Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

I can't tell if its the increasingly frantic reporting about the delta variant or what, but I'm starting to get some real second week of March 2020 vibes this week like we are on the precipice of some real, big deal changes. Like I don't think the U.S. will see any significant lockdowns or mandates again (that ship has long sailed), but I won't be surprised to see big gatherings getting canceled again, select elementary schools going remote in the fall, etc etc.

To be fair, a big part of it is hearing people like Jim DeRo calling for Chicago to cancel Lollapalooza (so not gonna happen), so it feels like a redux of the big St. Patrick's Day parade thing here.

Don't listen to the surface noise. Most of us live in urban centers where vac rates are good to excellent, jon. No one here's crazy. I'd be more reluctant about traveling to a city/county with jab rates below 60 percent.

that’s what i’m doing on sunday 😞

I live in an urban center with high vax rates, and cases and hospitalizations are both spiking dramatically. I don't think we are close to being out of this shit at all.

i’m heading to one of the least vaxxed states in the union to see my extremely vaxxed parents with my extremely not-vaxxed kids (who i think have probably been exposed to COVID about twenty times in the past year). i’m not too worried but starting to feel a little edgy

what i’m telling myself is that it’s about relative risk. the risk is very very low. my dad is 85. the best thing i could do for his health would be to make sure he never gets behind the wheel of a car.

Look, it depends what you do. If you feel uneasy, don't go to crowded indoor spaces. Visiting jabbed people looks otherwise okay.

This is the fucked thing. We all have to do perpetual risk assessment.

It's exhausting. But it's because you do it that you're all still kicking and I'm glad

Citrus County is currently 41% fully vaxed. I probably see fewer than 1 out of 20 people wearing masks.

You live in Florida? You may have mentioned it but damn.

Aren't there 20 people in Citrus, period?

I just finished my covid victory tour over the past two weeks, which included my first flights in 1 1/2 years, plus trips to both the deep south and throughout the vax-wary rust belt. 98% unmasked everywhere I went (including me, tbh), though when required or asked I and everyone I encountered complied. Largely it felt like a leap into the ocean, where you know there are sharks but you're somewhat assured by the unlikelihood one is going to bite you. Fwiw, didn't see a single handshake anywhere, though, or hug (I don't think), and people are adhering to the rules about mask requirements in airports and medical facilities and the like. Didn't see anyone using any hand sanitizer at all, curiously enough, though I did. I also kept my hands from my face and washed my hands frequently and thoroughly. I think everyone is aware of various risks at this point and is just choosing, typically invisibly, to do what they feel is necessary, which runs the gamut from vaxxed and masked, even outside, to ... nothing at all. In the end, it's what feels comfortable, I guess. Yeah, constant risk assessment, but being vaxxed significantly mitigates said risk.

The Ohio colleges we saw provided the most cognitive dissonance, particularly Ohio State. The school had cancelled tours for a long time, then offered them in very limited, almost one on one circumstances. Now they've expanded a bit to very small groups, still socially distanced inside and out, a fraction of their capacity. They ask those unvaxxed to mask up inside, though of course there is no way to know. The school itself is not yet requiring vaccination, but at the same time they (like others) are offering incentives to get vaxxed, and there are QR codes posted all over about how to get vaccinated (plus other safety information). In the end it's really the same thing: do or don't do what feels comfortable, because depending on where you are, there's only so much the government (state, federal or local) can or will do for you at this point. Which of course those of you in places like Florida already know. Yeah, many urban centers are doing OK in terms of vaccination rates, but the great unwashed know no bounds.

Oh, incidentally, even driving through the small towns and corn fields in the middle of nowhere (did you know Annie Oakley is buried near Greenville, OH? Me neither! Do you know where Greenville, OH is? Me neither!), between the Trump flags and anti abortion bulletins, and even a couple of Confederate flags, I saw plenty of pro-vaccine billboards, so someone is doing their job, or at least the best they can with people posting "Impeach 46!" signs in their front yards.

"I'd be more reluctant about traveling to a city/county with jab rates below 60 percent."

like my county in nyc! (actually our zip code in the bronx has an even lower rate: under 50% with *at least one shot*)

fully vaxxed under 45%

It's going to be too late, but I'm really hoping more and more employers start requiring vaccinations once it's no longer just for emergency use. Starting to think that's our only hope.

Israel continuing to generate outlying efficiency reports: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-23/pfizer-shot-just-39-effective-in-halting-delta-israel-says

however from their own advisory team chairman:

The data could be skewed because of different ways of testing vaccinated groups of people versus those who hadn’t been inoculated, according to the report.

