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Delta a Blessing in Disguise?
Delta a blessing? I am not often accused of being a raging optimist/Pollyanna type. But I really am seeing a bright silver lining around the Indian variant.
Here is what we know:
First, unlike variant alpha which was really fiercely “seasonal” within defined regions, delta is causing a noticeable simultaneous “case” increase all over the US (even more in the southern US because late July-early August is the southern COVID “seasonality” period.) indicating a big difference in contagiousness. That may seem like bad news but…
Second, fatalities per case are extremely low compared to all previous waves.
And a glance at the excess deaths running chart from CDC–much lower compared to this time last year:
Third, hospitalizations remain remarkably low despite the increase in reported COVID-positives cases all over:
Fourth, antibodies are being mass-produced! We are adding lots of new COVID-antibody-possessing Americans at a very low cost in illness and/or death and doing so at a faster pace. Delta and the vaccines are parallel tracks toward broader resistance and immunity. Some real scientists might even step forward and say that while COVID-19 will hang around indefinitely as an endemic nuisance, the chances of another life-threatening dangerous surge are rapidly approaching zilch if not already there.
ADDED BONUS: What little credibility the CDC had left has been squandered over its response to the Delta wave. The CDC decided to base new mask guidance on a weird interpretation of data resulting from an enthusiastic non-socially distanced gathering of tens of thousands of gay guys in P-town MA for “Bear Week.” That should have been the ultimate superspreader event but instead resulted in only 5-7 hospitalizations (some of which may have been for other medical reasons but accompanied by a positive COVID test) and zero deaths. Delta spread widely with minimal or no adverse effects among the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. No big subsequent COVID surge in the surrounding community. The entire state of Massachusetts is still averaging only 2-5 COVID deaths per day.
The CDC/media panic porn addiction contrary to reality, science, and common sense will be their undoing.
So an increasing mild, rapidly spreading variant is rapidly pulling us toward the clear end of the pandemic and hopefully to the dawn of accountability and retribution. Masks off, businesses and schools open, and pitchforks out.
Published in General
As my post above clearly outlines, I think mandating masks for the vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated is unreasonable. I post to combat misinformation- you are free to read what you like. There has been way too much misinformation about masks, vaccinations and “alternative” treatments. We have no really good therapy for COVID other than vaccines (& to a much significantly lesser extent masks). It is very likely that the vast majority of the unvaccinated (and non recovered) will get COVID and any health consequences they suffer will all be “on them”. I feel for those duped by misinformation who do not get vaxxed and get severe COVID-every single person on the ventilator from COVID at the hospital here is unvaccinated-100% without exception-and my info isn’t from an Instagram influencer nor from an industry outsider-it is personal knowledge known without a doubt.
I just don’t see that in the data.
There are states like North Dakota and Rhode Island with over 145,000 cases per million population.
And other states like Vermont and Hawaii with less than 50,000 cases per million population.
Delta is considerably more transmissible than original covid. Delta does not seem to be more lethal or virulent (some reports suggest it may be slightly less so). It may have more vaccine breakthrough though this is very uncertain (we may be seeing waning vaccine effectiveness over time). Delta went from 10% of covid in the US to over 90% in 2 months. Absent delta, we would be at herd immunity.
Lambda has been the dominant variant in Peru since variants have been assessed there (starting about March). It has been found in the US, but, unlike delta, has not really spread. Lambda is still a tiny portion of the covid cases here. One thing to keep in mind, fatality rates in Peru have been very high. Three times higher than in the US. That’s fatalities per total population, not case fatality rate.
Masks do not work.
Period.
I have been pro vaccination before covid and after covid. The misinformation on the vaccination came from Biden early on. Don’t go blaming anyone else.
This is a broad rule of epidemiology, but may not apply in the case of covid, which causes severe isolating illness (and death) in only a fraction of the people it infects. And even when it does cause major illness, those individuals still have ample opportunity to spread the virus. So covid isn’t really subject to the selective pressures that would drive it to lower virulence. More virulent strains are a real possibility.
Fine, Ignore his graph that took all the states through April.
What does he know, anyway? I mean, he is only a researcher on how effective drugs are in treating illnesses. Not like he is the expert you are.
This is the Kansas mask study but set in Germany. The authors appear to be oblivious to the seasonality curve and attribute declines to mask mandates in post hoc fashion.
We start here:
Germany’s overall decline from the first wave was already underway when the specific mandates were imposed. The dotted line in their figure about what the cases should have been is silly. Below is what was happening at the same time among maskless Swedes.
And once those German mandates were in place, why did COVID still do its thing to the extent it did? Why didn’t the “significant” reductions persist and become even more visible against the backdrop of greater infection rates elsewhere?
I do not respect ANY study of COVID that does not take into account the built-in seasonality curve of the country involved. That this is happening is undeniable. That is what one must measure against–not silly assumptions about unchecked spread. Anyone who points to the downside of one of those curves and says that it must be due to mask mandates or lockdowns or some other externality is simply not paying attention to the data. The fact that so many “experts” have ignored this fact in favor of absurd assumptions of unchecked infection growth without the imposition of NPIs is stunning.
