I suspect the vaccine reduces their viral load in shorter time, so I think they’d be less of a risk. (?)
Another crazy nut who shoots a store cashier about wearing masks:
“Another crazy nut murderer who shoots a store cashier about wearing masks:”
My husband seems to have been exposed to covid within a couple of days (one way or the other) of getting his first dose of vaccine. In fact, the odds are decent he picked it up at the vaccination site, since that and the red cross (where he gave blood the previous day) were pretty much his only exposure to the outside world.
He had no symptoms. The only evidence he was exposed is the antibody tests the Red Cross does. They test for antibodies to the spike protein (which you’d get either from infection or from vaccination) but separately test for antibodies to the “shell” of the virus. You only develop those if you were exposed to the virus. And he tested positive.
He gives platelets every two weeks, and he turned positive two weeks (minus a day) after his vaccination. Despite being fully vaccinated, I was alarmed enough by this that I tested myself for antigens before going out to see friends, and tested negative. (I also tested “no recent exposure” in my own antibody test a day or two later.) So I’m pretty sure he didn’t catch it from me, nor did he give it to me.
So… maybe being vaccinated at the same time made a difference? Or maybe it was a false positive. But two weeks later, he was still positive.
Interesting. So maybe he was exposed to a small dose of the virus (as demonstrated by anti-N antibodies), but between that and his vaccination, he was never technically infected.
Things are starting to go back to normal around here, kind of. I booked travel plans for us to fly across the country to see my in-laws. (Obviously my wife hasn’t seen her family in well over a year.) Then I bought tickets for no less than three live concerts coming this fall and winter to our area.
We’re gradually getting out and about. We’ve been having one meal inside at a restaurant per week. We do have restaurant food now and then the rest of the week, too, but it’s takeout or maybe sitting outside if it’s not crowded.
Yesterday we sat inside at a brilliant middle eastern restaurant for lamb shish kebab and rice. Wow, did that ever taste good. I’m sick of my own attempts at various ethnic cuisines. I can come up with a pretty good rendition, but there’s nothing like the real McCoy.
Maybe next weekend we’ll actually go to a mall for a stroll and to visit the Apple store.
I’ve gone back to walking at my local mall. Before the pandemic, they opened for walkers at 7:30 am. It was perfect. Only a handful of people, climate-controlled, no traffic, curbs, bugs, dogs, tree branches, uneven sidewalks, and always the perfect temperature, especially in deep summertime when outside it’s 78-80 degrees (with 90% humidity) at 6:00 am.
Unfortunately, now they don’t unlock the doors until 9:45 am, and the stores open at noon, so there are already quite a few people there even by 10 am. Still, I can get in 45 minutes before it becomes (to me) uncomfortably crowded. I usually wear my mask. I’m not in anyone’s presence for more than a few seconds and I don’t touch anything (except one handrail on some stairs).
LOTS of stores have gone belly-up since I stopped mall-walking in March 2020.
We had a party today. I invited a lot of vaccinated friends, and we hung out on the patio. It was the first time I’d seen most of them in more than a year. It was great!
We went out to the pub for lunch today with friends. There were 4 front of house staff (working the bar and serving) on duty. The staff are required by law to mask. We had: mask not covering nose; mask not covering nose; mask not covering nose or mouth; and no mask at all.
Today, by the way, the UK recorded it’s highest number of COVID cases for 4 months.
Just sayin’.
j
I look at nextdoor.com every day. I’ve counted five home office desks plus assorted office chairs posted for sale or free in the last two days. A year ago you couldn’t find any for love or money.
A few months ago I read that voluntary immunization would be better than mandatory because it would spark less resistance.
Now we have given that a trial for a few months, with signs up all over any hospital I have been in (all U.S.), inviting staff to be vaccinated. And what did we get?
