I agree that the data showing such a strong protective effect from serious disease against these variants is excellent news.
But I’m not seeing anything in the Qatar study that speaks to Fauci’s claim that
Perhaps Fauci was speaking in more general terms about what we know about the earlier strains (rather than variants) with regard to transmission? Even if that’s the case, I think he’s overstating the strength of direct evidence we have so far about vaccine efficacy in reducing transmission, although the evidence is pointing in that direction and I think he’s likely correct.
As to the first, perhaps and perhaps not. As to the second, please don’t shoot the messenger or mistake the message for the messenger.
As I read the OP, he was looking for absolutist moral answers. So I answered him absolutely as I believed a moral absolutist would answer. Which is different from how I would answer for my own sake. Sorry if that wasn’t laid out obviously.
My own attitude as to myself is more nuanced. And much closer to yours. I’ll run with @HMS_Irruncible’s good list just above, but re-prioritized & restated.
Following applicable laws, and the rules of businesses I patronize.
Why? There’s no excuse for non-compliance with properly constituted authority. If a certain business become too draconian for my evolving tastes, odds are a competitor will be more accommodating. Their store = their rules. cf. “Don’t be a jerk.”
Not being careless with my own health.
Why? People I care about, including me, depend on me. I’ll be better than merely non-reckless as to my safety. I also use a tighter standard on my driving and eating habits than just “not reckless”. Careful doesn’t mean “avoid all risks”, because that’s clearly impossible; you can choke to death on your toothbrush if you’re careless enough.
OTOH, COVID is clearly a risk in addition to all other other more familiar traditional risks, not instead of any of them. The total is what matters. Once vaxxed IMO that mostly means avoiding dense crowds of people not known to be vaxxed, and being masked if I can’t avoid the crowd (e.g. at work).
Not being reckless with the health of others.
Why? We live in a civilization, not a jungle. What’s reckless? Tough call. For the unvaxxed, it’s easy to be reckless: just be near other unvaxxed people unmasked while COVID’s still rampant in your local area. For the vaxxed (assuming no new vax-eluding variants appear) it’s much harder to be reckless or even careless. I can’t articulate a specific example for you now, but there’s probably some corner cases.
Encouraging others to use a similar taxonomy of concerns. If not similar priorities, at least not reckless or actively anti-social priorities. Why? We live in a civilization, not a jungle. Peer pressure influences some people a lot more than it does others. In a nutshell: be part of the solution, or at least stay out of the way. Don’t be part of the problem. Encourage others to do the same. We’ll all be happier if we all live that way.
Mask forever types represent close to zero risk to you, while anti-maskers didn’t give a damn who they killed. Why would the former be obnoxious in any way?
Innocuous things can still be obnoxious and vexing. Could be a personal problem on the part of the party feeling vexed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the vexation is contrived or inappropriate.
That said: I would think the obnoxious thing is more vocal stridency about “masking forever” than it is the plain act of wearing a mask in public.
And you and I can ignore them if we’d like. I just assign different levels of obnoxiousness to people who preach at me versus people who don’t give a shit if they kill me.
Serious question. Do you perceive a fully vaccinated person going unmasked as proof they don’t give a shit if they kill you? Because I don’t think that’s supported by evidence.
One is the individual threat that a person poses, and I’m in agreement that if it’s not stipulated and if nobody else cares, I don’t feel compelled to wear a mask.
But there are situations in which there are unknowns. I’ve recently gone back to the workplace, where masks are still required. I have no problem with this. There’s no way to know, without demanding proof, who is vaccinated and who isn’t. And until everyone agrees to submit to vaccine passports, the one way to improve to confidence in everyone’s safety is to continue wearing masks.
There are people out there who aren’t vaccinated, and some are vulnerable even after being vaccinated. I’d absolutely wear a mask to make them feel more at ease. A little empathy goes a long way.