An example: Last week I had a two-day bicycle trip planned. Mrs R was planning to join me at a hotel at the end of day one, and then take me home at the end of day 2. About 30 miles short of the Day 1 destination I got a text saying that she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t think she should be staying at a hotel that night. I was not self-contained enough to stay there alone, but she was still feeling well enough to come and get me, and did so. (I did offer to ride back home against the wind, but it would have taken me a while.)
We wondered if it was covid. We’re both vaccinated, so weren’t too worried about a dangerous illness. She had a miserable night and then started to get better. But we had travel plans for our anniversary this week and didn’t want to go spreading covid to others, including those who aren’t vaccinated and who tend to make up almost all of those who get hospitalized these days. It could be dangerous for some of those people. So I picked up one of the drugstore antigen tests, which she took Thursday and Saturday. If one of them had turned out to be positive I would have run across town to the CVS to get one of the other brand of antigen test kits. If both brands had turned out positive we would have cancelled our reservations. Maybe even if just one had turned out positive. (False positives are more of a problem with this test than false negatives.) But the test was negative both times, so we kept our reservations and enjoyed a few days on Lake Michigan.
Today I was planning to go to a monthly retirement breakfast with my old colleagues. But last night I remembered that when we had been looking for a place to get lunch yesterday (a cafe/bakery) a sign on the door said it was closed due to one of the employees testing positive for covid. We had eaten at that same place Monday. I had waited inside a long time to pick up our order and take it outside to eat. (It’s a popular place.) So last night I got to thinking that I had perhaps been exposed to covid and shouldn’t go to the restaurant for breakfast this morning. I wasn’t too worried about myself, but I didn’t want to be the person to spread covid to others. If I was going to catch something, today would be the most likely day to get symptoms. I felt fine yesterday evening and did a bike ride at slightly faster than my usual speed, but that wouldn’t necessarily have meant anything yet. If there had been time for me to pick up one of the covid tests from the drugstore I could have done that, but I didn’t even think of the possibility of being infectious until late last night.
Then, this morning when it was too late to make it to the breakfast, Mrs R told me that she had just checked the web site of the cafe/bakery. The employee who had tested positive hadn’t even been working there this week, and all the other employees have been vaccinated. That meant the risk that I was infectious was quite a bit lower than I had thought. If I had known that, I would have gone to the breakfast. Some of my colleagues thought I should have gone anyway, but I’m not sure all of those present in the restaurant would have appreciated it.
(It has been a long time since I wore a mask. I went along with the mask-wearing regime until some time this spring, though it wasn’t too much of a hardship on me because we just didn’t go very many places. I tended to roll my eyes at some of the extreme anti-maskers here on Ricochet, but I came to understand that wearing one most of the day is a whole different deal and I wouldn’t like that, either. Once I quit wearing masks this spring, I found myself extra repulsed by the idea of ever wearing one again. I’m not saying I won’t ever, but I have less tolerance for them now than before.)
I think this is common. I’ve noticed that even my associates who are expressing new fears of the DELTA VARIANT!! aren’t wearing masks either.
With some folks who seem to love masks, I’d be careful what you wish for, Bryan.
Yup.
I saw this in Boston versus New York City early on. It was very obvious in the rate of infections.
In fact, it was so obvious from the research when the pandemic started that some scientists were calling it a “disease of latitude.” :-)
This is an excellent discussion. I’ve learned a lot.
Why should somebody do that? Why not look at a graph that lumps all regions together, as well as one that looks at them separately?
Case data can be useful in some circumstances. As an indicator of who has “active” covid it is not good, but as long as the testing criteria remain the same it can be used for comparison and trending purposes over time. It is also revealing of the impact of vaccines. In the UK the 7-day case average peaked for Delta recently at 47,000 and at the time the 7-day average for covid deaths was 80. During the winter surge when the 7 day average went up to 47,000 there were about 600 deaths a day as the 7-day average.
In Florida currently the 7-day average is over 17,000 with a 7-day average of 69 fatalities a day. During the winter surge the highest 7-day average was a bit over 15,000 with 161 deaths (scaling it up to the currently level would be about 177 deaths).
Define “works”. Lots of people make claims that things “work”, but what does that mean? Are you saying that a properly fitted and clean N95 mask will reduce the effective Rt from 2.02 to 1.84? Same for claims about vaccines. Because if the effectiveness of a cloth surgical mask is a 3% reduction in Rt, I can get that by taking 3% fewer trips to where other people are.
Wait. They had to inject people with something during the clinical trials. Didn’t the clinical trials begin in September 2020? The variant could possibly be a mutation that occurred among the trialees. Because it is indeed fast spreading, it could be a by-product of the vaccine trials. I don’t believe the injection necessarily had to be widely available to the public for it to begin spreading.
