'The War Has Changed': Internal CDC Document Urges New Messaging, Warns Delta Infections Likely More Severe (washingtonpost.com) 422
Yasmeen Abutaleb, Carolyn Y. Johnson, and Joel Achenbach, reporting at Washington Post: The delta variant of the coronavirus appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health document that argues officials must "acknowledge the war has changed." The document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington Post. It captures the struggle of the nation's top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.
The document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or the common cold. It cites a combination of recently obtained, still-unpublished data from outbreak investigations and outside studies showing that vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated. Vaccinated people infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated and infected with the variant.
"I finished reading it significantly more concerned than when I began," Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, wrote in an email. CDC scientists were so alarmed by the new research that the agency earlier this week significantly changed guidance for vaccinated people even before making new data public. The data and studies cited in the document played a key role in revamped recommendations that call for everyone -- vaccinated or not -- to wear masks indoors in public settings in certain circumstances, a federal health official said.
The document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or the common cold. It cites a combination of recently obtained, still-unpublished data from outbreak investigations and outside studies showing that vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated. Vaccinated people infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated and infected with the variant.
"I finished reading it significantly more concerned than when I began," Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, wrote in an email. CDC scientists were so alarmed by the new research that the agency earlier this week significantly changed guidance for vaccinated people even before making new data public. The data and studies cited in the document played a key role in revamped recommendations that call for everyone -- vaccinated or not -- to wear masks indoors in public settings in certain circumstances, a federal health official said.
I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in Provincetown the week after July 4th, when the major outbreak was underway. Of my friends, 100% were vaccinated, 100% got sick. Thankfully nobody has needed hospitalization, but Delta changes the game, even with vaccination.
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
100% were vaccinated, 100% got sick. Thankfully nobody has needed hospitalization
In other words, the vaccinations were 100% effective. That's great news!
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm not afraid of dying, then I'm not really afraid of catching it.
At this point, pretty much EVERYONE int he world is going to catch it one time or another, and if so, I'd rather :
1. Be vaccinated so my odds are heavily in favor of mild, if not asymptomatic survivability.
2. Before and after, I have a normal life again...going out, not having to wear a mask all the damned time (I'm a bit claustrophobic)...and generally enjoying life in a normal manner.
And for those that are un-vacinnated, well, it's your choice, you live with that choice and its consequences....good luck.
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That's exactly how I feel. I'm fully vaccinated and I'm in a low-risk group to begin with. I'm not afraid of either 1) getting no symptoms at all or 2) getting slight symptoms, especially as my family is vaccinated.
We are rapidly approaching the point where Covid is like the flu or catching a cold: Nobody really cared about getting the flu or catching a cold even though influenza kills tens of thousands a year. If vaccinated folks have near-zero chances of hospitalization or death then we should be C
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
What Covid has driven home for me is the importance of getting vaccines that protect others, not just yourself. In the past, I've mostly skipped flu vaccines because I can just shrug off the flu. I would even go about my normal life, including going to work. I've come to realize how irresponsible that behavior was. From now on, I'm going to start getting the flu vaccine every year and, if I think I'm sick, I'm not going to go into the office or to the store, etc. If I absolutely have to go somewhere, I'm going to wear a mask. I should have been doing that all along.
Re: I was in Provincetown (Score:3)
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the spread among unvaccinated idiots is likely to further erode the efficacy of the vaccines. So it is not as though the vaccinated population is free to let things run amok.
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Wear a mask if asked to. I fucking hate it as well, but that's not the point - it costs you nothing other than a mild inconvenience, and it will save lives.
Weren't we told that wearing masks was worse than not wearing them? Oh right, that was a lie intended to save masks for medical staff. Lying has consequences. I learned about the little boy who cried wolf when I was 5.
Not to mention, if masking so important, imagine how many lives were lost during those 3 months because they told us not to wear them? We didn't have medical grade masks but we could have made our own cloth masks, and a lot of us just had masks for other reasons (I had a box of them). Either t
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that works well like last year, when everyone was in the same boat.
