A Majority of Doses are Now Second Doses

As of Feb. 18 (last day of full data) we gave out 817,708 second doses and just 702,426 first doses. In other words, a majority of doses are now second doses. As Daniel Bier writes this means that we are boosting some people from ~85% to ~95% protected when we could be vaccinating more first timers and getting them from 0% protected to ~85% protected.

If we followed the British rule and delayed the booster to 12 weeks, we could immediately more than *double* the number of people going from 0% protected to to ~85% protected. More first-doses would be great for the newly protected and more people at ~85% protection would also reduce transmission so there would be fewer new infections and less threat to the non-vaccinated.

The opportunity cost of not delaying the booster is measured in lives lost.