Yeah, that is what I was saying a few days ago. The deahts and hospitalization chart doesn't follow the cases trend as it used to do before (almost identical trends), which is HUGE news and strong evidence that vaccines are working.
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Coronavirus (Covid-19) informational thread
- Thread starter yaxomoxay
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It's one study, but if it's even close to being real this is bad considering that people with masks (of any kind) tend to be more careless in their behavior (they get closer to people, they don't fit them properly etc.).
I agree about deaths, but I am still concerned about the number of hospitalizations.
Maybe you. The stuff I see is the opposite of caution. I’ll never ever forget that lady at Kroger that removed her mask… to sneeze.
I believe that is the result of vaccinations, becuase most people ending up in the hospital now are younger (older people have much higher vaccination rates), and thus have better survival outcomes.
Those hospitalization numbers are something though, considering they are 2/3 of the way to peak hospitalizations when there were no vaccines, and we are still in summer: it shows how virulent Delta is. When schools open and windows close, it seems like it is going to spread like wildfire, and the hospitals are going to get overwhelmed again...
Yeah, I do hope that study is wrong. It would be ironic if all the fights over school masks were completely pointless considering the kids are not wearing N95's. Maybe we should be advocating for opening school windows!
I view mask wearers as more cautious/responsible in general. But I take your point -- don't assume wearing a mask means you and the people around you are safer.
I am moderately optimistic.
- There are 330,000,000 Americans.
- We're now above 200,000,000 vaccinated Americans (one shot).
- 55,000,000 are <12 and can't be vaccinated, that leaves out 75,000,000.
Well, I am advocating for keeping kids in the open!!
They spend too much time inside for real... but that's a different topic than Covid!
I don't think most of the anti-vaccinators are ever going to change their minds. But I do think the potential for the "end" (i.e. switch to endemic) is in sight. I've heard Gottlieb say the one advantage of Delta being so virulent is that it will probably reach everyone who isn't vaccinated by winter, so we will get mass immunity one way or another. I just feel like the next couple of months could be really dark...
Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.
“It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”
The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.
‘Nursing Is in Crisis’: Staff Shortages Put Patients at Risk
“When hospitals are understaffed, people die,” one expert warned as the U.S. health systems reach a breaking point in the face of the Delta variant.
I don't think it's all that meaningful. In particular, it's inconsistent with real-world data showing that when mask mandates are in place, COVID infections go down (e.g., the Kansas county data).
I see people giving other people more space to walk around too. People are more mindful of personal space.
After a while, good 'ol Darwin wins.
We shall see, let's hope for the best. However I do agree that all anti-vaxxers getting sick with Covid would probably be the best thing at this point.
I think we do need more studies, but they will take years. Sweden didn't impose any mandate of any kind (merely recommending masks to young students and only on public transportation) and their infection rate is almost minimal and they had 0 (zero) deaths for months at a time. I honestly think that there are so many variables that it's impossible to truly say what works and what doesn't.
That was pre-Delta though. Masks were shown to be very effective with the original virus, but Delta has changed the equation.
Some estimate that 15 minutes of viral load exposure to the original CVOID is equivalent to 1 second of Delta.
My son's hospital was waiting for FDA approval before mandating the vaccine. I imagine a lot of workplaces are the same way. There were a few high-profile cases of employers requiring vaccines for employment with the con-commitment firings but waiting for FDA approval probably makes it a bit easier for reluctant employees. Of course if FDA approval was another six months, then that would be another matter. MRNA and JNJ need to get on the ball and get approved now.
wow, they moved fast!! Well, I guess my oldest kid will be forced to get his jab!
We can use measles in the USA as a surrogate for transmission. Its R0 is about 15, much, much higher than even the delta variant (R0 ~ 6-7, depending on community immunity and transmission). In 2020, measles cases were at a 10 year low, almost certainly due to social distancing and wearing of masks. In 2021, there have been only two measles cases in the USA, and they are likely linked to one another. So, I am pretty confident that masks (and distancing) will work just fine for delta.
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Welp.. don't have to worry about that, as the Pfizer jab is now known as Comirnaty, as it got the full FDA approval today.
BL.
That’s a really dubious analogy. First off, the medium age for Measles outbreaks I think it like six years old. I don’t see mask wearing to be significant in that age group at any time during COVID. The closing of daycares and decreased socialization is the most likely explanation, especially considering the absolute numbers are so low.
Also you are assuming that mask effectiveness and R0 are in a direct linear relationship. There must be some correlation, but many other factors come into play such as the nature of airborne transmission (aerosols, droplets), how well it circulates in the air (I believe Measles transmits with coughing and sneezing, COVID with straight-breathing), the particle size ranges of the virus, the viral load needed for infection, and I’m sure many more factors I’m unaware of.
Take a common sense look at it: every mask wearer is leaking virus particles. If you wear the mask exactly the same as before, for every particle you leaked before Delta, you are leaking 1000+ now. Clearly mask effectiveness had to go down because of Delta. Delta is new enough (a few months?) that we probably just don’t know how much so yet. The article I posted was the first science I’ve seen on it.
I think what is happening is that as new variants show up, they are more endemic than pandemic in nature. As such, you get a lot of transmission and people testing positive, but the number of people actually getting seriously ill is rapidly dropping on a per-person basis. In fact, mRNA vaccines could eventually evolve to treat both COVID and the more common influenza viruses.
I shared your post with my wife, [who is a medical professional], even though she disagreed with some of what you posted, she did indicate that she believes that the virus just will continue to mutate to the point where there will be so many variants, eventually she anecdotally believes C/19 will work itself down to almost just posing cold like symptoms once it’s initial ‘wave’ saturates the unvaccinated. In other words, the potency effects will s-l-o-w-l-y degrade over the course of time through transmission. Again, that’s her thoughts based off discussion with other virologists, some of who are working direct with the likes of what’s happening in Thailand.