However, now..we have the vaccine out and people are just flat refusing to do so.
I believe this is their choice, but I also believe at some point you give up trying to help those that will NOT help themselves.
They make the choice, they live with the consequences of said choice.
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Even if you decide not to give a shit about someone else, the consequences of COVID running rampant will impact you just as well.
That unvaccinated individual who got sick because someone decided not to wear a mask will end up on a ICU bed, and that's one bed less available for your - or your loved ones, god forbid they ever need ode.
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That's cool. Viral outbreaks are very respectful of state lines.
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
From the science, as I understand it, being vaccinated, I shouldn't have to worry about getting sick and dying.
And if I catch it and am asymptomatic yes I may spread it, but I don't really have to worry about those around me that are also vaccinated as that they are protected too.
That that remain UN-vaccinated, well that's their choice, there is plenty of free opportunity to get vaccinated.
If they can get out to where I happened to be in public, they can also go to the vax sites.
They have made their choices and well...they can suffer the consequences, it isn't like they haven't gotten plenty of warning.
I don't feel I should have to curb or curtail my life or lifestyle to protect people that won't protect themselves.
So, if they don't want to get vaxxed, then I advise them to get N95 masks that actually do comfer some protection to them.
But one big reason I got the shot, was to be able to have a normal life again, and not wear a mask.
At this point, the onus is on them, not me.
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Informative)
only in public in high-rate areas.
From the CDC:
People age 2 and older should wear masks in public settings and when around people who don’t live in their household.
So they say wear a mask anywhere in public, and anywhere around people that don't live with you.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Most of them don't live with the consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
What those folks _will_ do is spread the virus to people who don't have those luxuries, or who are just unlucky and will get severely ill.
Yes, a few of the anti-mask/vax will get severely ill. A few will die. But since so many will get away without any consequences they can cheerfully say "screw you, God will save me".
COVID is the worst possible virus it could be. If it was more deadly we wouldn't have this conversation because the anti-mask/vaxers would know a bunch of people who died and with it they'd know fear. If it was _less_ deadly it wouldn't be that big an issue.
COVID is just deadly enough it can overwhelm our medical system with the willfully ignorant but not deadly enough that they can't be tricked by propaganda.
I've got a good friend of mine who's black and doesn't have good health insurance. He's vaccine hesitant and it's likely because he seldom if ever goes to a doctor, even when he really needs to. Studies show the single biggest thing that convinces the vaccine hesitant to get the shot is their doctors. But in America if your job sucks you don't get to see a doctor....
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except the evidence is that getting the infection and recovering only gives protection for a time as antibodies wane, much less protection than the robust level the vaccines give that we find go for more than 6 months. So a portion of the unvaccinated will get infected again and again with various strains, a Russian roulette game
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Re:Most of them don't live with the consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
except the evidence is that getting the infection and recovering only gives protection for a time as antibodies wane, much less protection than the robust level the vaccines give that we find go for more than 6 months. So a portion of the unvaccinated will get infected again and again with various strains, a Russian roulette game
Where exactly is the proof that a vaccinated person, cannot create a new variant of this virus?
We've already blown the vaccinated mind with the fact that they can get "breakthrough" COVID.
A vaccinated person absolutely can create a new variant. But the probability of mutation is directly proportional to the number of times the virus replicates, and vaccinated people stop the virus more quickly and with a lower viral load, which means fewer replication cycles, and total replications are exponential in the number of replication cycles. So the odds of a vaccinated person creating a new variant are likely several orders of magnitude lower than the odds of an unvaccinated person creating one.
Which means they can likely get COVID again.
Also, vaccine efficacy wanes as I type this. Within 12 months we'll be talking about boosters for everyone.
We should already be giving boosters to everyone — three doses within six months, and a booster at two years. Three doses would raise the effectiveness from probably about 90% to more like 99%. With the higher R0 of delta, a third dose is critical, and that needs to happen now.
