They did a prospective study of vaccine effectiveness vs infection and transmission among vaxxed healthcare and frontline workers. Seems biased from the start. Won’t it be confounded by their tendency to wear (better) PPE?
Edited to add: I suppose it depends on their methodology. Quick glance at Thompson’s study, seems they compared vaxxed HCWs to unvaxxed HCWs. I don’t know if we would expect to see material PPE-wearing differences between those groups.
If you know the effectiveness of PPE vs no-PPE, and the effectiveness of PPE w/ Vaccine vs PPE w/o Vaccine, you can estimate the effectiveness of the Vaccine alone, even if you don't have statistics for it by itself.
That excuse stopped working a long time ago. It has been said as a defense every time there is a scare. Remember when Texas removed the mask mandate? Mass death predicted. We waited 2 weeks. Deaths dropped. Remember the beach photos, complete with an interview with the grim reaper? The hospitals are going to overflow? How many times have we heard this? Yet we still continue to make the same apocalyptic predications, as though it's the first time. The hospitals are fine and the deaths are low. We flattened the curve long ago.
Look at the stats for yourself. 1 Covid death in the past 2 weeks in DC. Where they are now they are requiring masks even for the vaccinated and signaling lockdown. What about all the homicides? What about all the other causes of death? What about the rapidly accelerating income inequality as a result of lockdowns and mandates? What about the kids, who are extremely low risk, falling behind in school?
what's wrong with masked world? it helps stop the spread of other airborne diseases as well, it filters out (to some extent) the smog, facial recognition software has more trouble, so we regain at least some privacy...
I understand that it must be depressing for people who see masks only as infringing on their freedoms and nothing else, because they are currently at the mercy of society.
If someone sees mask wearing instead as a joint effort to fight the pandemic, as means to get out of it earlier by limiting the spread of the disease or as a way that they can do something to protect themselves no matter what others might do, then it is absolutely not depressing. Self-efficacy influences mood positively a lot.
Wild how westerners make these dystopian associations, while in Asia it’s just part of basic hygiene, like expecting people to wipe their ass or wash their hands.
Where in Asia is everyone walking around masked unless they’re actively sick? In Tokyo you can always see a few masked people, but that’s totally different than everyone being masked.
Everyone in Japan is currently walking around masked.
People here also walk around with masks during allergy season, or doing flu season even when they’re not sick. In Taiwan and Vietnam I saw (and wore) masks on days when the air was particularly dirty.
Jesus what a way of moving the goalposts. First you say in Asia (billions of people!) everybody has always walked around masked. Now it's only Japan and only during the pandemic.
These emotions are due to pandemic, yes? The mask is just an apparel - something that is now worn - but hardly the cause these negative emotions? I like the extra privacy a mask gives (introvert!) - but I do understand why some feel them uncomfortable.
The desire to get rid of masks is mostly iconoclastic in my opinion. People come up with all sorts of hand-wringing explanations for the anti-mask phenomenon but it's actually pretty simple in my opinion, people want rid of their masks for the same reason English people burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November. It's not the masks themselves that make people dislike them, it's what they represent. To some they're primarily a symbol of caring about your neighbours, to others they're primarily a symbol of government authoritarianism. It's this subjective, symbolic association that I think informs most people's opinions of masks.
I suspect the Venn diagram of people who don't like masks and people who don't like coercively collectivist politics is basically a circle. It certainly is here in the UK, most opposition to masks in Parliament came from the Tory backbenchers which I guess is why their mandatory use was dropped this month; the 1922 Committee (a formal group of Tory backbenchers) can force a vote of no confidence in the Tory leader if 15% of them call for such a vote. Tory backbenchers tend to be more small-c conservative than the Tory frontbench, they're not necessarily anti-authoritarian but they're often anti-collectivist.
I, for one, hate wearing masks. I do it if I'm required or am sick and not otherwise. In the winter glasses + hat + longer hair make it really difficult to get a mask on-off (not to mention extra fogging up glasses, which can be dangerous in some situations) and in the hot summers it quickly can cause overheating. It's also so depressing to not see people's faces outside of a small familial or maybe social bubble.
The masks most people wear basically only diffuse sneezes and coughs which makes immediate droplet transfer lower.
A piece of ordinary cloth on your face does not filter smog, does not prevent any airborne infection droplets from reaching you, essentially only lowers the chance of your cough hitting somebody else. You need an N95 or better to really do anything to protect yourself. Also even if you have a high grade mask, wearing it so it actually seals to protect you is hard and most people don't do it well.
Unless we are talking about fitted N95 masks, CDC used to say the opposite even about transmission to others: "There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure."
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
Which is why I get annoyed at the flood of maskless wonders in UK shops since 'freedom day' (I am 65, and have a chronic respiratory illness). And I wonder whether the Great Unmasked coincides with the Great Unvaccinated.
When the checkout queue is moving slowly, some people try to move the queue forward by moving closer tho the person in front, even though the queue hasn't moved. I've noticed that people who do this are always maskless.
My local store is near a homeless shelter; homeless people face much greater threats than what amounts to a nasty respiratory virus. But I like social distancing; it tends to improve my sense of having personal space, as well as making me feel safer.
I can't work out what your other comment is getting downvoted for. It basically boils down to "some people are arseholes and they behave like arseholes" - which probably tells you all you need to know about the downvoters.
Oh - I'm not at all surprised. Many people have been bitterly opposed to mandatory masking since it was introduced. Among them are influential public figures with a reputation for being able to think, such as Peter Hitchens. It's not just ill-educated people, and they hold these views sincerely.
So I have to accept there's a way of thinking that makes it actually wrong to mask-up.
Incidentally, I walked off the street into a pub the other day, for a straight whisky at the bar - I didn't plan to hang around (nobody was masked, of course, because you can't drink through a mask). Well I was basically called out by this grumpy fella, because I came in masked. I mean, he was joking, but he obviously despised me.
in fact covering your face does protect you, only less effectively so. Even eyeglasses reduce the covid transmission rate noticeably. Every little helps and compounds.
