It is quite clear that for a vaccinated population, it isn't a threat. These are facts that simply aren't being reported by the news media. It's unfortunately quite common for talking heads to prefix "the highly infectious Delta variant" to any discussion, and never offer any context or nuance.
Your claim that the media is simply not reporting that vaccinated people are much better protected to the point of it basically not being a threat is not “a fact”.
Most media (except, of course, certain anti vaccine organs, which unfortunately seem to have infected an entire section of the mainstream US media) is reporting the significantly better outcomes for the vaccinated.
That being said, considering how small a percentage of people are vaccinated, it’s still a massive threat we cannot simply ignore.
We need to double down on vaccination even more. Delta only underscores that need that already existed.
> That being said, considering how small a percentage of people are vaccinated, it’s still a massive threat we cannot simply ignore.
It is definitely a massive threat to people who cannot get vaccinated if they want to. In my country, we passed that threshold months ago, so the vast majority of deaths are people who simply chose to not get vaccinated.
Vaccination still continues apace, but nowadays it's mostly people under 25, who are much less likely to be hospitalized. When the vaccinations per day start falling below the max we can physically vaccinate, that'll be the point where everyone who wants a vaccine has gotten one.
Unfortunately for the people who have legitimate reasons to not get vaccinated, there are enough people who distrust vaccines that we'll never be truly free of COVID.
> Your claim that the media is simply not reporting that vaccinated people are much better protected to the point of it basically not being a threat is not “a fact”.
> That being said, considering how small a percentage of people are vaccinated, it’s still a massive threat we cannot simply ignore.
OK, so your issue is that I've critiqued the media for sensationalism.
You think the media is not being sensational, because There Is a Major Threat. That's fine. We can disagree. The facts are still the facts, and people can interpret threats in light of those facts. You've now triple-responded to my comment with essentially the same thing. Maybe you're seeing this through an emotional lens?
(FWIW, I haven't seen any major news outlet report that the latest data for secondary transmission of "the Delta variant" indicates that it is not more contagious in the UK. That's a pretty big change, and it's new information. Even if you can find a single news source that has reported it, it's not widely known.)
> We need to double down on vaccination even more
I'm not sure what "double down" means, but I never said that people should not get vaccinated.
Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated.
So they are all clearly reporting this. And the reality is that there are tens of millions of people who are not vaccinated who are extremely susceptible to the Delta variant.
It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being made by every news outlet and government agency that I have been following.
In the UK there are some communities with relatively low vaccination rates and it's shooting through them like wildfire. It's not a huge number of people in absolute numbers, but pretty rough on those communities.
Hospital admissions are also skewing a lot younger. Fortunately even if they do get hospitalised younger people are still less likely to die.
Still, deaths are happening. My wife is in health care and she hears stories of people swearing blind Coronavirus doesn't exist and that vaccines are a conspiracy, while dying of it.
Besides the headline, here are some other phrases in it pointing out the difference in impact on the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
> the recommendations of health experts, even as the virus’s Delta variant and other mutations fuel outbreaks in areas where vaccination rates are below the national average.
> Public health experts have said that a strong vaccination effort is critical for the United States to outrun the virus
When I listen to or read a media report on Delta “sweeping through country XYZ”, it seems to me that the media is breathlessly trying to generate clicks and views.
The (apparent) reality that Delta appears to have a lower IFR and that hospitalization rate for vaccinated people for Alpha or Delta is extremely low do not seem to get the same level of coverage as context for the click/view-generating reporting.
> The (apparent) reality that Delta appears to have a lower IFR and that hospitalization rate for vaccinated people for Alpha or Delta is extremely low do not seem to get the same level of coverage as context for the click/view-generating reporting.
Let's be clear: the good data so far is coming from a country with a high vaccination rate. I'm not willing to extrapolate from the UK data to countries who haven't vaccinated their vulnerable populations.
To be clearer: it makes no sense that delta would have higher transmissibility, that it would be due to spike protein mutatations and that its mechanism would be higher ACE2 binding and higher viral load (and faster time to symptoms) and yet it would be less virulent/deadly. Those statements are in conflict, so if all the preceeding facts are correct then its most likely that the low IFR is due to vaccination and natural immunity from last year.
> By far, the most widely studied trade-off involves transmission and virulence (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996; Alizon et al. 2009). Transmission and virulence are linked by within-host replication: increasing parasite abundance increases the likelihood of transmission, but also increases the likelihood of host death; mathematically, this assumption can be formalized by making transmission rate β an increasing function of parasite-induced mortality rate ν. Nearly all of the literature we summarize below assumes this trade-off.
The trade-off hypothesis should apply in this case specifically because the proposed mechanism is via improved spike binding to ACE2 and that it has been claimed that increased viral loads have been observed.
This wouldn't be a worry for anyone vaccinated, of course, but for still immunologically naive people (antivaxxers in the first world, and those without access to vaccination elsewhere) then Delta should be of greater concern.
> Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated.
Maybe they do this five paragraphs down. I almost never see this mentioned within the same paragraph as the "highly infectious" claim, which is always at the very top of the story.
> It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being made by every news outlet and government agency that I have been following.
Two things:
1) I am not "insisting"...I'm providing data. Nobody should believe me blindly. I am nobody.
2) If you already know these facts, great! Most people don't.
ok, three things:
3) I'm not sure why you're so prickly about the fact that I'm sharing factual information.
Bottom-line: If you’re 2x vaccinated, hospitalization is highly unlikely for Alpha and Delta variants.
See this report, page 44 bottom: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...