US vaccine supply could be plentiful soon
Questioning illustrates challenges facing lawyers
In just two months, the United States could be swimming in COVID-19 vaccine. Literally swimming. The 500 million 0.5-milliliter or 0.3-milliliter doses expected to be shipped by then are enough to fill a 55,000-gallon swimming pool.
As hard as it is to imagine now as people frantically call, click and line up to get vaccinated, the nation is close to shifting from a situation of scarcity to one of abundance.
With a plentiful supply of vaccine, there will be more urgency to persuade the reluctant to accept it, experts say. Otherwise, the abundance will become a surplus that threatens to undermine the nation’s ability to move beyond the pandemic.
“When we start to have more vaccine available, we’re really going to be in bad shape because what we’re going to see is a lot of people who don’t want to
get vaccinated,” said Bernadette Boden-albala, dean of the public health program at the University of California, Irvine.
About 18% of Americans have been immunized. Boden-albala thinks there will be vaccine surpluses in some areas as soon as early April.
Then the challenges start. “If we’ve got whole states in this country that don’t want to mask and don’t want to socially distance, then I’m very concerned we’ll have people there who don’t want to be vaccinated either,” she said.
Messaging will matter, experts say. The easiest group to reach will be those who’ve simply put it off.
For them, the message needs to be that immunization is quick, easy and free, said Christopher Morse, an expert on health communication at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Some people who haven’t gotten vaccinated simply haven’t had the time or felt rushed to do so. Messages about why it’s worth their while will be needed, experts say. “You might say, ‘Get vaccinated, spend Easter with your family,’ Dr. Kelly Moore, deputy director of the Immunization Action Coalition.
Mobile clinics, pop-up vaccination sites and public service announcements will be important to reach those in low-income communities of color where vaccine uptake has lagged because of access and hesitancy.
Public health officials are buoyed by one apparent shift: Vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans appears to be falling. In December, just 42% said they planned to get vaccinated. That number is now 61%, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Friday.
Vaccine hesitancy overall also is falling. In September, 49% of Americans told the Pew research group they probably or definitely wouldn’t take the vaccine. By last month that number had fallen to 30%.
But that still leaves 75 million people who may not be taking the doses. Experts say at least 65% of people, and likely closer to 85%, must be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
And there are significant partisan differences in terms of who wants vaccine.
Pew found 83% of Democrats said they’d gotten vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated, compared with 56% of Republicans.
“We’re going to see a point where there’s a real polarization where people are getting vaccinated and people are not,” said Dr. Corey Casper, CEO of the Infectious Disease Research Institute in Seattle and a professor of global health at the University of Washington.
While areas with high vaccination rates will see few infections, communities with lower rates may continue to see cases. “They’re going to see a huge use of resources in those areas. It’s going to hurt their economies,” he said.
It appears unlikely Americans will be forced to get a shot. Employer mandates for vaccination would be tricky, said Michelle Mello, a law professor and legal health expert at Stanford University.
From a purely regulatory standpoint, it would be difficult to enforce because so far all three vaccines being used in the United States have emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, not a license, said Mello.
There’s also not yet solid data showing vaccination makes it less likely someone can transmit COVID-19.
“Once that exists, it would allow employers to say it’s an intervention that prevents harm to others,” Mello said.
“Everyone sees the benefit of making it voluntary,” she said, though employers might think of sweetening the pot. “If some percentage of your workers are going to feel like crap after their doses, maybe you give them the day after off.”
MINNEAPOLIS – The long process of jury selection for a former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death began Tuesday with two jurors picked and five dismissed, including some who said they would not be able to set aside their views on what happened.
One woman who was dismissed said: “I definitely have strong opinions about the case. I think I can try to be impartial – I don’t know that I can promise impartiality.”
Another woman said she saw bystander video showing Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, and didn’t understand why the officer didn’t get up when Floyd said he couldn’t breathe.
“That’s not fair because we are humans, you know?” she said. She, too, was dismissed.
The exchanges between potential jurors, attorneys and the judge illustrate the challenges in seating a jury in such a well-known case. Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill set aside three weeks for a process that could run longer; Opening statements are scheduled no sooner than March 29.
Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death, and jury selection is proceeding despite uncertainty over whether a third-degree murder charge will be added. The state has asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to stop proceedings until that’s resolved, which could mean a delay of weeks or months.
Floyd was declared dead on May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against the Black man’s neck for about nine minutes. Floyd’s death sparked sometimes violent protests in Minneapolis and beyond, leading to a nationwide reckoning on race.
Chauvin and three other officers were fired; the others face an August trial on aiding and abetting charges.
A man who was selected to serve on the jury, a chemist who says he comes to conclusions based on analysis and facts, said he has never watched the video of Floyd’s arrest but that he has seen a still image from the video. When asked if he could decide the case based on the evidence, he said, “I’d rely on what I hear in court.”
The man, whom prosecutors said identifies as white, said he supports the
Black Lives Matter movement, but views the organization itself unfavorably. He also has an unfavorable view of the Blue Lives Matter movement. He said everyone should matter the same.
“The whole point of that is that all lives should matter equally, and that should include police,” he said.
A woman who was selected described herself as a “go-with-the-flow” person who could talk with anyone about anything. The woman, who is related to a police officer near Minneapolis, said she initially had a negative perception of Chauvin because of what she saw in the bystander video.
“That video just makes you sad.” she said. “Nobody wants to see somebody die, whether it was his fault or not.”
She said there could be many reasons why Chauvin would pin Floyd to the ground, and that while she has heard Floyd had drugs in his system when he died, she understands that may not have been a factor in his death.
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, exercised two of his 15 peremptory challenges on potential jurors who identify as Hispanic, which led prosecutors to object that the jurors were being rejected because of their race. Cahill disagreed, noting that the second Hispanic juror to be dismissed had martial arts experience and referred to Chauvin’s restraint as an “illegal” move. The judge said that man made it clear he would stick to his opinions until someone told him otherwise, improperly shifting the burden of proof to the defense.
Cahill ruled on several pretrial motions Tuesday, setting parameters for trial testimony. Among them, Cahill said jurors will hear when Chauvin stopped working for the police department, but not that he was fired or that the city made a “substantial offer” to settle a lawsuit from Floyd’s family. Those details won’t be allowed because they could imply guilt, Cahill said.
Minneapolis City Attorney Jim Rowader said the city made an offer to the Floyd family last summer that was rejected. He didn’t provide details. A message left with an attorney for the Floyd family hasn’t been returned.
Cahill also ruled that a firefighter, who can be heard in the bystander video urging the officers to check Floyd’s pulse, will be allowed to testify about what she saw and whether she thought medical intervention was needed. But she won’t be allowed to speculate that she could have saved Floyd if she had intervened. Testimony about what training Chauvin received will be allowed.