2/ COVID VACCINES WORK. They protect you from severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
IF YOU HAVEN'T YET GOTTEN VACCINATED, THIS IS THE TIME.
3/ The Delta variant has turned suburban streets into a @NASCAR track.
Seatbelts might be enough to keep you safe when you're driving in your suburban neighborhood, but if you're a NASCAR driver, you also want a helmet, airbags, and more.
4/ COVID vaccines may be enough to keep us all safe once we've controlled SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the community, but we're not there yet. The Delta variant is driving a lot more transmission.
We're still on a NASCAR track and need our helmet and airbags (e.g. indoor masking).
5/ And here's another analogy:
6/ Dr @robbysikka and the professional sports leagues have done important work to help us understand breakthrough infections.
Athletes get regular testing REGARDLESS of whether they have symptoms.
The good news: athletes with breakthrough infections don't get very sick.
7/ But many of these athletes who've had breakthrough infections with Delta have had very high levels of virus and carried that virus for longer than was the case with Alpha.
This means they're a lot more infectious and more likely the spread SARS-CoV-2 infection to others.
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1/ Clearing up confusion about what it means that Delta viral loads are ~1000x higher than the viral loads seen with the original SARS-CoV-2. medpagetoday.com/special-report…
2/ We need to be precise in speaking about infectiousness.
Exposure = Dose x Time
If viral loads in infected people are ~1000x higher with Delta than original SARS-CoV-2, the dose of virus to which the uninfected person is exposed has gone up ~1000x.
3/ Exposure = Dose x Time
If Dose increases 1000x
the Exposure you would have gotten from an infected person early in the pandemic over 15 minutes
you now get in 0.9 seconds (~1 second).
15 minutes = 900 seconds
But in NEITHER scenario are you 100% sure to be infected.
1/ "As we have said, this [COVID] is very heterogeneous across the country, and these decisions have to be made at the local level." —@CDCDirector@RWalensky
2/ "If you have areas of low vaccination & high case rates...local policymakers might consider whether masking...would be helpful for their community until they scale up their vaccination rates..." —@CDCDirector@RWalensky
3/ This speaks to our broken federalist approach to public health:
- technical guidance from the @CDCgov that needs to be interpreted locally
BUT
- no real power or $$$ at state/local level
Delta is 2.4-3.3x less susceptible to neutralizing Abs elicited by prior infection or Pfizer/Moderna vaccination as compared to the early WA1/2020 variant.