The Week in News
While Delta is scary, the vaccine is still working.
Boy it’s hard to get away from Covid news. The Delta variant continues to ravage the Republican regions of the country, while Fox News continues to do all it can to undercut efforts to minimize the spread of the virus.
One thing that’s been interesting with Delta is how many people I know, both professionally and personally, who are vaccinated and who caught Delta. Compare this to the last time I knew anyone who caught non-Delta Covid — I can’t remember the last person, and it was only a handful in total. This is very un-statistical, but it confirms for me that Delta is way better at infecting vaccinated people than the previous strains. The good news: I don’t know anyone with serious symptoms. Some had no symptoms at all, others had your typical nasty, but livable, flu, and others lost their sense of smell and taste, but didn’t have to go to the hospital.
Having said that, the data still shows that only 0.1% of vaccinated people are coming down with Covid today. And nearly all of them have cases that are not considered “serious.” Why? Because the vaccine is working. The latest CDC data shows that among those coming down with Covid the vaccine still reduces the chance of death by 25x, the chance of going to the hospital by 25x, and it provides an 8x reduction in the chance of getting sick at all (which includes mild or asymptomatic cases).
Now, part of the reason that Delta is better at infecting already-vaccinated people is that it’s just so contagious. They’re saying it’s as contagious as chickenpox. (I got chickenpox when I was 16 by simply attending a party where the host had chickenpox. I greeted her when I came in, that was it.) CNN had a graphic today showing just how contagious Delta is as compared to the first variant we faced in March of 2020. In a nutshell, ever person who caught the original variant infected two other people. With Delta, each person infects five other people. I did the math, it adds up quickly.
With the original variant, one person infects two people, they infect four people, and they then infect eight people. The total comes to 15 people infected. With Delta, one person infects five people, those five infect 25, and those 25 infect 625. Bringing you to a grand total of 656 infections with Delta vs. only 15 for the original variant. The difference is insane.
The good news is that it’s beginning to appear that all the fear over Delta, along with much of the Republican party’s sudden epiphany that dying is bad, may be convincing more folks in GOP-land to get vaccinated. New vaccinations have spiked in Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. That’s great news, as all three states were showing signs of a major surge in cases. In Missouri, there was a weird story this week about people putting on disguises to get vaccinated, lest their family and friends chastise them for it. But hey, at least they’re going.
The New York Times had a story on what the unvaccinated are saying might motivate them to finally get the jab. I’m not sure that I believe them.
I see that list, and I imagine the same “but it’s not FDA approved” crowd then saying, “but it’s Biden’s FDA, and they rushed their decision.” I also don’t buy that getting it from their local physician will matter. Now, having a vaccine mandate for flying would, in my opinion, work because for a lot of us flying isn’t something we can avoid. In other words, unavoidable coercion could work. (It’s also interesting to note that monetary incentives, including $100 cash, had little impact on people polled.)
Another poll that had me really wowed was about vaccine mandates. The poll found that 64% of Americans support requiring everyone to get a vaccine, and 70% support requiring a vaccine to fly.
But what really surprised me is that almost half of Republicans support a general vaccine mandate (I think it was 45%). That’s quite a large number, considering how crazy the GOP has been of late, particularly on Covid. We’re certainly seeing a growing number of companies requiring that their employees get vaccinated, or face onerous regular testing, masking and distancing. Among the companies requiring employee vaccinations: Google; Facebook; Netflix; Twitter; Lyft; Washington Post; Morgan Stanley; Saks Fifth Avenue; Disney; and even Walmart (generally considered to be a right-leaning company).
Interestingly, and disturbingly, none of the airlines require flight attendants to be vaccinated. How that’s for absurd and creepy.
At the same time, President Biden ordered the Pentagon to look into its options for getting its civilian and military staff vaccinated, and the Pentagon turned around a few hours later and ordered everyone to get vaccinated! If you don’t get vaccinated, you’ll have to wear a mask, be socially distanced, submit to regular testing, and you won’t be able to fly for work.
In the end, we’re a bit of a victim of our own vaccine success. You’ll recall that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines showed 94%-95% efficacy in preventing symptomatic illness. So it was pretty much a guarantee that you were unlikely to get Covid at all if you were vaccinated. It also was pretty much a guarantee that the vaccinated wouldn’t get serious illness, hospitalization or death. Now, with Delta, that’s changed. There’s a greater chance of being infected, though the vaccines still seem to be holding up in terms of blocking serious infection, hospitalization or death. But the breakthrough infections — i.e., vaccinated people getting infected — has sufficiently confused things that some people think the vaccines no longer work. In part, that’s because we let people define success as “not getting sick at all.” And that wasn’t really ever the goal. The goal was to stop serious illness that could lead to long-term harm or death. And we’ve still achieved that.
Also, to the degree that the goal posts have moved from stopping all disease to stopping serious disease, it’s because of unvaccinated, unmasked, not-socially-distanced people. They’re the ones who helped create the Delta variant, and they’re the ones helping to spread it. It’s not the vaccine’s fault that selfish people have undermined its effectiveness.
I’m gonna call it quits. I’m thinking of doing an update tomorrow, Monday, about the remaining Fox News advertisers, who include big names like Procter & Gamble. There’s just no excuse for any normal mainstream company to be funding Fox News’ effort to get Americans killed in Insurrections and pandemics. These advertisers are accessories to murder, and I’m going to ask you to help let them know that later this week.
Hope you had a great weekend. JOHN