Did the CDC jump the gun?

It was my impression from the beginning that it was a well intentioned but ham fisted effort to protect the mask supply for healthcare workers.  

bub said:

It was my impression from the beginning that it was a well intentioned but ham fisted effort to protect the mask supply for healthcare workers.  

 If true, then it goes down as one of the worst missteps of the pandemic response (excluding everything Trump said and did).

tjohn said:

bub said:

It was my impression from the beginning that it was a well intentioned but ham fisted effort to protect the mask supply for healthcare workers.  

 If true, then it goes down as one of the worst missteps of the pandemic response (excluding everything Trump said and did).

Ham-fisted or not, the thought of needing/demanding healthcare professionals to get in there and treat these people but do so without basic protection was sufficient motivation in my mind. There weren't enough of those PPE materials to go around until production was ramped up. Even with the PPE they had, many such heroes, as we called them, caught COVID and died anyway. That left the remaining hospital staff to become even more exhausted. The available supply was so short, I believe it was a reasonable response. I do, however, think the message about using any sort of masking material available in the meantime should have been better. 

That said, we were still trying to learn as much as possible about the mode of transmission. All those handwashing directives? Yeah, it is very important in the general sense, but look up the question of whether handwashing was important to stopping COVID-19. Notice the dates in early-to-mid 2020 for the vast majority of what you see. Then, the number of such reports drops off significantly as we discover that the far more dangerous mode of spread is airborne transmission. Do people still wash their hands as well as they used to? What about all the hand cleaner dispensers set up everywhere? Are we using them much anymore? That stuff was on clearance after the new year, even in spite of the nasty resurgence at the holidays. 

Even after many many months of study, we were operating under mistaken "knowledge" [see above] that it was droplets rather than aerosol particles. At least the demand that air circulation be improved was on track. A friend of mine in Maplewood started a mask production drive with the tightly knit cloth she had volunteers collecting from all over. We donated many pairs of flannel pajamas and many of my old flannel plaid shirts. We also did what we could to scavenge such materials from thrift stores to help her crew make (maybe) thousands of these double-layered masks to make up for the lack of them. Many other people dug out their sewing machines and got to work.

A question on my mind is whether there is up-to-date data on whether children can definitely spread the delta variant compared to earlier versions or at least as much. I have not found any reports that are specific to the last month or so. Even here, not just in Florida & other such defiant areas, there are strong pushes to get children back in school Combined with people being fooled into thinking masks are as necessary anymore, we could wind up with another wave that spreads around the country as the school year starts.

I worry about those families, both children and older generations, that resist the vaccine and masks. The people who should not get the vaccine for various reasons, too, since they're going to be at greater risk through no fault of their own. I just hope they have enough really good masks they can use and that they do not get shamed for trying to protect themselves.

I'm an EMT, I'm aware of how bad the N95 supply situation was for a long time.  For a while, we switched over to the hard shell fancy industrial kind with the screw in filters.  Supposedly 100% protective but very uncomfortable - hot, get wet very quickly and you have to just about scream to be heard.  

bub said:

I'm an EMT, I'm aware of how bad the N95 supply situation was for a long time.  For a while, we switched over to the hard shell fancy industrial kind with the screw in filters.  Supposedly 100% protective but very uncomfortable - hot, get wet very quickly and you have to just about scream to be heard.  

 Yikes

I like to think that the truth would have worked better.  Something like, "Folks, our healthcare providers need N95 masks.  Please use non-N95 masks."  In the early days of the pandemic when people were nervous, there would have been support for something like this.

Or maybe the CDC really believed that facemasks wouldn't help.  They certainly made enough mistakes and bad calls.  This would be one more.

In all the talk about booster shots and "waning immunity", just a reminder that the vaccines still work very, very well in dramatically reducing the chance you'll get seriously ill and need to get hospitalized. Here's an example of what happens when too many people don't get vaccinated:

Houston veteran dies of treatable illness after waiting hours for ICU bed

When hospitals are overwhelmed by covid patients, there's less room for everyone else. Get vaccinated.

