Informative Twitter thread from a physician at the University of California, San Francisco; an excerpt:
If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially if you’re in a highly vaxxed region....
[U]nvaxxed may well do OK for a while, probably through summer [due to the large number of vaccinated people]. But fall/winter now scares me a lot, much more than it did 2 weeks ago....
[F]or Delta, Pfizer dose 1 is only ~33% protective. gov.uk/government/new This creates 2 problems: 1) People stay vulnerable until after shot 2 (& many let guard down earlier); 2) Loss in efficacy for dose 1 points to some degree of vaccine/immune escape. And – though this isn’t proven – I’d worry that a fully vaccinated elder, or someone whose immunity stems from an infection >12 mths ago, won’t be sufficiently protected over time, if immunity falls below a threshold needed to thwart Delta....
For a vaccinated person, watch the Delta % in your region (currently ~6% in the U.S. & rising) & Covid cases in your community. cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspecti If you’re seeing more cases & more Delta, I’d restore some precautions (esp. if you're high risk) – at least indoor mask wearing (if you’ve stopped; BTW, I haven’t) in places w/ unvaxxed/unmasked folks.
I’ll now bet we’ll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta’s nastiness, & “back to normal” behavior....
For me, Delta adds to my resolve to keep mask on indoors when unvaxxed/unmasked people may be around. And I'm getting psychologically prepped for some restrictions to return in fall (tho highly vaxxed places like SF will likely do fine). Nobody wants that, but the virus doesn’t care what we want. For unvaxxed, I wish you well but my sympathy is flagging. Your bad choice is looking worse.
(Thanks to Mike Otsuka for the pointer.)