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>God will save me
If anyone says that to you, you can remind them of Matthew 4:5-7. Doing something stupid and expecting God to bail you out from it is explicitly forbidden.
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Have you tried approaching your friend with something to the effect "Yeah, lots of reason for distrust there. So what do you do with people you don't trust? You watch what they do, not what they say. What fraction of doctors got the vaccine themselves? How many rich white people bribed hospitals for early doses?"
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Ah, back to that shibboleth. Too bad the true story is that they told their voters to trust experts [cnn.com] before the guy who told 30,000 lies while in office [washingtonpost.com]:
"I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about," she continued in the clip from an exclusive interview airin
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
No you don't get it.
It isn't that I am afraid of Catching COVID, I am afraid of spreading it to someone else. Back over a year ago, before we had too much information on it, I was like, well let me just catch it, I am at the demographic that should be able to handle it, just lock me in my room for a couple weeks, then I would be good to go.
However the real danger is the amount of time that you don't have symptoms and are infectious, so during that time I figured I was fine, I could had spread it to my loved ones friends and colleagues who may be at a higher risk for compensations or death.
If I die, I am dead, there isn't much to be afraid about that. However I don't want to die, as it will put undue burden onto other people. I don't want to be spreading COVID as well to avoid putting undue burden onto other people.
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Well, since I'm vaccinated, as mentioned, I"m not that afraid of catching it since I won't die.
Therefore, I'm not that afraid of spreading it around to other people that are vaccinated.
The vaccine is out there and free and easy to get.
Those that refuse to help themselves, well, that's their problem.
Because of THEIR choices, the onus is upon them to protect themselves, wear N95 masks and avoid public places...it is
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And for those that are un-vacinnated, well, it's your choice, you live with that choice and its consequences....good luck.
Ignorant and senseless argument, since the unvaccinated will continue to cause this virus to mutate, and we're one variant away from vaccines being worthless.
Then we're back to everyone trying to "live" with the consequences. Including you. Good luck.
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Funny)
Leaky vaccines are the cause of more severe variants.
WTF youtube channel you been watching bro?
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They were being hyperbole by calling it _the_ cause, but it is still _a_ cause. If you have false confidence that you can go back to normal life with the vaccine, but it still gets into your body and multiplies, and infects other people, then, aside from more people getting sick, that also means more opportunity for the virus to mutate into new strains. If the vaccinated were just completely out of the transmission pool, that would be one thing. You would have a population that are not involved in the probl
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LiFe WiLL FiNd a WaY!1 (Score:3)
...reduce the limits of a thing (in this case the fact it's food source dies off and it reproduces less if it does too much harm) and it will grow into those new limits.
Are you following the works of Doctor Ian Malcom by chance?
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need an authority figure to tell you, if you have any understanding of evolution whatsoever this is easily discerned.
tiny detail: you still have to prove that vaccines do actually exert this evolutionary pressure. since particularly the delta variant was first detected where there was null vaccination in place, and no particularly virulent mutations have been seen emerging in areas with profuse vaccination, the data available doesn't seem to support your hypothesis, actually the opposite.
never mind authority, where is your data?
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Scientific Method in action plus a more nuanced understanding of evolution. Ah, wish our schools still taught science. Budgets cuts and all.
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It's not just that, the dude has it exactly backwards: The larger the number of (unvaccinated) hosts, the greater the available pool for new mutations to arise in.
Do these nutters even realise that they're fighting on the side of the virus? The biggest viral problem we have to deal with isn't Covid19, it's Stupid21.
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:4, Funny)
"We're closing up shop. A helpful Slashdot user named 'Nickname Unavailable' pointed out that all efforts to preserve human life in the face of bacterial or viral infections are useless, because evolution." - Dr. Anthony Fauci
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reduce the limits of a thing (in this case the fact it's food source dies off and it reproduces less if it does too much harm) and it will grow into those new limits.