I’m compliant in my health club in wearing a mask because I have not provided the medical proof of vaccination, so they won’t give me a blue silicone bracelet like everyone else has. I’m one of the only members who wears a mask when I work out, even when I play squash. I’m doing it to make the point to people not to be afraid if you don’t want to get the shot. I’m visibly demonstrating to people that I’m not taking the shot and I’m willing to put up with the rigamarole because I think taking the vaccine is too risky to my health, and also because I think it’s a failure at preventing spread of the virus. For me, natural immunity is the only way out of this thing. Everybody taking the shot is a recipe for disaster. Also, I’m sympathetic with the staff of the health club, who are required to wear a mask regardless of vaccination status.
Solidarity! :-)
I’ll bet you do, you rapscallion, you.
Those data are about mask mandates, not masks. Right?
The fact that mask mandates should have made a difference but did not should have provoked some curiosity among those who base their authority on science. Masks as part of a comprehensive PPE deployment (like I used to have to wear sometimes when I worked in clinical labs back in the last century) are a key ingredient. The farther you move from an entire PPE context, the less masks alone appear to have worked.
An additional irony is that mask surfaces are better for viral survival than most of the surfaces they would arrive at if expelled with no mask. Have we all been walking around wearing pathogen collectors, happily spreading or absorbing the bug slowly as the droplet and microloogies dry up? I dunno but it is pretty clear the mandates failed either because we don’t have a handle on the efficacy of sustained mask wearing or, more likely, we have a very incomplete picture of transmission.
I am sick to death of being told why masks should work by the very people most qualified to figure out why they didn’t.
Delta began in India. Is that where the trials were conducted?
It does not matter.
Let’s say you have a study in a lab (in vitro) and it shows masks protect against the spread. Boom, case closed.
Except
What we see is that mask mandates don’t effect the spread. That means in the real world (in vivo) it does not matter how masks work in the lab, they don’t work to contain the spread. I don’t have to give reasons as to why, what we see is that mask mandates don’t work.
Probably at least a third of the people I see wearing masks “in the wild” aren’t covering their noses. Think they’re modeling that in their laboratory studies of mask effectiveness?
Of course they are not. But again, it is not up to me to say why mask mandates don’t work. It is clear they don’t. That is all that matters.
Fire this clown:
In the interview, he tossed out fear about COVID victims in pediatric ICUs. There is zero data that delta is more dangerous to any age group than alpha. Again, data-free, he blithely assumes masks etc will make a difference even initially suggesting parents wear them at home around their kids.
That alone is grounds for firing. He embarrassed the NIH and the entire federal medical research sector. This clown is winging it, bathing in the sensibilities created by a collective need to pretend that what has been mandated has worked and that the variant is justification for doubling down on stupid.
A real scientist might have said in that interview:
(a) the delta variant appear to be more contagious but less lethal;
(b) be advised that if you are health-compromised, you should know that the number of reported infections will likely be on the rise for about two weeks (especially across the southern tier of the United States because COVID has definitive regional and seasonal spread patterns) so this would be a good time to take full precautions;
(c) there is no reason for the vaccinated to mask up because the chances of becoming ill or being a transmitter are extremely small and we hope that vaccinations continue at a good pace;
(d) kids still very rarely contract a symptomatic COVID infection with any variant and they are very, very unlikely to be transmitters so the disruption and state of fear created by school closings, mask mandates on toddlers and other relatively excessive measures will likely do more harm than good;
(e) with lots of exposures and vaccines, it is becoming clear that COVID cannot and will not recreate the deadly waves of last year but it will be around indefinitely in one form or another (like every other flu virus) so we do need to learn to live fully but sensibly with that risk;
(f) I will now head home because I will certainly have already been fired from my government position for excessive candor, accuracy, science, and failing to defend the party line.
The idea is simply vile. Wait. . . I misspelled “evil.”
Masks are dehumanizing — like full face coverings on Muslim women. It’s no longer a health and wellbeing issue for me. It’s a cultural one. I will not go gently. I will not wear a mask to protect someone else, and I don’t need protection from anyone. I’m vaccinated and I have my stash of HCQ and Ivermectin. Screw it all — the CCP virus, the CDC, NIH, FDA, the Biden maladministration, and most especially, the masks!
The Left is anti-human. Have you noticed? Environmental extremists (I’m adding “extremist” to all subcategories of leftist from now on) treat people as pollution. Climate change hysteria is literally about “reducing the surplus population” (read Prager on the deranged and disgusting comments in the NYT: https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/04/whats-ripping-american-families-apart/). Abortion denies the humanity of children in the womb (just a clump of cells) despite every living human on the planet once existing in the same state prior to now advocating for the murder of innocents. Talk about “privilege!” Transgender extremists deny the biological reality of complementarity of the male and female sexes.
Leftism really is a mental disorder. It’s sick and twisted and I will not participate. And, btw, only a man and woman can be married. Duh.
Sounds more dogmatic than scientific. Maybe I need to go and rewire my brain.