It’s as if Covid perched on someone’s shoulder as they read The Complete Stephen King, laughed, and whispered, “You want frightening? I’ll show you frightening!” And Carrie’s hand shot from the grave and signed in ASL “Run.”
My brand new N95 masks arrived today. Any nascent plans I had to mingle faded with today’s stocks. You’re no idiot, Lucian. But thanks for your conscience.
I feel like I say this WAY too much to my patients as well as my friends and family - masks don’t really protect YOU they protect others. What protects you is minimizing time indoors around unvaccinated people, social distancing and hand washing. The same old sh** that has been true from the beginning. Masking works to prevent spread of everyone is doing it, most especially those who could be sick. And since the ones most likely to be sick are the ones least likely to mask, we’re back to the pre-vaccine procedures. Except we can invite vaccinated friends for dinner.
Well said. I've continued to wear my mask in public since I received my shots in May for two reasons. One, I'm protecting myself and others--I understand that being vaccinated doesn't prevent me from spreading Covid. And two, I wear the mask to remind other people that the danger is far from over, and--I hope--encourage others to get vaccinated. I don't want to help create the impression that we're out of the woods.
Don't beat yourself up; we all know from the get go that a certain fraction of people, even after getting fully vaccinated, would be vulnerable to infection for Covid. The new Delta strain is simply a more virulent isomer of the basic virus. It is certainly more transmissible. The five individuals infected are almost, by definition, more likely to suffer from a breakout infection, even after having been fully vaccinated, and apparently without regard to which of the vaccines available they were given. Infections here in California from Covid Delta have doubled over the past week. The counties incorporating our most populous communities are requiring masking up; and the respite that we were experiencing over the past month has not reverted back to where things were over the past 15 months. As Yogi Berra would have said, "it is déjà vu all over again". The miracle is not that five individuals comprising part of the Texas delegation would have come down with Covid infection; rather, it is how few of us have been infected with Covid after receiving the full vaccination protocol.
Leave it to the Beavis & Butthead Brigade to start crowing that they were right and we were wrong because five people out of 200 million people vaccinated have tested positive for Covid Delta. The fact is that the infection could have come from anywhere, but the fact that it came from Texas is clearly a mark of shame on them for letting it happen. Just this week a report about last winter's collapse of the Texas electrical grid ended up with more than 200 people dead from cold and exposure. This simply is not mere negligence on the part of the State of Texas; no, this is willful ignorance and indifference on a grand scale, replicated over, and over again, in every state dominated by the Republican Party.
The lesson to be drawn from this episode, like accidents that happened in wartime, is that safety cannot be guaranteed no matter how much effort, or time, or care, is used to plan and execute an operation. The five people who were infected, I do not know whether they were men or women, might not have caught the disease had they not been career politicians whose job it was to meet and interact with hundreds of people, colleagues, other public figures, constituents, and all the people they run into in between. These constant interactions, unmediated by 6 feet of open space; mostly indoors; unmasked, at least a large fraction of the cases, comprise a probability distribution in which a resulting infection might almost be seen as inevitable and unavoidable. Whether you use Bayesian analysis, or some other metric, each interaction is multiplied by the next, and the odds of which inevitably point towards unity: you can beat the odds for only so long before the Law of Large Numbers catches up with you. You cannot live your life in fear of drawing the short straw on one occasion or another. Fortunately, the protection offered by the various Covid formulations is more than enough to prevent severe illness leading to hospitalization or death. That is a long way aways from the risks that vaccine resistors experience for themselves: if they get sick, odds are they go down for the count, and likely as not they take a whole bunch of their family and friends with them.
For those fully vaccinated who do fall victim to a breakout infection of Covid Delta, the emotional fallout is more likely to be one of disappointment rather than fear of death or debilitating disease. In flu season, we get our shots, but the odds are usually somewhere around 50-50 that we will come down with some type of flulike symptoms; and influenza is not a disease to be trifled with. It can be a killer. This should be a reminder though, we are still a long way from beating this thing; and having to mask up when we do grocery shopping or visit the big-box stores, we, and everyone else on the premises, or at risk. The science itself is still developing, and we have, and all the long way over the span of the past two years. We should be thankful though that we no longer have Donald Trump to contend with, nor with the malignant administration that he created in his wake. So, as I say, do not beat yourself up over this. This is still billed to Donald Trump's and the Republican Party's respective accounts.
