Unclear Reports about the Delta Variant May Be Premature, Alarmist

 

Several items about the Delta variant have been coming across my news feed regarding the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing it. They are somewhat alarmist and a little confusing about exactly what they're claiming is being protected against. 

This article in Bloomberg reports that in Israel, protection from the Pfizer jab dropped from 94% to 64%. A little more than half of new infections were among vaccinated people.  

There was a slight increase in serious illness, to 35 cases on July 4 (up from 21 cases in June) in a population of 9.3 million. They don't say how many of those were among vaccinated people—perhaps none. 

In any case that's about a 1 in 265,000 chance of getting seriously ill. You're two times more likely to die by a lightning strike than having that happen.

Another expert says it's too early to draw conclusions about any change in effectiveness because of the low overall number of cases among vaccinated adults.  He also says that if anything, its more likely that Delta has decreased effectiveness at preventing mild cases but remains effective against severe cases.

This idea is supported by the fact that the new top-symptoms for COVID-19 have changed.  The current top five symptoms are more cold-like:

  1. Headache
  2. Sore throat
  3. Runny nose
  4. Fever
  5. Persistent cough
In fact, I read in another article (that I can't find right now to link) that public health people are concerned that the symptoms are becoming indistinguishable from common respiratory infections. This may cause people to ignore them, providing new opportunities for the bug to mutate.

Image by Corona-zona

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