“The heavily skewed exposure patterns in the recent outbreak in Israel, which are limited to specific population sectors and localities,” means the analysis may not be able to take all factors into account, said Ran Balicer, chairman of Israel’s national expert advisory team on Covid-19 response. “We are trying to complement this research approach with additional ones, taking additional personal characteristics into account. But this takes time and larger case numbers.”

whereas another report printed this week in the NEJM suggests 88% efficiency:

Just published @NEJM
Vaccine protection against the Delta variant from >4,000 cases + comparison w/ Alpha, by @PHE_uk
—mRNA, 2-dose: 88% effectiveness vs *any* symptomatic infection
—AZ, 2-dose: 67% pic.twitter.com/v0C57Okaec

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 21, 2021

Anecdotal and small sample size, but in our city (77.5% fully vaccinated, 12+) mask use has noticeably increased in the past few weeks. Our baseball league (outdoor, obviously) recommends, but doesn't require, masks in the dugouts when full but otherwise leaves it up to the players choice. Through the late June and July season, we typically had 5-6 kids masking up for at least a portion of the game. At last night's game, more than 10 had 'em. As a coach, I wear mine whenever in the dugout but not when I'm out coaching third base.

In the library, where just two weeks a couple staff and a handful of patrons unmasked, everyone is masked.

cases in UK dropped again today, to 36,389.

too early to draw major conclusions and too soon to see effects of re-opening - here's what Ward and Oliver have to say!

definitely this... but also worth noting the effects of Step 4 won't necessarily all be seen on one day, but may come in gradually. and particularly we may see more impact from this weekend than we did from Monday. all of which makes interpretation harder, and caution sensible. https://t.co/Rb5J5oHLjX

— James Ward (@JamesWard73) July 23, 2021

Hmm and schools broke up a few days ago, which have required regular (2x/week) rapid testing at Secondary level since however long ago they became available...

(It wasn't compulsory afaik but I think the uptake was still significant)
Parents of younger kids were supposedly testing 2x a week too. (I was doing so but not particularly regularly)

Even more anecdotal local data: just got back from Costco, where I'd say about half of the clientele (though very few of the staff) were masked. Also, I think I now know more people that have recently had to quarantine/test or are quarantining/testing due to possible exposure to a positive or suspected case than I knew people who had to do either at the peak of the pandemic.

pub nearby has live music right now for the first time I can remember.
local kids are going to clubs for the first time ever.
meanwhile rates in my town are higher than they've ever been. It's a bit surreal.
pub band is playing Sweet Home Alabama obviously.

And still more data from me: Trader Joe's staff was mostly masked, shoppers maybe 50/50? When I checked out I asked if it was company policy or personal, and they said just personal choice. It's def. strange to see all the social distancing markers and plastic barriers removed, but the staff still masked. Just adds to the choose your own adventure confusion.

I think we're going to look back on that May 13th announcement from the CDC as one of the more unfortunate landmarks along the pandemic path. Saying "hey, masks off, vaccinated people" and leaving it all up to the honor system was a bad move at the wrong time.

yeah I really felt like it was done 2-3 weeks early, like lets get a prolonged and steady drop before we just whip 'em off like that

No way to win, though. At the time the CDC thought offering clear, crisp incentives for the fully vaccinated would encourage more vaccinations.

Still seeing majority masking indoors (both employees and customers) in my highly vaccinated city

It's hard to believe, but as late as late April the CDC had still not issued guidelines about safe outdoor behavior.

unmasking isn't the primary cause of the uptick in cases - the Delta variant, which was only here in small numbers at the time (Alpha was the dominant) is the cause.

Unvaccinated people not masking definitely contributed to spread, but we'd probably still be seeing drastically increasing cases even without the CDC's statement. maybe not as high, no but a lot of the unvaccinated people who took advantage of the loophole by pretending they were vaccinated probably were regularly going places sans mask or dicknosing.

just feel like the CDC was caught between a rock and a hard place. messaging wasn't great, but the issue is that there was ample science to suggest that vaccinated folk didn't need to mask, and there was nothing wrong with *that* message. the problem was that the mask mandates in cities and states were for *everybody*, and because the CDC abruptly rolled out the new messaging, cities/states/businesses had to decide whether to keep their mask mandates and risk pissing off the vaccinated, or using the honor system and telling unvaccinated people they needed to mask without any way to verify.

I do think there's merit to caek et al saying that the mandate rollback should have been tied to specific milestones rather than abruptly rolled out, but we would have hit those milestones fairly quickly anyway, given how steeply the vaccines dipped in a short period of time.

