I talked my wife into not attending the Minnesota State Fair

[BumRushDaShow]

52. "study proves that vaccinated people can infect others with Covid. It does not do that"

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., -

The Provincetown outbreak has all the hallmarks of a superspreader event, with infected people reporting to public health officials that they gathered in “densely packed indoor and outdoor events that included bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes,” according to Friday’s CDC report. The full outbreak, which began over the July Fourth holiday weekend, is close to 900 cases, but the analysis included only a subset of 469 cases. About three-quarters of infections occurred in people who were fully vaccinated, and that group had received Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a research institute in Cambridge, Mass., that was involved in the genetic analysis of the outbreak, highlighted that this was not a single event.

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 -

Viral Load in Breakthrough Cases
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 -

It isn't virtuous to stay isolated if in fact it is safe to get outside and socialize. There is accumulating evidence that it is, and virtually no evidence that it isn't.

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.