I’ve thought about this a bit, and I’ve decided I can’t live my life based on what stupid people do. I’m fully vaccinated; everyone I closely associate with is fully vaccinated; everyone in my family is fully vaccinated. I’m going to start returning to normal, as the law allows.
I’m not sure if this theory has been put forward in this thread so far, but:
So let’s say the CDC knows that there is a certain amount of “vaccine hesitancy” out there. I prefer to call it “idiot vaccine denialism” but whatever. So vaccines will never get us to a state of herd immunity, because there are too many dumbasses out there, and we can’t mandate vaccines. (see dumbasses, above).
So what to do? The solution may be to ensure that the anti-mask, anti-vax dumbasses get the disease right away, in order to either die or get immunization the natural way. Now that the normals are vaccinated, the hospitals should be able to cope with the influx of new covid patients that are made up of mainly dumbasses.
Voila! Herd immunity achieved by most of the population getting the vaccine, and most of the dumbasses getting the disease.
Yes. I’m wondering if that’s showing up in the data. The estimated infection rate is over 30% nationwide, but I bet that rate is higher in some counties where there was more covid denialism and vaccine denialism.
There were fears of a surge in May due to everything reopening and spring activities. The surge started, then peetered out. I think that’s due to a combination of vaccinations and infections. For example, Bexar County, TX officially has 11% of the population infected. Even if that rate is only half the true rate, we’re talking about a quarter of the adult population has been infected. 60% of the adult population has been vaccinated. Considering overlap, Maybe we have close to 70% of the population immune. That must have slowed down the effective reproduction rate because it looked like we were gearing up for a surge early to mid-April when looking at new cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and EMS transports. Then it just turned right around. When people start vaccinating their kids, there will be even less people out there to infect.
It’s not a matter of trusting the CDC; it’s a matter of trying to figure out reasoning that wasn’t explained well enough. The CDC’s science is trustworthy; its communication skills were maybe not so great this time.
The NYT article I linked to finally clarified things for me.
Your argument would have a bit more pull if I could find any posts where you wholeheartedly supported the CDC when they were trying to convince people to mask-up and isolate.
Same question to you-Where are the posts where you were behind the CDC when they wanted everyone to mask up?
Unfortunately, this may allow new strains to develop-strains we just aren’t ready for. It would be damn difficult to get people to mask up again at this time, I would think.
Wait a minute, the masks were not to protect you, they were to protect other people from you. If you are vaccinated then you don’t need a mask because you have protected yourself. The CDC says that the effectiveness of the vaccine won’t cause you, for the most part, to spread the virus. So get the vaccine if you want!
For the millionth time, whether or not a mask protects you depends on the mask.
I was just talking to a buddy who is at a very high level in a research institution that has looked into this thoroughly.
And you are absolutely correct.
I have read the papers cited by the cdc as the rationale for this new guidance but these were carried out with healthcare workers. Presumably these subjects were all (properly) wearing masks and possibly other PPE. So these efficacy estimates would include the the use of masks plus vaccination. I don’t understand how they concluded masks were no longer important for vaccinated folks based upon the data referenced??
Did you support the CDC when they wanted everyone to mask up?
I’m seeing a pattern here.
And for the million and third time, it isn’t a black and white “These over here don’t protect you at all, while those over there there are the ones that work great!” situation.
I masked up when the CDC made the recommendation. I have been vaccinated…I should not be a spreader and I made the decision to get the vaccine to protect myself as well as people around me. So that’s the message I received by them easing up the restrictions. Is that the pattern your seeing?
That doesn’t answer my question. How heavily did you support the CDC when they wanted everyone to mask up? Where could I find this support here on the SDMB?
I just told you what I did, I supported the masking. Period I don’t have to prove to you or anyone what I did. Period and full stop.
Not looking for proof of what you did, just evidence of what you actually said here.
Thanks anyway.
I think you maybe misread. The CDC cites stats for the general population and then says: “In addition to the studies listed in Table 1a., further evidence of the impact of vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has been demonstrated among healthcare workers.” [bolding mine] It also cites studies involving nursing home residents, and the Israeli study, which involved the general population.
Granted, I didn’t read all the papers cited by the CDC in its latest guidance. Given that there were 92 of them (11 just for the statement, “However, across studies, antibody neutralizing activity of sera from vaccinated people was still generally higher than that observed for convalescent sera from people who have recovered from COVID-19.”), I’d think it’d be a tough task for anyone. But if you’ve read them and found that the CDC has mischaracterized those studies, please let me know which specific papers were misrepresented. I’d like to read those specific papers, too.
The only pattern is you repeatedly asking that question of others.
Is it some kind of unwritten rule that you made up that unless one posted here that they 100 percent supported the CDC when they wanted folks masking up that they can’t have an opinion now? Or that they have to have evidence of being pro-CDC earlier?
I was in support of the CDC wanting masking. But I rarely post, so you won’t find any posts of mine to that effect. But does that mean I can’t have an opinion?
You remind me of a poster at another forum years ago who said I couldn’t have an opinion about something Obama had said because I hadn’t criticized Ronald Reagan for something he had said twenty years earlier. Never mind that the site didn’t exist in the 80s.
By the way, who appointed you to be the rule maker? Unless I’m mistaken this is the Straight Drop forums, no the Czarcasm forums.
Straight Drop Forums would be for gallows humor, right? We at the Straight Dope have that in abundance.