PeterWick said:
- - Is the length of time someone is contagious for shorter, or not affected at all, or we don't know, for vaccinated with breakthrough?

-------> I have not seen hard data on this other than that the viral load in people who contract delta and delta+ is much higher. I would go with a mathematical hypothesis that suggests the more virus someone, vaccinated or not, must deal with, the longer they are at risk of transmitting it. That might mean longer time for unvaccinated than 14 days (BTW, that 14 days is longer than the real risk for the most part. The extra days are just to be more certain since there is variation in the onset of conversion to positive & contagious period). Quarantine or isolation (if COVID+) for vaccinated people is definitely advised, but the period of time may be shorter. Don't know.

- - If you're vaccinated you're still far less likely to get infected at all, and so vaccines are still substantially reducing transmission, right?

--------> This is probably still true against wild type COVID and the earlier variants. The vaccines clearly do not prevent infection very well against the deltas but they do reduce the severity of illness. The findings for that are a veritable 2x4 upside the head.

 Following up on this, now that it's been a bit more time and we have more data:

No, Vaccinated People Are Not ‘Just as Likely’ to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People

(The Atlantic)

PVW said:

 Following up on this, now that it's been a bit more time and we have more data:

No, Vaccinated People Are Not ‘Just as Likely’ to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People

(The Atlantic)

I'm quite happy to be mostly wrong about the possibility of infection spread from vaccinated people here. I haven't read it but did they parse out the the data according to the variants?

It's not a super data-heavy article, but the time setting looks to be firmly in the delta era. I'd say these are the key passages:

In the aftermath of the Provincetown announcement, many who had gotten their shots were confused about what the news meant for them, especially when headlines seemed to imply that vaccinated individuals are as likely to contract and transmit COVID-19 as the unvaccinated. But this framing missed the single most important factor in spreading the coronavirus: To spread the coronavirus, you have to have the coronavirus. And vaccinated people are far less likely to have the coronavirus—period. If this was mentioned at all, it was treated as an afterthought.

Despite concern about waning immunity, vaccines provide the best protection against infection. And if someone isn’t infected, they can’t spread the coronavirus. It’s truly that simple. Additionally, for those instances of a vaccinated person getting a breakthrough case, yes, they can be as infectious as an unvaccinated person. But they are likely contagious for a shorter period of time when compared with the unvaccinated, and they may harbor less infectious virus overall.

 Additionally, for those instances of a vaccinated person getting a breakthrough case, yes, they can be as infectious as an unvaccinated person. But they are likely contagious for a shorter period of time when compared with the unvaccinated, and they may harbor less infectious virus overall.

Okay, then I wasn't so far off.

ml1 said:

PVW said:

ml1 said:

The likelihood is that it's unvaccinated people infecting each other.  Yes, correlation isn't causation.  But virtually every U.S. hot spot now is a county with very low vaccination rates.  

 To better understand terp's view of this, I'd be really curious to hear his explanation for the correlation between low rates of vaccination and high rates of cases and serious illness vs the much lower rates in areas with greater vaccination rates. Correlation may not be causation, but it's often a strong hint of where to look. If terp is asserting there's no causal link here, what is his alternative hypothesis?

 apparently it's seasonality that drives the decline in infection,  IIRC from one of the earlier posts.  The virus magically disappears in the warm weather.  It's like a miracle.

Do you understand now?  New York has record high cases.  Go look at Florida's case numbers.  Cornell has 100% vaccination rates and had to close campus due to outbreaks.  

terp said:

Do you understand now?  New York has record high cases.  Go look at Florida's case numbers.  Cornell has 100% vaccination rates and had to close campus due to outbreaks.  

Well, unless you are able to re-run 2020 with the omicron variant, it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison you're attempting here.

