We are at the point where a one-size-fits-all approach may not be reasonable. The rules for NE/NY/NJ cannot be same as the rules for MO/AR/AL, for example. 80% vaxxed vs 20% vaxxed.
Here in MA, all the new hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals.
Los Angeles County has a relatively low vaccination rate compared to other coastal urban counties in California. Demographic factors that may be related could include lower SES distribution, lower health care access, and higher Latino and Black populations.
And, according to yesterday’s report there are 108 people in the hospital with covid in the entire state of MA so I don’t think we need to change the rules here yet.
Perhaps we should have masking requirement based on the vaccination percentage of the local population?
And public health professionals who seem prone to overreaction. Remember the decisions last year to ban people from the beaches and fill in the skate parks with sand…
Also, many of the places with the lowest vaccination rates and highest community spread are those where people will be least likely to follow any mask recommendation, and where local governments are least likely to return to mask requirements and such. (Los Angeles County may be a partial outlier here, although vaccination rates are only low relative to other coastal urban counties in California, not as much overall.)
A friend just posted that her daughter and her cousin flew to DC to a shower for some other friends and relatives. All vaccinated. Now 7 of the 8 adults in the group tested positive for covid.
I don’t think we are out of the woods yet
how sick were the 7?
I wonder how many of us have been infected and just don’t know. We have lots of “colds” or “allergies” going around my area. Testing is not required here anymore for work, etc., so people carry on like in the old days. A woman in a neighboring district recently died from covid. She was fully vaccinated, but on immunosuppressants. She was being treated for a sinus infection when she flew off for vacation, and was hospitalized/passed away in the vacation spot. I guess the local doctors assumed it was not covid and did not test because she was vaccinated?
Honestly, I would rather not know if all I have are minor/no symptoms. And for me, minor symptoms are: runny/congested nose, fever, and fatigue. Any type of chest cough or loss of smell/taste is not mild to me. And I thought that was the point of the vaccine: to have no symptoms or very minor symptoms. The virus could live in your nose and test positive, but your body would not come down sick or very sick.
Voluntary mask use (even in uncrowded outdoor situations) appears to be positively correlated with vaccination rate, and resistance to masks and other COVID-19-mitigation methods appears positively correlated with non-vaccination rate.
Perhaps it is not surprising that people are moving toward the extremes here, given how politicized COVID-19 is, and how polarized politics is.
One may be vaccinated for COVID (or the flu, or anything else) and still contract a mild case. I am sure there are people who get flu shots, then get a mild case of the flu but think it’s only a bad cold because of the vaccine.
7/8 testing positive is not the same as 7/8 in the hospital on ventilators. I expect we’ll be testing positive for a long time, but avoiding serious illness due to vaccines. Like the flu.
When a group of similar people who know each other get sick I often wonder if they got their vaxes together at the same time/area. And if so, was that batch viable? With the cold temps needed, it wouldn’t be difficult for some to slip through the cracks, esp if an idiot like the one they caught purposely tried to sabotage them. The containers are supposed to have failsafe markers on them, but again, humans who want to can do weird things if they have access.
But this quite probably isn’t the case with your friend’s group if they flew in (doubtful they all received the same batch!). It just brought up that thought in my mind again when odds don’t match what’s supposed to happen.
I’m definitely glad our blood tested positive for antibodies after our vaxes. It gives me more confidence in ours.
I agree the two are highly correlated. That’s why using “not having to wear masks” as an inducement for vaccination was never going to work for most of those who haven’t been vaccinated.
Almost everyone who has been vaccinated has antibodies:
How well these antibodies protect against the Delta variant is another question.
It may only be able to work in situations where a “vaccination or mask” rule is practically enforceable. Typical retail stores may not be practically able or willing to enforce a “vaccination or mask” rule (this is an option where I am, but no retail store that I have seen does it; most use an honor system that is probably regularly “cheated” on, while a few require masks for everyone). Even other situations where there can more reasonably be “vaccination or mask” enforcement at entrance still need to have to deal with preventing unvaccinated people from removing their masks after entry.
Of course, making masking rules dependent on collective vaccination rate rather than individual vaccination status increases the level of political conflict, since that magnifies the external effects of personal choices. People tend to resent rules that are the result of others’ choices.
But then, since vaccinated people are mostly low risk, some may say just to let unvaccinated people get each other sick with the usual rate of serious problems, while the vaccinated people just watch on the sidelines. That mostly matches up personal choices with personal consequences, but it leaves out the medically vulnerable who have less choice in the matter (i.e. who are still at risk even after vaccination), and unvaccinated people getting sick and filling up hospitals and ICUs may impact people who need medical care for other reasons.
The actual paper notes some nuances, particularly one versus two doses (the UK prioritized getting first doses out, so many people got one dose but spent a lot of time in that state waiting for the second dose):
See table 2 on page 17-18.
Two doses of Pfizer - BioNTech resulted in 100% antibody prevalence in ages 18-79, 97.8% in ages 80+. But one dose resulted in antibody prevalence that declined by age from 100% in ages 18-29 to 32.3% in ages 80+.
For the Oxford - AstraZeneca vaccine, two doses resulted in antibody prevalence from 100% in ages 18-39 down to 83.6% in ages 80+, but one dose resulted in antibody prevalence from 72.2% in ages 18-29 to 46.3% in ages 80+.
| Vaccine | 1d vs Alpha | 2d vs Alpha | 1d vs Delta | 2d vs Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pfizer - BioNTech BNT162b2 | 49% | 93% | 33% | 88% |
| Oxford - AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 | 51% | 66% | 33% | 60% |
(1d = 1 dose, 2d = 2 doses, Alpha = B.1.1.7, Delta = B.1.617.2)
There’s another consequence. The virus will mutate as it continues to spread, diminishing, or even eliminating, the effectiveness of the vaccines.
has anyone heard of anyone who had covid and also got vaccinated getting covid again (versus just vaccinated)
Vaccines are certainly still effective. However, the delta variant has lessened the effectiveness of all vaccines. Some of them are probably only borderline effective. If transmission continues on a large scale, it’s a sure bet that even more contagious variants will appear.
However, the scope of mutation is limited by two virus “goals” that somewhat conflict with each other:
There are lots of possible mutations for “goal 2” that go against “goal 1”. It does look like “goal 1” is the most favored in natural selection and competition, since we saw B.1.1.7 / Alpha followed by B.1.617.1 / Delta become dominant due to increased contagiousness (“goal 1”) while B.1.351 / Beta appears to be sidelined despite it being the most vaccine-evading variant (“goal 2”).
This is not to say that it is impossible for a new variant to fulfill both virus “goals” at the same time, but it is also not guaranteed that such a variant will occur.
Some of the vaccines were probably only borderline effective to begin with. The widely used (internationally, including the UK) Oxford - AstraZeneca vaccine appears to be like a worse version of the J&J - Janssen vaccine available in the US – requires two doses instead of one, less effective generally even after two doses, and appears to have the same rare dangerous effects but slightly less rare.