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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
Which could account for its greater infectiousness. But does it?
Masks don’t work as self protection and even the liars have not claimed that, but here we are seeing it said.
I don’t think we have to go this far to acknowledge mask mandates haven’t worked to stop or slow the spread. Good masks properly worn probably do protect you from droplet spread and decrease the aerosolized viral load you might otherwise be exposed to. But, there are a couple of contingencies in that statement: “good mask” and “properly worn.”
If everyone were wearing N95 masks sealed to their faces while in public, maybe mask mandates would have worked. That was never going to happen.
We really don’t know for sure what the minimum “load” is for infection. Lots of invading viruses would seem to be worse than just one. But if someone is largely immune or largely susceptible does that matter more than load? So, hypothetically, an NPI (pick one or a combo: lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, social distance markers on the floor of the store…) that is ninety percent effective may show zero results if the bug just needs one virus per preferred host. This is also why isolating the vulnerable instead of pretending we can impose general suppression strategies made more sense.
We’re in agreement. The “public health” approach to this pandemic has been terrible. And it’s not getting any better because of the political expediency for people in power.
No-those who advocate masks (your so called liars) do have data that masks both protect others (ie source control) and protect the wearer (ie respiratory or personal protection). Obviously, you dispute their conclusions but you are the one misleading when you claim “even the liars have not claimed that”. If you look at the CDC data they believe that masking as source control is 40-60% effective and as “personal protection” is 20-30% effective. As Scott Gottlieb has pointed out this data is probably from the earlier variants and therefore is probably optimistic in terms mask effectiveness against the delta variant.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidance/
if the delta variant is more like chicken pox than the flu in terms of transmission then mask quality & proper fit becomes more important than earlier since the earlier variants where close to flu in terms of transmission rates.
some reviews of some of the mask data:
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/scicheck-the-evolving-science-of-face-masks-and-covid-19/
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
the conclusion of the last review: “Experimental and epidemiological data support community masking to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The prevention benefit of masking is derived from the combination of source control and wearer protection for the mask wearer. The relationship between source control and wearer protection is likely complementary and possibly synergistic14”
Again, if relative susceptibility is ultimately more determinative than viral load, then mask effectiveness in that range is unlikely to put a dent in total infections. Reliance on masks blocking immediate large-load viral release from big coughs and sneezes is kinda like expecting a ban on machine guns to end all gunshot deaths. The susceptible guy in the classroom desk near me that I did not spray with saliva and snot will have to wait a few minutes while those viral particles are steadily released from the drying mess in my mask into finer aerosol goodies.
We still have not resolved the issue as to why widespread mask use has never translated into reductions in overall outcomes. I am increasingly inclined to think that it must have something to do with low level transmission and dormancy of some kind.
I’m inclined to think that proper mask use is unenforceable and we don’t fully understand transmission.
If shooting you with a .45 is more determinative than shooting you with a pellet gun, that doesn’t mean a pellet gun won’t put a dent in you. Logic, man, logic. Also, think quantitatively.
Bl0cking is one thing. Decreasing is another. Think quantitatively, not binarily.
I would be glad to have to wait longer.
Unfortunately, the CDC doesn’t have credibility. I’d have to see age-adjusted CFR data based an assay differentiation to believe that a virus would unnaturally mutate to be both more deadly and more contagious.
Or, the nasal titers are reflecting the virus having more of a preference for the nasal area. That could be an evolution.
Actually, the CDC’s numbers tend to be good- but they take too long to get numbers & assessments out to use to guide decision making. Bureaucracy’s tend to be too consensus oriented and let too many layers/people in on making decision to be agile in the face of an evolving problem. The problem with Fauci et al is they like the “noble lie” for the little people – which backfires b/c the little people figure it out fast and then do not trust them. As for mutations- a higher nasal tiger may lead to a higher viral inoculum – that alone may make it more deadly w/o any other changes.
I’d prefer my doses to come slowly enough that my immune system can gear up, too. One minute may not be enough.
That raises an interesting question–does a spaced series of small exposures always lead to immunity? Or is there a kind of binary factor–the people whose immune systems are strong and primed with past viral exposures are going to generate antibodies and resist infection even at relatively high initial loads versus people whose immune systems are so bad that a tiny exposure is all that it takes?
The “seasonality” model suggests that there is an antecedent period of asymptomatic spread, then an outbreak when conditions are right. Additional infections from sick people to healthy people take place during the outbreak but the outbreak predictably fades because (a) the conditions don’t persist and/or (b) the bug runs out of primo hosts (and secondary infections make for lousy spreaders) and then (c) the number of formerly infected (or vaccinated) is just too large to create another surge. But the fact that the damn bug is still around but not erupting for periods means that, like with shingles, there is some state where it can hang around in vivo.
The Spanish Flu (an H1N1 virus) had four waves over two years. I think this bug will create another wavelet in late fall/winter in many places but unlike the Spanish flu, the last wave will be the least deadly.
I read some speculation the Spanish flu was the mutated return of a pandemic from decades earlier and that is why old people had such a low incidence of infection and death–they survived the earlier instance and thus had been largely exposed to something similar.