If you want better filtering, you can always wear a cartridge respirator. They're also much easier to wear correctly -- they're hot, and the sweat on your face creates a seal against the rubber, making it very easy to tell when the seal is or isn't working.
I have one that I use when woodworking / sanding / varnishing, and the difference between a respirator and even a good N95 mask is like night and day. You can pull in a gratuitous volume of air through the respirator and it doesn't have that "there is a disconcertingly noticeable quantity of VOCs getting past this N95 mask" smell to it.
The basic multigas cartridge that comes in the half-mask bundle at Home Depot will happily adsorb VOCs.
I have a 6000 series with bare P100 filters installed, and they certainly cut smells, but that's probably not what they're designed for. Amusingly, throughout this entire pandemic I've only worn it for wildfire smoke-- it appears to be completely impossible for people to understand what I'm saying while I'm wearing it.
I find it very constricting as well as depressing. Regarding the constriction - the extra insulation causes me to sweat more, fogs up my glasses, and makes it harder to breathe. The depressing bit comes from not being able to see people's faces, smiles, and emotions as easily. It is especially difficult if you have a disability like deafness, where seeing lips is crucial to navigating everyday interactions.
The inability to see people's smiles, emotions is pretty sad. This is especially bad for new borns and kids.
Also I don't know how people do it with having to smell their own breath for long. Regardless of how well the oral hygiene is, breath gets bad after eating some food.
Also cloth masks are pretty much useless considering their penetration level of 97%. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection:
> Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%. This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
> We did not consider the use of respirators in the community. Respirators are tight-fitting masks that can protect the wearer from fine particles (37) and should provide better protection against influenza virus exposures when properly worn because of higher filtration efficiency. However, respirators, such as N95 and P2 masks, work best when they are fit-tested, and these masks will be in limited supply during the next pandemic. These specialist devices should be reserved for use in healthcare settings or in special subpopulations such as immunocompromised persons in the community, first responders, and those performing other critical community functions, as supplies permit.
We won't be. People will simply be unwilling to do so long term and what doesn't get prevented by vaccines will burn through the population until everyone has antibodies and the disease weakens and "the common cold kills people" becomes the new normal.
There have always been diseases around that killed people, we were lucky for quite a while because the rate was fairly low and now it seems to be permanently bumped up a bit again. Eventually the disease is going to run out of people to infect the first time.
Asia has been living in a masked world for at least two decades. It's not a major inconvenience, and it doesn't infringe on anyone's freedoms. Westerners really need to stop being such spoiled entitled children about this situation, and cowboy up and do what it takes to eradicate this pandemic.
Well, see, this is the kind of attitude that gets people concerned. I'm not aware of any expert or health official who believes that eradicating the pandemic is possible. If you've gotten the impression that our public health response is about reaching some future point where Covid-19 is gone and nobody ever has to worry about it, you're being misled.
I think it's important not to overcorrect here. The CDC issues all kinds of guidelines: wash your hands after petting a dog, always use a meat thermometer, definitely don't eat eggs with a runny yolk or raw cookie dough. (Less family friendly but more directly on point, they insist on dental dams for STD protection, which is probably even more widely ignored than the dog petting thing.) "Normal" doesn't mean the CDC will stop offering strict guidance on how to keep yourself healthy, it just means that most people feel okay slacking off on the parts that would be too annoying.
> I'm not aware of any expert or health official who believes that eradicating the pandemic is possible.
There are plenty of experts and health officials who believe that eradicating the pandemic is possible. Including some with experience eradicating other pandemics like Ebola and Zika [1], along with the editor-in-chief of the Lancet [2], among others.
Eradicating a pandemic is not unprecedented, it can and has been done.
> If you've gotten the impression that our public health response is about reaching some future point where Covid-19 is gone and nobody ever has to worry about it, you're being misled.
Clearly our COVID19 response is not currently about that, or no one would have to advocate for it.
First off, I think this is an instructive case of reputation laundering. These seem like two independent sources at first, but if you dig deeper, both of these sites are mouthpieces for one Yaneer Bar-Yam.
I have to concede that he's not a crank, and appears to have meaningful pandemic expertise. I'm now aware of one expert who's confident eliminating Covid is possible. But this has to be evaluated in the context of the overwhelming consensus (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2) that it's probably not, and these sites are structured as grand calls to action more than detailed arguments, so it's hard for me to figure out what the content of the disagreement is. What does Bar-Yam know that immunologists don't?
I’m not sure “reputation laundering” is the right term, since these folks don’t have any reputational problems. One site is their institute’s home page with news on all their research. The other is a website focused on COVID19 only, aggregating relevant info, with a more semantic URL and probably some SEO, and including team members outside of NECSI. They don’t hide their connection to NECSI, but the organization is more than just NECSI.
As for the disagreement, it probably stems from the fact that with other outbreaks like Ebola, with known ~50% mortality rates, there’s unanimous consensus that they must be shut down early, and so they are.
That common cause and singled-minded focus and coordination is a major factor in successfully eradicating the pandemic. And doing it early before it can become widespread is obviously more viable than shutting it down after it’s gone global.
These folks are asserting that the methodologies used for shutting down other pandemics early can still be effectively scaled up to shut down a widespread pandemic like COVID19 that we failed to shut down early. And that’s where the disagreement is with the consensus you linked.
The thing is, global pandemics aren’t over, they’re just beginning, and we could be hit by something worse later. It behooves all of society to use COVID19 as a not-too-deadly trial run for learning how to quickly shut down something worse in the future, rather than fatalistically accepting it.
> As for the disagreement, it probably stems from the fact that with other outbreaks like Ebola, with known ~50% mortality rates, there’s unanimous consensus that they must be shut down early, and so they are.
I think this is the core thing that I've never understood about the zero covid idea. If you look at, say, France or Spain, there was a unanimous consensus that the coronavirus must be stopped early, with strong and severe lockdowns for 5-6 weeks as these sites outline. The consensus didn't break because of laziness or complacency; it broke because it didn't work, because the lockdowns reduced but never eliminated community transmission. If you have a disease that's not that bad in the scheme of things, and you try the best known suppression strategies but they don't get rid of it, what other option is there than to find a way to live with it?
