Let’s Dance

We’re past the hammer and now we’re well into the dance. And this is going to be one long, exhausting dance. Like everyone I’ve been following Israel and trying to figure out what Delta is actually doing all while being super frustrated with the messaging coming out of the CDC. And then the thing that I’d heard about happening happened to me. So here’s the story. I went to a family gathering with 24 people who were all vaccinated. We got together at a restaurant with generous airflow and super high ceilings. At the time we did this we were basically following CDC guidelines for a small get together. However, one person felt a little sick the next day, had the wherewithal to immediately get tested for Covid and it came back positive.  Since then 4 more people in our group have tested positive and were waiting for the results of others. I tested negative.

Even if no one else comes back positive, that’s 16.67% of our party and that doesn’t seem like the “rare occurrence” we’re hearing from the CDC and other experts. So I get it when I hear so many people saying they don’t know what to trust and I agree that messaging from the CDC has been dangerously flawed. So this has to be handled better because this dance is going to last for years and it’s going to test everyone’s mental health and ability to keep things straight.

The CDC and the Biden administration obviously decided that loosening restrictions with things like gatherings and masks would be an incentive to get the vaccine for those who weren’t already willing to get it. They said that much back in May. Hey, you can take off your mask and meet up with people. 4th of July, right?  Well guess what, you know who were already not wearing masks and were fine just meeting with people? The same people who are never gonna get vaccinated that’s who. 

Yea sure, they didn’t know for sure what Delta could do at that time.  Research shows there’s a wider variety to vaccine hesitancy than just being a Trump supporter and many of those types might be reached. Great, but their goal should be to inform those of us who want to know what’s going on so we can make decisions. There’s too much disinformation out there to play any games whatever the intention. So if they thought Delta might be a problem then tell us there might be a problem. And stop saying these breakthrough cases are rare, I heard someone say that again today.

The reality seems to be that Delta is a really different Covid. If my experience, which is the same we saw in Israel and Provincetown, is normal then a good amount of vaccinated people will get it and mostly not get too sick. But they’ll spread it and that will drastically increase the chances that eventually a new mutation will arise that makes the current vaccines ineffective. Then we’re really into it. Because we’re not going to lock down again unless World War Z happens.  And if you think people are crazy now, well we haven’t seen anything yet. What’s your take on a second brand new vaccine, not just a booster, being accepted? Will more people take it or less?

Today Fauci said there’s “ample chance” that a new variant can arise that will bypass the vaccines. I looked up “ample” because I assume he chooses his words carefully and I wanted to be sure I knew what he meant to say.  I think in this context you could say he meant that there’s a good chance. Yea, a good chance. Only 14% of the world’s population is fully vaccinated now and Delta is the worldwide dominant strain, so I would say there’s a big enough petri dish to say that yea there’s probably a good chance. 

We’re never going to force people to be vaccinated. I know some of us want to but it’ll never happen in the West. They’ll either come to it or not so we need the most honest assessments we can get from the CDC and we also need to try to keep our heads together on this. There’s no comparing the games they are playing to the massive amount of disinformation out there. And if they lose our trust it will get way harder to know what is going on in time to make sensible decisions.   

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