The @PHE_uk report today paints a grim picture - TL;DR:-delta variant has almost replaced the beta variant in much of England- 50-60% more transmissible- ~2.5x higher risk of hospitalisations- Schools appear to be a key area of spread with many large no.s of clusters 🧵— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) June 3, 2021
Counterpoint: variants already exist that make vaccines less effective. South Africa had to send back it's shipment of AstraZennica/Oxford vaccines because they cannot provide effective protection against the South African variant of Covid 19. What if one of these variants ends up on your country? By removing mask restrictions before herd immunity is achieved (67-75% of the population being fully vaccinated), you are creating the conditions for such an event to occur. Masks don't only protect others, they also protect yourself to a certain small extent, even fabric masks. Also n95/ffp2 grade masks that seal do protect yourself very well. Please still wear a mask in public. I understand not wearing a mask when everyone around you is fully vaccinated, in that case yeah go for it and go maskless, but you can't have that knowledge in public.
I addressed this point that I expect this, my point is that it’s a worldwide problem and we just have to assume that countries are going to botch their response enough we will get that variant which is why people are already looking at making vaccines that target those. My dumb hope is that if you had a vaccine and you catch an escape variant it might lower lethality at least, that would be a huge boon although one we can’t count on.
I wear a mask because my country has almost no one vaccinated at all. I stay inside and social distance as well. I am still very aware that you can’t trust everyone in the world to do this and with a animal reservoir species elimination is off the table so even if we vaccinated everyone it’s probably not going away away. China the country that has handled this best still gets regional flare ups they have to stamp out and not every country is as competent as China even if they are not overtly evil like the line god worshippers I’m the “western” countries.
Yeah it's just all messed up. Hopefully the vaccines work well and stomp everything out, but even then they're taking so long to be available in the global south. I've just pretty much accepted that a terrible 3rd wave is inevitable now.
Depends on where you are. The big risk in the developed world is a big wave of hospitalizations around the vaccine reluctant. The other longer tail problem is an escape variant, but generally the bad system we have set up is good at immediate problems with clear risk and every lab worldwide is currently tracking COVID variants.
Counterpoint: variants already exist that make vaccines less effective. South Africa had to send back it's shipment of AstraZennica/Oxford vaccines because they cannot provide effective protection against the South African variant of Covid 19. What if one of these variants ends up on your country? By removing mask restrictions before herd immunity is achieved (67-75% of the population being fully vaccinated), you are creating the conditions for such an event to occur. Masks don't only protect others, they also protect yourself to a certain small extent, even fabric masks. Also n95/ffp2 grade masks that seal do protect yourself very well. Please still wear a mask in public. I understand not wearing a mask when everyone around you is fully vaccinated, in that case yeah go for it and go maskless, but you can't have that knowledge in public.
I addressed this point that I expect this, my point is that it’s a worldwide problem and we just have to assume that countries are going to botch their response enough we will get that variant which is why people are already looking at making vaccines that target those. My dumb hope is that if you had a vaccine and you catch an escape variant it might lower lethality at least, that would be a huge boon although one we can’t count on.
I wear a mask because my country has almost no one vaccinated at all. I stay inside and social distance as well. I am still very aware that you can’t trust everyone in the world to do this and with a animal reservoir species elimination is off the table so even if we vaccinated everyone it’s probably not going away away. China the country that has handled this best still gets regional flare ups they have to stamp out and not every country is as competent as China even if they are not overtly evil like the line god worshippers I’m the “western” countries.
Yeah it's just all messed up. Hopefully the vaccines work well and stomp everything out, but even then they're taking so long to be available in the global south. I've just pretty much accepted that a terrible 3rd wave is inevitable now.
:doomjak:
Depends on where you are. The big risk in the developed world is a big wave of hospitalizations around the vaccine reluctant. The other longer tail problem is an escape variant, but generally the bad system we have set up is good at immediate problems with clear risk and every lab worldwide is currently tracking COVID variants.