I'm smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania and, aside from the region surrounding State College, it's a pretty Republican area. I got vaccinated early but, since I know the limitations of the vaccine (probably keep me out of the hospital but won't keep me uninfected) I mask up when I go to grocery stores or other places where there are a bunch of people who are (statistically anyway) unvaccinated.
It's all well and good to rely on having been vaccinated but that isn't really enough.
I'm in the relatively sane Northeast (MA), and in a county (Dukes) that as of early June had a vac rate well over 90%, but I'm also on Martha's Vineyard. The summer hordes are here, most of them aren't wearing masks, and the number of cars on the road with plates from Florida, Texas, and other places with low, low vac rates gives me pause. I haven't stopped wearing my mask.
The best-rated shots have about a 95% effective rate. What is it about 95% that people don't understand? It's less than 100%, goddammit. So far the vacs seem to be living up to their advance billing: vaccinated people who get Covid get milder cases and are unlikely to need hospitalization. Yes, some people have died, but let's compare those figures to the number who would have died if vaccination were less widespread or (gods forbid) nonexistent.
And yes, there are gaps in the messaging. Recently I went looking for figures on how soon after exposure a test would reveal whether one was infected. Couldn't find this on the CDC site (it might be there, but after 20 minutes I gave up looking), so -- what else? -- I asked my Facebook friends for input. Some of them are health-care workers; others had firsthand info from medical pros. The answers varied, but the range suggested that before 3 days it might not show up and if one was still negative at 14 days (i.e., the length of time that has been recommended for quarantine after possible exposure), one could consider oneself clear. Given the number of people out there who seem to think that vaccination makes them immune and that testing is 100% reliable no matter when one does it -- well, I wish this info were easier to find.
If it’s useful to anyone, I offer my experience. I’m 73 1/2, fully vaccinated (Pfizer) as of March 9, 2021, and I have continued to wear my mask outside my apartment all the time. I m doing this because I’d rather be safe than sorry.
My large apartment building (365 units) requires masks - in hallways, compactor rooms where we bring garbage and recyclables, elevators - EVERYWHERE. I work full time (psychoanalyst and psychotherapist) and returned to my office to work remotely (cabin fever got the best of me) at the beginning of May. My office building requires masks in all public spaces.
Walking through Manhattan for 15-20 minutes to work, and on the return walk home, I pass people whose vaccination status is unknown to me. I used to joke that I wore a mask to prove I’m not a Republican; the truth, though, is more basic. I want to live as healthy and safe a life as possible. Yes, I might not die if I get Covid now, but I’d rather do all I can to minimize the likelihood of getting Covid in the 1st place.
Think about your options and choose. I choose wearing a mask.
The Yankee players that have tested positive were vaccinated and asymptomatic, "breakthrough infections" - so were a number of Olympic athletes. The airborne virus comes in through your nose and mouth as you breath, the vaccinated person does not get sick, their body is armed against Covid -19. That does not mean that live virus cannot be in your nose or mouth, and if tested many of the vaccinated would test positive. To me, those who are vaccinated & test positive are not actually 'sick' with Covid 19, but the virus, in smaller quantity & virulence, shows up in the test. According to Dr. Fauci that is not a serious problem to those vaccinated, but it is to those who are not.
Up to a point, but as I understand it, *some* of the vaccinated who test positive do have symptoms, i.e., they *are* "sick." This seems to be the case with one of the five Texas legislators who tested positive. Fwiw, these Texas Dems have been trashed by Republicans for traveling during Covid (like they should talk??), but it may turn out that their action has turned the tide on voting rights. If it does, and even if it doesn't, it was a risk worth taking.
There’s something about these Texas legislators testing positive that strikes me as suspicious. First, we don’t know the names of four of them. Why in the world not? Second, we don’t know which test they were given. It seems to me that without knowing the test we can’t know how reliable it is. Third, we don’t know which vaccine they were given. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine has much less protection than Pfizer and Moderna. Why hasn’t that been divulged? It makes absolutely no sense not to make public these three straightforward facts. I’m not a conspiracy nut, so I don’t think they’re being withheld for any reason, but I do know that until we know them, we’re not making a meaningful assessment of the known facts.