I also think it's important to acknowledge that our efforts to fight Ebola have not generally been this strong, despite Bar-Yam's arguments that they should be. In 2014, some American states imposed mandatory quarantines on doctors and nurses who'd been treating Ebola patients in western Africa, and there was strong pushback - from medical experts, who said that the quarantines were stigmatizing and counterproductive and there's no medical reason to impose such an over-the-top policy. "The Ebola quarantines and other movement restrictions put in place throughout the nation beginning in late 2014 were motivated by fear and by politics, not by medical science", said Doctors Without Borders.
>The consensus didn't break because of laziness or complacency; it broke because it didn't work, because the lockdowns reduced but never eliminated community transmission.
Their critique of most of those cases is the measures were lifted prematurely, before getting all the way to zero infection rate, allowing it to re-spread again. And also the fact that all adjoining countries need the same zero-covid policy, or even ones that get to zero covid can be reinfected by neighbors. It's all (the way to zero), or nothing.
How can we be confident that zero infection rate would ever have been achieved? They gave it a good shot, in most places over twice as long as had been originally planned. At some point, if you're not seeing transmission rates getting at least close to zero, it seems like you have to conclude the plan's not working.
And also during past pandemics like SARS, swine flu, others. Because Asian culture already accepts mask wearing when sick as a kind of civil courtesy and responsibility, it wasn’t a big step up for widespread mask wearing during pandemics.
Mask wearing when you know you're sick is something I would like to see more in the West (one of the few good things that might come out of the pandemic). Regardless, I imagine there are negative psychological effects of long-term society-wide mask wearing. Just speaking for myself, I found it very depressing not being able to see people's faces outside of a small familiar and social bubble for a year and I honestly dread going back to it.
Forever, because too many self-centered people refused to do the few simple things it would have taken to get the situation even remotely close to under control. It's already gone on longer than it needed to, and because of human selfishness it's almost certainly just going to get worse.
Will anyone hold the CDC accountable for its screwups? Even misinformation by Fox News pales in comparison to the travesty that was CDCs recommendation to remove mask mandates for vaccinated people. If purported expert agencies can’t suppress their politics and idiocy and be cautious why can we ever expect the public to be careful?
Yes, Israel reinstated its mask mandate immediately after they saw cases rise a month ago and their own studies indicated the delta variant was impacting vaccine efficacy or even transmitting from vaccinated persons: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-reinstate-indoor-mas... Much of the data in this CDC slide deck is actually from these Israeli studies.
I will also note Israel has already approved a third dose of mRNA booster shots for 60+ year old people based on the data they have seen with waning efficacy. The CDC as of now currently says boosters are not necessary for Americans "at this time"...
Even assuming they were making the correct decisions in the beginning of the pandemic (which they were not), the decision recently to tell anyone vaccinated is fully safe is outrageous. There’s not a single expert who agreed that that was a good idea, and now thousands of people are dying because of it. The only reason to make that announcement was political and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. A scientific agency that puts politics before science.
This and the fda authorization of the biogen drug have sealed the deal for me on how corrupted the US has become. It’s been coasting thanks to the good decisions made decades past, and finally it’s just fumes and the time couldn’t be more perfect.
So the entire delta-has-same-transmissibility-regardless-of-vaccination panic is from 145 cases in Massachusetts, on a bullet point that confuses mean and median.
Stumbled upon some truly cursed knowledge (if it's true, though I fervently hope not). Imagine a followup pandemic not of more Covid but of neurodegenerative disease from this. Not just in the most severe cases.
Am I? Level of olfaction impairment and cognitive impairment have tracked together according to some other sources. Again, I'll be glad if this isn't true.
He was most struck by three findings: One, he said, was the frequency with which people who had been exposed to the coronavirus had subsequent problems with memory. About 60 per cent had cognitive impairment, and for 1 in 3, the symptoms were severe.
Second, his findings indicate that the severity of a COVID-19 patient’s illness does not predict cognitive problems. “What puts you at risk of having the cognitive problems is just having been infected, regardless of how badly ill you were,” he said. “You may have had very mild COVID, but if you were infected and you are older, you are at risk of having these issues.”
And, third, losing the ability to smell, which has been commonly reported among COVID-19 patients, is correlated with cognitive troubles. “They track together quite well,” de Erausquin said. “The more severe your lack of smell, the more severe your cognitive impairment.”
I disagree, I think its recent growth in use is a smooth addition to the language, even if we do already have plenty of synonyms for 'bad'. Speaking of those, your very classy 'stupid' hasn't exactly clarified much either.
It isn't just "bad", it denies knowledge of any cause and shrugs it off. If you're looking at broken tech and you shrug it off as "oh well its just cursed" then you're never going to solve the problem. The frequent posts on this site where someone drilled down through multiple levels and determined root causes of issues and mitigations were not written by someone who though the problem was "cursed". The use of that word implicitly turns the user's brain off from understanding any further. And I continually see it used more often. And there's always a reason. Literally nothing is "cursed". You can choose to not dig into the causes because time is finite, but using that kind of language makes the decision for you. And that's relevant to this site, if you want to solve those kinds of problems you need to not view things as being "cursed". Really that word is being used more and more in a way which is explicitly damaging to understanding. If you want to be more successful in your career in tech, you should really cut it out of your vocabulary since it is a self-defeating word.
If this is the case, then that's not how I was using that word at all. More like, I feel cursed to know this potential outcome, and feel like blissful ignorance might be preferable. Quite the opposite of what you're inferring, I'm going to be reading much further on this issue because it's important.
Obviously this is a really specific pet peeve of yours, in a specific context, that doesn't have much to do with what I said. Maybe you just saw the word, had an emotional response based on the behavioral of some individuals you know, and your brain turned off to reading the context of what I actually said.
My odds of getting in a car wreck today are tiny. If I wear a seatbelt today it will almost certainly not matter. My odds of getting in a car wreck over the course of years are not so tiny, and wearing a seatbelt makes a big difference.
