Thread by @sbspalding

We have arrived at the point in the plague where the sheer number of confounders makes it nearly impossible for even the highly numerate to intuitively predict what their individual risk for COVID is, this is important.

Individual COVID risk is now highly dependent on:

1. Vaccine status.
2. Pre-existing condition status.
3. Local public safety regulations.
4. Average, local vaccination rates.
5. Delta variant prevalence.
6. Activity type and duration.
7. Prevalence of masking.

etc...

I might be perfectly safe walking maskless into a Whole Foods in Kings County, Washington (71% vax rate), but that might be a less great idea in Alexander County, Illinois (~15% rate).

If I'm a 25 year old, fully vaccinated person in a high-vax state it might be pretty OK for me to go to a small-scale indoor sporting event. Whereas if you're in a lot of States in the South, the calculus becomes a little trickier and you should probably at least wear a mask.

The math gets even weirder because often no-vax individuals tend to herd, resulting in high-vax areas with extremely risky clusters. Some activities tend to attract people with higher-risk tolerance, which is another consideration.

Then add to this all the FUD, misinformation, and ambiguous bits of data floating around.

1. How rare are breakthrough infections?
2. Are breakthrough infections equally contagious?
3. How rare are vaccine side-effects?
4. How much worse is Delta / Lambda etc?

I'm no epidemiologist so take EVERYTHING I SAY WITH A PILLAR OF SALT, but my reading is that we just don't have super clear, closed-form answers to these questions beyond the obvious, "vaccinated people are *significantly* better off than the unvaccinated."

So we are left in a world where even well-meaning people have a hard time parsing what they should be doing and when, and where what constitutes pro-social behavior might be VERY different depending on who you are and where you live.

So what's a well meaning person to do in this sort of risk environment? For my money, I'd say that all you can do is:

1. Get vaccinated! (ask me why in DMs)
2. Keep track of local COVID conditions. and select activities that make sense.
3. Mask up if you are at high risk.

Most importantly though, don't be too hard on yourself if you mess up. No one will get this perfect, no one can be perfect at all times and under all conditions. Risk mitigation isn't risk elimination, it's about doing the best you can with the cards you're dealt.