also doing better on first shot volume.

Man, Collin County has five hubs all working off the same waitlist. They are getting almost 43,000 doses next week. Everyone on the waitlist evidently has a number and you can search the waitlist. They are about a week behind the state average but at this rate they are going to sprint ahead... Congrats to them...

I thought about this a bit today and ended up on "that makes sense". Give some more vaccine to the areas that are hard to serve. Not a ton more, but maybe a little more. If you get it in a rural area, you are more likely to end up at a crappy hospital. An outbreak can overrun it pretty quick. You have to drive farther to get to medical stuff. Urban areas are a little more flexible. Hospitals are not as far apart and maybe can lean on each other a bit more. I don't know, maybe my thinking is flawed. But maybe it makes sense to try to put out the fire in hard to reach areas quickly and then focus more effort on the cities. it is a little crazy to think that Austin may be shortchanged now because we have put more effort into masking, resulting in less disease. I was really hoping Austin would get a 3rd hub this week not under control of the city or the university, but alas there it is....

Dell Med (UT) is running out by mid-week, they are kicking butt. Austin Public Health is getting through their allotment by the end of the week, people are having trouble scheduling appointments and their website/scheduling/selection does not appear scalable, but I have heard that the Delco site is pretty well run once you get there. All of the other 300 or so Travis County possible providers could help if they had vaccine, which they don't.

Texas 1B definition is: 1. People 65 years of age and older OR 2. People 16 years of age and older with at least one chronic medical condition that puts them at increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19, such as but not limited to: Cancer Chronic kidney disease COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) Heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease or cardiomyopathies Solid organ transplantation Obesity and severe obesity (body mass index of 30 kg/m2 or higher) Pregnancy Sickle cell disease Type 2 diabetes mellitus

In the US: Pfizer: 4.37 million doses per week allocated for next week Moderna 5.78 million doses per week allocated for next week Over the last four week of allocation (which is roughly a month, add a bit) Pfizer: 17.1 million doses Moderna: 18.4 million doses Each person requires two doses.

Yes, early on. Probably not as much in the last week. Hard to tell. To date, only about 40% of the shots have gone to those over 65 in Texas, and 35% in Travis County. But over the last week, about 51% statewide have gone to seniors, and 46% in Travis County. Four weeks ago, the number was probably 10% of shots to seniors, 90% to everyone else. It was defiantly 1A healthcare workers plus others who were in position to get it thanks to privilege or connections.

The numbers include everyone vaccinated in Texas. They come from ImmTrac2, the statewide tracking system. I assume everyone getting vaccinated is having their data put into that system. I am getting my data here: https://tabexternal.dshs.texas.gov/t/THD/views/COVID-19VaccineinTexasDashboard/Summary?%3Aorigin=card_share_link&%3Aembed=y&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Amobile=true&%3AdeepLinkingDisabled=y For example, the Travis County numbers are not the same as the numbers for the Austin Public Health hub. Travis County residents can go elsewhere for shots and the Austin Public Health hub can serve people from outside Travis Co. The numbers I am using are where people live who got the shot, not where they got the shot or how they got the shot.

I've been looking at the vaccine data statewide to try to determine if seniors are really getting priority. After about a week, it's about a 50/50 mix of those 65 and older and those below 65. Travis County has similar numbers. Statewide, Texas is averaging about 28k shots to those over 65 each day. At that rate, we have 60 days to go until 50% over 65 get their first shot (projected March 28th) and 120 days until 100% get first shots (projected May 27th).

A lot of Tarrytown is already SF-3 (duplexing allowed). The code allows more density in Tarrytown today than in many other parts of the city. Try suggesting SF-3 zoning to other parts of the city that are SF-2 or SF-1 (less or no duplexing) and watch the rebellion occur. Even if you increase zoning in Tarrytown, it's not on the new rail lines and the bus service to downtown that was in place has been removed. You are going to get car-based living. If you wanted to allow more housing in Tarrytown today and the city actually talked to the residents rather than just impose a map on them, you might discover some areas of possible density. There is a biological lab and low density married student housing on Lake Austin Blvd. Residents want to keep Muny and maybe think about ways to expand it beyond just golf. The Austin State School has a huge chunk of low density land and I think they are down to a few hundred residents. Camp Mabry just north of the neighborhood has room to march and land helicopters. You could build on all or some of that and connect it with buses up and down Exposition that ran into downtown. There are reasons that these areas stay as they are but if you just want density .... you could do it without tearing down the neighborhood today. There is honestly land all over town, including a really empty Robinson Ranch with rail already running through it and a 15 year old zoning agreement that allows almost unlimited density covering the land. The rail connects to downtown and Leander and is a short distance from Apple. But the city council just does not consider solutions like this.

I am amazed that people below the poverty line can live in Austin. If they own a million dollar house and are poor, man, take the capital gain and enjoy life somewhere else. If they are renting a million dollar house ... yeah, they aren't renting a million dollar house. Many people that can't afford where they are living move someplace cheaper. Sounds crazy but it happens. They don't just say "Well, I guess I'm homeless." It sucks for people that can't afford Austin, but many people moving here think it's cheap compared to where they were.

Tiny correction -- the petition validation stuff happens at the city clerk level. They do indeed try to toss out petitions if they can, in my opinion. The standard operating procedure is to first try to invalidate the petition, then have the city council claim that they can't support it because it is illegal, then wait for a judge to step in and say you have to put it on the ballot, then make the ballot language so confusing that no one can understand it, then find funding for a campaign against the petition so that voters say no. That always works. Dana DeBeauvoir is actually at the forefront of voting reform. Wired did an article on her efforts before the last election. Not saying she may not have been involved in hijinks before, but her recent efforts seem well meaning.

HHS released allocations for next week. Texas's Pfizer allocation stayed constant at around 165k first shots but the Moderna allocation rose from 167k first shots this week to 220k next week, an increase of 53k first shots next week. That's an extra half-DKR of folks that will get it next week. Texas has now been granted allocations to eventually cover 13% of the population, even if no further allocations were made.

Sometime today, the number of people in Travis Co that have received their first dose will exceed the number of people in Travis Co that have had a confirmed case of COVID.

From my googling and reading, I think the way it is works is: 1. Sites are putting in requests for doses, so a hub might request 10,000 doses for next week. Hubs are supposed to have the capacity to inject those doses during the week, not to hold on to doses. 2. The state is granting requests via their weekly vaccine list. 3. During the week after the grant, those quantities of doses arrive ... probably shipped directly from the manufacturer. There are kits that come with it with all of the stuff you need to inject the vax. 4. Three (Pfizer) or four (Moderna) weeks later, a second identical shipment arrives for second doses. So the doses are probably coming directly from the manufacturer but the trigger for the whole thing is to get on the state allocation list. The state isn't getting a giant bulk drop and then parcelling it out to the sites.