If you write it in permille the differences appear even smaller. But if you look at the actual number of people who will die if we keep the pandemic going and don't get the vaccination rates up, the difference is suddenly in the millions of people.
…in just one given week, though. And that week was not so bad; in January we had case rates many multiples higher.
But maybe if you count infections per second, instead of per week, you can get a number so close to 100% not dead that it’s a rounding error: pandemic solved!
1. Slide 16 mentions India but the details aren't clear. Is this study's focus on breakthrough cases and spreading of Delta based off data in India? I know India was where Delta originated and that it blindsided them because COVID measures that worked well for previous variants did not work anymore - so does that simply mean that the most data on Delta happens to be in India due to the larger cumulative number of Delta cases there? And if so how applicable is that data to the US, given that the type of vaccine administered is different and may have different (reduced) efficacy compared to Pfizer or Moderna, and since other factors (population size, density, healthcare quality, etc) may also be different and influence the data?
2. The graphs on Slides 20-21 are unclear to me. My interpretation is that they have four different scenarios and are using the bottom-left one, which assumes a higher R0 representing the Delta variant, and a lower assumption of natural immunity of 5% - basically the more conservative outlook. The graph itself seems to be indicating a probability of increase in cases, and we presumably want to be below 0.5. The legend shows three colors for universal masking, masking of the unvaccinated, and no masking. But the graph itself has five color bands - are the other color bands just hybrids? So the color between beige and lilac represents some vaccinated people masking and all unvaccinated people masking? And no masking is not an option per this graph even at 100% vaccination, because the probability of cases increasing would be around 80% still? If the natural immunity is higher (the bottom-right graph), then there is no need for universal masking in nearly all levels of vaccination? Am I interpreting all that correctly?
The colored bands seem to be semi-transparent, so all can be shown in the same graph instead of having to show an own one for each of them (i.e. it is purely a display problem where the bands overlap).
How can you get to 40-60% effectiveness if you have perfect mask wearing, but leave restaurants and bars open? Even wearing a N95 when going to the grocery store and post office or whatever isn't going to help if you then go to a bar and spend an hour maskless with your 100 closest unmasked friends.
Restaurants and bars are open because people really want them to be, not because the CDC recommends it. The CDC offers some suggestions on how to manage the risks of opening restaurants, but there's nothing to change there because they've never revoked their early 2020 guidance that it's a big risk.
If there is a secret hidden footnote to "NO ADJUSTMENTS FOR OTHER INTERVENTIONS" and "no distancing, no isolation, no gathering restrictions" that reads "just kidding about that, all restaurants and bars need to be closed immediately" then this slide deck is doing a very bad job of clearly recommending what public heath interventions should be done.
Again, why would they recommend universal masking if they know for a fact that it wouldn't do anything? What's the point?
Why hasn't the FDA approved the vaccines, when health experts universally agree they're safe and effective and everyone should get one? I always hate when conversations come to this, because it comes across as a wild hot take, but there's a point where you've just gotta blame organizational dysfunction. It wouldn't be appropriate for the CDC to say "everyone ought to close indoor dining again" or "masks are pointless if you have them off 80% of the time to eat", and they certainly can't say "let's just let the unvaccinated people get sick". So they have to say some other stuff instead.
Based on a podcast I heard this week FDA approval also looks at quality assurance of mass manufacturing, storage, supply chains, etc. It’s not just about efficacy and safety of the formulation, itself, but whether they can be assured at scale. It takes time to check all those boxes.
That's required to get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), is supposed to be why Novavax is behind schedule due to other cell culture based manufacturers soaking up resources, and why Emergent BioSolutions has never gotten approval for their Baltimore plant to make Janssen doses. Was in fact shut down, AZ/Oxford production at it canceled, etc.
As I understand it the rolling reviews for mRNA vaccine approval are purely a matter of time to prove for real the length of efficacy of them, that's part of the risk/benefit analysis. Can only be done a day at a time....
Yeah, this is not a slide of recommendations; that’s describing the model assumptions illustrated by the charts. Essentially, it says “these charts don’t include modeling the impact of any additional mitigations aside from masking”; these charts show that we must enforce universal masking immediately at minimum.
On the last slide, “Next Steps for CDC”, they explicitly list:
> ▪ Prevention
> – Consider vaccine mandates for HCP to protect vulnerable populations
> – Universal masking for source control and prevention
> – Reconsider other community mitigation strategies
Which means they definitely think additional mitigations are worthwhile, but we must start with at least masking.
They have a hard job to communicate the specific recommended actions while remaining calm and not causing a panic or making people think that they are over reacting… with everyone ready to jump on them, I do not envy the job.
I feel like we are in complete agreement on the facts, but are somehow coming to opposite conclusions.
Slide 21, bold red text, surrounded by a red box: "Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant"
If this is supposed to imply that restaurants need to be closed, I feel like it should instead actually explicitly say that, because it means firing a million people, again. If universal masking requires restaurant closing, then masking by itself won't do anything!
If masking by itself does nothing, then why dedicate two slides to just masking? If masking does nothing, why give it 40-60% effectiveness? If the graph is totally worthless and means nothing useful, why put it in the presentation?
If closing restaurants is mission critical, absolutely required for any other NPI to have any effect at all, then why hide it inside "Reconsider other community mitigation strategies" on the last slide?
I think you've misunderstood the slide. It says: If we do no other mitigations other than wearing masks (3 variants in the graph), this is what happens.
If additional stuff is done, then the risk goes down. It does not say how much, maybe a little, maybe a lot. But such other mitigations are unlikely to happen if the easiest, most effective and most accepted way, wearing masks, is not enforced already. That's why it makes sense to look at the case of masks-only.
Wow these slides are packed with information and accompanying citations - truly a great resource for anyone following the literature regarding COVID-19 and especially the variants of concern.
