Hey, France has lots of stupid people too!
After the COVID nightmare happening all over the Navajo Nation last year, one would think that they would want to avoid breakout events. One would be wrong.https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-health/2021/07/20/covid-19-outbreak-arizona-dance-hall-has-turned-deadly/7881742002/
Virginia’s official count now has vaccination status as a factor. Could be useful/interesting.
Paywalled.
Darn, I’m sorry. I never know what’s paywalled on that site because a lot of it isn’t.
"## The number of positive COVID-19 cases linked to a June 11 dance in Arizona’s Show Low area has grown to 24 and 2 people have died.
Published 8:00 AM MST Jul. 20, 2021 Updated 8:56 AM MST Jul. 20, 2021
LINDEN — Stephanie and Ray Thalman hadn’t been out to a single one of their beloved country dances in this rural Arizona hamlet for nearly two years when they stepped into the White Mountain Square Dance Hall on the evening of June 11.
About 70 people attended the three-hour event that night, moving to the music of a two-person live local band called Midnight Moon. The Thalmans, both 74 and veteran ballroom dancers, stepped, swayed and spun across the hall’s hardwood floor to 10 songs, Ray recalled last week.
Their only dance partners were each other."
Also: The most recent death linked to the outbreak was Stephanie Thalman, who died July 7. She had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in April, her husband said.
Thanks – I figured you didn’t know it was paywalled. Generally hard to tell what is and what isn’t if you yourself subscribe.
Poor Stephanie! vaccinated and everything; and staying careful for two years.
Was that on the Navaho Nation land? I can’t tell from what you quoted.
Thanks for understanding, please also understand that sometime I forget that I know things that most other people don’t just due to proximity. Yes, that part of the White Mountains is Navajo, another part is Apache.
There was a very sad picture that someone had taken of them before they went out. They looked like just the sort of active elderly couple that would have suffered so much through the lock down. (Unlike folks like us who embraced the enforced sloth.)
Thanks for answering! and for understanding my ignorance. 
“This is a dramatic increase, up from 50% [in] the week of 4 July,” Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in Senate testimony.
Walensky also said Covid fatalities had risen by nearly 48% over the past week to an average of 239 a day.
Some of the measures that were implemented by Asian countries earlier in the pandemic – masking but otherwise carrying on with business as usual – ain’t working with delta. There’s just too much viral load and infectiousness.
How do we know it’s that the measures don’t work as well against delta when they say in the same breath that there’s “a slow vaccination program, lax public vigilance”? Masks don’t work and social distancing doesn’t work and vaccines don’t work if people aren’t still actually wearing masks and social distancing, or getting vaccinated.
Prior to the vaccine regime, Asian countries (like Australia and NZ) managing to contain the virus through testing, data collection, testing, and exercising caution. With the delta variant, their ability to quantify the risk has been altered.
192,274,819 total cases
4,133,943 dead
174,960,319 recovered
In the US:
35,081,719 total cases
625,363 dead
29,435,171 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
There’s still essentially no community spread here in China, but it is starting to look as though the Chinese vaccines do not protect against Delta infection (whether they reduce the risk of hospitalization is still unclear).
A number of airport staff in cities such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen have caught Delta despite being front of the queue for vaccinations.
Do you really believe there’s no community spread in China? Because I don’t.
Oh for god’s sake, not this still.
As I say, I work in the medical industry in China. I’ve visited hospitals around the country. A country that ended lockdowns about 15 months ago. Hundreds of millions go to offices and factories every day, the tourism industry is bigger than it was in 2019 etc etc.
If they are hiding community spread then it’s the best game of hide and seek the world has seen, because I haven’t seen any cases*, nor have Western journalists and epidemiologists working in the region, as I have cited previously.
I know it makes some people uncomfortable but that’s the way it is. China stomped the virus locally and is in a similar condition to countries such as New Zealand now. I have had a close relative in my native UK die of covid, so I do not treat this matter lightly and do think investigations should continue as to the origin of this outbreak. But I also strongly believe in accepting objective reality.
* obviously when I say “no cases” I mean none beyond the ones in the official WHO reporting.
Which is another point: if China is trying to pretend there’s no community spread, why do they make it national news when there is, say, briefly a few cases in Guangzhou, resulting in a district being locked down, and the aforementioned airport cases? The deception doesn’t even make sense.
Here is a fairly good overview of Delta, for those curious/interested:
Hawaii has had six days in a row with triple-digit new cases, ranging from 100-166. Too early for today’s figures, which are always reported at 12 noon local time. They’re saying this could keep up for a while and that a lot of new cases are locals returning from Las Vegas. Vegas is hugely popular with Hawaii residents and is often referred to as the ninth island. Lots of direct flights between the two places.
Good article - thanks for sharing. I also recommend a YouTuber “Medcram”, which features a physician who’s obviously done a lot of reading about COVID and the different variants. He incorporates a lot of research into his videos. His most recent video, posted two days ago, included some of what was discussed in the Intelligencer article you linked.
In short, there’s growing data to suggest that the vaccines generally are a bit less effective in terms of protecting us against infection; however, they are still doing their job in terms of keeping us out of the hospital, or worse.