Natural immunity imposes the same kind of selective pressure, so the virus is going to evolve into a super-bug anyway. Might as well get vaccinated. Its no worse than the alternative.
Ah, science (Score:3)
Yep, that's why everyone in the US has polio. And tetanus. And rubella. And measles. And mumps. And diphtheria. And chickenpox. Um. Wait.
Nick, the truth is, vaccine naysayers are part of an experiment. They're what science calls a "voluntary control group."
We're well into this, and the results for
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Leaky vaccines are the cause of more severe variants. Viruses evolve to a natural equilibrium: they can't kill too many or they burn out their hosts, they have to spread so they can infect more hosts. If you increase the barrier of severity which a population can tolerate then a virus will mutate to that new limit, then the unvaccinated suffer the severe effects while the vaccinated still get the milder effects they would have had if no one had been vaccinated. The vaccinated are putting everyone at risk at this point by acting as a breeding ground for more severe strains, so they're absolutely right when they say "the war has changed," they're changing it.
I'm sorry.... but you don't have a very good understanding of evolution. I'm no biologist, but I know enough to see where you're wrong.
Viruses aren't unstoppably evolving so some equilibrium, they're just propagating, with mutation, like everything else. The thing that drives mutation is the number of viruses and the selective pressure they undergo.
Remember the vast majority of viruses live and die within the host, and that's where most of the evolution happens. Only a tiny minority of viruses go from one h
Re:I was in Provincetown (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaky vaccines are the cause of more severe variants. Viruses evolve to a natural equilibrium: they can't kill too many or they burn out their hosts, they have to spread so they can infect more hosts. If you increase the barrier of severity which a population can tolerate then a virus will mutate to that new limit, then the unvaccinated suffer the severe effects while the vaccinated still get the milder effects they would have had if no one had been vaccinated.
Careful there. The delta variant appeared in India in December of last year. The first vaccines reached India in January of this year. The vaccines did not cause the stronger variants.
The vaccines may have been partially responsible for the alpha variant largely dying out in the U.S., resulting in the delta variant becoming the dominant variant, but the much higher rate of transmission would have made delta become dominant eventually anyway; the only effects of the vaccines were making that curve steeper and making the total case count lower.
The vaccinated are putting everyone at risk at this point by acting as a breeding ground for more severe strains, so they're absolutely right when they say "the war has changed," they're changing it.
That's probably not true, either. The vaccinated limit the potential of variants that don't spread as quickly. This has nothing to do with severity, though — only prevalence. Severity is unlikely to be affected by vaccination.
Most people, whether vaccinated or not, have mild symptoms for at least the first week; hospitalization doesn't typically occur until after two weeks. People who get coronavirus and don't die are most contagious beginning about one day before symptoms appear and ending on about the fifth day. Contagiousness tapers off after that period (though it can be nonzero for weeks).
Notice that the severe period and the high-contagiousness period don't overlap. And the milder cases are less contagious, so vaccinated people are less likely to spread the virus during that high-contagiousness period.
So I would think that the emergence of variants with higher end-stage severity is unlikely to be affected by the vaccination rate except, perhaps, indirectly by virtue of the faster spread of certain variants being caused by increased viral load, which could potentially result in worse symptoms.
Either way, every single COVID variant of concern was first detected before the vaccine became broadly available (i.e. before the beginning of 2021). That strongly suggests the opposite of what you're saying — that vaccination has reduced the rate of transmission, and thus the rate of mutation.
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In other words, the vaccinations were 100% effective. That's great news!
CDC defines efficacy and effectiveness around reduced case counts, not reduced symptoms. See: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsep... [cdc.gov]
If everyone was infected, the the efficacy for the vaccine in that particular group was 0%.
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Previous infection is like having one shot, pretty good protection against the original strain, crappy protection against the Delta strain. Good news is that the vaccine will work better for you.