Thank you for this insightful (as always) article. I'm in Los Angeles and it's so disheartening as Delta cases are climbing. Thus far I have not caught the virus and I hope I do not. Fully vaccinated with Moderna. I am concerned about the economy and the food and beverage industry- restaurants, hospitality and the entertainment industry. I am so sick of irresponsible people messing up our lives.
The Republicans love to sit around and say science is crap and Fauci should be drawn and quartered one way or another because the facts and methods of this virus change just like the AIDS virus did all that time ago. They didn't get herd immunity on that either. And these dumbbells don't seem to notice tons of the people who've had the virus are getting it again. Republicans have gone off the rails. There is NOTHING that supports their position being a good one on this. And the screaming, glaring message is your side is dying and nobody else is unless there are extraordinary things going on. Hard to understand how this losing is getting a win over the libs and Dems. But then again Trump is the answer.
While you are forgiven for (as you say,) acting stupid, believe me, it's very easy to fall into the 'I'm vaccinated thus I am a superhuman!" and feel like it. However, when the very first cases of Covid 19 happened to those who were vaccinated, everyone should have taken notice.
That's because there are no guarantees in life. Not for vaccines or viruses.
People have been looking forward to being free of the masks, mandates, rules and quarantines for so long that the possibility that the vaccines could be less than 100% effective did not register.
It's forgivable, but remember, nothing is ever 100% anything-and we'd best be on our guard until those who refuse to take one either finally succumb to public pressure or die, because they're the ones who are really spreading this.
And that's why when the CDC acclaimed that we could take off our masks if we were vaccinated I said to myself, "That's the wrong statement to make and it's not over by a long shot", and kept my mask on.
The virus still has fight in it, and we've got to stay armed against it. The war is almost won, but for the last few battles. It'll take another year (as originally stated) to put it in retreat.
It’s as if Covid perched on someone’s shoulder as they read The Complete Stephen King, laughed, and whispered, “You want frightening? I’ll show you frightening!” And Carrie’s hand shot from the grave and signed in ASL “Run.”
My brand new N95 masks arrived today. Any nascent plans I had to mingle faded with today’s stocks. You’re no idiot, Lucian. But thanks for your conscience.
I feel like I say this WAY too much to my patients as well as my friends and family - masks don’t really protect YOU they protect others. What protects you is minimizing time indoors around unvaccinated people, social distancing and hand washing. The same old sh** that has been true from the beginning. Masking works to prevent spread of everyone is doing it, most especially those who could be sick. And since the ones most likely to be sick are the ones least likely to mask, we’re back to the pre-vaccine procedures. Except we can invite vaccinated friends for dinner.
Good advice Anne.
Well said. I've continued to wear my mask in public since I received my shots in May for two reasons. One, I'm protecting myself and others--I understand that being vaccinated doesn't prevent me from spreading Covid. And two, I wear the mask to remind other people that the danger is far from over, and--I hope--encourage others to get vaccinated. I don't want to help create the impression that we're out of the woods.
No masks here in DeSantistan...and no surprise, sadly.
Don't beat yourself up; we all know from the get go that a certain fraction of people, even after getting fully vaccinated, would be vulnerable to infection for Covid. The new Delta strain is simply a more virulent isomer of the basic virus. It is certainly more transmissible. The five individuals infected are almost, by definition, more likely to suffer from a breakout infection, even after having been fully vaccinated, and apparently without regard to which of the vaccines available they were given. Infections here in California from Covid Delta have doubled over the past week. The counties incorporating our most populous communities are requiring masking up; and the respite that we were experiencing over the past month has not reverted back to where things were over the past 15 months. As Yogi Berra would have said, "it is déjà vu all over again". The miracle is not that five individuals comprising part of the Texas delegation would have come down with Covid infection; rather, it is how few of us have been infected with Covid after receiving the full vaccination protocol.
Leave it to the Beavis & Butthead Brigade to start crowing that they were right and we were wrong because five people out of 200 million people vaccinated have tested positive for Covid Delta. The fact is that the infection could have come from anywhere, but the fact that it came from Texas is clearly a mark of shame on them for letting it happen. Just this week a report about last winter's collapse of the Texas electrical grid ended up with more than 200 people dead from cold and exposure. This simply is not mere negligence on the part of the State of Texas; no, this is willful ignorance and indifference on a grand scale, replicated over, and over again, in every state dominated by the Republican Party.