One silver lining of this disaster other than the end of the myth of the Wise Technocrat Nirvana arising from the Great reset is that there will likely be some really good research and the likelihood of vastly better preventive biotechnologies.
That is not what people are calling for, though.
I have seen here that people are saying masks protect the person. A bit of cloth won’t.
OH, OK, your answer is to link to sites that lie about other things.
Right.
It must be difficult to get reasonable comparisons between today and a century ago. Lifespan was much shorter in 1918 so the concept of ‘old’ was different and the people did not suffer anywhere near the obesity levels as exist in America today. So the Spanish flu was likely much more lethal for healthy people than Covid is today.
Nothing “always” works. But I read a paper recently (probably pointed to by someone on Ricochet) showing that immune systems react to repetition to a limited extent. That’s why many vaccines come in two doses. But those are repeats of relatively large doses. I have seen no data on repeated exposure to the real thing in very small doses. I would expect it to be very hard to do that study, and it wouldn’t have a clear application if someone did it. But I sometimes behave as though that might work. I’m willing to classify it as a superstition on my part. As far as I know, my immune system is in reasonably good condition for a 72-year-old. Hence, my willingness to do limited masking to slow down what I take in. But now that I’ve been vaccinated, the threshold for when I’m willing to put on a mask has changed. Haven’t done it in several months.
My behavior is not a recommendation for how someone else should behave.
No doubt about its greater lethality. And it was misdiagnosed a large of the time to boot.
Sorry, but . . . why are we listening to the CDC on masks? (On anything?)
Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in effect.
I listen to the CDC on a lot of things, but when they say 40-60 percent effective, I have very little idea what that is supposed to mean. What are they comparing with what? Lacking that information, I don’t take those numbers too seriously.
The CDC blew whatever little credibility they had last year. And it was already super-low thanks to their support of gun control, BLM, and climate change.
Stay in your lane, idiots!
Frankly, there’s not a single federal agency that I’d trust right now. I assume they’re all infested with insane lefties, and whatever their original purpose, their main goal now is making the US into a totalitarian communist state.
Estimates of how well masks block incoming (lousy: 20-40%) versus outgoing (Better: 40-70%) as compared to no mask are numbers I recall seeing CDC toss out. Some studies provided by Ricochetti MDs indicate better outgoing blockage rates than that. Obviously, mask type and usage make a difference. Remember the theme that we wear masks to protect others, not ourselves? Those kinds of numbers are why. There is also the assumption that reduced immediate released viral load has a significant impact on the likelihood of infection.
If you want a good reason to doubt CDC competence on masks, this study claiming an enormous difference between masked and unmasked counties in Kansas is still on their website even though the actual results following the study period look like this:
Are you saying that rental agreements and contract law are in the wheelhouse of the CDC?!?
I’m not sure that’s true. Many people died in childhood, negatively affecting the life expectancy. Once people got into adulthood, I doubt there was all that much difference.
Good questions. The immune system is complicated. I read that dose 1 creates mostly binding antibodies and that dose 2 creates blocking antibodies for mRNA jabs. I would think the optimal thing for humans is continuous low-level exposure and having our bodies “focus” on those things.
I read a study on guinea pigs, where they tested transmission effectiveness in several temperature humidity conditions. Cool (60s) and damp was optimal for transmission. Hot and humid and cold & dry not so much. A good CDC would do more of those studies, since respiratory viruses are a perpetual problem.
Hard to predict based on past pandemics, since we have never done so much social intervention to prevent spread. Australia may be locked down for decades….
Could be the big Russian Flu pandemic of 1890. It was the biggest pandemic in the 1800’s and type of virus is unknown. I am sure somebody is digging around the ice to find out.
Wow! That is optimistic. I’ll like some of whatever your smoking ;) I think the elites will take away from this that they can control elections, public opinion, and any aspect of our lives. We can even get the elites to admit that creating novel viruses in unsecure labs is a bad idea.
Not only that but our leading experts are practically clairvoyant:
There are too many smart, credentialed people who clearly see what a goatf#ck was created by Friends of Fauci for the Tech Lords (Peace be Upon Them) to silence them all. That alone can be a bonus in terms of staffing and official outlook.
There has almost certainly never been this volume of research on a respiratory virus before and people in white coats are coming up with lots of ideas for attacking this or that spike or sequence. If somebody does come up with a drug to block all coronaviruses including the common cold, there are big bucks to be had (assuming hitmen from Vicks, Robitussin and Kleenex don’t get to him first). So I am gonna wave the “Yay Science!” pom poms a bit in anticipation of good stuff on the way.
Speaking of amazing levels of research, I was kidding when I spoke of the zeta variant–turns out there is one! This is data from the UK where delta has been predominant for at least six months.
This is important and almost never mentioned. People talk as if once a droplet is stopped by a mask, that’s the end of it. It either ceases to be or is forever glued to the mask. But droplets can dry and particles can move again, either outward or inward. That should be part of the calculation of effectiveness.