COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[ProudModerate2]

Edited: Today at 06_59_23 PM by YE

Before YE edited a post, we have people (someone) here literally saying that "it's probably good for society anyway, that people who are unvaccinated, die" (paraphrasing).
Some of you here, really need to take a break.

[Horus]

Edited: Today at 06_59_23 PM by YE

Before YE edited a post, we have people (someone) here literally saying that "it's probably good for society anyway, that people who are unvaccinated, die" (paraphrasing).
Some of you here, really need to take a break.

If you have chosen time and time again to not get the vaccine, I can only assume you don't care about your own life. Why should we base our policies around protecting those who outright refuse to protect themselves?

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

So, as I've expressed earlier in the thread, I have mixed (leaning negative) opinions on the latest CDC guidance, but I do have to push back a little on one of the talking points that is being used against the decision. There's a lot of criticism that this sort of recommendation will disincentivize getting vaccinated... but the vaccination rate has already plateaued dramatically! Until there is some sort of punitive action taken against the unvaccinated, we are not going to get very many more adults vaccinated regardless of the incentives that the CDC provides or doesn't provide. The CDC had previously said that getting vaccinated was your one-way ticket to a total return to normalcy, and that still wasn't enough for nearly half of American adults.

Honestly, I'm still a little amazed that the vaccination rate is plateauing where it is considering that almost half of adults get a flu vaccine every year despite the flu not being something most people think twice about and despite the flu vaccine not being particularly effective.

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

Even if the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated, which I doubt, only the unvaccinated are going to get seriously ill. We should not base our policies around protecting them as they have had ample opportunity to protect themselves free of charge and refused to do so every time.

I mean, the tragedy is obviously for those who are medically unable to get vaccinated. Not that it seems like there's any tenable way for us to protect them forever, unfortunately, but it's still heartbreaking.

[beaver2.0]

Edited: Today at 06_59_23 PM by YE

Before YE edited a post, we have people (someone) here literally saying that "it's probably good for society anyway, that people who are unvaccinated, die" (paraphrasing).
Some of you here, really need to take a break.

If you have chosen time and time again to not get the vaccine, I can only assume you don't care about your own life. Why should we base our policies around protecting those who outright refuse to protect themselves?

I agree.  I certainly do not want to leave the unvaccinated out to dry but on the other hand, when people have a solution available and do not take it, is it reasonable for the rest of society to accommodate them?  I'd also add that this doesn't appear to be a short-term thing.  There's no reason to believe that there will not be a significant percentage of Americans that do not ever vaccinate.

One issue I see here is the fact that the virus will mutate among the unvaccinated and potentially jump to the vaccinated and kill.  And then there's also the fact that there really are some people (children, especially) that are unvaccinated at the moment through no fault of their own and potentially in danger.

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

Edited: Today at 06_59_23 PM by YE

Before YE edited a post, we have people (someone) here literally saying that "it's probably good for society anyway, that people who are unvaccinated, die" (paraphrasing).
Some of you here, really need to take a break.

If you have chosen time and time again to not get the vaccine, I can only assume you don't care about your own life. Why should we base our policies around protecting those who outright refuse to protect themselves?

I agree.  I certainly do not want to leave the unvaccinated out to dry but on the other hand, when people have a solution available and do not take it, is it reasonable for the rest of society to accommodate them?  I'd also add that this doesn't appear to be a short-term thing.  There's no reason to believe that there will not be a significant percentage of Americans that do not ever vaccinate.

One issue I see here is the fact that the virus will mutate among the unvaccinated and potentially jump to the vaccinated and kill.  And then there's also the fact that there really are some people (children, especially) that are unvaccinated at the moment through no fault of their own and potentially in danger.

You do a good job of outlining a lot of the conflicting priorities here, both morally and practically. On one hand, I think we should generally have a vested interest in preserving human life, even the lives of those who may make poor decisions. But to what extent do the rest of us postpone normalcy for the sake of that cause, esepcially when the way forward for these individuals is so painfully obvious?

Even if we decide that unvaccinated people deserve every ounce of suffering they may incur from COVID and that the vaccinated shouldn't put up with even the slightest inconvenience to potentially save some of their lives, the vaccinated will continue to feel the consequences of a heightened prevalence of COVID. As you mentioned, the threat of mutation is a very pressing threat to the efficacy of our vaccines. Additionally, the general burden that COVID places on the healthcare system hurts everyone, not just those who end up in the ICU.

[beaver2.0]

Edited: Today at 06_59_23 PM by YE

Before YE edited a post, we have people (someone) here literally saying that "it's probably good for society anyway, that people who are unvaccinated, die" (paraphrasing).
Some of you here, really need to take a break.