To be clear, I'm not faulting the CDCs line of thinking, but it was sort of the icing on shitty cake in abandoning mask wearing in quite a few areas to the honor system and essentially put the onus on individuals and businesses and letting state and local officials off the hook way too easily. Just saying it came at the wrong time.

And, yeah, definitely the variants are the larger issue, without a doubt. But I still maintain that the timing and wording of the CDC announcement didn't help things a bit and made the pandemic marginally worse.

To be honest though, considering that messaging around the pandemic has been an absolute shitshow (sometimes for legitimate reasons like evolving science, but more often for shitty political reasons) from the word go, I'm surprised to see how many people defend that particular one.

think we're going to look back on that May 13th announcement from the CDC as one of the more unfortunate landmarks along the pandemic path. Saying "hey, masks off, vaccinated people" and leaving it all up to the honor system was a bad move at the wrong time.

if you look back now you’ll find plenty of ppl itt saying it was a bad move within minutes

The most recent figures from the Israeli Ministry of Health, released late this week, suggested that Pfizer’s vaccine was just 39 percent effective in preventing infection in that country in late June and early July, compared to 95 percent from January to April.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/us/covid-vaccine-boosters.html

fuckin….. eek

Preprint, small sample size, study conducted in a country where the average fully vaccinated person got their second dose a long time ago, doesn't square with recent PHE findings (88% for Pfizer, 67% for AZ), etc. But yeah, it's hardly comforting.

I hadn't realized just how insanely contagious the Delta variant is compared to other viruses:

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1050D/production/_118892866_r_variant_comparison_2x640-nc.png

Not pictured: the 2009 swine flu, whose R0 was between 1.2 and 1.6 according to the WHO.

No fucking way we'll ever reach herd immunity with reproduction numbers such as these, especially if anti-vaxxers have their say.

football's back then. you could virtually see the covid in the air of the pub over the road, full of middle age football fans, the kind that wouldn't be seen dead in a mask. putting the toxic into toxic masculinity.

I think the only football rn is pre-season friendlies with unusually high attendances. Despite the sign on the local Onestop now politely requesting people wear masks rather than insisting - I've not seen any mask-less shoppers yet. The local pub last night though, jfc I'd have to have an industrial respirator and body suit to go in there.

this would be qpr, although pub was maybe away fans given the lack of colours. (man u apparently, seems a long way to come)

supermarket was probably 50/50 today, worse than usual but then i was 2 hrs later than usual.

putting the toxic into toxic masculinity.

Yes, it's overwhelmingly men I'm seeing without masks, young to middle-aged men.

Preventing infection might be *a* goal, but it can't be *the* goal. While the mRNA (at least) vaccines may or may not retain their effectiveness at preventing any infection, according to that article they do remain (so far) "more than 90 percent effective in preventing severe disease, and nearly as effective in preventing hospitalization." Or put another way, per someone in that Times article, "the goal of this vaccine is not to prevent mild or low, moderate infectious disease, the goal is to prevent hospitalization to death. Right now this vaccine has held up to that.” We've always known boosters were likely, even before there was a vaccine, and given the focus (in that article in general, or apparently in Israel specifically) on boosters to those most at risk, you've gotta assume the 10% or so for whom vaccination does not prevent severe disease or hospitalization remains the most vulnerable population, with various preexisting conditions or co-morbidities, which should make it easier to monitor or focus on booster administration, should it come to that.

It does seem frustrating to me that the prospect of a booster is coming before any of the vaccines have even received full FDA approval. FDA approval (here) would certainly bump the needle (so to speak) a little bit, in terms of getting shots in arms, or allowing schools and whatnot to require the vaccine. I live in a heavily vaxxed area, with people happy to get vaxxed, and yet the high school is still not requiring vaccines. I can only assume that's because they legally can't until the FDA formally gives it the OK.

I too read the article and thought, "Well, what's changed?" We knew we'd need boosters.

Re that new Israel data, the first question I’d have after “is this solid” is what shape is that curve after vaccination? We got our second Pfizer on April 1st so where does that put us after almost four months? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I saw an article recently about how the UK was right to have a long gap between first and second doses because it does, in fact, make the vaccine more effective.

I’m thinking that “breakthrough” cases - that pretty much always end up being mild - will be par for the course if it’s been 6+ months since your last shot. Which is probably… good, right? A little booster of immunity all by itself.

But maybe not so good if you’re spreading it to unvaccinated people…. ugh