It's definitely very disappointing that the variants have significantly blunted the vaccine's ability to slow the spread, but they're still doing well at their primary goal -- limiting severe illness.

And I still have no idea how you think the virus spreads.

PVW said:

terp said:

Do you understand now?  New York has record high cases.  Go look at Florida's case numbers.  Cornell has 100% vaccination rates and had to close campus due to outbreaks.  

Well, unless you are able to re-run 2020 with the omicron variant, it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison you're attempting here.

It's definitely very disappointing that the variants have significantly blunted the vaccine's ability to slow the spread, but they're still doing well at their primary goal -- limiting severe illness.

And I still have no idea how you think the virus spreads.

Go back and read.  You are starting with an answer and backing your logic into that answer.  I am not saying that vaccines play no role, but from a seasonality perspective this is playing out as I predicted in July and what happened in 2020(peaked in the south in late summer when people there were indoors and then peaked in the colder weather in the north when people there spent more time inside)

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

terp said:

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

It's been accepted for a long time that COVID infection rates would vary with the seasons. It's an obvious effect with an airborne virus.

Show me one person who laughed at your most brilliant insight.

drummerboy said:

terp said:

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

It's been accepted for a long time that COVID infection rates would vary with the seasons. It's an obvious effect with an airborne virus.

Show me one person who laughed at your most brilliant insight.

Read the quotes where I brought this up yesterday.

terp said:

drummerboy said:

terp said:

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

It's been accepted for a long time that COVID infection rates would vary with the seasons. It's an obvious effect with an airborne virus.

Show me one person who laughed at your most brilliant insight.

Read the quotes where I brought this up yesterday.

I see no one laughing, or even disparaging your contention of seasonal differences.

if everyone who is eligible was vaccinated, there's a good chance we'd be at a point where we could all live with the risks associated with the coronavirus.  Vaccinated and boosted people are rarely the ones who end up in the ICU.  So if we face another round of restrictions it will almost certainly be to keep unvaccinated people from overwhelming our hospitals.

drummerboy said:

terp said:

drummerboy said:

terp said:

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

It's been accepted for a long time that COVID infection rates would vary with the seasons. It's an obvious effect with an airborne virus.

Show me one person who laughed at your most brilliant insight.

Read the quotes where I brought this up yesterday.

I see no one laughing, or even disparaging your contention of seasonal differences.

Now I feel like I am being gaslit.  

apparently it's seasonality that drives the decline in infection, IIRC from one of the earlier posts. The virus magically disappears in the warm weather. It's like a miracle.

drummerboy said:

terp said:

drummerboy said:

terp said:

bub said:

Terp:

You're picking and choosing the time to jump in and say "I told you so."  Why didn't you jump in a few months ago when places like Texas and Florida were on fire with new cases and the stats showed that the unvaccinated were in much greater danger for serious cases than the vaxed?  I think its been a given that cold weather plus holidays pushing people together indoors helps the virus (although that doesn't explain  the south's experience).   It's also been a premise since day one that the larger the population of unvaxed, the greater the chance that vax resistant variants will arise.  There's no certainty with this thing and people who have tried to draw absolute conclusions, right or left, have been burned.

For example, you mention the recent Cornell outbreak.  After reading about that, I checked the Covid tracker for my daughter's college, also in upstate NY.  It has had zero active cases for some time and since testing began this year has a positivity rate of a paltry .08.  Go figure.  I can't.

I did.  And I said it was seasonal and would shift as the weather shifted.  I was laughed at because it was obviously the vaccines and only the vaccines and the unvaccinated were satan's spawn and what have you.

The virus is very unpredictable regarding specifics, but the general trend is that it strikes when people spend more of their time indoors.  It seems to spread to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.  I am not saying the vaccines have zero efficacy, but they are certainly not the cure all they have been sold as.

It's been accepted for a long time that COVID infection rates would vary with the seasons. It's an obvious effect with an airborne virus.

Show me one person who laughed at your most brilliant insight.