My guess, based on examples like Green_Bean’s questions to LSLGuy, is that some people who won’t wear masks because of their vaccination status are concerned about being morally judged and lumped in with deniers because they’re not masking. I mean, if Fauci were to say tomorrow that it’s an objective danger to other people’s lives to go unmasked indoors for any reason, that’d at least give most people pause, right?
I wouldn’t consider a fully vaccinated person going unmasked as an anti-masker as defined by @dalej42, as I can’t possibly fathom why he would consider them obnoxious in any way. The mask-holes (as they are called in the Pit thread) on the other hand, don’t give a shit if they kill people.
A maskhole with a lingering cough happily spewing plague right and left and a fully vaccinated person without a mask look exactly the same to everyone nearby.
So not only can those nearby folks not judge the threat to their safety, the more people that don’t mask for their own reasons, the more other follower people will unmask simply because that’s what the crowd is doing. Thereby increasing the threat level for all.
Masking can stop when we can reliably know who is who. Or when there simply is very very little COVID to be had out there in public. CDC has dropped the requirement before either of those preconditions has been met.
The CDC didn’t say anything about whether a state should drop its mask mandate. That is not in its bailiwick. They are scientists and not politicians. All they are saying is that the science says that if you are vaccinated, then you can ditch the masks. Follow the science, right? So if you are vaccinated, then why do you care what unvaccinated people do? Keep wearing a mask until the year 2028 for all I care. But I am vaccinated, the science says I don’t need to wear a mask anymore, so I’m not.
I don’t have some childish nanny state responsibility to “teach” other adults what to do when they can read and make their own choices.
I think he’s very likely correct. If I doubt anyone, it’s not going to be an immunologist with his credentials and experience. If you read the quotation from my earlier post. I think it’s very clear he was specifically referencing variants, not earlier strains.
There’s zero reason to think he was speaking “in more general terms” about earlier strains. He specifically referenced the B.1.1.7 variant, which is not an earlier strain, as well as the B.1.135 variant. Those are not earlier strains.
And if you’re familiar with Fauci, overstating is definitely not something he’s prone to do. In fact, quite the opposite.
I understand hesitance, given the seeming 180º turn-around of the CDC, but I’m not going to start doubting Fauci merely because the CDC did a poor job of framing the guidance and explaining the reasons for the change.
Appeal to authority doesn’t cut it. What matters is research data - if Fauci referenced some, please cite it. The Qatar paper presents very important data on efficacy against disease, but I’ve read through it and there’s nothing in it about transmission.
It’s much easier to study disease incidence in a vaccinated cohort than it is to study transmission from that cohort to unknown other people. So most of the data we have so far on transmission is indirect. Over the past year, I’ve repeatedly corrected people at the opposite extreme - who misunderstood cautious statements that we don’t yet have definitive data on transmission to mean that we have affirmative evidence of the opposite, people mistakenly thinking that we know vaccines don’t prevent transmission. In fact I got pitted just a few days ago for one such correction! In fact, all the data we do have points in the right direction - I certainly agree that it’s likely, it would be strange and shocking if a vaccine that is so remarkably effective against disease did not have a substantial effect in reducing transmission. But it’s not yet so definitive as Fauci suggests in that quote, and the real answer almost certainly will not be black and white, it will be some quantitative reduction in transmission.
Here’s the CDC’s current correctly cautious statement (updated April 2nd), referencing the existing evidence:
A growing body of evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people are less likely to have asymptomatic infection and potentially less likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others. However, further investigation is ongoing.
Let me say you’re one of the posters here I’ve most respected, particularly when it comes to scientific and medical topics. Your logic and knowledge in these matters have earned that respect. I hope you understand, though, that when I say if it comes down to weighing your skepticism against Anthony Fauci’s extremely long list of impressive credentials in immunology that have made him, not the overstating, merely competent guy you seem to think he is but a scientist whose achievements over his 53 years in the field has earned the respect of his peers and a long list of prestigious awards, I’m going to trust his views over yours. I have, of course, also read the studies he referenced.
