Social distance?
Yeah, it’s tough to keep kids apart.
But masks?
The younger the kid the more the kid accepts masks as normal. The kids have adjusted to masks a LOT better than the adults have based on my observation of the general public. Scientific? No, but when I’m on a register I see 200-300 customers a day, meaning the person who swipes. It’s more if you count their families that accompany them.
The kids aren’t the ones who can’t keep the masks on.
If, if, if enough people actually get vaccinated – problem is, they are not. And that leads to the kinds of mutations that can eventually boomerang back to us and make the vaccines much less effective, which would then put us right back in the place of having to lock things down again.
On that subject, my hope is that businesses everywhere will begin to pandemic proof themselves to the extent that they can. This will mean having flexibility with their workforce and allowing them to WFH to the extent possible. This also means we should revisit the issue of national healthcare legislation. Perhaps major and mid-size businesses see something in it for them to put together a national health insurance coverage mandate (i.e. Obamacare Plus). One of the reasons why our economy is dealing with labor bottlenecks is because people are saying “I’m not going to risk my life for a shit or middling wage job.” And they’re not wrong for thinking that.
There are also issues with long covid. I’ve known people personally who had mild covid symptoms, then had cardiovascular issues months later.
And newer research shows that the vaccines seem to reduce the risk of infection from Delta by maybe 2/3, which is better than nothing but not an amazing drop.
Exactly this ^
Death is the worst outcome; there are a lot of other outcomes that none of us reading this thread are really prepared to deal with.
Already half of all new covid cases in the US are the delta variant, yet outbreaks tend to be fairly localized.
You can look at this NYT map and toggle through hotspots, vaccination rates, and total cases/deaths per 100,000. Counties with low vaccination rates (acquired immunity) and low total cases/deaths (natural immunity) will be the next places where deaths will start to surge. Other places with high vaccination rates and/or high total cases/death may have a surge in cases but not hospitalizations and death.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Delta has been our guest for just a few weeks - give it time. I think we’re gonna be dealing with some seriousness in the next 4-6 weeks.
Will we see the same surge that we saw from Thanksgiving to Super Bowl Sunday? No, but the assumption that the worst is behind us and that it’s going to back to normal is going to be challenged in an existential way.
NYT has a nice article today summarizing recent studies on vaccines vs Delta. They point out the Israeli study did NOT correct for many other factors which similar studies had taken into account.
Their summary: "Fortunately, all the studies so far agree that most Covid-19 vaccines are very effective at keeping people out of the hospital and have generally protected against the Delta variant. Israel’s Ministry of Health estimated that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is about 93 percent effective in preventing serious illness and hospitalization.
93% is lower than the previous estimates, fwiw. But it’s still pretty good.
I understand. People will differ in reaction to imprecise risk metrics.
There’s a spectrum of reactions. Some will read “less effective” and interpret that as “no longer effective AT ALL – not even a little bit”. Some will assume “less effective” means “a smidge less effective, no biggie”.
To me, “less effective” are weasel words meant to make for eye-catching copy. Let me see the actual numbers, and from lots and lots of studies (one or two or three aren’t enough). When consensus is achieved among researchers that “Yep, we need to pitch all the mRNA vaccines – they don’t work anymore” … I’ll then perk up my ears.
Sometimes there isn’t enough data to make a firm determination.
Indeed. Doesn’t stop some in the popular media from doomcasting.
It’s clickbait. Yes, there is media out there meant to scare you, to get you to click on it.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the original Covid. The variants are like multiplying one unknown on top of another. A big field out there to install fear.
Everyone should be as cautious as they feel necessary. It’s a lot less harmful to be too cautious than to be too reckless. Yet I still need to constantly filter out clickbait.
This is pretty much how I respond. I decided to continue to wear a mask when I go in public and have yet to eat inside in a crowded restaurant thanks to variant concerns. On the other hand, I regularly visit family members who are also vaccinated, eat outside at restaurants, and do outdoor activities in public without a mask. These are not major burdens to me. I notice that more people in my local stores are starting to wear masks again.
Regarding these news articles, sometimes the “less effective” are describing in vitro studies where antibodies generated by a certain vaccine are tested against the new variant in “petri dishes” to see if they neutralize the virus. It does give you a nice precise number but the reduction in effectiveness appears to be inflated. When real world data comes out, the vaccines perform very well. The problem is that the in vitro studies are much faster than the human studies, so you get these concerning headlines first. This happened with every variant of concern so far.
Nice article. From the article:
But once vaccines hit the real world, it becomes much harder to measure their effectiveness. Scientists can no longer control who receives a vaccine and who does not. If they compare a group of vaccinated people with a group of unvaccinated people, other differences between the groups could influence their risks of getting sick.
It’s possible, for example, that people who choose not to get vaccinated may be more likely to put themselves in situations where they could get exposed to the virus. On the other hand, older people may be more likely to be vaccinated but also have a harder time fending off an aggressive variant. Or an outbreak may hit part of a country where most people are vaccinated, leaving under-vaccinated regions unharmed.
One way to rule out these alternative explanations is to compare each vaccinated person in a study with a counterpart who did not get the vaccine. Researchers often go to great lengths to find an unvaccinated match, looking for people who are of a similar age and health.
For its new study, Israel’s Ministry of Health did not go to such great lengths to rule out other factors.
And my understanding is that the Israeli data are muddied because they published total results, not even adjusting for age. And as in most places, more old people are vaccinated and more young people are unvaccinated. And the effects of this virus are so dependent on age that a vaccinated elder may have a higher risk of death than an unvaccinated young adult, even if the vaccine is highly effective.
It looked like picking apart the Israeli data by age, the Pfizer vaccine is only about 95% protective against serious outcomes, which is a lot worse than its effectiveness against the “base” virus, but still pretty good.
There was a study in Wisconsin (where I live) that stated that the unvaccinated were 99% of the hospitalizations but only 95% of the deaths. That makes it seem like the vaccine is not working in certain cases, but that may not be the case.
The deaths in Wisconsin since vaccination are front loaded. There were more in March than there are today. The first vaccinated were the elderly and most vulnerable. Those are going to skew the numbers, since most of the deaths came from a time where only the most vulnerable were being vaccinated.
Also, there is a ceiling to Covid impact. It is death. You can have 100 times the amount of Covid to kill you, like taking poison. But you can only die, after that we stop counting. So it’s possible that the vaccine helped fight against Covid, just not enough to keep the person alive. They had a bad case or were in a vulnerable group.
The problem I am seeing is the group that started out with “If masks keep you safe, and you are wearing a mask, you can’t get Covid even if I don’t wear a mask!” and then proceeded to “If you think vaccines protect you, and you are vaccinated, it doesn’t matter if I am!”.
They only believe in absolutes, not degrees of protection. The idea that masking AND distancing AND hygiene AND vaccines are cumulative layers of protection can’t get through their closed minds.
The points raised by @Tfletch1 and @puzzlegal are also relevant. None of these studies are done in closed systems. Pfizer and Moderna can’t be compared directly as they were done at different times, with different subjects, and different populations. OG and variants also can’t be compared directly against each other.
I think it should be vaccine or no continued life.
Sounds like something I’d say 6 beers deep into a binge, but wait, what?
Moderating:
Suggesting widespread death on millions as a solution to those who don’t vaccinate is not appropriate. Do not do this again.
Not a warning. This time.