Read the quotes where I brought this up yesterday.

I see no one laughing, or even disparaging your contention of seasonal differences.

it's a misinterpretation of what I wrote.  I was arguing with the contention that we'd have seen the magnitude of decline we saw after vaccinations strictly from seasonality.  And the peaks across the country in July and August in largely unvaccinated areas are evidence that seasonality alone is not sufficient to see declines in infections.  Take Alabama for instance, where still only 47% of residents are fully vaxxed.  Their rate surged in August, not during winter.  Now it's quite low, but a lot of people had to get sick and die for natural immunity to kick in.  It's obvious seasonality plays a part, but it's not the sole determinant of infection rates.

Seasonality has two broad components - people spending time indoors to get out of the heat, and spending time indoors to get out of the cold. So different areas could peak during different seasons.

The vaccines worked amazingly well before Delta and even then no one said it was a "cure all."  It was understood even back then that vaccinated people would get infected.  We were also warned that subsequent variants could undermine the vaccines.  Even now, the most recent studies are confirming that a booster offers substantial increased protection against Omicron.   You haven't caught anyone in a lie.  The winter thing doesn't explain what as happening in the south in hot weather.

As far as the northeast leading the Omicron surge, the south will catch up.  Florida had almost 9000 cases yesterday, the worst since September.  The experience of our region, in the early days and now, doesn't surprise me notwithstanding the relatively high vaccination rate here.  We live in a extraordinarily densely populated metropolitan area with multiple international airports bringing in a large volume of international travelers on a daily basis.  

ml1 said:

if everyone who is eligible was vaccinated, there's a good chance we'd be at a point where we could all live with the risks associated with the coronavirus.  Vaccinated and boosted people are rarely the ones who end up in the ICU.  So if we face another round of restrictions it will almost certainly be to keep unvaccinated people from overwhelming our hospitals.

I believe the saying at the time was that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.  It was untrue then and its proven to be untrue now.  I saw the numbers in Minnesota the other day.  44% of their covid deaths are breakthrough cases.  Again, that isn't to say they have no effect.  It is to say that they are not the cure all and we should not scapegoat part of the population.

bub said:

The vaccines worked amazingly well before Delta and even then no one said it was a "cure all."  It was understood even back then that vaccinated people would get infected.  We were also warned that subsequent variants could undermine the vaccines.  Even now, the most recent studies are confirming that a booster offers substantial increased protection against Omicron.   You haven't caught anyone in a lie.  The winter thing doesn't explain what as happening in the south in hot weather.

As far as the northeast leading the Omicron surge, the south will catch up.  Florida had almost 9000 cases yesterday, the worst since September.  The experience of our region, in the early days and now, doesn't surprise me notwithstanding the relatively high vaccination rate here.  We live in a extraordinarily densely populated metropolitan area with multiple international airports bringing in a large volume of international travelers on a daily basis.  

Come on.  That just is not true.

https://www.uchealth.org/today/booster-shots-protection-against-omicron/

Data thru November, so may not include much Omicron, but boostered people being 50 times less likely to be hospitalized than the unvaccinated is not a stat to be sniffed at.

Where is that data?  I'm not watching a video on Facebook 

terp said:

ml1 said:

if everyone who is eligible was vaccinated, there's a good chance we'd be at a point where we could all live with the risks associated with the coronavirus.  Vaccinated and boosted people are rarely the ones who end up in the ICU.  So if we face another round of restrictions it will almost certainly be to keep unvaccinated people from overwhelming our hospitals.

I believe the saying at the time was that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.  It was untrue then and its proven to be untrue now.  I saw the numbers in Minnesota the other day.  44% of their covid deaths are breakthrough cases.  Again, that isn't to say they have no effect.  It is to say that they are not the cure all and we should not scapegoat part of the population.

number of cases is not the proper metric. It's hospitalizations and deaths, which are overwhelmingly the unvaccinated.