This gets to my point on the messaging. If people had been told this was the reason at the beginning it would be one thing. But the reason told was “masks are not effective”. They may have said this so that there wasn’t a panic, or a run on masks, or some other reason. But anytime you say one thing to the public and then later change your reason and say you lied, that leaves no room for confidence going forward. They lied to try and get people to behave in a certain way.
Another example is that saying J&J was just as good as the mRNA ones and that people shouldn’t be comparing the effectiveness rates. A lie to get people to take J&J.
The messaging would have been much better had they been upfront on everything from the beginning instead of lying to try and manipulate behavior. That’s a major reason why the public is fed up with them and turning to other sources like random YouTube bloggers.
Your response is to quote a twitter rando replying to another twitter rando?
“Clearly not the case, with large winter wave despite extensive mask wearing.”
This guy is an idiot if he does not realize a significant % of the country only wore masks when required out in public and continued to gather in private without masks, because people like him gave them the “science”.
The reality is that masks do not protect anyone very well by blocking viruses in the air from being inhaled. They do a better job reducing viruses that are exhaled from an infected person from floating around in the air. When we realized that many people were asymptomatic or were shedding the virus prior to having symptoms, the guidance changed. Yes, there was an element of preventing a run on masks at stake as well, but the guidance did follow what was known at the time.
What I learned about the J&J vaccine is that it was less effective at preventing infection but just as effective at preventing hospitalizations and death. Those are still good reasons for taking a one and done shot in a situation where people are hesitant to commit to the time for two doses. If someone wants to manipulate that into a lie, they have other motives.
I wouldn’t listen to a Harvard professor that pushed for herd immunity two months before vaccines became available. He is an idiot with an agenda that now looks dumb and is trying to flex on mostly out of context points to make up for it.
hmmmm, does that mean vaccinated people can get just as sick and die from delta as the unvaccinated? i’m confused. I don’t really care about people who die because they are too stubborn to get vaccinated, but if the vaccine is now useless, well, that’s terrible.
The vaccines are not useless. As Mr Fritz says, they still appear to reduce severity of disease. That doesn’t mean some vaccinated people won’t get very sick or die from covid, but it’s less likely than unvaccinated.
The main new thing is that vaccinated can still get infected and infect others at a rate higher than previously thought.
But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of severe breakthroughs is exceedingly low: As of July 19, the CDC had received reports of 5,914 COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths out of more than 161 million fully vaccinated people in the United States.
But the main issue is to get enough folks vaccinated to slow the transmission such that the epslion, gamma,… etc variant don’t become prevelant and vaccine resistant.
I see a lot of the current delta craze as a method to get vaccine numbers up again. Vaccination rate had stalled and without some new found fear of death, we didnt have a good way to get it going again.
Yes there are some localized spikes in cases, but the US and many states have only seen marginal increases in covid from Delta. Yes its up 500% since last week, but still down 5000% since the peak. My state has hardly seen an increase from Delta.
They can use this as a reason to mandate federal workers to get vaccinated adds another 2M people to the vaccinated list. It also prompts other large companies (and hospital systems) to follow that lead (read: FED says is OK to mandate vaccine). Maybe we get another 20M people on the vaccine list. Maybe that gets us 75% vaccinated… which would be a BFD… add in the maybe 10% of unvaccinated people that have some natural immunity from prior infection and we could start talking about heard immunity.
maybe delta isnt going to kill us all this summer. But whatever new strain hits us in December and Jan might kill a LOT of people. We have a chance to significantly mitigate the winter season risk of covid though vaccination now. I see all of the current policies trying to slap people awake so we dont wake up in 6 months and say "o ya, covid is still here, better get a shot now that another 100k people just died’
Where I live, cases are pretty much where they were last year at this time, and increasing quickly and persistently over the last month. It’s the persistent increase that says to me “This could be bad,” along with the fact that the Delta variant does seem to infect kids and kids can’t be vaccinated.
I hope you are right and it’s nothing to worry about and you get to say, “I told you so.”
School starts here in 2 weeks. There will be few masks and I don’t know about distancing.
an interesting case study will be my school. We went full 5 days a week last year with masks and distancing. This year they dropping the masks and likely the distancing. Last year, there was very little covid in the school. Like 3 or 4 reported cases for the entire district for the year. I was even skeptical last year. I thought school would be canceled within a few weeks, there was no way kids didnt spread covid I thought. But they actually got thru the whole year.
There may also be some frequency/severity issues going on now. This is the first spike in cases since we had good vaccination rates. 6 months ago, a spike in cases meant a bunch of people were about to die, but now I think severity per case is much lower than before, and especially among the older population that is mostly vaccinated.
There will be no ‘I told you so’ from me… im just speculating. my hope is that 1: delta doesnt kill too many people and 2: we can use the delta hype to justify more vaccinations so that 3: another 100k people dont have to die this winter.
Im still in the camp of seasonal patterns and that mid summer should be a low point for respiratory disease. Im very concerned that we make a lot of decisions based on summer data that should not apply to winter conditions.
So, i admit that while i claim to be a fan of “masks”, for my personal use, i relied on respirators until I was vaccinated, and i still use a respirator when i engage in risky behavior like taking my mom to the hospital. And i just bought another reusable respirator, thinking that i may be using them more often in the near future.
That being said, i also have a lot of fabric masks. I used them with a filter before i obtained respirators. I used them when we had an everywhere mask mandate when i walked around my neighborhood. Since being vaccinated, I’ve used then for quick trips to pick up takeout, too. Oh, and while doing yardwork during pollen season – an unexpected benefit to having a mask wardrobe.
My fabric masks do not just redirect my breath. They absolutely filter most of it. No, my glasses don’t fog up. I have extensive experience exercising with a mask on, and it’s fine, especially when it’s not too hot outside.
It’s worth finding masks that fit you. They are more comfortable and work better.
Yeah, i think it’s been really rough on the elementary school kids, especially the nursery school through grade 3 group. But i wonder how many middle schoolers benefited from less forced interaction with their peers.
I don’t know about the seasonality thing. Both last year and this year summer was when it started. In my area things started improving a LOT in February. Was it the brutal cold and icy roads? Maybe. But that flies in the face of the seasonality argument.
This summer has brought more Covid thanks to Delta, but also more common colds, RSV, all the stuff that usually circulates in winter.
the 2nd wave definitely started in nov of 2020. There were some bumps in the curve along the way, but the real second wave, which was the peak of the entire pandemic, was from Nov-Feb.
oddly the 2nd wave started to die down in feb… which was before vaccines really started to get pushed out. I have never been able to explain this. It is possible the 2nd wave was coming down naturally and vaccines were just assisting in the pull back. My other theory is the timing of reported data is just wrong.
With so many families opting for virtual last year, I think that helped to lower transmission in our local schools. The schools I heard about with higher transmission were mostly related to sports teams.
But with all the kids back and no masking (here), plus a variant that seems to infect kids, I wouldn’t want to send my unvaxed under 12’s this year. (I mean, if I had them.)