In Israel, an overwhelming majority of cases are breakthrough cases.
The same is true in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
It’s actually not having a hard time finding people to infect; it’s infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated. The vaccines do provide a much stronger layer of protection, which makes the worst outcomes much less likely. But I think we’re back at a point now where masking can no longer be considered optional, and I think offices should reconsider bringing employees back to work.
What makes the outbreak unusual is that two-thirds or more of the cases have been among fully vaccinated people, in an area boasting one of the country’s highest vaccination rates.
Since pretty much every one in Provincetown is vaccinated, that means that the risk of catching it was MUCH higher for the few unvaccinated people. It’s hard to know what the %vax rate is in Provincetown, since the official number is about 125%. That mostly represents a disconnect between the census number, which is permanent residents, and the seasonal residency – many people who were vaccinated did so during the summer season. But it highlights the general fact that data is never clean and tidy.
But the 12-15 year olds are reported as 95% vaccinated, and the 16-19 year olds as 87% vaccinated, so I think we can assume the underlying rates of vaccination are very high.
If 1/3 of the infected were unvaccinated, and only 1/10 of the total population (a guess) was vaccinated that means that the odds of a vaccinated person catching it would have been about 2/9 the odds of an unvaccinated person catching it. Or a 78% effectiveness rate. Not nearly as good as the 95% we were looking at with the original virus, but still pretty damn good protection.
Oops – the official rate for “at least partially vaccinated” is 124% (published as >95%, but the state includes the underlying data). The official rate for fully vaccinated is only 115%. My numbers for kids above were fully vaccinated rates. I don’t think 90% vaxxed is an unreasonable guess, given the data.
That’s not completely true if you do things to improve your mask. This is important if you live in an area full of anti-maskers. For surgical masks, it’s only necessary to close the gaps. You can do it by tying the loops and tucking or, even better, wearing a nicely fitted cloth mask over it. This converts a mask used for source control into a mask for PPE. Some surgical masks already fit fairly snug and likely act as PPE. See the link in my OP for data on probabilities of different masks as PPE. Remember, we’re talking about probabilities in low concentrations of virus like a well ventilated grocery store. High viral concentrations like ER or covid ward, even N95’s are not enough.
Tying your surgical mask. I know this works with the perfume smell test.
Doubling up masks to improve fit and add more filtration to protect the wearer
Fix the mask with a brace or rubber bands - this looks weird but it makes a point.
Data
There are excellent cloth masks out there with filter inserts so that you don’t have to wear the surgical mask. You can wear to masks but combine fabrics so that you have filtration through both mechanical and electrostatic mechanisms. The better the mask is for source control, the better it will be for PPE as well (as long as you seal the gaps). Again, I test my masks with the perfume test.
A video on the different types of filtration: shear mechanical for the large droplets, increasing the maze and sticking chances for small particles moving via brownian motion, and electrostatic for the medium-sized particles.
In both of these papers below, the materials were subjected to something sprayed directly on them at a certain flow rate. It was testing the material, not gaps. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252
Yes, because an overwhelming majority of adults are vaccinated. I think it’s over 85%. If you read larger articles on this, you’ll see that many researchers are questioning effectiveness results. The sample size of unvaccinated adults is too small relative to vaccinated. For me, the large vaccination rate in the population demonstrates the utility of vaccination. It’s why cases are so low even though they had Delta cases way back in April. Compare that to the doubling rate in a place like Louisiana in only the past three weeks. Compare Israel’s deaths and hospitalizations to Louisiana. Their cases have been rising for over a month. Deaths are a blip and hospitalizations are rising but nowhere near to what they had in the past. Now look at Louisiana. Deaths are already rising and hospitalizations are skyrocketing. It is true that Israel has a mask mandate, but that would only prove that masks and vaccines are working together to keep hospitalizations, deaths, and even cases low.
It is having a hard time finding people to infect compared to the unvaccinated. Again, compare Mass to Louisiana. Compare California to Louisiana. I’m choosing Louisiana because its surge started more recently and its vaccination rate is crap so it’s a conservative comparison. Again, the differences could be due to both vaccination and masks. That’s why I’m wearing a mask in public.
Yes. The data out of San Antonio is that 96% of the people currently in the hospital are unvaccinated. The Delta variant accounted for 83% of cases a week ago so it’s probably 100% of cases now. So our surge of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people. The good news is that I started to see people wearing masks again a couple of weeks ago.
Is there any actual evidence that wearing two masks is better than one? The only argument I’ve seen for it is “Well, it’s just common sense”, but common sense would argue the opposite: If doubling up were better, they’d have been made that way in the first place. To see why it might not be better, consider the hypothetical of a mask made out of cellophane: Nothing at all is going to get through that mask, but that means that 100% of the airflow is going to find its way around the edges of the mask, and so it won’t actually stop anything.
Yes. Look at some my cites. The value depends on the mask. If you have a good mask like a surgical mask but it has gaps, simply adding a cloth mask on top will seal the gaps. Sometimes masks fit well but they have limited filtration. Doubling up adds layers. Mixing fabrics adds variety of filtration.
Obviously a well fitted n95 doesn’t need doubling for most purposes.
In terms of actual evidence, the jury still seems to be out. Double masking almost certainly provides additional filtration; however, it’s one more item that has to be decontaminated once you take it off. If you decontaminate the inner mask but fail to do so with the outer mask, you could inadvertently contaminate yourself unwittingly, which was one of the original concerns or cautions about masking in the first place. Probably wasn’t a big concern with the earlier variants of COVID but considering the viral load of the Delta variant, I think that concern is legitimate and back in play.
Another concern is that the additional layering cannot pull the seal of the mask that’s protecting you. If you’re getting additional filtration but impacting the integrity of the seal that prevents air from directly flowing underneath your mask, then you’re actually doing more harm than good.
All of that is to say, it probably does help, but only if you do it right. There’s an article from the Cambridge University Press
Note the mask isn’t filtering individual virions; it’s filtering droplets, especially those advice about a micron in diameter. I suppose a virus could change respiratory behavior to alter the droplet distribution, but I haven’t read anything one way or another.
To the OP, I don’t see mask effectiveness changing at all from one variant to another. The effectiveness is its ability to filter droplets. If Delta droplets happened to have much more virus in them, that would increase the risk of infection, but the mask isn’t any less effective at filtering.
Correct - I meant that the aerosols that contain the virus haven’t gotten any smaller but worded it inaccurately. So in that sense, the masks are no less protective. But with the delta variant, there is potentially more virus being shed whenever those droplets or aerosols are released. The virulence of the Delta variant makes both vaccines and masks less effective relative to the previous variants. Still, we’re absolutely better off with both vaccines and masks because these are layers of protection that can make the virus less severe. The data, both statistical and anecdotal, are beginning to show a clear pattern, which is that breakthrough infections are much more likely but that the vaccines are doing a pretty good job of beating the virus back once infected – and that is the value of the vaccine. Masking could also be the difference between not getting the virus at all or getting much less of it. I just worry we may not be so lucky with the next variant of concern.