I need more time to digest this presentation, but there are two important topics that I feel are missing or at least underrepresented:
1) The effectiveness of early outpatient treatment using a combination of existing medicines (antibiotics, corticosteroids, antiplatelet/antithrombotic) [0a] [0b]
2) The risk of vaccine induced immune escape
Regarding 2) The basic idea is that imperfect vaccines may cause selective pressure which further enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This may be particularly relevant to the widely deployed mRNA vaccines, which induce an immune response that is highly targeted towards the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
Here are some peer reviewed publications on the topic, along with a few excerpts [1][2][3][4][5][6]. To be clear, the excerpts I'm providing below do not contradict any of the major points from the presentation. However, I do hope they illustrate that there is another important dimension to discuss when evaluating the evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2.
Excerpts from [1]:
- "A growing body of evidence suggests that the targets of several human vaccines are evolving"
- "For example, resistance to influenza and herpes-virus drugs emerged within a few years of FDA approval, and resistance to antivirals rapidly arises within human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients"
- "The best documented example of vaccine resistance evolution occurred in Marek’s disease, a commercially important disease of chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (Gallid herpesvirus II). There, two generations of vaccines were undermined by viral evolution. Those vaccines prevented disease, but even before the pathogen evolved, they did not prevent viral infection, replication, or transmission. Instead, Marek’s disease virus reached large population sizes even within vaccinated hosts and was able to transmit to new hosts. As a result, the virus was likely able to generate genetic diversity within vaccinated hosts, and vaccine-induced selection was able to act during transmission between hosts. The benefits of prophylaxis were thus missing."
Excerpts from [2]:
- "Here we show experimentally that immunization of chickens against Marek's disease virus enhances the fitness of more virulent strains, making it possible for hyperpathogenic strains to transmit. Immunity elicited by direct vaccination or by maternal vaccination prolongs host survival but does not prevent infection, viral replication or transmission, thus extending the infectious periods of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts."
Excerpts from [3]:
- "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control."
- "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting the spike RBD?"
- "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."
- "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molec...
> The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape"
So the CDC made a grave error in telling vaccinated people they could remove their masks.
That is one way to look at the situation, but it will be a long time before we can definitively say this was a major error relative to other recommendations and actions taken.
A broader perspective and perhaps a better takeaway is that to mitigate this pandemic it seems we - collectively as a society - need to focus on more sophisticated & multi-faceted strategies beyond the current mRNA vaccines, lock-downs, and masks.
Delta is getting a crazy amount of press but for some reason most articles don’t show any of the articles stats. For instance rather than show cases or deaths, they show “percent of cases that are delta.” Here is the CDC chart showing cases and deaths by group.
Cases are increasing but even case increase is a tiny blip compared to winter. Cases have always been a poor metric to judge the pandemic as it doesn’t indicate the severity of the infection. Filter the graph by deaths and we can see COVID deaths have still yet to increase even a tiny amount from their already extremely low levels after vaccinations become mainstream. Yes there is a lag time between death and cases but that lag time is only two weeks.
> Cases are increasing but even case increase is a tiny blip compared to winter.
If you look at the US as a whole cases are not are still well below the worst daily averages of last Christmas, but blip is a much stronger word than I'd use when the trend line is pointed up with no obvious end in sight.
Drill down on the individual states with the most issues and you'll see that places like Louisiana are basically at the same point as they were in winter and will likely far exceed it.
As you say, the fact that most of the most vulnerable age ranges have been vaccinated will certainly help the death tolls. The flip side of that, however, is that a much higher concentration of the deaths in those states are going to be younger individuals.
True cases are equal in some areas like Louisiana and Florida. Florida is completely open with the worst possible scenario of practically no masks, low vaccine rates, and enormous crowds but has only 1.4 weekly deaths per 100,000, low but above the national average of .5 weekly deaths per 100,000. Compare this with deaths from all other causes which average about 16 weekly deaths per 100,000. So yea we have a problem but at the current rate you are more likely to die from a stroke than COVID. You are about half as likely to die by suicide. You are about 6 times as likely to die from heart disease than COVID. I’m just saying there are other things to be afraid of and focus on than the pandemic.
It does not confirm your point. It says roughly "if a vaxxed and unvaxxed people are equally sick (e.g. same strength of symptoms), they transmit equally". However, vaxxed people get sick ~20x less, so they transmit ~20x less overall. (20x is a bad estimate here, taken from efficiency against hospitalizations)
> No difference in mean Ct values in vaccinated and unvaccinated cases
This refers to registered cases. Registered cases ~ symptomatic cases above certain threshold of symptoms (e.g. if you only have running nose or no symptoms whatsoever, you won't report anything).
Suppose you have two separate groups of 100 people, one with all vaccinated, other with none vaccinated. In each, 1 member is sick and gets in contact with everyone. In unvaxxed group, say, you get 20 symptomatic cases, 30 asymptomatic cases, and 50 are lucky. In a vaxxed group (an example), you get 3 symptomatic cases, 10 asymptomatic cases, and 87 are lucky. Now according to my understanding the slide statement above applied to this though experiment says that every one in the 20 symptomatic cases from unvaxxed group has the same chance (individually) to transmit, as everyone of the 3 symptomatic cases of vaxxed group. But because vaxxed group has 6x less people on stage 2 who could transmit further, overall transmission rate is also almost 6x lower.
E.g. the statement talks about sending chances, and not receiving chances. And overall transmission depends on both.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadEdited to add: I suppose it depends on their methodology. Quick glance at Thompson’s study, seems they compared vaxxed HCWs to unvaxxed HCWs. I don’t know if we would expect to see material PPE-wearing differences between those groups.
Maybe it has? For example, DC has reported 11 homicides since its last reported COVID death.
Look at the stats for yourself. 1 Covid death in the past 2 weeks in DC. Where they are now they are requiring masks even for the vaccinated and signaling lockdown. What about all the homicides? What about all the other causes of death? What about the rapidly accelerating income inequality as a result of lockdowns and mandates? What about the kids, who are extremely low risk, falling behind in school?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/washington-distr...
Unless you think it’s normal that American society has more mass shootings than I can keep track of in recent memory then i’d call it an epidemic.
