I wrote in January about vaccines and public health, and I wanted to retract my bottom-line recommendation about which vaccine to get -- if you have a choice -- in Hong Kong. Appointments opened to residents 16+ yesterday, so this post is coming a bit late, but oh well. Here we are.

If you're in Hong Kong and have choices, my personal recommandation is that you get an appointment for the BioNTech (Pfizer) vaccine as soon as possible. (If you are in Hong Kong and have a HKID, the link to book a vaccine in English is here -- click the red "Book Vaccination" box at the left.)

In the rest of this post, I'll describe how my thinking has changed on the argument I expressed in my January post.

(1)

When I wrote in January, I was looking at a massive shortfall in vaccine demand in the US and assuming that it couldn't happen here in Hong Kong. In hindsight, I was extremely wrong.

In the first 57 days of the government vaccination program, 16.3 doses have been given for every 100 persons in Hong Kong, at an average rate of 21,500 doses/day (government source). On Friday at 9am, all residents 16+ became eligible to book appointments, and "about 31,300 new vaccination bookings [were] made online" in the 13 hours before and 11 hours after the opening. I'm not sure whether this is 31k people with 62k appointments, or 16k people with 31k appointments.

Even if it's 62k new appointments in the first-day rush, that's still only 2.4x the daily processing rate (26,100 doses given in the same 24