fyp, imo

You can't say the US opened up too soon when the vaccination rate is ~50%, the vaccination has been available to the majority of the population for months, and the numbers indicate that the vaccination reduces serious symptoms. If the general population waits for the vaccination rates to be reasonable, then it will be a long time before the country should open up.

The fact that you are trying to prove your point without ratios or comparisons to the last year is the reason for the insult. Or the correlation to vaccinated people or ratios of those who needed ventilators vs hospitalizations vs positive cases.

I could very well be wrong, but your 5k number has absolutely no context.

Everyone should vocally oppose any reintroduction of mask mandates or lockdowns. The vaccine is the cure, not NPIs. If you don’t want it that’s on you. No reason to punish everyone who got it. IMO.

Actually, the "reason" for your insult is your demeanor and the way you react when people say something with which you disagree.

I don't have to launch into a long-winded statistical exposition to "prove my point," because that point is obvious: the Delta variant has increased the danger to even vaccinated people by a non-trivial amount.

But y'know what? You're right. About everything. As you always have been, including before you were born. Your opinions carry the weight of iron and have the luster of gold. The truth you speak rings out across the land, like the tolling of a great bell.

Feel better now? Now go call someone else an a******. You'll be lotsa fun at parties.

The Delta variant arose because our (global) response to the original version was poor. Mass vaccination is a race against time. We lost.

In an alternate scenario, where we had both the infrastructure and the will (again, globally) to defeat the original Covid-19 virus, the Delta variant would never have arisen, or at least would not have widely propagated.

So the answer to your question is that the next variants are NOT coming if we eradicate or at least, substantially control the existing ones. If we fail to do that, yes, we'll need to shut down again--over and over, until we get everyone's stupid asses vaccinated.

I must add, parenthetically, that we're extremely fortunate that the existing vaccines deal well with the Delta and other existing variants. We might not be so lucky in the future. That's another reason to take drastic measures to stop the spread of the Delta variant now (including, God forfend, shutting down all the crap tables)--it might mutate to something we have no defenses against.

I have said multiple times I could be, and often am, wrong.

Put some context into your numbers. This whole thing started around why people shouldn't be in Vegas even if they are vaccinated. To the people that make that claim I'd like to hear a good argument about the likelihood of a vaccinated person contracting the virus and getting sick/hospitalized/ICU'd because of it. Especially compared to a non-vaccinated person. There is at least a years worth of data.

Again, as a vaccinated person, I think the risk is minimal (especially with a mask and distancing) even against the variants. If you disagree, then I'd like to hear it. If you are saying I should care about the non-vaccinated people, then they shouldn't be in such situations or get themselves vaccinated.

It's pretty much about what you consider minimal. The risk to the fully vaccinated (let's define this as risk of hospitalization, including death) was X to the fully vaccinated. Whatever X may have been, I think we can agree that it was not zero. The CDC, on July 6, reported 5,186 cases of fully vaccinated people needing to be hospitalized.

Now, with the arrival of the Delta variant, you have to more than triple X. Maybe still tolerable? Depends on your POV. Also on your risk of dying should you contract Delta-covid, and the impact that hospitalization, when you do survive, would have on your life.

My personal view was that I was mildly apprehensive about being in crowds or gatherings even after getting fully vaccinated, and I'm more than mildly apprehensive now. As far as visiting Vegas is concerned, well, it's a shitty, overpriced destination right now. And certainly, whatever X is, it's greater when you mix with tens of thousands of people than if you stay at home. I hope that by October (WSOP), things will be different.

Am I missing something or is the country (the US) open now and has been open for months? I think people are arguing that we should be careful so that the numbers of those getting covid, being hospitalized with it, and dying from it rise too high or else we will need to shut down again. I doubt a shutdown will be linked to a certain vaccination percentage and will likely be triggered by numbers related to positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Getting a vaccine, wearing a mask, and maintaining social distance whenever possible all help and are the bare minimum people can do to help.

Also, places starting to enforce mask requirements again and social distancing again is not shutting down. I would rather be able to go to any business I wanted to and have to wear a mask and social distance than not have certain businesses open at all. What is infuriating is that people are just "done" with covid and won't get a simple vaccine and won't wear a simple mask and won't simply keep some extra space between themselves and others to decrease the overall numbers for everyone's sake.

Ask not how big of an *sshole you can be - ask what you can do for your country and your world...wear a mask and get a shot!

That 5,189 figure is a cumulative number - not a daily number, just to be clear. But I can read these data reports too. 79% of those are over the age of 65. But I thought you said it could be 11,000? Or is it 3x as many?

Or are we really just making it up as we go along here.

Again - at ~5,000 cumulative cases out of 162,000,000 your chances of getting infected to the point of needing to be hospitalized would be roughly .003%. There are roughly 450,000 doses going out daily still so even that % will be going down.

Look its clear that being out in public makes you uncomfortable right now. And thats fine, to each his own, everyone has to make their own decisions right now. If these numbers make someone uncomfortable then they probably should stay at home.

But then I would ask this - don't project your fears on the rest of us by telling people how dangerous it is that we want to go into a casino. We can all read the data tables too.

Madrobin has been trolling this thread pretty hard

What I really don't get is all the people calling anti-science folks that do not want to get the vaccine or dispute the cost benefit analysis of lockdowns.