People walking into churches, schools, concerts, etc… and indiscriminately killing people is a deep sickness in American society.
>Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant
Well that's very sad, if not entirely unexpected. How long will we be living in a masked world?
If someone sees mask wearing instead as a joint effort to fight the pandemic, as means to get out of it earlier by limiting the spread of the disease or as a way that they can do something to protect themselves no matter what others might do, then it is absolutely not depressing. Self-efficacy influences mood positively a lot.
People here also walk around with masks during allergy season, or doing flu season even when they’re not sick. In Taiwan and Vietnam I saw (and wore) masks on days when the air was particularly dirty.
The situation is the same in China.
I also specifically said people wear them outside of the pandemic.
I think you’re very confused because you’re angry. Calm down. :)
I suspect the Venn diagram of people who don't like masks and people who don't like coercively collectivist politics is basically a circle. It certainly is here in the UK, most opposition to masks in Parliament came from the Tory backbenchers which I guess is why their mandatory use was dropped this month; the 1922 Committee (a formal group of Tory backbenchers) can force a vote of no confidence in the Tory leader if 15% of them call for such a vote. Tory backbenchers tend to be more small-c conservative than the Tory frontbench, they're not necessarily anti-authoritarian but they're often anti-collectivist.
Not everything is politically motivated.
A piece of ordinary cloth on your face does not filter smog, does not prevent any airborne infection droplets from reaching you, essentially only lowers the chance of your cough hitting somebody else. You need an N95 or better to really do anything to protect yourself. Also even if you have a high grade mask, wearing it so it actually seals to protect you is hard and most people don't do it well.
Masks do more to protect others than they do you. Which is why we are safest when everyone wears a mask.
https://www.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
When the checkout queue is moving slowly, some people try to move the queue forward by moving closer tho the person in front, even though the queue hasn't moved. I've noticed that people who do this are always maskless.
My local store is near a homeless shelter; homeless people face much greater threats than what amounts to a nasty respiratory virus. But I like social distancing; it tends to improve my sense of having personal space, as well as making me feel safer.
So I have to accept there's a way of thinking that makes it actually wrong to mask-up.
Incidentally, I walked off the street into a pub the other day, for a straight whisky at the bar - I didn't plan to hang around (nobody was masked, of course, because you can't drink through a mask). Well I was basically called out by this grumpy fella, because I came in masked. I mean, he was joking, but he obviously despised me.
I have one that I use when woodworking / sanding / varnishing, and the difference between a respirator and even a good N95 mask is like night and day. You can pull in a gratuitous volume of air through the respirator and it doesn't have that "there is a disconcertingly noticeable quantity of VOCs getting past this N95 mask" smell to it.
VOCs getting past a well-fitting N95 mask is working as intended, isn't it? N95 filters particulates only.
I have a 6000 series with bare P100 filters installed, and they certainly cut smells, but that's probably not what they're designed for. Amusingly, throughout this entire pandemic I've only worn it for wildfire smoke-- it appears to be completely impossible for people to understand what I'm saying while I'm wearing it.
Not really though.
https://www.sensory.com/finally-a-biometric-solution-that-re...
https://qz.com/1803737/chinas-facial-recognition-tech-can-cr...
Masks were not great for mental health, but apparently that doesn’t matter as much as virtue signaling.
Also I don't know how people do it with having to smell their own breath for long. Regardless of how well the oral hygiene is, breath gets bad after eating some food.
Also cloth masks are pretty much useless considering their penetration level of 97%. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
> Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%. This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
https://www.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
> We did not consider the use of respirators in the community. Respirators are tight-fitting masks that can protect the wearer from fine particles (37) and should provide better protection against influenza virus exposures when properly worn because of higher filtration efficiency. However, respirators, such as N95 and P2 masks, work best when they are fit-tested, and these masks will be in limited supply during the next pandemic. These specialist devices should be reserved for use in healthcare settings or in special subpopulations such as immunocompromised persons in the community, first responders, and those performing other critical community functions, as supplies permit.
And why not say it. The fact the government is forcing me to wear a mask indoors makes me want to get rid of it asap.
We won't be. People will simply be unwilling to do so long term and what doesn't get prevented by vaccines will burn through the population until everyone has antibodies and the disease weakens and "the common cold kills people" becomes the new normal.
There have always been diseases around that killed people, we were lucky for quite a while because the rate was fairly low and now it seems to be permanently bumped up a bit again. Eventually the disease is going to run out of people to infect the first time.
VE for Delta apparently wears off after ~180 days.
There are plenty of experts and health officials who believe that eradicating the pandemic is possible. Including some with experience eradicating other pandemics like Ebola and Zika [1], along with the editor-in-chief of the Lancet [2], among others.
Eradicating a pandemic is not unprecedented, it can and has been done.
> If you've gotten the impression that our public health response is about reaching some future point where Covid-19 is gone and nobody ever has to worry about it, you're being misled.
Clearly our COVID19 response is not currently about that, or no one would have to advocate for it.
[1]:https://necsi.edu/corona-virus-pandemic. (Ebola: https://necsi.edu/ending-pandemics)
[2]:https://www.endcoronavirus.org/
I have to concede that he's not a crank, and appears to have meaningful pandemic expertise. I'm now aware of one expert who's confident eliminating Covid is possible. But this has to be evaluated in the context of the overwhelming consensus (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2) that it's probably not, and these sites are structured as grand calls to action more than detailed arguments, so it's hard for me to figure out what the content of the disagreement is. What does Bar-Yam know that immunologists don't?
As for the disagreement, it probably stems from the fact that with other outbreaks like Ebola, with known ~50% mortality rates, there’s unanimous consensus that they must be shut down early, and so they are.
That common cause and singled-minded focus and coordination is a major factor in successfully eradicating the pandemic. And doing it early before it can become widespread is obviously more viable than shutting it down after it’s gone global.
These folks are asserting that the methodologies used for shutting down other pandemics early can still be effectively scaled up to shut down a widespread pandemic like COVID19 that we failed to shut down early. And that’s where the disagreement is with the consensus you linked.
