I talked my wife into not attending the Minnesota State Fair
She loves the State Fair, and had planned to go next week with a couple of friends. Since the Fair Board refuses to mandate masks or to require evidence of full vaccination, I suggested she not go this year. She finally agreed that it wasn't a good idea, despite being fully vaccinated. I didn't insist, but I continued to suggest that it was a bad idea. The local news, too, has been covering this extensively, and there are many complaints about the Fair Board's negligence and lack of serious concern.
If ever there was an event that was more dangerous during a pandemic than one where a couple hundred thousand people will be standing and walking cheek to jowl, I don't know of it. Even though we have a relatively high vaccination rate here in the Twin Cities, the Fair attracts people from all over the state, including people from conservative, rural counties that have terribly low vaccination rates.
Personally, I think it was irresponsible for the Fair Board to be that cavalier about masks. They know the risks, but decided that it would be too hard to enforce such a rule. They're probably right about that, but the correct solution would be to put the Fair off for another year.
Mass exposure to those who are infected will affect even the vaccinated, I believe. I'm glad she decided to skip the event. I'll make her some corn dogs and deep-fried cheese curds.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Glad she changed her mind. I think a lot of my friends are letting their guard down, now, too. I didn't play it close to the vest for a year & a half to get Covid now.
And don't wear anything Krysten Sinema wouldn't wear!
But I gotta assume they painted a "rosy" picture for people wanting to attend games that they would
be safe from covid. MLB like Jerry Jones are looking after their bottom line.$$$$$$
they made a stipulation about "outdoors" where they are requiring masks for events of 1000 or more where you are "standing", pretty much cheek to cheek and jowl to jowl next to each other - e.g., a concert (the Health Director also gave the example of a "mosh pit" ) or like if you have hundreds standing along a barrier to a stage, with rows of people that can number in the thousands going back deep as you move further away from the front.
This was distinguished from people who were to be "seated" in outdoor stadiums who could go maskless if vaccinated (although going to any inside portion of the stadium to get food or go to the bathroom required a mask). The difference supposedly being that when seated, there is a bit of distance between seats so people aren't generally smashed together.
This past April when Citizen's Bank Park (Phillies) was 50% capacity, "socially distanced", it looked like this -
They are now at 100% capacity but even with that, there is still a bit of a gap between people and rows.
This is in constrast to the "Made in America" Labor Day weekend concert that they have here every year (last year's was cancelled but they are going ahead with it this year - masks required for the outdoors stages and proof of vaccination as well). This was from 2019 as an example -
So for analogies - when you have State Fairs, you have people crowded together, standing around exhibits or food stalls or moving in a large crush of bodies through relatively narrow "aisles" or pathways.
But at sports events, although people might be getting up and down out of a seat, you don't have the type of density just due to the seating arrangements. The exception would be the "standing room only" areas that I think many stadiums may have.
and that includes stadiums AND "fairs". So the one big variable at events such as that are whether people are vaccinated or not and/or how many are infected attending them (and how much viral load they have). And that will be different in every situation.
And as a note, as a scientist myself, "science" is really all "conjecture" - even with data.
Scientists CAN and often WILL disagree with the interpretations of the same set of facts. THAT is how it works and that is what goes on in real life. You might consider someone's interpretation as "conjecture" but ALL interpretations are "conjecture".
I think your comment of this - "Actually I know virtually nothing about science" - pretty much sums up why you are confused and can in no way attempt to make such a blanket pronouncement about what any research "does" or "does not" do.
Part of the MA data that CDC included was this -
And they had the status of those who were subsequently infected who have records of having been previously vaccinated. They also had the benefit of sequencing done by Harvard and MIT to determine the strains contracted, the latter who had actually mapped the entire genome and published that just a few months prior to that outbreak.