If you have chosen time and time again to not get the vaccine, I can only assume you don't care about your own life. Why should we base our policies around protecting those who outright refuse to protect themselves?

I agree.  I certainly do not want to leave the unvaccinated out to dry but on the other hand, when people have a solution available and do not take it, is it reasonable for the rest of society to accommodate them?  I'd also add that this doesn't appear to be a short-term thing.  There's no reason to believe that there will not be a significant percentage of Americans that do not ever vaccinate.

One issue I see here is the fact that the virus will mutate among the unvaccinated and potentially jump to the vaccinated and kill.  And then there's also the fact that there really are some people (children, especially) that are unvaccinated at the moment through no fault of their own and potentially in danger.

You do a good job of outlining a lot of the conflicting priorities here, both morally and practically. On one hand, I think we should generally have a vested interest in preserving human life, even the lives of those who may make poor decisions. But to what extent do the rest of us postpone normalcy for the sake of that cause, esepcially when the way forward for these individuals is so painfully obvious?

Even if we decide that unvaccinated people deserve every ounce of suffering they may incur from COVID and that the vaccinated shouldn't put up with even the slightest inconvenience to potentially save some of their lives, the vaccinated will continue to feel the consequences of a heightened prevalence of COVID. As you mentioned, the threat of mutation is a very pressing threat to the efficacy of our vaccines. Additionally, the general burden that COVID places on the healthcare system hurts everyone, not just those who end up in the ICU.

It’s a very difficult question to me, and it’s frustrating because we have the ability to vaccinate everyone but it’s not happening.

I’m not nearly knowledgeable enough to say what we should or shouldn’t do going forward, but from my perspective, it’s just very annoying that as a society we are being held back by a small group.

[pbrower2a]

Even if the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated, which I doubt, only the unvaccinated are going to get seriously ill. We should not base our policies around protecting them as they have had ample opportunity to protect themselves free of charge and refused to do so every time.

So COVID-19 can bounce off unvaccinated people, especially as the delta variant proliferates faster? If such is so, then I can hardly imagine a better reason for getting inoculated if one isn't already inoculated.

Those getting the delta variant might be the ones in whom a "zeta" or... whatever variant might evolve to beat the existing inoculations.

[lfromnj]

Its not good for society that unvaccinated people die but I mostly have apathy towards their fate within the US besides those who can't rather than won't get vaccinated.

[Benjamin Frank]

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1420752375229206542

Why do the vaccinated need to accommodate the venil, stupid and evil?  Either mandate the vaccine or put a national vaccine passport into place that bars the unvaccinated from going pretty much anywhere.

The unvaccinated like to go on about their 'rights' but the vaccinated have rights too.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/tony15202/status/1420840227648806915

[roxas11]

Maybe it's just me, but honestly, I think this current debate over mask is kind of idiotic and pointless

now don't get me wrong, I get why mask was needed at the start of covid and I understand why there was such a big push for mask mandates at that time, but now that we have the vaccines I think this current debate over mask feels like something that should have stayed in 2020...

rather than wasting our time fighting over mask agian I think we all should be far more focused on pushing the vaccines because by the end of the day if we don't find a way to get more people vaccinated than all mask mandates in the world is not going to matter in the end..

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Even if the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated, which I doubt, only the unvaccinated are going to get seriously ill.

I wish you were right, but unfortunately you are incorrect.

I can only assume that you didn't actually look at the CDC presentation (and other related studies and data that have come out over the past day or two), or else you didn't understand.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/cdc-breakthrough-infections/94390e3a-5e45-44a5-ac40-2744e4e25f2e/

According to the CDC, 15% of deaths in may and 9% of hospitalizations in the USA were among fully vaccinated people:



This time period (May) is while vaccines were still relatively "fresh" in the immune systems of most vaccinated Americans, and was also before the delta variant started becoming really prevalent/dominant. Once we start getting to the 6+ month period after people got their 2nd dose, and now that delta is prevalent rather than the earlier less virulent variants, there is plenty of reason to fear that this may go up further.

Here's a graph showing the CDC's estimated fatality rate and transmissability ranges for the delta variant. Clearly it is much more transmissable, but the worrying thing is also that it has a higher fatality rate. If you are not used to looking at graphs like this, the important thing you need to realize is the Y axis (fatality rate) is shown on a logarithmic scale, not a linear scale. That means that each unit by which you go higher on the graph is exponentially larger, not just linearly larger. So while visually it looks like the fatality rate is only slightly higher, it is higher by more than it looks.



