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Chris Painter's avatar

Great post! You might be interested in this post, contrasting our recent experience in NYC with a 1947 smallpox vaccination campaign: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JPyH3kxSzECAsM9bm/a-vastly-faster-vaccine-rollout

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Nick Arnosti's avatar

I've also been wondering about this! In New York, it seems that initially demand was lagging (when they were adhering strictly to group 1a only), but now that they have expanded eligibility, lack of supply is the primary problem.

We talked about pooling for COVID testing in my class on Thursday. Basically, small labs have the advantage of proximity (no need to ship samples across the state), but the drawback of higher variability than centralized testing facilities. If we had real-time data on turnaround times at different labs, then we could get the best of both worlds: benefits of pooling and short transportation times. However, collecting this information could be challenging, both logistically and for incentive reasons (what lab wants to publish long wait times, especially if it might cause them to lose business?).

For vaccination, it is crazy to me that we don't have a more centralized registration system. However it doesn't seem that this alone would fully "pool" vaccinations: unless vaccination is performed at one central site, potential no-shows still impact each site individually.

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