The other data that you seemed to have missed actually came out BEFORE this was published and it came from Wisconsin that I posted about here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2778275
A re-post of the relevant info is below -
======================RE-POST==============================
In many cases, researchers aren't operating in a vacuum and actually belong to organizations that have regular meetings with their colleagues across institutions where they can share what they might have found so far and get feedback. I gave an example of such a meeting and presentation here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2777973
Keep in mind that CDC said what they published in an "early release" was just one piece of what they used for the decision and the WaPo article has quite a bit of info to describe what was being presented in that release. along with some other pieces of data that they used, including data from a similar Wisconsin incident. I.e., -
At least five events sparked the outbreak, so it is not possible to blame it on one party or one bar. “There’s no one person or spot to blame here,” said Daniel Park, group leader for viral computational genomics at the Broad Institute. “The thing that’s catching the attention in national public health is that … a decently high vaccination rate isn’t quite enough” to stop an outbreak with so people in one place and the delta variant spreading. The scientists, along with officials at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, reported that 79 percent of the breakthrough infections were symptomatic. Four of five people who were hospitalized were fully vaccinated.
They are now analyzing the genetic fingerprints of the virus samples taken to trace chains of transmission and determine how commonly fully vaccinated people were infecting one another. The presence of similar amounts of virus in the noses of vaccinated and unvaccinated people raises the possibility they are both contributing to spread, but many scientists think that vaccinated people should be less likely to spread the virus. Similar findings may be emerging from other locations. The internal CDC document showed that national surveillance found that vaccinated people had larger amounts of virus in their nose when infected with the delta variant, compared with other variants.
A report of cases from mid-July in Dane County, Wis., found a similar result, showing that fully vaccinated people had viral loads similar to those of unvaccinated people “and may be more capable of spreading COVID than was previously known.” The Wisconsin data showed that unvaccinated people were twice as likely to be infected as fully vaccinated people.
Here is the link to the Dane County, WI data that was also evaluated - https://publichealthmdc.com/documents/2021-07-29_data_snapshot.pdf (PDF)
A copy/paste of the observation in that PDF is this -
Our partners at UW-Madisonsequence COVID test specimens and are able to determine levels of virus present in a sample. More virus in the sample can mean a greater likelihood that the person with COVID can transmit the infection to others. The chart to the right shows the level of virus (using cycle threshold data) present from recent test specimens in Dane County of fully vaccinated people (yellow dots on the right) vs. not fully vaccinated people (gray dots on the left). When the dots are below the gray dotted line, that means they had enough virus to be able to be sequenced. We can see that there are far more samples from the unvaccinated group—this is expected because unvaccinated people are more at risk of getting COVID. We can also see that the gray and yellow dots are distributed similarly. This is evidence that fully vaccinated people have viral loads similar to that of unvaccinated people, and may be more capable of spreading COVID than was previously known. This is a very recent discovery that is also being supported by recent research done by the CDC, but more research is still needed.
In fact, here is a screenshot of the slide that has the above text content that is part of that PDF -
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What the University of Wisconsin found was that there was actual significant viral load (not expected with the amount found because it apparently wasn't found like that for previous variants) in fully vaccinated individuals. Plus it was obviously not found to the degree of the unvaccinated, but it was there nonetheless and enough to be shed and spread. That is what the above scatter plot shows.
I know there are a group of DUers who go full on extreme exclaiming "I'm not going to wear a mask and lock myself away forever!!11!!!!!111". NONE of the info being presented suggests doing that AT ALL.
What it does is offer risk scenarios for evaluation by the individual. With all the waves that this country has had over the past year and a half, it is obvious what brings the rates down. Early on, complete lockdowns on the one extreme did it. But after later waves, it was found that "mitigation steps" like capacity limits and masking ALSO helped to do the same thing without needing to shut everything down.
Now with the vaccines, it has been found that the capacity limits could be increased, but if you remove simple mitigation such as masking in certain circumstances, then the case rates have gone up again. HOWEVER the kicker here is that we are now going through an even more infectious strain with "everything thrown open", and if they find that calibrating the previous mitigation like simple masking and adding some restrictions, we might find a level where nothing needs to be "completely closed down" and that could be supplemented with some additional types of mitigation (e.g., many restaurants are deploying HEPA filtration for example or even just improving the ventilation in their facilities that can preclude the need for indoor masking).
Regarding "outdoors", I would avoid saying any situation is "safe". I can walk out my door right now and some kid on an electric scooter can run me down in front of my door or I could go to a ballgame and watch the Phillies lose, but get hit by a foul ball and end up in the hospital.