Behind a Boston Globe pay wall, I’m reading that Harvard hospitals have about 85 percent compliance in an environment where faculty doctors are required to be vaccinated, but not other staff (although today’s news is that it will eventually be mandatory for all). 85 percent. Harvard. But this story, from Maine, is more typical:
Compare to Houston Methodist, where 153 out of 24,947 were fired this week for vaccine refusal. All, or almost all, of the other 24,794 were vaccinated. Mandatory vaccination thus apparently led to something approaching 99.4 percent compliance in a red state. Compare that to the Maine figure.
You can be in favor of voluntary measures because you don’t like compulsion. But I don’t think you can say any more that compulsion is ineffective.
As for the morality of compulsion, I’m against extreme compulsion, like prison. But firing for putting sick people at greater risk seems to me about right.
Good infection control requires people doing things that aren’t always totally pleasant, like thoroughly scrubbing hands before surgery. If you make it optional, lots of health care workers won’t do it, as we are seeing with the COVID vaccines.
I’d be all for prison if the refusal is done with malicious intent. Hard to prove that, but I swear that it has to be the reason for at least some people. Some people do not want to be seen to be “agreeing” with the “liberal agenda” and will do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t happen, even if it’s quite evidently the correct path to take.
I was disturbed to read this in the NYTimes daily COVID briefing newsletter:
WHO says keep wearing masks regardless, CDC says if you’re vaccinated, it’s not necessary. 
It’s been mixed messages from Day One…
I still wear mine to the grocery store (which is usually pretty crowded), but I don’t for Mall walking (not crowded). On Sunday our Episcopal church choir sang without masks (We were all giddy with the freedom, but it also felt reckless and weird!) and only a few members of the congregation were masked. The space is large and open and well-ventilated. All the choir members are fully vaccinated (i.e., have had both shots).
I ate at a restaurant with a vaccinated friend yesterday and the sign on the door said “Masks optional,” so we both went maskless. The restaurant was not crowded and (being Texas) the air-conditioning and ceiling fans were on full blast.
The Weird Times continue as we grope toward normalcy.
The CDC recommendation came out well before the delta variant took hold in the UK. For once the WHO is being more cautious than the CDC. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad idea.
On the other hand, the data coming out of the UK suggests that fully vaccinated people are still protected against the delta variant. Cases have been rising quickly since May 20. Hospitalizations? Barely a blip. In the past, hospitalizations tended to follow quickly behind new cases. It’s not happening this time.
I was going to stop wearing masks in public a couple of weeks ago, but the pace of vaccinations here and delta mutant made me hesitate. I still wear a mask in public places but it’s a lighter cloth mask. Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of public outdoor activities in public without a mask, including eating or having a coffee.
However, unlike the UK pre-Delta, Bexar County is stubbornly maintaining a 7-day average of over a 100 new cases per day. Only 53% of people 12+ have been fully vaccinated. I figure the delta variant will start to take over in the next month or few weeks. If cases are high, I’ll probably have to force myself to teach with a mask on in the Fall. That sucks!!! 
Informative article from NPR:
Here’s the accompanying illustration.
Given recent track records, I’m more inclined to believe the CDC. The WHO has lost a lot of credibility in the last 18 months.
Cross-posting from the 'Raffe.
Something about the CDC COVID data tracker puzzles me. A few days ago, it showed a spike in COVID deaths in California. We had gone from 1 or 0 deaths per day to 40 or 60 per day for a few days, and I thought, welp, now we’re going to spike upwards for awhile.
Then, this morning I check in with it, and those same days that showed 40 to 60 deaths per day have been revised down to just 3 or 5 deaths per day. What gives?
COVID death numbers, when first released, are never set in stone. They are more mutable than many in the public might realize. There are commonly backlogs in reporting, so a relatively large number can get dumped all at once.
There are also cases where deaths get date corrections – a June 1st death, say, gets reported on June 12th and is thus reported initially as though the death occurred on June 11th. Later, that death is corrected to June 1st.