Thread by @delong

braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First:

This, from Andy Slavitt, who was one of the most positive voices in the rolling COVID-19 plague discussion over the past year and a half—well, it stopped me in my tracks. Slavitt said: Delta “is twice as infectious. Fortunately… we… have... 1/

...a tool that stops… Delta… in its tracks… vaccine”.

That does not make much sense to me.

I am told that the way to bet is that Delta as has an R[0] of 8, that mRNA vaccines are 80% protective, and further that they are 80% protective against death conditional upon... 2/

...your getting a case of the plague. And I am told that that is a somewhat cautious bet—that it could turn out that mRNA vaccines are in fact significantly more protective than these “80%” still semi-guesses…

But let’s run with what I have been told…

80% protective... 3/

...means 20% non-protective. That means that in a fully mRNA-vaccinated population Delta still has an R[0] of 1.6: greater than one. If Delta hits a fully mRNA-vaccinated population, it spreads and its R[t] does not drop below 1 until 8% of the population has had... 4/

...breakthrough cases. And at that point the plague still has lots of momentum: it does not reach the asymptote of the logistic until 16% of the—fully mRNA-vaccinated population has had a breakthrough case. And of those, 0.2% die. That means that 0.03% of your population... 5/

...dies from the thing.

Now that is a lot better from Delta hitting a greenfield population—in which case R[t] rips through the population with extraordinary speed, and 1% of your population dies. But if we had a world of 8 billion people all of whom were fully mRNA-... 6/

...vaccinated, 0.03% is 2.4 million dead: that’s 10 years’ worth of influence right there.

So the right thing to say is not “vaccination stops the virus in its tracks”, but rather this, to the vaccinated:

* With the Delta variant, it is overwhelmingly likely that the... 7/

...virus will come to you.

* When it does, if you are vaccinated there is then an 80% chance that your immune system will repel it on the beaches.

* BUT THERE IS A 20% CHANCE IT WILL GET A BEACHHEAD. AND THEN YOU WILL BE (AT LEAST SOMEWHAT) INFECTIOUS.

* SO IF YOU HANG... 8/

...OUT WITH UNVACCINATED PEOPLE, GET THEM A VACCINATION NOW!!!!.

* IF THEY DO NOT, YOU WEAR A MASK, THEY WEAR A MASK, AND YOU DO MUCH MORE SOCIAL DISTANCING THAN STAY 6 FEET APART.

* OTHERWISE, IF YOU GET THE DISEASE, THERE IS A 1% CHANCE THAT YOU (OR SOMEONE ELSE... 9/

...INFECTED THEY BRUSH BY) WILL KILL THEM

* If you are vaccinated, even if you get it, there is only a minuscule chance that you will die—total mortality risk of 0.04%, which is about the chance that a 50 year-old American dies in a month: that’s the risk if you are... 10/

...vaccinated.

And say this, to the not-vaccinated:

* GET VACCINATED NOW!!!!
* With the Delta variant, it is overwhelmingly likely that the virus will come to you.
* if you are not vaccinated, then there is a 1% chance that you will then die—and that is with monoclonal... 11/

...antibodies and oxygen fighting on your side.

* Don’t think hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin is going to help you: yes, they degrade the virus; but they also degrade your body; in the case of malaria these medications degrade the parasite more than they degrade your... 12/

...body, and so they are useful therapies; but we have no reason to think that is the case with SARC-CoV–2.

But that is not what Slavitt says:

Aya Elamroussi: Delta Variant Is ‘Covid–19 on Steroids,’ Expert Says, with Cases Increasing in Nearly Half of US States... 13/

...‘That variant, first identified in India, accounted for 51.7% of all new Covid–19 infections in the country over the two weeks that ended Saturday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated…. Andy Slavitt…. “It’s twice as infectious. Fortunately... 4/

...unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine”…

LINK: <cnn.com/2021/07/08/hea…>

What is going on here?... 15/

One Video: One Video:

Kurt Campbell: The Biden Administration's Approach to Asia <>... 16/END