So you have to use common sense when invoking concepts (and terms) about whether "baseball is safe". Based on what has been reported so far, it appears to generally be okay - assuming people are vaccinated when in attendance because the elevated seating/row arrangement appears to reduce the opportunity for direct spread right into someone's face. I know there are all kinds of research that has gone on for years on airflow and particle dispersion (particularly in indoor environments). For example something way before COVID-19 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7185799/ and something more recent related to COVID-19 - https://www.llnl.gov/news/physics-particle-dispersion-may-lend-insight-reducing-airborne-spread-covid-19-virus
Analyzing airflow and particle transmission in outdoors environments adds a ton of extra variables like wind and objects in the immediate area that can divert the flow in a myriad of ways, and makes it that much more complex. Of course one way to see generic airflow patterns outdoors is to use some type of "fogger" machine to introduce a "visible" component that will allow you to watch how and where the (now-"visible" air) moves. However I disagree with this -
There is nothing that indicates that there is "no evidence" that "socializing outside" is somehow "risk free" when you have such a virulent strain occurring. The Delta variant started full force here some time in June and July and we are seeing the impact of it, even with the overlay of a vaccine. Many outdoor events that were going to use a "standing concert configuration", where people are side-by-side, row after row, packed together for an extended time, have been or may be canceled. But for those that are still occurring or recently occurred (including for example, the aborted-halfway-through-due-to-TS-Henri one in Central Park and the upcoming "Made in America" still scheduled here in Philly), will provide more data and context at some point.
There will always be some level of risk (even when sitting at home). The idea however is that if there is some circumstance that requires some extra protection, then it is wise to take heed.
It's akin to telling people that if you hear thunder, then lightning is nearby so get the hell off the golf course as a "mitigation" strategy to a possible lightning strike. And as much as people use the "struck by lightning" quip to establish some type of near-impossibility, it is actually more common than people think. One of my BILs was indirectly hit when he was a kid while INDOORS in the kitchen next to a sink by a window, and that resulted in him being thrown across the kitchen and having his ear drums damaged, ending up with what has become a lifelong impact to his hearing since then.
You argued that there was no proof of transmission.
Multiple studies have shown that with DELTA - emphasis DELTA - some vaccinated individuals have been found to unfortunately be able to harbor enough of that viral variant than previous ones - enough to potentially be shed and infect someone else.
I think that is issue about this particular variant vs previous ones like Alpha, UK, and SA.
The suggestions have been it might be due to how the Delta variant is configured (the actual spikes), where it is apparently able to evade antibody discovery due to the folding of the proteins that make up the spike, which obscures the portion that both a vaccine and the body's immune system, can't get to.
This then allows it to go unchecked through the body for some time before being intercepted by the body's immune response, but even that is hindered because the antibodies and other components need to be able to "latch on" to specific sites on the virus to start to neutralize it.
This is probably my favorite article of late that shows what is going on with Delta - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02039-y
In particular, here is the problem that it poses -
Since it can evade the "defense" systems, it can get in and reproduce itself rapidly (and thus you get that increased viral load) wherever it goes to find the preferred "landing sites" ("ACE2 receptors" ) in the body including the respiratory system (the nose being one area that has those receptors) - then it does this -
With Delta, a good summary is this -
South Korea just published a study about the potential viral load (the viral load issue also noted here and here, in different studies) that Delta has been found to generate compared to previous variants and like some of the other studies, it basically replicates faster and produces larger quantities of itself in a shorter time frame, but then starts to die down after about 10 days in its host.
The shedding from the vaccinated issues were reported by India - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.08.443253v5 and Finland - https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.30.2100636 PRIOR to the Provincetown and Wisconsin outbreaks as a FYI.
In essence, what was found in Wisconsin and Provincetown confirmed what was earlier found in India (the potential source of Delta) and Finland.
NatGeo has a good summary article of what they have been finding - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/evidence-mounts-that-people-with-breakthrough-infections-can-spread-delta-easily
were "designed" to be "research" or "a study" but were more shoe-horned into being one in the midst of ALL reported cases in their respective Counties. They are simply compiled and reported data of what they found out about the outbreaks in those locations in some detail, and adding background info so that readers can get some context for what was found. So a "peer review" is really not something that would be meaningful per se.
