Coverage of the Delta Variant Leaves People Wondering What's Going On
There is still assurance that the vaccines protect against it, and your chances of getting infected are small. Your chances of getting seriously ill are smaller, and your chances of dying are smaller still.
The data seem pretty unequivocal. Axios just published a good summary:
- 164 million Americans have been fully vaccinated in the U.S. as of July 31, 2021
- 0.077% of those have seen "breakthrough" cases (that's 77 in every 10,000, or about 1 in 130)
- 0.004% of those have been hospitalized (4 in every 100,000, or 1 in 25,000)
- 0.001% of those have died (1 in every 100,000)
According to my favorite risk-of-dying chart, you're more likely to perish from "electrocution, radiation, extreme temperatures, and pressure" than you are to be hospitalized with a breakthrough infection. You're more likely to die from a dog attack than from a breakthrough infection, and only slightly less likely to die from being hit by lightning.
All good, right? Then why are we seeing all these stories about breakthrough super-spreader events? There's the one in Provincetown, where three quarters of people infected were vaccinated. Also one in a San Francisco hospital system where a similar proportion of vaccinated employees were infected.
Delta is extra good at making copies of itself, so anyone infected has a high "viral load" and is shedding a lot of copies of the virus through respiration. Previously, the vaccines were thought to create an immune response in the nose which would prevent or drastically limit infection in vaccinated people.
Now it appears that this is not true—or not as true—for the Delta variant. Breakthrough-infected people can carry and transmit large amounts of the virus even though they don't get sick (or very sick). CDC has concluded it is as transmissible as chickenpox.
Because of this, they have re-issued guidance for everyone to wear masks indoors. This is sensible because they have learned that the virus is more transmissible by vaccinated people than they thought, and there are still lots of unvaccinated people to whom they could spread the virus.
Another good reason for the change is that the worst thing you can have is the virus spreading and mutating in a partially-vaccinated population. This potentiates new, more dangerous variants that are evolutionarily selected because they can evade immune responses produced by vaccines. Something like that could put us back to square one.
The renewed mask guidance has caused predicable bitching from the conservative death-cult outrage machine. Because, by God, once the CDC has adopted a policy it may never change it for any reason whatsoever!
The media have jumped all over the Provincetown and San Francisco outbreaks, and breakthrough cases in general, making the situation seem worse than it is. The mixed messaging about Delta is confusing people.
The Biden administration wants to see more measured coverage. They're worried that sensationalist coverage of breakthrough infections will cause hesitant people to conclude, wrongly, that there is no point in getting vaccinated. That would only prolong the pandemic and increase chances for new, nastier variants.
Image by Corona-zona