For many people (young-ish and health-ish) this virus presents very little risk, why would you risk all the possible short, medium and long term effects from the vaccine? you may argue both ways but many people are making the choice with a lot of data at hand. Respect people choices and move on.

Regarding lockdowns, you may argue whether they have been effective to lower covid mortality, I think their effect on that front has been marginal. The elephant in the room though is all the adverse effects they have for other physical health aspects, mental health and the economy. When are we going to discuss fully the harms of lockdowns?

By opening up too soon, I don't mean the opening of businesses. I mean people stopping the wearing of masks and other precautions.

I wonder how long it will be before people wearing masks are treated like pariahs by the majority of the public.

I stopped off at a convenience store after work and I wore a mask going in, inside the store, and leaving. When walking out, I was scowled at by someone not wearing a mask.

Doc,

I personally don't care if you wear a mask or not. It seems prudent even in flu season outside of a pandemic.

However your edit seems very personal and biased.

It is just a reaction to all the posts saying how rare it is for a vaccinated person getting covid. That is true, but I bet someone who catches covid after getting vaccinated doesn't give a **** about that fact.

I haven't had it and I personally know only one person who had it although she got it before she was vaccinated, I believe.

Maybe you don't realize how completely unoriginal it is to call someone who has the temerity to disagree with you on an internet forum a "troll."

Perhaps you also don't realize how unoriginal it is (and has been) to whine and moan about pandemic safety measures and then self-justify that whining and moaning by claiming they're ineffective.

"You think"---well, what you think, as you've so ably illustrated, means less than nothing. Far less, in fact.

Have a nice day, to the extent that you are able to.

You didn't read my post very carefully. I'm not surprised.

The 11,000 number was a rough projection about how many fully vaccinated people the Delta variant might make seriously ill--based on the CDC numbers re its increased transmissibility. Of course I don't know the future. Neither do you. I'm not making up anything, though, despite your snide remark. (How internet of you.)

Without trying to pick apart these numbers, which are simply estimates, why not focus on the basic concept here: that the Delta variant could make behavior that was previously safe (or safe enough) unsafe. Why is that so hard a concept for you to understand?

I'm not "projecting my fears" on anyone. If you need to feed your casino jones so badly, it may in fact be optimal for your health to Vegas yourself immediately, regardless of risk. Have at it.

Plus over 30 million with natural immunity.

If any at all. CA vs FL, for example.

Never.

That's sort of like discussing the intense psychological harm done to little Muffy during the Blitz when we all hid in the bomb shelter. Yes, we should have left her back in the flat so she wouldn't have been traumatized. If she was killed by a bomb, well, at least she wouldn't have had to suffer that trauma.

I know that the lockdowns were terrible terrible terrible terrible burdens for many people. But so were hospitalizations and dying. And those states that imposed early and strict lockdowns suffered MUCH lower infection and mortality rates than the states that acted like nothing was wrong and reopened too soon--or never shut down at all.

To claim otherwise is to be an ignorant fool. (Like the people who run those dead-red moron states.)

Was it Tucker Carlson's ass you pulled that figure out of?

Science flash: there is no such thing as "natural immunity" to a pathogen that hasn't existed until recently. Some people have stronger immune systems than others, but no one has total immunity to anything.

I believe he means natural immunity by being infected with Covid and recovering thus having antibodies.

There are some important unknowns with that.
- How long does protective immunity from a SARS-CoV2 infection last?
- How effective is it against common variant strains, like the delta and UK variants?
- How effective is protective immunity arising from an asymptomatic or very mildly symptomatic infection? Available evidence is that humoral and cellular immunity markers are much lower compared with infections requiring hospitalization.
- How effective is it in people of varying ages and health vulnerabilities?

There's strong evidence now from multiple published studies that those previously infected with the virus develop much stronger humoral and cellular protective immunity with one dose of an mRNA vaccine. The bottom line is that only a fraction of those previously infected with the virus but never vaccinated carry protective immunity today, and just how low a fraction is currently unknown.

Either you're missing something or I am. ITT we have people talking about not going out in public (to a poker room or LV). Yes the US is "open", but if vaccinated people aren't going out because the delta variant or bad numbers of unvaccinated people, then it's only open in the sense that you are allowed to visit certain places.

And yes, that is what people are arguing. My argument is that the hospitalization/ICU/ventilator numbers are bad for the unvaccinated and not so much for people that have been vaccinated. Being as multiple vaccinations have been available to US citizens for a while, then I'm not sure we need to worry about spreading the virus to the unvaccinated.

"Antibodies" is not equal to "immunity." Antibodies provide greater resistance to infection by a specific pathogen. Not immunity. A lesser chance of infection.

Also, having been vaccinated prepares one's immune system against the virus in the same way that having been infected and recovered does. So functionally, "formerly sick but recovered" and "vaccinated" are the same. They each have a continuing low but real risk of being infected with the Delta variant.

I’m so sick of this ****. If 50% of the us is vaccinated charge me double and require proof of vaccine to enter a casino. I’d pay money to know I’m not around anti-vaxxers and can confidently relax and enjoy myself.


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Your second paragraph really seems to be a **** you to the unvaccinated.