outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I don't have the expertise to produce a good analysis of whether "the CDC is flat out wrong in this case". It's not a simple matter of deducing that everyone masking in public would reduce case numbers and protect immune-compromised people.

The data I've seen published suggest to me vast number of cases that will require hospitalization or ICU confinement will be among the unvaccinated. Since vaccines are widely available, free of charge and massively publicized, it makes sense to think that government has done what it can, short of mandatory vaccination, to mitigate the main risks to society. Allowing the fully vaccinated to go without masks if they choose, without their openly defying public edicts, seems pretty reasonable right now.

This is admittedly shitty for immune-compromised people who cannot safely be vaccinated, but it's easy to see why the government is reluctant to use its biggest hammers to mandate their safety through other means. Attempting to enforce mandatory universal vaccination in this political climate is a non-starter.

Moodles do you have a link for tha WHO guidance? I looked around but don't see anything. Like, is this a truly global recommnedation, or areas where vaxx rates are low and/or where the Delta strain is burgeoning?

https://huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/covid-19-delta-infecting-vaccinated-in-israel_n_60d6661ce4b066ff5aba8faa

interesting. thank you, wins

There's data in that article, but it is delivered in such strange locutions that it's hard to get a good grip on what the fuck those dangling bits of data really mean, other than two doses of Pfizer are not reliably able to prevent infection by the delta variant. What's hard to derive from the article is the extent of the failure or the average severity of the symptoms.

We have known for weeks that the vaccines are less effective against Delta. We don’t know how much less, because we have only known for weeks.

But half of the adults infected had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, Balicer said

That’s in the article too right

Also not in the huffington post article but in other coverage of the same results: every single delta case in a vaccinated person in this sample was apparently asymptotic.

Thread *every reporter* should read. The seemingly "alarming news is actually perfectly consistent with the Pfizer vaccine being no less effective against Delta than it was against old school covid." https://t.co/CiJgRQwOcO

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) June 26, 2021

This is “alarming news” (first sentence in that article) only if you’re a journalist uninterested in giving people accurate if unsurprising information.

are they just randomly testing people in Isreal? I recall studies last summer which suggested that way more people had Covid than previously thought, it just happened to be asymptomatic in most of them

I’ve had it with the huffington post. From now on I only get my news from USA Today, America’s finest newspaper

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/27/delta-covid-variant-may-be-edging-race-against-vaccines

The calls for caution come at a time when research in Australia indicates just how easily the Delta variant can potentially spread. Based on CCTV footage, health officials suspect it has been transmitted in “scarily fleeting” encounters of roughly five to 10 seconds between people walking past each other in an indoor shopping area in Sydney in at least two instances.

Uhhh…

A very detailed and more level-headed thread about effectiveness of vaccines against delta variant

DELTA variant. To discuss this, let's actually start with discussing the spike protein of the virus. Remember, the spike protein of the virus is how the virus binds to our host cell. The spike protein is the protein that is encoded by the mRNA & adenovirus-DNA vaccines (J&J) pic.twitter.com/IaLEfRa6Yd

— Monica Gandhi MD, MPH (@MonicaGandhi9) June 16, 2021

^ that thread entails a very long read to fully absorb, but it is extremely thorough and informative. thanks for posting it.

Pom, Australia if particularly fucked because almost no one is vaccinated. It’s about 3% with 2 doses (depending on the source you ready, data is poorly collated and published)

It's a shame because covid-zero seemed like a very appealing strategy at first. Then again, it's not like a choice *had* to be made between locking down to a T and preordering enough vaccines to go around.

It’s COVID-0 but with very little effort to improve process and procedures in the last year. We’re still using the same hotel quarantine we were a year ago and COVID infects people in adjacent rooms. We still have unvaccinated people working wi the arrivals.

Sydney outbreak is down to a driver that drove a freighter crew from the airport to quarantine; no mask, no vaccine.

The other outbreak is some really dumb stuff. Mine worker who lives in Bendigo, VIC, but works in a remote gold mine 600km from anywhere in the NT. He flew up to Queensland to get his FIFO flight to the mine. QLD has border restrictions on with VIC, so puts him in a quanrantune hotel with incoming travellers. He gets infected, flies to the mine, infects a bunch of other people who fly back home all over the country.

We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one.

COVID-0 was a great idea but nothing has been done to combat the complacency, many people haven’t been in a hurry to get vaccinated and there’s been bugger all advertising to change people’s minds. Plus a deluge of anti-vax bullshit.

We had the whole summer to sort this shit out and did nothing. In fact the feds have actively worked against fixing quarantine.

We had the whole summer to sort this shit out

that's a chunky

I saw this being shared today, and while the underlying data may or may not be fantastic, the fact that it includes the first couple months of the year really aggravated my data nerd side.

Please get vaccinated.

99.5% Of People Killed By Covid In Last 6 Months Were Unvaccinated, Data Suggests https://t.co/50chCW9sEO

— Clayton Hove (@adtothebone) July 4, 2021

Agreed but AP numbers in the same article are more meaningful (and similar):

A previous analysis by the Associated Press found 99.2% of the more than 18,000 coronavirus-linked deaths reported in May were among unvaccinated individuals, with just 150 dying from “breakthrough” infections (in fully vaccinated people).

