School Kids: Lambs to the Slaughter. Delta is Very Patient
by John Lawrence
The Delta variant is rubbing its hands in anticipation. It could kill off more than 50% of the population.The rest of the world isn't that lucky since worldwide the population is much less than 50% vaccinated especially in poor countries like India where Delta started. Even in China the vaccinated population is less than 20%. Just as Americans were being told that the pandemic was practically over, we're hit with a new variant that is a game changer. Now even the vaccinated are not safe any more. As more and more vaccinated people are getting sick, we're told that they can transmit the virus as efficiently as the unvaccinated. They have horrendous amounts of virus in their noses. This is not too comforting. If they have this much virus in their noses, it won't be long before we start seeing more hospitalizations and deaths even among the vaccinated population. Unmasking indoors is no longer safe for fully vaccinated. One infected person, vaccinated or not, can spread it to 9 others. Viral loads in vaccinated are similar to viral loads in unvaccinated.
Breakthrough infections were responsible for three-quarters of COVID-19 cases in an outbreak during large public gatherings on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and nearly all sequenced cases were the Delta variant, researchers found. Of 469 cases linked to multiple summer events and large summer gatherings in a small town, 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated people, and almost 80% of those cases were symptomatic, reported Catherine Brown, DVM, of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and colleagues. Four of the hospitalized were fully vaccinated. So the virus has pitched us a curve ball. Just when we thought it was safe to go out, it turns out that the virus has mutated and is worse than ever. Partly this is the result of wishful thinking on the part of politicians who should have proceeded more cautiously. Truer words were never spoken than "It's not over till it's over." Thank you Yogi Berra.
Fighting this pandemic is the equivalent of going to war. Maybe we should instigate a draft. Then people would have no choice but to get vaccinated. In a bygone era they did not have a choice over being conscripted, but now people say, "My choice, my body." The problem is we all have to be in this together, but about half the population isn't. The hospitalizations and deaths are 99.9% among the unvaccinated. They are also mainly in the red states. As more and more Trump supporters die off from COVID, the Republican party is losing voters. Actually I'm not too upset about that. If 99% of the deaths are among Trump voters, so be it. It increases chances for Democrats. Yet conservative talk jocks encourage their listeners not to get vaccinated. Fox News is losing viewers. Again I'm not too disappointed.
The other thing to consider is that it's not over until the rest of the world is fully vaccinated since herd immunity turns out to be more of a myth than a reality. As long as COVID thrives in the rest of the world it's the height of foolishness to think that once all Americans are vaccinated we're home free. Even more deadly variants could pop up in India or Africa or God knows where. They would be sure to be transmitted here in a day or two. So why isn't the vaccine being made freely available in India, for instance, where they have the factories to manufacture it if they had the intellectual patents made freely available to them. COVID would get to start all over in the US especially if a new variant were resistant to the current vaccine. It's not enough to get all Americans vaccinated. Everyone in the whole world must be vaccinated in order to stop the spread of variants. If not, new vaccines would have to be developed and the process of trying to get everyone vaccinated would have to start all over again. As the prescient Yogi Berra once said, it would be "deja vu all over again."
