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More about Delta ........In response to some misrepresentations of Delta variant data by the CDC I posed this at one of the cruise blogs I write/post for:
Lets look at some data points. On 01/08/21, FL's 7d average of new daily cases were 17568, 04/20/21 = 6120, 06/23/21 = 1543. Obviously a huge decrease in transmissability attendant to vaccines as you point out.
WRT the Delta variant seroprevalence, that variant comprised 2.9% of all infections in 05/22/21 - in round figures a 7d moving average of about 14000 new cases or 435 infections from the Delta variant. The variant comprised 9.5% of new infections on 6/23/21 - in round figures a 7d moving average of about 1500 new cases or 142 infections from the Delta variant.
While its true the Delta variant is present in FL is it's impact on new cases or more appropriately disease burden something to worry about? I don't think it is. I continue to object to messaging from PH officials, including and most prominently the CDC, that wants to push the importance of getting vaccinated using misleading information. Is the get vaccinated message a good one? Yes it is. But don't manufacture fear of the Delta variant to do that. That fear has much wider negative consequences for returning to some level of normalcy than it does positive things for encouraging people to get vaccinated.
Like the 6 previous variants of interest and 3 ID'ed by various authorities as "variants of concern", we will continue to see these - it is what viruses do. Obsessing over them as the press is now doing - replacing their dire consequences narrative of a year ago with this - is more fear monkey shit. I have no doubt whatsoever that despite that SARS2 is going to be with us for a long time, it will turn out that it is entirely manageable - that point is being missed in the majority of reports that make it to the public eye.
I also have no doubt that we will need seasonal vaccinations for SARS2 (timing unknown at this point but will become evident). The Influenza virus changes every year and to be protected from it you need a Flu shot. You'll also probably need a COVID shot to protect your from the ever changing SARS2 virus. The advent of mRNA vaccines - miracle drugs actually - make it easy to "adjust" vaccines to protect against evolving variants. This can be done, as well, with traditional vaccines that use viral vectors to produce an immune response. Humanity will learn how to live with and manage SARS2 and probably we're now better prepared to do that than ever before and will be able to respond more effectively to the next bad guy that comes along. As with influenza vaccines over time that have proven to deliver increasing levels of immunity in humans, virologists expect that will also be the case with repeated inoculations against SARS2 (and future viruses).
We're getting damn good and beating those fuckers.
One important thing to keep in mind is that both Influenza and COVID are respiratory viruses with an impact across all age cohorts - some more vulnerable to serious disease than others. However, the incidence of serious illness from COVID is considerably higher than that of Influenza across all age cohorts. A study released in Lancet provides some meat to that claim. I mention this not as a means of furthering the hated fear monkey narrative but rather to be clear that as the two viruses go, SARS2 is both more infectious and more lethal. That being the case, more attention needs to be paid to regional outbreaks of COVID. We may or may not have learned our lessons about how to react to that occurrence, i.e., mitigation measures need to be targeted unlike they were when implemented in March '20: this time around, people need to be given the tools to assess their own risks and risks to their communities when deciding how to conduct themselves. We'll see.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...527-0/fulltext
Lets look at some data points. On 01/08/21, FL's 7d average of new daily cases were 17568, 04/20/21 = 6120, 06/23/21 = 1543. Obviously a huge decrease in transmissability attendant to vaccines as you point out.
WRT the Delta variant seroprevalence, that variant comprised 2.9% of all infections in 05/22/21 - in round figures a 7d moving average of about 14000 new cases or 435 infections from the Delta variant. The variant comprised 9.5% of new infections on 6/23/21 - in round figures a 7d moving average of about 1500 new cases or 142 infections from the Delta variant.
While its true the Delta variant is present in FL is it's impact on new cases or more appropriately disease burden something to worry about? I don't think it is. I continue to object to messaging from PH officials, including and most prominently the CDC, that wants to push the importance of getting vaccinated using misleading information. Is the get vaccinated message a good one? Yes it is. But don't manufacture fear of the Delta variant to do that. That fear has much wider negative consequences for returning to some level of normalcy than it does positive things for encouraging people to get vaccinated.
Like the 6 previous variants of interest and 3 ID'ed by various authorities as "variants of concern", we will continue to see these - it is what viruses do. Obsessing over them as the press is now doing - replacing their dire consequences narrative of a year ago with this - is more fear monkey shit. I have no doubt whatsoever that despite that SARS2 is going to be with us for a long time, it will turn out that it is entirely manageable - that point is being missed in the majority of reports that make it to the public eye.
I also have no doubt that we will need seasonal vaccinations for SARS2 (timing unknown at this point but will become evident). The Influenza virus changes every year and to be protected from it you need a Flu shot. You'll also probably need a COVID shot to protect your from the ever changing SARS2 virus. The advent of mRNA vaccines - miracle drugs actually - make it easy to "adjust" vaccines to protect against evolving variants. This can be done, as well, with traditional vaccines that use viral vectors to produce an immune response. Humanity will learn how to live with and manage SARS2 and probably we're now better prepared to do that than ever before and will be able to respond more effectively to the next bad guy that comes along. As with influenza vaccines over time that have proven to deliver increasing levels of immunity in humans, virologists expect that will also be the case with repeated inoculations against SARS2 (and future viruses).
We're getting damn good and beating those fuckers.
One important thing to keep in mind is that both Influenza and COVID are respiratory viruses with an impact across all age cohorts - some more vulnerable to serious disease than others. However, the incidence of serious illness from COVID is considerably higher than that of Influenza across all age cohorts. A study released in Lancet provides some meat to that claim. I mention this not as a means of furthering the hated fear monkey narrative but rather to be clear that as the two viruses go, SARS2 is both more infectious and more lethal. That being the case, more attention needs to be paid to regional outbreaks of COVID. We may or may not have learned our lessons about how to react to that occurrence, i.e., mitigation measures need to be targeted unlike they were when implemented in March '20: this time around, people need to be given the tools to assess their own risks and risks to their communities when deciding how to conduct themselves. We'll see.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...527-0/fulltext
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