15 vaccinated people attend a house party; the host gets sick with COVID the next day, as do 10 of the 14 guests over the following days. As the author notes:
It’s not clear if our group got sick because of a particularly virulent variant, because the vaccine is wearing off or for some other reason. Without good data, we’ll never know.
It could also be that the vaccine is no match for extended indoor exposure to the Delta (or Gamma?) variant. (Recall the case of the miners in South America.)
The surge in the Southern United States has something to do with lower rates of vaccination--and more mindless hostility to masks and precautions there--but it must surely also have something to do with the fact that it's really hot in those states this time of year, and so people are spending a lot of time indoors. Recall that the 2020 summer surge of COVID cases in the South was followed by a surge elsewhere in the fall and winter. Is this same pattern about to repeat, despite the vaccine? Or will the vaccine blunt it? Will it be a surge only of sickness, rather than hospitalizations and death?
Will the indoor mask mandates continue through the fall and winter? Will we be teaching in masks again?
Right now I'm not optimistic, unless they can roll out a vaccine booster, especially one tailored to the new variants.