CDC also references studies indicating that the delta variant has higher hospitalization and death rates (not surprising given the higher viral loads with the delta variant):



This unfortunately confirms a lot of what I was worried about and explained a couple of pages back in a few different posts in this thread. The fact that CDC's estimates are indeed that the delta variant has a higher fatality rate than previous variants is very bad, not just because it will directly mean more deaths (and more severe illness), but also because it suggests that viral evolution is NOT selecting for less deadly variants, but instead that deadliness and transmissablity are going hand in hand (both are associated with increased virulence and higher viral loads). That means that there is a very worrisome probability that the next variant that arises after Delta (and the one after that, and the one after that...) will have an even higher fatality rate. If virulence and the base fatality rate continue to rise as new more virulent variants evolve, then things will get hairy for those of who are vaccinated, even given that vaccines should continue to reduce our risk substantially relative to unvaccinated people (and that is even assuming that vaccine-resistant variants do not evolve). When you consider the possibility of getting re-infected multiple times by more virulent variants with higher fatality rates in the future, what are now small risks of death become larger.

The other important thing that we need to be on the lookout for is Long COVID from the delta variant in vaccinated people who were vaccinated a while ago and may have waning immunity. We simply don't know much about how prevalent and how severe that is yet because not enough time has passed and data is simply not really available yet.


Finally, lest you be confused, none of this is in any way "anti-vaccine." Quite the opposite. In fact, it makes it much MORE clear and important that we need to get EVERYONE vaccinated (not just in the USA, but in the entire world) using all means necessary, and we need to do it NOW. On the one hand, in the USA, we need to massively ramp up both the carrots and the sticks to get more of the "hesitant" people to get freely available life saving vaccines. Meanwhile, the Federal Government needs to step in and get vaccine production capacity ramped up on a true world-war-two-style all-out mobilization level. We need a crash program to produce vaccines much more quickly for the world's 8 billion people, as well as to produce more of any extra infrastructure needed to administer vaccines in other countries that lack that infrastructure (e.g. freezers for mRNA vaccines) and send them to developing countries across the world so that they have the supply much more quickly to get their populations vaccinated.

Otherwise, this is likely to get worse. The time for twiddling our thumbs has passed.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Its not good for society that unvaccinated people die but I mostly have apathy towards their fate within the US besides those who can't rather than won't get vaccinated.

I can certainly understand the sentiment, and part of me doesn't care (or cares less) if unvaccinated people die than vaccinated people die.

But the problem is the #s and proportions of vaccinated people who are dying are going up due to a combination of the impact of the delta variant and waning efficacy (exactly how much contribution each of these factors make is yet to be conclusively determined and will only be figured out over time as we gradually get more data), to the point that 15% of COVID deaths in May were fully vaccinated people, and only 85% unvaccinated.

The peak in vaccine doses administered per day in the USA was April 13, so in May most people would have been fairly recently vaccinated, i.e. not much time for the amounts of antibodies to go diminish, and May was also while only a small minority of US cases were from the Delta Variant. For both of these reasons the percentages of deaths occurring among vaccinated people may become higher when more recent data eventually gets released, and I would bet that probably is playing into the CDC's decision-making here.

[YE]

Now we know why the CDC changed their guidance; they analyzed an outbreak in Cape Cod and realized that it spread among a largely vaccinated population.

The bubble has burst. The party is over. The blind adherence to the idea that the "vaccine makes you and the community safe from COVID" must end. Clearly in the face of the Delta variant, the vaccine alone is not enough and we need mitigation measures. Given that masks are effective at slowing down the spread and cost nothing, it is utter folly at this point to not institute mask mandates.

But within weeks, health officials seemed to be on to something much bigger. The outbreak quickly grew to the hundreds and most of them appeared to be vaccinated.

As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.

The initial findings of the investigation led by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to have huge implications.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cdc-mask-decision-stunning-findings-cape-cod-beach/story?id=79148102

Many posters have acknowledged that it is possible to get the coronavirus while vaccinated. The odds of it being more than the flu, however, are relatively small. At this point, the major upside of wearing masks is to prevent vaccinated people from spreading to unvaccinated people to whatever extent that is possible.

This case feels like an ultra super spreader where the viral load is so strong it gets to vaccinated people.  Anyone (and this isn't explicitly directed at you specficially to be clear) who uses this as a reason not to trust vaccines has made an idiotic conclusion.

Ok, maybe not.

https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1420920808629706758?s=21

[emailking]

92,000 cases today.

[Hammy]

Regarding the chart, that seems in line with a general reduction in deaths among unvaccinated individuals rather than a dramatic decrease in vaccine efficiency, given the CDC's graph still shows a very strong protection, and the total deaths per case increase is a third of what it was when we reached this point with the last wave.