The lesson to be drawn from this episode, like accidents that happened in wartime, is that safety cannot be guaranteed no matter how much effort, or time, or care, is used to plan and execute an operation. The five people who were infected, I do not know whether they were men or women, might not have caught the disease had they not been career politicians whose job it was to meet and interact with hundreds of people, colleagues, other public figures, constituents, and all the people they run into in between. These constant interactions, unmediated by 6 feet of open space; mostly indoors; unmasked, at least a large fraction of the cases, comprise a probability distribution in which a resulting infection might almost be seen as inevitable and unavoidable. Whether you use Bayesian analysis, or some other metric, each interaction is multiplied by the next, and the odds of which inevitably point towards unity: you can beat the odds for only so long before the Law of Large Numbers catches up with you. You cannot live your life in fear of drawing the short straw on one occasion or another. Fortunately, the protection offered by the various Covid formulations is more than enough to prevent severe illness leading to hospitalization or death. That is a long way aways from the risks that vaccine resistors experience for themselves: if they get sick, odds are they go down for the count, and likely as not they take a whole bunch of their family and friends with them.
For those fully vaccinated who do fall victim to a breakout infection of Covid Delta, the emotional fallout is more likely to be one of disappointment rather than fear of death or debilitating disease. In flu season, we get our shots, but the odds are usually somewhere around 50-50 that we will come down with some type of flulike symptoms; and influenza is not a disease to be trifled with. It can be a killer. This should be a reminder though, we are still a long way from beating this thing; and having to mask up when we do grocery shopping or visit the big-box stores, we, and everyone else on the premises, or at risk. The science itself is still developing, and we have, and all the long way over the span of the past two years. We should be thankful though that we no longer have Donald Trump to contend with, nor with the malignant administration that he created in his wake. So, as I say, do not beat yourself up over this. This is still billed to Donald Trump's and the Republican Party's respective accounts.
I'm not beating myself up. I figured my readers deserve a good chuckle in the midst of all this dark shit. Besides I can be a complete idiot at times.
I'm smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania and, aside from the region surrounding State College, it's a pretty Republican area. I got vaccinated early but, since I know the limitations of the vaccine (probably keep me out of the hospital but won't keep me uninfected) I mask up when I go to grocery stores or other places where there are a bunch of people who are (statistically anyway) unvaccinated.
It's all well and good to rely on having been vaccinated but that isn't really enough.
I am guilty and will mask up.
Now Fox can blame Joe, wanna bet?
I'm with you 💯
Just switched back to my N95 masks 2 days ago.
I'm in the relatively sane Northeast (MA), and in a county (Dukes) that as of early June had a vac rate well over 90%, but I'm also on Martha's Vineyard. The summer hordes are here, most of them aren't wearing masks, and the number of cars on the road with plates from Florida, Texas, and other places with low, low vac rates gives me pause. I haven't stopped wearing my mask.
The best-rated shots have about a 95% effective rate. What is it about 95% that people don't understand? It's less than 100%, goddammit. So far the vacs seem to be living up to their advance billing: vaccinated people who get Covid get milder cases and are unlikely to need hospitalization. Yes, some people have died, but let's compare those figures to the number who would have died if vaccination were less widespread or (gods forbid) nonexistent.
And yes, there are gaps in the messaging. Recently I went looking for figures on how soon after exposure a test would reveal whether one was infected. Couldn't find this on the CDC site (it might be there, but after 20 minutes I gave up looking), so -- what else? -- I asked my Facebook friends for input. Some of them are health-care workers; others had firsthand info from medical pros. The answers varied, but the range suggested that before 3 days it might not show up and if one was still negative at 14 days (i.e., the length of time that has been recommended for quarantine after possible exposure), one could consider oneself clear. Given the number of people out there who seem to think that vaccination makes them immune and that testing is 100% reliable no matter when one does it -- well, I wish this info were easier to find.
