I tried to get the key but failed ... guess I could have grabbed a screen shot and embedded that. Basically, it's the lightest color being 49% and the darkest being over 90%.
Edit: I put that key in there... thanks.
It's too late now, but federal and state governments had time to prepare for vaccination campaigns and seemed to let the arrival of the mRNA vaccines creep up on us. Really, the CDC printed millions of vaccination cards for us to document our doses? I know people object to online databases, but it should have been a centralized database from the get-go. Same deal with contact tracing, why have individual states release apps instead of a national system?
Anyway, more to the point, there was a relatively simple way to break through a lot of vaccine hesitancy. Instead of all the "stimulus" money that was doled out to adults, we should have paid everyone to get vaccinated. I'm not saying the whole $1400, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-$600 would have done it. I know a few states are now trying to incentivize young people to get vaccinated, but it should have been universal from the jump. A lot of vaccine hesitancy would evaporate when people have Benjamins dangled in front of them. Administration could be a little tricky, as not everyone files a tax return.
I realize some ethicists say this is a terrible look that we have to bribe Americans when most of the world has no access to vaccines. But we recently "printed" billions of dollars to send to many working families that are not currently affected economically, so carving out a chunk of that to boost vaccinations would have been the better play. We can all cringe about the optics, but I haven't heard of another way to get us to 75% vaccinated.
As time goes on the undercount becomes a smaller percentage, and I'd need substantial evidence to believe the undercut was still anywhere near 6-10x.
I don't have to tell you this, but 10x seems mathematically implausible.
I find the current CDC estimate (3.5:1) reasonable, except they have always modeled a low percentage of asymptomatic cases. That doesn't seem to align well with what we know about SARS-CoV-2 transmission.