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I wonder if Lollapalooza [insider.com] which runs from July 29 to Aug 1 will turn out to be a super spreader event.
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Of my friends, 100% were vaccinated, 100% got sick.
What's the sample size here? Pretty much all reports show that at least Pfizer and Moderna are pretty effective against contracting the delta variant, albeit less than against other variants. For all of your friends to become infected, they must have been small in number or seriously unlucky.
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Of my friends, 100% were vaccinated, 100% got sick.
What's the sample size here? Pretty much all reports show that at least Pfizer and Moderna are pretty effective against contracting the delta variant, albeit less than against other variants. For all of your friends to become infected, they must have been small in number or seriously unlucky.
Depending on when they got vaccinated, the efficacy of it may have dropped. [slashdot.org] It'll be interesting to see if/when the booster shots get recommended.
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So you have one friend, and they got sick, from drinking too much that night?
The actual numbers of Vaccinated (With a few weeks for the body do its thing) vs Delta Covid cases is very low. Well within the range of the Vaccines rated efficacy rating.
Your story seems to be very misleading.
1. How many friends are you talking about? Percentages are a good way to lie.
2. When you say they were vaccinated, how long ago where they vaccinated, did they have all the required vaccinated, had time passed. If you get
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CDC compared it to chickenpox fearmongering parents now. Since when the hell is chickenpox airborne? Why didnt they compare it to Shingles, adult version of chickenpox? This is all bullshit and fearmongering.
So a document that was intended to be internal and not released to the public is "deliberately arousing public fear"(1) among parents because it compares Delta to chickenpox? The linked article doesn't show the internal document, so it's unclear whether the CDC stated the part about "Ebola or the common cold," or if that is editorialized.
It seems pretty clear to me that there was no intent to arouse public fear with a document that isn't meant for public consumption.
(1). Fearmongering as defined on Lexico [lexico.com]:
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CDC compared it to chickenpox fearmongering parents now. Since when the hell is chickenpox airborne? Why didnt they compare it to Shingles, adult version of chickenpox? This is all bullshit and fearmongering.
Respiratory viruses aren't the only airborne viruses. Chickenpox has always been airborne. That's why chickenpox has an R0 of 10–12. You couldn't get that high a rate of spread if it were spread by scratching other people's bumps. :-D
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The vaccine, does not prevent you from catching COVID, and becoming ill. It only helps minimize deaths.
The vaccine, does not prevent you from catching COVID, and becoming ill. It only helps minimize deaths.
The vaccine, does not prevent you from catching COVID, and becoming ill. It only helps minimize deaths.
Contrary to the Republican Party mantra, repeating a lie over and over doesn't make it become true.
Your body is exposed to viruses all the time. Most of the time, you're exposed to a small number of virus particles, and your immune system stomps the virus into the ground before you get sick. Technically, you were "infected", but not meaningfully so.
Vaccination raises that threshold by making your immune system respond more quickly to an infection. This means that most vaccinated people's immune systems s
And it's still summer (Score:2)
Re:And it's still summer (Score:5, Insightful)
we're certainly going to cull the dumb-ass herd a significant amount then. My estimate for U.S. deaths back in early 2020 was 2 million and we're only managing to draw that order of magnitude of death out since half the population didn't get vaxxed. Sad but preventable and entirely due to stupidity.
Re:And it's still summer (Score:5, Interesting)
In the UK there won't be any Delta variant left to spread since most of the population (88% adults at least 1 jab) is vaccinated and Delta is spreading so fast that everyone will have had it by winter, at least I think that's the gov't plan... Same as the old plan.
It's complicated here, official figures make it look like infections are plummeting but actually for some reason 90%ish of testing centres are closed so, false data. BUT, even though the symptom tracker data shows infections are rising fast, hospitalisations are not rising fast. Since most people here were vaccinated in the last 3 to 4 months, the vaccine is doing a good job of stopping severe cases of covid19. The bad news is data shows vaccine effectiveness doesn't last long, it drops fast. So maybe it's best as many people as possible get the virus now whilst the vaccines are working rather than slow the virus down and end up having a worse outcome.