I do have to wonder as far as more severe breakthrough cases how many of these are either elderly (who are generally more at risk from any infection) or nursing/hospital workers or people caring for sick (likely unvaccinated) family, who would be exposed to a much larger and more consistent viral load--has there been any study on this?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Regarding the chart, that seems in line with a general reduction in deaths among unvaccinated individuals rather than a dramatic decrease in vaccine efficiency, given the CDC's graph still shows a very strong protection, and the total deaths per case increase is a third of what it was when we reached this point with the last wave.

I do have to wonder as far as more severe breakthrough cases how many of these are either elderly (who are generally more at risk from any infection) or nursing/hospital workers or people caring for sick (likely unvaccinated) family, who would be exposed to a much larger and more consistent viral load--has there been any study on this?

In the same presentation, they have other slides about how breakthrough cases seem to be worse for old people and people at nursing homes. The relatively higher risks for older people (and immunocompromised people) appear not to have changed and seem to be a general characteristic of COVID.

Due to this fact, if you are young and healthy and thinking about your own personal risk, I would be more worried about the possibility of long COVID as compared to hospitalization/death per se.

You are right the CDC graphs don't show a great decrease in efficacy in preventing death also. If there is a decline in efficacy, one would expect based on what has been observed so far in other countries like UK and Israel for it to first show up as a decline in efficacy against infection and against mild infection, rather than hospitalization/death. Then, maybe efficacy declines more with additional time against death/hospitalization as well (or maybe not so much if we are lucky). And it probably should go without saying, but also even with some declines in efficacy, people remain far better off being vaccinated than not.

But also, if there were a great decrease in efficacy, one would expect it to show up in later/newer data, not in the earlier data, both because more time will have elapsed since vaccinations, and also because delta will be more prevalent. At the least, the mRNA vaccines seem to be quite effective (remarkably so!) for at least the first 6 months or so. After that there is emerging evidence that they have declining efficacy, but the precise details about how much and how fast that is, and how much it applies for e.g. mild illness as compared to severe illness (and for long COVID) are still in the process of being figured out, with seemingly new studies gradually clarifying things a bit more each day or two.

[Hammy]

Due to this fact, if you are young and healthy and thinking about your own personal risk, I would be more worried about the possibility of long COVID as compared to hospitalization/death per se.

I already have chronic fatigue, allergies, IBS and sleep issues so that would probably just blend into the general misery I've been in the last decade or so anyway, which I guess can either be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

But also, if there were a great decrease in efficacy, one would expect it to show up in later/newer data, not in the earlier data, both because more time will have elapsed since vaccinations, and also because delta will be more prevalent. At the least, the mRNA vaccines seem to be quite effective (remarkably so!) for at least the first 6 months or so.

I'm freshly vaccinated so if there is in fact a decline in strength over time (something I honestly assumed would be the case from the outset) hopefully they will have approved a third dose/interval booster doses by that point.

[It’s so Joever]

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2021/07/30/delta-variant-chickenpox-contagious-cdc-covid-19-coronavirus-provincetown-cluster/

[It’s so Joever]

In other words: The CDC’s reversa was not based on nothing like so many arrogant posters have been saying. If you want to be mad, be mad at the virus itself, don’t shoot the messenger for simply doing their job.

[emailking]

I guess they're saying R0 is like 8-9 for this variant, or cluster or something. Chickenpox can be higher, but an R0 of 8 is pretty bad.

[Hammy]

In other words: The CDC’s reversa was not based on nothing like so many arrogant posters have been saying. If you want to be mad, be mad at the virus itself, don’t shoot the messenger for simply doing their job.

They lost all credibility when they lifted the mask guidance and suggested an honor system for unvaccinated in the first place as that was a purely political decision, so personally I'm going to be highly skeptical of anything that follows. And I remain skeptical of the change in guidance here for that reason--It's all about political pressure.

I change my mind when we have either enforced mask mandates for the unvaccinated, or vaccinate mandates.

[GP270watch]

I love the way that people want to bash the CDC for changing policy with different information(much more comprehensive information than you or I have access to) but also bash the CDC for not taking the information they find on Twitter to immediately move on from mask mandates, school closures, lockdowns.

[pbrower2a]

To paraphrase the late President George Herbert Walker Bush, then it is best that if we err we err on the side of human life.  Because so many Americans failed to do their part -- the very easy part at this stage (which is to take the inoculation) we have what could be a more severe wave of death than we have seen before in proportion to the non-inoculated part of the American population.

I hope that people get scared enough if not inoculated to get to some place that can inoculate them. Yes, get the second shot if you didn't get it before.