The thing is, global pandemics aren’t over, they’re just beginning, and we could be hit by something worse later. It behooves all of society to use COVID19 as a not-too-deadly trial run for learning how to quickly shut down something worse in the future, rather than fatalistically accepting it.
I think this is the core thing that I've never understood about the zero covid idea. If you look at, say, France or Spain, there was a unanimous consensus that the coronavirus must be stopped early, with strong and severe lockdowns for 5-6 weeks as these sites outline. The consensus didn't break because of laziness or complacency; it broke because it didn't work, because the lockdowns reduced but never eliminated community transmission. If you have a disease that's not that bad in the scheme of things, and you try the best known suppression strategies but they don't get rid of it, what other option is there than to find a way to live with it?
I also think it's important to acknowledge that our efforts to fight Ebola have not generally been this strong, despite Bar-Yam's arguments that they should be. In 2014, some American states imposed mandatory quarantines on doctors and nurses who'd been treating Ebola patients in western Africa, and there was strong pushback - from medical experts, who said that the quarantines were stigmatizing and counterproductive and there's no medical reason to impose such an over-the-top policy. "The Ebola quarantines and other movement restrictions put in place throughout the nation beginning in late 2014 were motivated by fear and by politics, not by medical science", said Doctors Without Borders.
Their critique of most of those cases is the measures were lifted prematurely, before getting all the way to zero infection rate, allowing it to re-spread again. And also the fact that all adjoining countries need the same zero-covid policy, or even ones that get to zero covid can be reinfected by neighbors. It's all (the way to zero), or nothing.
Forever, because too many self-centered people refused to do the few simple things it would have taken to get the situation even remotely close to under control. It's already gone on longer than it needed to, and because of human selfishness it's almost certainly just going to get worse.
Just because they were wrong doesn’t mean that they didn’t make the best decision possible with the available information and given circumstances.
I will also note Israel has already approved a third dose of mRNA booster shots for 60+ year old people based on the data they have seen with waning efficacy. The CDC as of now currently says boosters are not necessary for Americans "at this time"...
This and the fda authorization of the biogen drug have sealed the deal for me on how corrupted the US has become. It’s been coasting thanks to the good decisions made decades past, and finally it’s just fumes and the time couldn’t be more perfect.
1. https://twitter.com/fitterhappierAJ/status/14174356332121825...
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096999611...
He was most struck by three findings: One, he said, was the frequency with which people who had been exposed to the coronavirus had subsequent problems with memory. About 60 per cent had cognitive impairment, and for 1 in 3, the symptoms were severe.
Second, his findings indicate that the severity of a COVID-19 patient’s illness does not predict cognitive problems. “What puts you at risk of having the cognitive problems is just having been infected, regardless of how badly ill you were,” he said. “You may have had very mild COVID, but if you were infected and you are older, you are at risk of having these issues.”
And, third, losing the ability to smell, which has been commonly reported among COVID-19 patients, is correlated with cognitive troubles. “They track together quite well,” de Erausquin said. “The more severe your lack of smell, the more severe your cognitive impairment.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/covid-19-could-le...
can we please stop using this stupid word? calling things "cursed" is the opposite of bringing any clarity to the world.
Obviously this is a really specific pet peeve of yours, in a specific context, that doesn't have much to do with what I said. Maybe you just saw the word, had an emotional response based on the behavioral of some individuals you know, and your brain turned off to reading the context of what I actually said.
99.9785% of vaccinated are not infected 99.8714% of un-vaccinated are not infected
99.9999% of vaccinated are not hospitalized 99.9975% of un-vaccinated are not hospitalized
99.99996% of vaccinated are not dead 99.99904% of un-vaccinated are not dead
This is such a small difference.
But maybe if you count infections per second, instead of per week, you can get a number so close to 100% not dead that it’s a rounding error: pandemic solved!
1. Slide 16 mentions India but the details aren't clear. Is this study's focus on breakthrough cases and spreading of Delta based off data in India? I know India was where Delta originated and that it blindsided them because COVID measures that worked well for previous variants did not work anymore - so does that simply mean that the most data on Delta happens to be in India due to the larger cumulative number of Delta cases there? And if so how applicable is that data to the US, given that the type of vaccine administered is different and may have different (reduced) efficacy compared to Pfizer or Moderna, and since other factors (population size, density, healthcare quality, etc) may also be different and influence the data?
2. The graphs on Slides 20-21 are unclear to me. My interpretation is that they have four different scenarios and are using the bottom-left one, which assumes a higher R0 representing the Delta variant, and a lower assumption of natural immunity of 5% - basically the more conservative outlook. The graph itself seems to be indicating a probability of increase in cases, and we presumably want to be below 0.5. The legend shows three colors for universal masking, masking of the unvaccinated, and no masking. But the graph itself has five color bands - are the other color bands just hybrids? So the color between beige and lilac represents some vaccinated people masking and all unvaccinated people masking? And no masking is not an option per this graph even at 100% vaccination, because the probability of cases increasing would be around 80% still? If the natural immunity is higher (the bottom-right graph), then there is no need for universal masking in nearly all levels of vaccination? Am I interpreting all that correctly?
That combined with how much more infectious this is makes it truly worrying.
One interpretation of the fact that Israel has such different numbers on vaccine effectiveness is that effectiveness starts dropping ~6 months in.
We'll need to start doing 3rd shots for lots of people ~now.
IMO the world just got a lot darker.
>Given increased transmissibility, lower VE, and current vaccine coverage, NPIs needed to reduce transmission of Delta variant
>Masking:
>• Source control 40-60% effective
>• Personal protection 20-30% effective
>NO ADJUSTMENTS FOR OTHER INTERVENTIONS
>• e.g., no distancing, no isolation, no gathering restrictions
I'm... not sure about that? Delta is infecting people who just walk past each other in indoor spaces: https://www.wsj.com/articles/delta-variants-spread-outpaces-...
How can you get to 40-60% effectiveness if you have perfect mask wearing, but leave restaurants and bars open? Even wearing a N95 when going to the grocery store and post office or whatever isn't going to help if you then go to a bar and spend an hour maskless with your 100 closest unmasked friends.