Vaccines (Score:2)
Who could have prediced this? (Score:2)
Meanwhile with state universities (Score:5, Interesting)
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Translation: one political party knows we are pathological liars now after how we've acted the past five years and don't trust us.
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It's utterly bizzare that a political party would this for their hill to stand and die on.
Re:Meanwhile with state universities (Score:5, Insightful)
The legislatives initiatives that the op posted about are absolutely a Republican problem. Legislation banning local mask mandates, and now mandatory testing, is solely coming from Republican legislators.
Your strawman of low vaccination rates being solely a Republican problem is just that, a strawman.
Political hate speech? I don't think so. And we'll keep on posting these facts because they are facts. I'm happy to have this debate with you, and I'm no going anywhere.
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I'm not sure why you have this weird need to focus on specific people on Slashdot you don't like (and frankly, your weird obsession with rsilvergun is just creepy). But let's be clear. The comment you are labeling "political hate speech" wasn't about vaccination rates among Republicans, in which case, maybe your comment would make sense. The comment was about the actions taken by *elected Republican legislators*. And that's independent of anything else.
But if you do want to discuss specific groups gettin
Re:Well, I'll stand with the Republicans on this o (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't seem to be what is going on here. What the university wanted to do was to say that students who weren't vaxxed would get regular testing. So they were being given a choice here. And the test is really very straightforward; I had to have them done weekly last year. You can label the test as experimental but since it is literally just a 5 second nose swob, there's really no issue.
As for people who might not be able to get vaccines (again ignoring that this is about *testing*), many places requiring vaccines are allowing people to get verified medical reasons to not be vaccinated, so that's not relevant.
If I were really set on defending the Wisconsin legislature here, I'd make a different argument. Since some schools which are requiring testing are requiring the students to pay for the tests, the legislature may be unhappy that this is functionally a fine for non-vaccination. I don't know if U Wisconsin was going to make students pay for the tests. If that's their plan, then this could be functionally a $500 to $2000 fine to unvaxxed students and be seen as a work around around the legislature saying no to a vaccine mandate. If that's what is going on, their behavior is still not great, but it makes slightly more sense.
But given that the legislature is saying no to vax mandates, no to mask mandates, and no to any testing it doesn't look like anything that nuanced is going on. It really does look like this is just about saying "no" to even the smallest thing which will help reduce the spread of COVID.
Vaccination does NOT equal Immunization. (Score:2)
I think it's important to understand that when you get Vaccinated against COVID-19, you aren't immune to it. None of the vaccines tout that you can't get it after you have the vaccine fully onboard. The advantage of the vaccine is that if you do get COVID-19, you won't A.) die from it, and B.) get so sick you have to be hospitalized and ventilated. They have never, ever said you can't get sick from COVID-19 after you've had the vaccine.
The scenario that we should be considering is when you are vaccinated,
Fantasy Book Idea (Score:2)
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want people to get vaccinated, actually reward them rather than punish them.
What we should do is follow science and not worry how it makes Karens feel.
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Hmm....it would bode well for you in all aspects of life, to gain a bit more insight into human behavior.
I could say the same for you. When your child wants to touch the stove you don't let them no matter how much they cry.
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I arranged letting him touch the stove when it wasn't very hot. It hurt enough that he never touched it again without actually getting burned. Nothing like actual experience to learn.
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I believe you just described the effects of getting vaccinated compared to actually getting the disease. You force them to get vaccinated and then say, "You see how you feel after second dose? Imagine that going for days and requiring hospitalization." Forcing vaccination is in many ways the same as letting them touch the too-warm-but-not-hot stove.
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When your child wants to touch the stove you don't let them no matter how much they cry.
That's a little tricky. There's an old expression: "the burned hand teaches best". Sometimes, it's a good idea to let children push their limits to see what happens. Obviously not walking into traffic, but maybe let them burn themselves or cut themselves a little.
