Unless... and hear me out here... it’s not illegals but the unvaccinated. Because it does look like it’s concentrated in states with high rates of unvaccinated people like Florida, Alabama and Mississippi who... and, again, hear me out here... don’t share a southern border. That’s probably a lot to take in. Maybe, you can take some time and study a map or something and get back to us though.
Let's all get vaccinated so we don't have to mask up or lockdown for another two years. This can all be stopped by reaching vaccinated herd immunity.
on every strain eh? ---- Like I said let's lock down and mask up for a far as the eye can see. This is all about control, not public health. Wake up and grow up! Get Right!
Well, Trumpers don't want to get vaccinated and want to stay locked down forever. Unlike you I don't want to be locked down and have to wear a mask -- the way to get beyond the pandemic is to get everyone vaccinated. After reaching vaccinated herd immunity everything in the U.S. can be open again -- just like it was pre-pandemic.
That's right. You just want everybody else to be locked down and wear a mask. ---Schadenfreude at it's height---
The Washington Post article... ‘The war has changed’: Internal CDC document urges new messaging, warns delta infections likely more severe The internal presentation shows that the agency thinks it is struggling to communicate on vaccine efficacy amid increased breakthrough infections https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidance/ 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. That official told The Post that the data will be published in full on Friday. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky privately briefed members of Congress on Thursday, drawing on much of the material in the document. One of the slides states that there is a higher risk among older age groups for hospitalization and death relative to younger people, regardless of vaccination status. Another estimates that there are 35,000 symptomatic infections per week among 162 million vaccinated Americans. The document outlines “communication challenges” fueled by cases in vaccinated people, including concerns from local health departments about whether coronavirus vaccines remain effective and a “public convinced vaccines no longer work/booster doses needed.” The presentation highlights the daunting task the CDC faces. It must continue to emphasize the proven efficacy of the vaccines at preventing severe illness and death while acknowledging milder breakthrough infections may not be so rare after all, and that vaccinated individuals are transmitting the virus. The agency must move the goal posts of success in full public view. The CDC declined to comment. “Although it’s rare, we believe that at an individual level, vaccinated people may spread the virus, which is why we updated our recommendation,” according to the federal health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Waiting even days to publish the data could result in needless suffering and as public health professionals we cannot accept that.” The presentation came two days after Walensky announced the reversal in guidance on masking among people who are vaccinated. On May 13, people were told they no longer needed to wear masks indoors or outdoors if they had been vaccinated. The new guidance reflects a strategic retreat in the face of the delta variant. Even people who are vaccinated should wear masks indoors in communities with substantial viral spread or when in the presence of people who are particularly vulnerable to infection and illness, the CDC said. The document presents new science but also suggests a new strategy is needed on communication, noting that public trust in vaccines may be undermined when people experience or hear about breakthrough cases, especially after public health officials have described them as rare. Matthew Seeger, a risk communication expert at Wayne State University in Detroit, said a lack of communication about breakthrough infections has proved problematic. Because public health officials had emphasized the great efficacy of the vaccines, the realization that they aren’t perfect may feel like a betrayal. “We’ve done a great job of telling the public these are miracle vaccines,” Seeger said. “We have probably fallen a little into the trap of over-reassurance, which is one of the challenges of any crisis communication circumstance.” The CDC’s revised mask guidance stops short of what the internal document calls for. “Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant,” it states. The document makes clear that vaccination provides substantial protection against the virus. But it also states that the CDC must “improve communications around individual risk among [the] vaccinated” because that risk depends on a host of factors, including age and whether someone has a compromised immune system. The document includes CDC data from studies showing that the vaccines are not as effective in immunocompromised patients and nursing home residents, raising the possibility that some at-risk individuals will need an additional vaccine dose. The presentation includes a note that the findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the CDC’s official position. The internal document contains some of the scientific information that influenced the CDC to change its mask guidance. The agency faced criticism from outside experts this week when it changed the mask guidance without releasing the data, a move that violated scientific norms, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “You don’t, when you’re a public health official, want to be saying, ‘Trust us, we know, we can’t tell you how,’” Jamieson said. “The scientific norm suggests that when you make a statement based on science, you show the science. … And the second mistake is they do not appear to be candid about the extent to which breakthroughs are yielding hospitalizations.” The breakthrough cases are to be expected, the CDC briefing states, and will probably rise as a proportion of all cases because there are so many more people vaccinated now. This echoes data seen from studies in other countries, including highly vaccinated Singapore, where 75 percent of new infections reportedly occur in people who are partially and fully vaccinated. The CDC document cites public skepticism about vaccines as one of the challenges: “Public convinced vaccines no longer work,” one of the first slides in the presentation states. Walter A. Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center, said he was struck by data showing that vaccinated people who became infected with delta shed just as much virus as those who were not vaccinated. The slide references an outbreak in Barnstable County, Mass., where vaccinated and unvaccinated people shed nearly identical amounts of virus. “I think this is very important in changing things,” Orenstein said. A person working in partnership with the CDC on investigations of the delta variant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, said the data came from a July 4 outbreak in Provincetown, Mass. Genetic analysis of the outbreak showed that people who were vaccinated were transmitting the virus to other vaccinated people. The person said the data was “deeply disconcerting” and a “canary in the coal mine” for scientists who had seen the data. If the war has changed, as the CDC states, so has the calculus of success and failure. The extreme contagiousness of delta makes herd immunity a more challenging target, infectious-disease experts said. “I think the central issue is that vaccinated people are probably involved to a substantial extent in the transmission of delta,” Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist, wrote in an email after reviewing the CDC slides. “In some sense, vaccination is now about personal protection — protecting oneself against severe disease. Herd immunity is not relevant as we are seeing plenty of evidence of repeat and breakthrough infections.” The document underscores what scientists and experts have been saying for months: It is time to shift how people think about the pandemic. Kathleen Neuzil, a vaccine expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said getting more people vaccinated remains the priority, but the public may also have to change its relationship to a virus almost certain to be with humanity for the foreseeable future. “We really need to shift toward a goal of preventing serious disease and disability and medical consequences, and not worry about every virus detected in somebody’s nose,” Neuzil said. “It’s hard to do, but I think we have to become comfortable with coronavirus not going away.”
Much too length to commit time to. If you want to attraction attention to your pointings, please be brief.
If you aren't vaccinated and haven't had COVID, you will get Delta variant: Brett Giroir Former Trump health official urges Americans to get vaccinated https://www.foxnews.com/media/vaccinated-covid-delta-variant-brett-giroir Admiral Brett Giroir, former assistant health secretary under President Trump, warned on "America Reports" Thursday that the Delta variant is so contagious that it's "just a matter of time" before everyone who is not vaccinated and hasn't had COVID-19 yet catches it. ADM BRETT GIROIR: Anyone who’s not vaccinated and who did not have COVID previously, the Delta variant is so contagious that you’re going to get it. It is just a matter of time. If you have prior immunity you do have some protection, but more and more data are telling us that that protection is not so good against Delta. Remember, you can get the Flu every year. It’s not because your immunity isn’t good. It’s because the Flu changes and Delta is really a new strain that is different than everything we’ve seen. So, I am really concerned that natural immunity, although real, is not going to be sufficient against Delta. If you don’t have natural immunity and you’re not vaccinated, you’re going to get Delta. So, prevent it by getting your vaccine. (Video at above url)
The news coming out of Israel over the past few days which shows that the Pfizer vaccine is only 35% effective at stopping transmission of Delta COVID -- which is significantly below the 50% level considered the lower cut-off point of effectiveness. Plus additional data from Israel showing that the Pfizer vaccine has been only 80% or so effective at stopping severe COVID cases for Delta compared to near 99% for the original COIVD. --- is all not good news. On top of this the data released today from the CDC about the spread of Delta COVID among the vaccinated at public gatherings in Barnstable County, Massachusetts is not good news either. These recent revelations in regards to vaccination and Delta COVID are game changers. Understandably they led immediately to masking recommendations for the vaccinated by the CDC. The Delta variant appears to be vaccine evasive -- and based on its ability to cause breakthrough transmission of Delta COVID -- it pushes the level of vaccination level needed for herd immunity well above 90% when vaccination is only 35% effective as stopping transmission. The question becomes what public measures are next. Due to the larger number cases among children and the higher infectiousness of Delta COVID with an R factor estimated at around 9 -- the immediate concern is school re-openings for fall semester which are a mere few weeks away. After all the turmoil over the past year -- it would be best to have children back in school at 100% and no longer remote. This was the hope for the fall -- we would be returning to a more normal K-12 learning experience. However to be safe in the face of Delta there would be a need to strongly move forward with vaccinating the children 12 and older plus staff to provide some protection and partial reduction in transmission. And the everyone would need to wear masks -- otherwise continuous outbreaks of Delta COVID would be closing schools. Sadly it appears we are on the verge of just one more COVID mutation making the current set of vaccines not effective at all. To reduce mutations we need to limit the number of possible unvaccinated human hosts to a lowest number possible -- because the unvaccinated hosts appear to be the ones most likely to host mutations while getting severely ill. Naturally a further COVID mutation making the current vaccines ineffective would immediately set off a race to create a booster to address the new variant. Not a good situation to be in.