I.e., when CDC reports out the data sent to them from all the states and territories, their reporting is not a "study" or "research". It's simply reporting the data, and that data can be broken down into various data sets by location, demographics, etc.
So if I look at the CDC's data and graph of reported cases in say Florida, and see the plot is showing a spike over a 2 week period, I should be safe saying - "Hey that is a spike of cases over the past 2 weeks, so something happened or is happening to cause that", rather than saying - "That line on the plot that is going up over the past 2 weeks means nothing because it hasn't been 'peer reviewed'".
What usually CAN happen in those cases is that someone could do "a study" using what they call "meta-analysis", where they will gather information from numerous topically-related studies and/or topically-related compilations of data, and then analyze that for any trends and/or correlations across data sets.
Your reference to what the UK did, which I assume is this - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/227713/coronavirus-infections-three-times-lower-double/
doesn't really preclude or negate the findings from Wisconsin or Provincetown. In the case for all 3, they established that the vaccinated CAN contract and shed the virus, but obviously at lower rates. That is EXACTLY what the scatter plot from the Wisconsin report showed -
The little graph at the very bottom right-hand corner has the left side of the plot with gray dots (those dots being the relative amount of virus found in unvaccinated cases) and has the right side with the yellow dots (those dots being the relative amount of virus found in the vaccinated cases), and it's obvious that the "vaccinated" have less "dots" than the "unvaccinated". THAT is the benefit of getting vaccinated in the first place. It shows the vaccines are working.
But the problem here is that the vaccinated even have "that much", which is a new finding compared to previous variants.
But to make it clear, no vaccine is 100%, and I think THAT is the real message. It never has been - even with the so-called "childhood" vaccines. For example, there are some new mutated strains of Polio that are out in the wild nowadays and there is an updated vaccine to deal with that going through trials and an approval process.
So there's nothing that the UK's publication found that is somehow contradictory to what was found in Wisconsin and Provincetown.
The point is that compared to previous variants, Delta has produced a significant ("non-zero" ) amount of itself in vaccinated people, and that amount can (but obviously not ALL of the time) be shed and spread.
Enjoy the game!! 
And again, as I noted earlier, the Wisconsin report was not designated "a study". It was their reported data that had background info associated with it, and analysis of what they found with their outbreak.
The "Ct" reference value is used in PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests that amplify the amount of collected sample through a number of "cycles" to get enough of it to be detected by a fluorometric detector. A bunch of years ago I ran these as part of a couple training courses that I was one of the instructors for. I am sure the instruments today are much more sophisticated than those back then but the concept is the same. I believe the sample gets a marker substance that binds to the molecules that would cause the fluorescence that would eventually get detected.
Basically the more cycles needed to get enough of it to detect, the less there is of the targeted material in that sample. Alternately, the lower the number of cycles needed to detect the marker, the more there is in that sample. Variations will inevitably occur with samples based on the collection techniques and how much was actually collected using the swab, as well as the transfer techniques to preserve that sample for eventual marking, and analysis. I.e., sometimes not enough is collected or something happened between collection and transfer or sample prep that results in getting an "inconclusive" result.
University of Wisconsin describes it here (PDF file) - https://www.wvdl.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/WVDL.Info_.PCR_Ct_Values1.pdf
In general, across the hundreds of different manufacturers of test kits/schemes, the number of cycles for amplification is generally cut off at ~35.
I posted about the guidance regarding these tests here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2778994 and will re-post below -
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FDA publishes a reference standard for the current EUA-approved tests - https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/sars-cov-2-reference-panel-comparative-data
which indicates the minimum detected viral load (particles per ml) for each of the approved test systems. A good summary of that is here -
— It can help better triage patients, physician argues
by Robert Hagen, MD January 4, 2021
(snip)
The FDA has given lab manufacturers a wide latitude in determining the cycle threshold cut-off number of their qualitative tests to determine positive versus negative. These tests were approved under Emergency Use Authorization and have not been subjected to typical FDA scrutiny. With this in mind, the state of Florida has required all laboratories doing COVID testing to report the cycle threshold numbers used in qualitative and quantitative tests.