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Most humans are about as bright as your average dog.
What an elitist-prick-like thing to write.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree it is elitist, but the repeated evidence of the pandemic, climate change, and a host of other topics is that 30% of the populace is only dog intelligent. I wouldn't say "most" the way Archie did, but a big enough segment that we cannot assume intelligence in our societal planning and have to compensate for a huge idiot factor. That whole 30% segment cannot process rapidly changing data, cannot evaluate relative risk, and cannot update hypotheses in response to new evidence without feeling shame (which makes them reluctant to accept new data). These make them a severe problem for addressing societal problems.
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Nice in theory, but if we wait for the Kevins and Karens to listen to the science, we'll be in this situation for decades.
Just offer a tax incentive for people who get vaccinated. Say a hundred bucks or so. Not much money for the wealthy, but generally speaking, it's not the wealthy that are particularly vaccine-hesitant
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes having others vaccinated would be great.
But you don't encourage that by re-masking all vaccinated people.
Agreed 100%. Re-masking vaccinated people tells vaccine skeptics ("deniers") that they aren't in fact effective.
Add to that my personal resentment that if unvaccinated people are unwilling to protect themselves, why should I go above and beyond what I've already done to protect them?
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GRAND RAPIDS, MI—Local compassionate progressive Karter Brynlee is recovering from an emotional roller coaster today after initially feeling sad for someone dying of COVID, then feeling a perverse thrill after finding out the victim hadn't been responsible enough to get vaccinated, then sad again after realizing he was an illegal immigrant who had snuck acro
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BabylonBee link? Poe's law in full effect.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed 100%. Re-masking vaccinated people tells vaccine skeptics ("deniers") that they aren't in fact effective.
Yeah, in the same way seatbelt usage tells airbag skeptics that airbags aren't effective. Why wear a seatbelt if your car has a perfectly good airbag? Are the airbags not effective? Clearly it's all just a conspiracy orchestrated by Big Seatbelt to sell more belt tensioners.
Of course the answer is that both seatbelts and airbags are partially effective, and that using both is more effective than using either on its own. In car safety features as in pandemic mitigation strategies, the best approach is defense in depth.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more like asking drivers to wear a full-face motorcycle helmet in addition to a seatbelt when driving a car. Yes, it is technically safer, but the marginal increase in protection doesn't justify the unreasonable burden.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe they should be asking "If the vaccines really work so well, why are so many vaccinated people getting infected?"
And by "so many" you mean roughly 3% of reported cases. And you ask this even though you know that the vaccines were never promised to be 100% effective.
Anything you have to say beyond that is of dubious intellectual honesty.
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In recommending that vaccinated people resuming wearing masks indoors in virus hot spots, the CDC this week said that new evidence shows that breakthrough infections may be as transmissible as those in unvaccinated people. They cited a large recent outbreak among vaccinated individuals in the Cape Cod town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, among others, for the change.
As the documents note, COVID-19 vaccines are still highly effective at preventing serious illness and death. The CDC has always expected some b
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how to explain to others that you should care about other people. Disagreements over COVID-19 aren't about politics, but a basic divide on what it means to live in a civil society.
By getting vaccinated, I've already demonstrated far more care for unvaccinated people than most of them have done for themselves. I feel no moral obligation to continue degrading my own quality of life just to indulge their foolishness.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the vaccines were designed to match the original SARS-COV-2 strain, and now there's a mutated strain that is different. You may as well ask why last year's flu shot doesn't protect against this year's flu strains.
Where are large numbers of vaccinated being hospitalized? I do see news reports of breakthrough infections, but not mass hospitalizations associated with them. If 97% of hospitalizations [nytimes.com] are unvaccinated patients, your narrative has a problem.
Which is exactly how you and yours like it. Exaggerate the effectiveness claims, exaggerate the breakthrough consequences, pretend that the contradiction that you've manufactured exists, and then claim that the man on the street should trust you instead.