Again, why would they recommend universal masking if they know for a fact that it wouldn't do anything? What's the point?
This is not true.
As I understand it the rolling reviews for mRNA vaccine approval are purely a matter of time to prove for real the length of efficacy of them, that's part of the risk/benefit analysis. Can only be done a day at a time....
On the last slide, “Next Steps for CDC”, they explicitly list:
> ▪ Prevention
> – Consider vaccine mandates for HCP to protect vulnerable populations
> – Universal masking for source control and prevention
> – Reconsider other community mitigation strategies
Which means they definitely think additional mitigations are worthwhile, but we must start with at least masking.
They have a hard job to communicate the specific recommended actions while remaining calm and not causing a panic or making people think that they are over reacting… with everyone ready to jump on them, I do not envy the job.
Slide 21, bold red text, surrounded by a red box: "Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant"
If this is supposed to imply that restaurants need to be closed, I feel like it should instead actually explicitly say that, because it means firing a million people, again. If universal masking requires restaurant closing, then masking by itself won't do anything!
If masking by itself does nothing, then why dedicate two slides to just masking? If masking does nothing, why give it 40-60% effectiveness? If the graph is totally worthless and means nothing useful, why put it in the presentation?
If closing restaurants is mission critical, absolutely required for any other NPI to have any effect at all, then why hide it inside "Reconsider other community mitigation strategies" on the last slide?
If additional stuff is done, then the risk goes down. It does not say how much, maybe a little, maybe a lot. But such other mitigations are unlikely to happen if the easiest, most effective and most accepted way, wearing masks, is not enforced already. That's why it makes sense to look at the case of masks-only.
I need more time to digest this presentation, but there are two important topics that I feel are missing or at least underrepresented:
1) The effectiveness of early outpatient treatment using a combination of existing medicines (antibiotics, corticosteroids, antiplatelet/antithrombotic) [0a] [0b]
2) The risk of vaccine induced immune escape
Regarding 2) The basic idea is that imperfect vaccines may cause selective pressure which further enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This may be particularly relevant to the widely deployed mRNA vaccines, which induce an immune response that is highly targeted towards the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
Here are some peer reviewed publications on the topic, along with a few excerpts [1][2][3][4][5][6]. To be clear, the excerpts I'm providing below do not contradict any of the major points from the presentation. However, I do hope they illustrate that there is another important dimension to discuss when evaluating the evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2.
Excerpts from [1]:
- "A growing body of evidence suggests that the targets of several human vaccines are evolving"
- "For example, resistance to influenza and herpes-virus drugs emerged within a few years of FDA approval, and resistance to antivirals rapidly arises within human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients"
- "The best documented example of vaccine resistance evolution occurred in Marek’s disease, a commercially important disease of chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (Gallid herpesvirus II). There, two generations of vaccines were undermined by viral evolution. Those vaccines prevented disease, but even before the pathogen evolved, they did not prevent viral infection, replication, or transmission. Instead, Marek’s disease virus reached large population sizes even within vaccinated hosts and was able to transmit to new hosts. As a result, the virus was likely able to generate genetic diversity within vaccinated hosts, and vaccine-induced selection was able to act during transmission between hosts. The benefits of prophylaxis were thus missing."
Excerpts from [2]:
- "Here we show experimentally that immunization of chickens against Marek's disease virus enhances the fitness of more virulent strains, making it possible for hyperpathogenic strains to transmit. Immunity elicited by direct vaccination or by maternal vaccination prolongs host survival but does not prevent infection, viral replication or transmission, thus extending the infectious periods of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts."
Excerpts from [3]:
- "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control."
- "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting the spike RBD?"
- "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."
- "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molec...
So the CDC made a grave error in telling vaccinated people they could remove their masks.
A broader perspective and perhaps a better takeaway is that to mitigate this pandemic it seems we - collectively as a society - need to focus on more sophisticated & multi-faceted strategies beyond the current mRNA vaccines, lock-downs, and masks.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsoverti...
Cases are increasing but even case increase is a tiny blip compared to winter. Cases have always been a poor metric to judge the pandemic as it doesn’t indicate the severity of the infection. Filter the graph by deaths and we can see COVID deaths have still yet to increase even a tiny amount from their already extremely low levels after vaccinations become mainstream. Yes there is a lag time between death and cases but that lag time is only two weeks.
If you look at the US as a whole cases are not are still well below the worst daily averages of last Christmas, but blip is a much stronger word than I'd use when the trend line is pointed up with no obvious end in sight.
Drill down on the individual states with the most issues and you'll see that places like Louisiana are basically at the same point as they were in winter and will likely far exceed it.
As you say, the fact that most of the most vulnerable age ranges have been vaccinated will certainly help the death tolls. The flip side of that, however, is that a much higher concentration of the deaths in those states are going to be younger individuals.
- lower your own chances of symptomatic disease, severe illness, hospitalization and death
- and therefore, help keep the healthcare system from collapsing
Delta variant vaccine breakthrough cases may be as transmissible as unvaccinated case
This refers to registered cases. Registered cases ~ symptomatic cases above certain threshold of symptoms (e.g. if you only have running nose or no symptoms whatsoever, you won't report anything).
Suppose you have two separate groups of 100 people, one with all vaccinated, other with none vaccinated. In each, 1 member is sick and gets in contact with everyone. In unvaxxed group, say, you get 20 symptomatic cases, 30 asymptomatic cases, and 50 are lucky. In a vaxxed group (an example), you get 3 symptomatic cases, 10 asymptomatic cases, and 87 are lucky. Now according to my understanding the slide statement above applied to this though experiment says that every one in the 20 symptomatic cases from unvaxxed group has the same chance (individually) to transmit, as everyone of the 3 symptomatic cases of vaxxed group. But because vaxxed group has 6x less people on stage 2 who could transmit further, overall transmission rate is also almost 6x lower.
E.g. the statement talks about sending chances, and not receiving chances. And overall transmission depends on both.