So how does a qualitative RT-PCR test work? Basically, the manufacturer sets the test to turn off the cycling or amplification process when a certain number is hit. For a qualitative test set at 40, after 40 amplification cycles, if any viral material is detected, it turns off and is reported as positive. If none is detected, it would be reported as negative. If the number of amplification cycles was really 15 or 25, it would still run until it gets to 40 and be reported as positive. With these type of tests, it's critical to use an agreed-upon cycle threshold value such as 33 (CDC) or 35 (Dr. Fauci) rather than setting it at a potentially misleading 40 or 45.
Many of the current tests in use are preset by the manufacturer to these higher numbers.The World Health Organization issued a notice last week telling the labs "the cut-off should be manually adjusted to ensure that specimens with high Ct values are not incorrectly assigned SARS-CoV-2 detected due to background noise." Could this be a reason why many people test positive but remain asymptomatic? In that same memo, WHO said all labs should report the cycle threshold value to treating physicians.
A quantitative test is designed to come up with the actual cycle threshold value as the cycling process turns off when detecting any virus. There is not a preset value, so a quantitative measure is obtained. A test that registers a positive result after 12 rounds of amplification for a Ct value of 12 starts out with 10 million times as much viral genetic material as a sample with a Ct value of 35. Above that level, Fauci has said the test is just finding destroyed nucleotides, not virus capable of replicating.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90508
(emphasis mine)
The number of cycles (Ct) to reach a detectable amount with forced replication (amplification), tends to vary (due to sampling type and consistency, and obviously due to sample prep required for the various test systems and their actual detector thresholds). But from a bunch of research things that I looked at, some kind of "positive" result will be detectable within a range from ~13 - 35 cycles.
Supposedly many of the test systems are set to run for up to 40 cycles to catch the most minimal of particles, but generally going that far didn't seem necessary. For example, a simple description of that was this (from October 2020 regarding viral shed) -
(emphasis mine)
So looking at the 5 pages of "approved" tests, the most sensitive vs the least sensitive -
180 | PerkinElmer, Inc. | PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit
600000 | Boston Medical Center | BMC-CReM COVID-19 Test
So the above represents the "lowest detectable" by those systems (as the most sensitive vs the least sensitive for the approved list) but either would be considered a "low" viral load. And within the ranges of each of these tests, there would be a "high" load value that is detected with the minimum amount of amplification cycles, and based on a number of papers, those with "high" loads happen fairly soon in the number of cycle runs, but more often than not, after about 12/13 cycles. And apparently once they hit a "positive", they cease any further runs.
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And with respect to the UK study that you cite, this summarizes what they found - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1
But that is not unexpected and it indicates that the vaccine "is working".
Here is a link to that UK study's summary and what it said in the abstract - https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/90800
Discussion From end May to beginning July 2021 in England, where there has been a highly successful vaccination campaign with high vaccine uptake, infections were increasing exponentially driven by the Delta variant and high infection prevalence among younger, unvaccinated individuals despite double vaccination continuing to effectively reduce transmission. Although slower growth or declining prevalence may be observed during the summer in the northern hemisphere, increased mixing during the autumn in the presence of the Delta variant may lead to renewed growth, even at high levels of vaccination.
(the link went to something that was jammed into one big paragraph so I separated out based on where section headers were)
The above regarding the reduced effectiveness over time is also why you see the U.S. and other countries going with the boosters and again, it confirms what was found from the data from Wisconsin and Provincetown - i.e., "fully vaccinated people" were found to be able to contract the virus over time. And in the case of the UK, they were actually testing everyone - both symptomatic and asymptomatic, whereas in the U.S. they are not really tracking asymptomatic infections (unless someone believes they were exposed and gets tested and that result gets reported). So the number of "positives" in the U.S. is probably much higher, but people who have little or no symptoms are generally not getting tested (and have been dissuaded from getting tested).
And with that, some Thomas Dolby (came out my senior year in college and I still have the 45 in a crate somewhere
) -
Your wife can enjoy a nice day with her friends, just not surrounded by 50,000 potentially-infected idiots.