6000 [cdc.gov] hospitalizations out of 161 million vaccinated people, compared to 628,000 [worldometers.info] deaths among the unvaccinated. The experts are sure what the science is. You just can't be bothered to listen to what they have to say.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe get your news from reputable sources?
https://apnews.com/article/cor... [apnews.com]
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines... [webmd.com]
Among the 4,300 COVID-19 patients admitted to Cleveland Clinic hospitals between Jan. 1 and April 13, 99.75% were not fully vaccinated.
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Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)
Rugged individualists angry about a thin piece of cloth over their face. My body my choice, until it comes down to people wanting abortions or ingesting recreational drugs. Then suddenly they want government.
Re:That's fine, let us live if vaccinated (Score:5, Insightful)
My body my choice, until it comes down to people wanting abortions...
The thing about abortion is that it is not "your" body that you are killing; it is your child's body.
The thing about vaccinations is that if you're young and healthy, it's not your body that you're killing by not getting vaccinated. It's some random stranger's body.
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.... But stop pretending that thin cloth masks do anything especially the way people wear them in real life....
Actually, even a half assed attempt at wearing a mask that covers only your mouth while speaking blocks a tremendous amount of aerosols. Just watch the slow-motion videos on this. You don't need to be a scientist or even past high school education to get this.
Cause: Method of transmission is considerably hampered (less virus containing aerosols/droplets dispersed in the air)
Effect: Less people get infected.
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A whole fucking lot, apparently...
Re:Herd (Score:5, Insightful)
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Current vaccines are perfectly effective against Delta: https://www.healthline.com/hea... [healthline.com]
As mentioned above, you're missing a whole fucking lot.
Re:I'm missing something here? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to an article I saw on r/LeopardsAteMyFace there are now people who have changed their mind but are afraid to tell their family they are getting it.
I wish the messaging helped because what happens when Delta becomes some other variant that the vaccines are mostly useless against and we are back in a lock down while the biotech companies race AGAIN to find an answer.
Science will always defeat politics but in this case the fight will last a long time. I'm just enjoying my summer and safety while it lasts. I have no idea if it will take a turn for the worse but if it does I am mentally prepared for it.
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Nah, there are others ways a virus can become more successful and yet still be deadlier too. Lower infectious dose alone is one. As long as there is delay in symptom presentation the virus can be more successful even if it kills more.
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I'll tell you what. If you set it up, I'll do it. I'll be the liberal in the ring with just a few conditions. One of them is that you're in the ring as well, and the other is that I get to pick the marines.
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1) Where is the peer-reviewed data documenting the R Transmission rate of COVID-19, with comparable R Transmission rate data for the Delta variant? For reference, the R Transmission rate for measles is approximately 15, as in, one person testing positive for measles will transmit measles to 15 other people on average. The UK NHS recently ESTIMATED the R Transmission rate for COVID-19 is 0.6 - 0.8 (less than one). If peer-reviewed R Transmission data for COVID-19 and variants is not available, why not?
I don't know if this is "peer-reviewed" and/or if that even possible at this stage, but from CDC document warns Delta variant appears to spread as easily as chickenpox and cause more severe infection [cnn.com]:
The CDC presentation says the Delta variant is about as transmissible as chickenpox, with each infected person, on average, infecting eight or nine others. The original lineage was about as transmissible as the common cold, with each infected person passing the virus to about two other people on average.
That infectivity is known as R0.
"When you think about diseases that have an R0 of eight or nine -- there aren't that many," Walensky told CNN.
Also, stop saying "peer-reviewed" in every sentence, it make you sound like a nut. Not everything needs to be peer-reviewed and/or can be on your time frame.
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CDC recently updated estimated infection fatality rates for COVID. Here are the updated survival rates by age group: all variants
0-19: 99.997%
20-49: 99.98%
50-69: 99.5%
70+: 94.6%