Since my purpose was to explain why I, after ascertaining Fauci’s credentials and reading the data referenced in the articles, came to the conclusion I did and to share my reasoning, as opposed to trying to convince everyone else to do the same, I hardly think this was merely an appeal to authority. If you disagree, so be it. I know what my intentions were.
I don’t know if the two studies were the totality of Fauci’s evidentiary support, but the only way to find out would be to view his entire speech to the American Thoracic Society, the speech that’s the source for the articles. I actually tried to access the video of the speech, but the ATS requires medical credentials.
I hope you’ll grant me the same respect for the conclusions I’ve reached as I do yours. If not, so be it.
I don’t see the point in just stating your appeal to authority more elaborately. I’m not claiming to be a superior immunologist/epidemiologist to Fauci, and it’s not a question of whether I have “respect” for you or for Fauci. I’m just making a straightforward request for a cite of the research data that he/you believe supports his strong claim about the efficacy of the vaccines against transmission. That’s just what all scientists do - if someone makes a claim, they want to see the data for themselves.
That Qatar study that you highlighted was important, and somehow I’d missed it, so I’m very grateful to you for posting that. If there’s some more recent research that I’ve also missed on efficacy in reducing transmission please point me that way and I’ll be delighted, I just haven’t seen anything yet.
I didn’t think I was stating an appeal to authority more elaborately. If you do, I’m very sorry.
I can’t cite more sources than the articles I read include. (And I"m still not sure why the article in my first post isn’t accessible since I’ve had no issues. A friend I sent the link to also couldn’t access it.) That’s why I tried to get access to the video of Fauci’s speech. As I said, he may well have had more studies that led to his conclusion, but I can’t access the speech.
I’ll keep looking for more information, as I know you will. I’m looking forward to sharing.
The more vocal people on this board seem to skew towards the extremely cautious end of the spectrum. So many people have expressed things like that they’ve barely been out of the house since last March, haven’t seen anybody outside their immediate “bubble,” and feel they are being really wild by finally going to an outdoor restaurant with widely spaced tables now that they’ve been fully vaccinated.
There was no particular reason for me to jump in to say that I’ve been going out quite freely the whole time, and socializing with some trusted friends without masking. In fact, in many cases, to do so would have been borderline threadshitting. I didn’t want to be judged either. My circle of friends and family has been doing the same as me as far as behavior. New Jersey has had relatively strict rules and good compliance with those rules all along, which in and of itself created a safer overall environment. The fact that nobody I know has gotten sick since the mask mandates have been in place may have an element of luck involved, but I believe that our general compliance with rules and recommendations has been the major factor in protecting us.
While I definitely have an issue with many aspects of how the change was announced and is being implemented, I have to believe that the CDC is well aware that many unvaccinated people will unmask against recommendations and took this into account. After having several days to mull it over, I have decided to take them at their word. Well, to start taking them at their word…once NJ ends the mandate, it might take me a while to feel comfortable going unmasked indoors, but I see my behavior ultimately heading in that direction.
I will continue to carry a mask in my purse for a long time to come, however. As stated above, I’m happy to mask up upon request, no problem. I won’t judge anybody choosing to continue to wear a mask - in fact, I probably won’t even really notice.
To echo nelliebly, I’m willing to take Fauci’s word for it. I could dig into the studies myself, but I don’t really know how to interpret them and could easily reach a faulty conclusion. Fauci and the CDC know what they’re looking at, and they are aware of all sorts of contributing factors to the current situation in the U.S. that may not be apparent to me. I doubt they came to this decision lightly.
I agree with this - and I do resent the implication that those of us who choose to unmask are somehow irresponsible or incorrect. If I trusted the CDC and Fauci before, I see no reason to disregard them now. Wear a mask if you want, but don’t do it because you think you need to peer-pressure me into wearing one myself.