Again, classic anti-vax rhetorical maneuver. Take something that is true - yes, vaccinated people can catch covid. Present it as if it is surprising or contrary to what was promised. Undermine public confidence in the official message https://t.co/pnttlcLzfD

— James E. Baldwin (@james_e_baldwin) July 6, 2021

I know zero for what it's worth but I also know such people exist because I'm not a fool. I also know that someone highly invested in anti-vax is massively disproportionately likely to know more such people.

She’s not anti-vax, she’s zero-COVID and wants strong restrictions in place alongside vaccinations.

Which is not the first time she has floundered in the face of political realities and likely won’t be the last.

i don't know if Zero Covid will ever be truly possible. few diseases have ever been eradicated outright. doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep the numbers as low as possible (including restrictions), but I think Zero COVID is definitely going to become unattainable even in the countries that practically had achieved it.

it will likely be endemic.

Polio still kicking around in a few places, we’re not going to eradicate covid-19 this decade.

Polio had resurfaced in the Philippines right as I was departing in 2019

To be very clear I’m criticizing the original quoted tweet. I’m very frustrated seeing vaccines presented as if they only work if they result in eradication, which they rarely do. It discourages people from getting immunized & deemphasizes the push for global vaccine equity.

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 5, 2021

I worry about the last Israel-Pfizer report because of how it's already being misinterpreted and because there was no data or pre-print, so experts can't analyze and speak to the data. I hope more is coming.

Even the Chairman of Israel's expert panel cautioned against reading too much into the numbers due to the small sample size of cases.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/early-israeli-data-signals-delta-strain-may-bypass-vaccine-cause-mild-illness/

caek when u read this, any thoughts on yesterday's news from Israel?

Yes I have and I don’t think it’s accurate and we need to wait for data. https://t.co/2VPOHJh0yZ See here. Some seem to think it means infection total (as in asymptomatic and symptomatic) which if that is the case it’s no different than that Israel found for Alpha and ancestral.

— Mac n’ Chise 🧬🦠🧫 (@sailorrooscout) July 5, 2021

Singapore now showing 100% of vaccinated cases are mild/asymptomatic...while 10% unvaccinated require oxygen and 0.7% died. pic.twitter.com/qX8Voc61bw

— Juli798686 (@julietast2) July 6, 2021

apparently the MoH put out some of the methodology behind yesterday's report and it's getting skewered by multiple scientists:

Methodology is very much so off and therefore cannot be used to help effectively assess the effectiveness of the vaccine, therefore that “64%” is not a true assessment hence why it differs from the 88% you see out of PHE and Canada.

— Mac n’ Chise 🧬🦠🧫 (@sailorrooscout) July 6, 2021

i find this passage incredibly relatable

“For some, even a catastrophic bout of covid-19 couldn’t totally shake that skepticism.

“We never took it serious. We would joke about it, actually, and say that after the election it would all go away, that this was the Democrats’ way to control us,” said Jessica Goff, who lives in Chilhowie, Va.

When her mother, who is in her mid-50s, developed a sore throat after a family trip to D.C., they ribbed her, saying it must be the coronavirus.
It was. After Goff’s mother developed a high fever, she was taken by ambulance to Johnston Memorial, and a week later she was intubated. Goff was furious, claiming that doctors had not adequately informed her family about the severity of her mother’s condition. As a result, she said, she had advised her mother to refuse the proven covid-19 treatment remdesivir.

She was comforted when she learned that one of her old high school friends was a nurse manager in the ICU, and thrilled when her mom recovered after several days on the ventilator. But she gives the credit to God, not to Johnston Memorial.

“It was definitely a miracle,” she said. “I had rallied the prayer warriors.” And while she no longer doubts the reality of covid-19, she said she still believes it has been exaggerated and that hospitals are falsifying cases to make money.

“It’s just like, what’s real? What’s not? Obviously the corona is real, but I don’t think the numbers that they’re reporting are actually accurate,” said Goff, a 38-year-old information systems analyst.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/06/appalachian-covid-deniers-nurses-virginia/

fuck God, he ain't putting in 24 hour shifts

god's voicemail is full

also he's out of night and weekend minutes LOL what is this 2005

think of that passage every time you feel tempted to reason with these people

Every ER employee should be allowed to stamp on Goff's feet on their way out of the hospital for the rest of eternity

this is kind of an amazing slice of life americana 2020 exchange:

Their opinions about the pandemic had been shaped by sources that include Facebook, YouTube, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity and conservative talk radio. They distrusted the evolving guidance from public health authorities.

Christy said, “Wasn’t there one point where they were saying you could get it through your eyes?”

Tony shook his head.

“What’s the point in wearing a mask if you can get it through your eyes?”

that's comedy gold, sorry

what's the point of hugging a dog if it knows you know it will die one day

What's the point of peeing if you're just going to have to pee again later

what's the use of asking Kenneth for the frequency if the frequency is going to change

I brush my teeth every day I never get a reward

Christy said, "Weren't you the one telling me if you wear a mask you're actually probably more likely to get it?"

Tony shook his head.

"What's the point in wearing a mask if your dog can get it?"

https://i.imgur.com/EctVNzt.png

the answer my friend
is blowing in the wind