If it’s useful to anyone, I offer my experience. I’m 73 1/2, fully vaccinated (Pfizer) as of March 9, 2021, and I have continued to wear my mask outside my apartment all the time. I m doing this because I’d rather be safe than sorry.
My large apartment building (365 units) requires masks - in hallways, compactor rooms where we bring garbage and recyclables, elevators - EVERYWHERE. I work full time (psychoanalyst and psychotherapist) and returned to my office to work remotely (cabin fever got the best of me) at the beginning of May. My office building requires masks in all public spaces.
Walking through Manhattan for 15-20 minutes to work, and on the return walk home, I pass people whose vaccination status is unknown to me. I used to joke that I wore a mask to prove I’m not a Republican; the truth, though, is more basic. I want to live as healthy and safe a life as possible. Yes, I might not die if I get Covid now, but I’d rather do all I can to minimize the likelihood of getting Covid in the 1st place.
Think about your options and choose. I choose wearing a mask.
The Yankee players that have tested positive were vaccinated and asymptomatic, "breakthrough infections" - so were a number of Olympic athletes. The airborne virus comes in through your nose and mouth as you breath, the vaccinated person does not get sick, their body is armed against Covid -19. That does not mean that live virus cannot be in your nose or mouth, and if tested many of the vaccinated would test positive. To me, those who are vaccinated & test positive are not actually 'sick' with Covid 19, but the virus, in smaller quantity & virulence, shows up in the test. According to Dr. Fauci that is not a serious problem to those vaccinated, but it is to those who are not.
Up to a point, but as I understand it, *some* of the vaccinated who test positive do have symptoms, i.e., they *are* "sick." This seems to be the case with one of the five Texas legislators who tested positive. Fwiw, these Texas Dems have been trashed by Republicans for traveling during Covid (like they should talk??), but it may turn out that their action has turned the tide on voting rights. If it does, and even if it doesn't, it was a risk worth taking.
There’s something about these Texas legislators testing positive that strikes me as suspicious. First, we don’t know the names of four of them. Why in the world not? Second, we don’t know which test they were given. It seems to me that without knowing the test we can’t know how reliable it is. Third, we don’t know which vaccine they were given. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine has much less protection than Pfizer and Moderna. Why hasn’t that been divulged? It makes absolutely no sense not to make public these three straightforward facts. I’m not a conspiracy nut, so I don’t think they’re being withheld for any reason, but I do know that until we know them, we’re not making a meaningful assessment of the known facts.
Thank you for this insightful (as always) article. I'm in Los Angeles and it's so disheartening as Delta cases are climbing. Thus far I have not caught the virus and I hope I do not. Fully vaccinated with Moderna. I am concerned about the economy and the food and beverage industry- restaurants, hospitality and the entertainment industry. I am so sick of irresponsible people messing up our lives.
I also have my own LLC selling apparel online. People are not spending as they used to.
The Republicans love to sit around and say science is crap and Fauci should be drawn and quartered one way or another because the facts and methods of this virus change just like the AIDS virus did all that time ago. They didn't get herd immunity on that either. And these dumbbells don't seem to notice tons of the people who've had the virus are getting it again. Republicans have gone off the rails. There is NOTHING that supports their position being a good one on this. And the screaming, glaring message is your side is dying and nobody else is unless there are extraordinary things going on. Hard to understand how this losing is getting a win over the libs and Dems. But then again Trump is the answer.
While you are forgiven for (as you say,) acting stupid, believe me, it's very easy to fall into the 'I'm vaccinated thus I am a superhuman!" and feel like it. However, when the very first cases of Covid 19 happened to those who were vaccinated, everyone should have taken notice.
That's because there are no guarantees in life. Not for vaccines or viruses.
People have been looking forward to being free of the masks, mandates, rules and quarantines for so long that the possibility that the vaccines could be less than 100% effective did not register.
It's forgivable, but remember, nothing is ever 100% anything-and we'd best be on our guard until those who refuse to take one either finally succumb to public pressure or die, because they're the ones who are really spreading this.
And that's why when the CDC acclaimed that we could take off our masks if we were vaccinated I said to myself, "That's the wrong statement to make and it's not over by a long shot", and kept my mask on.
The virus still has fight in it, and we've got to stay armed against it. The war is almost won, but for the last few battles. It'll take another year (as originally stated) to put it in retreat.