It doesn’t blow mine, this year has truly shown me how much, how to say this in a non mean way, umm, ugliness and willful ignorance there are in the world.
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Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion
- Thread starter Parker in NYC
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Tom P.
Well-Known Member
You need to have 75%+ having immunity to reach herd immunity. You don't have to get there exclusively through vaccinations. Remember, there have been almost 31 million confirmed cases in the United States and most experts agree the number is likely much higher than that in reality. When you factor that natural immunity in with vaccines, I feel confident that if we get to 50% or 60% of the population being vaccinated, we are going to be fine. Of course, it would be great to push that to 70% or 80%, but I don't think we will be doomed if we don't reach that number.
We have no idea what the true number is, but it’s somewhere between 60-100%. It also varies by varient.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
This is true. In the beginning when vaccines were scarce there was a lot of overlap between the naturally infected and the vaccinated, especially with healthcare workers who were at high risk for exposure. As time goes on and everyone who wants a vaccine gets one I think the percent of people unvaccinated who have been naturally infected will continue to grow. So even if 30% of the population stays unvaccinated we will probably still get to 80-85% immune due to that factor. It may take a little longer that way than just getting the shot.
Yes but as the thread I shared explained, even 100% vaccinated is not 100% immunity.
If vaccines are 80-90% effective, then 100% vaccination would be 80-90% immune.
If only 50% of the population gets vaccinated, that’s an immunity of 40-45%.
infection acquired immunity is even less effective, especially against new variants. And doesn’t last nearly as long as vaccine immunity.
so assume past infection gives an average of 50% immunity... for illustration.
If the non-vaccinated 50%... if 1/3rd of those people had past infection, giving them 50% immunity on average...
Combined with the vaccinated people, total immunity would only be 48-53%... way short of 75%.
The only way we get to true herd immunity would be if about 75% get vaccinated. That would get us to 60-68% immunity.
Then infection acquired immunity out of the remaining 25% might get us into the high 60s/low 70’s.
Without 75% actually getting vaccinated, you’re unlikely to ever reach true herd immunity. (Using Israel as an example... they have vaccinated lots to get to major case reduction. But they still aren’t at herd immunity).
This is an article tonight in the telegraph newspaper in the uk - it’s behind a paywall so just screenshot some of it - suggest around 75%
Attachments
A vaccine being 95% effective does not mean a failure rate of 5%. That percent is based on an unvaccinated person in a situations risk of Covid. Unless you are getting a nasal injected puff of purified SARS-Cov2 into your nose your risk of getting Covid unvaccinated is no where near 100%, let’s just say it’s 10%. If an unvaccinated persons risk is 10%, then a person vaccinated with a 95% effective vaccine is 0.5%, or 1 in 200.
Which bucket holds the “vaccine unnecessary” crowd, who claim that they don’t need to/ won’t get it because they are generally healthy, think the COVID case numbers are drastically inflated, rationalize that won’t get a bad case anyway, and figure other vaccinated folks can protect themselves if they are worried?
LovePop
Well-Known Member
That's very interesting. UK's cases and deaths has been coming down very nicely such that they have already reached herd immunity. Good to know.
hopemax
Well-Known Member
There was a story last month, in The Washington Post, about the situation in rural Alabama. And I'm sure the same stories are playing out in other areas.
If it's behind a paywall, I hope people can use one of the Internet tricks to bypass it. There are too many good, yet sobering parts that explain what is happening "on the ground," to quote all of them. It is a different world, than the one most of us are experiencing. For instance, none of us have learned about vaccination events via a flyer at the gas station (because that is the most effective method for getting the word out.)
GoofGoof
Premium Member
And the thing to remember is as the number of cases overall comes down the chance of infection drops for everyone as well. So in your example if the unvaccinated person faced a 10% risk of infection before there were vaccines that could be cut to 1% if community spread drops way down so a vaccinated person‘s risk drops to 0.05%.
Chi84
Premium Member
This article explains 95% efficacy of the vaccines.
COVID-19 vaccines: What does 95% efficacy actually mean?
It doesn't mean 5% of vaccinated people get infected.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
Cool visual demonstration of herd immunity...
www.npr.org
How Herd Immunity Works — And What Stands In Its Way
Scientists say the pandemic will end in the U.S. only when we achieve what's called herd immunity. Play with our simulations to see how immunity can stop an outbreak in its tracks.
www.npr.org
No.. it does not mean a failure rate of 5%.
but it does mean a immunity rate of 95%.
For herd immunity, it’s not just whether it will make you sick but whether you can even carry it. Now, getting vaccinated massively reduces your ability to even pass on the virus, but it’s not 100%.
Going back to the link I posted previously... an excellent explanation of the math:
Important to understand the difference between herd immunity and case reduction. If we reach herd immunity, we can get cases down pretty close to 0. Just small numbers of cases from people crossing international borders. Almost 0 community spread. That’s the goal.
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Horizons '83
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
However Pfizer and Moderna are 90% effective against the UK variant. I’m still feeling pretty good about our chances of getting out of this sooner rather than later.
Why not just let people make their own decisions? Want to go and wear a mask when masks are lifted? Great. Want to go and complain about masks before they’re lifted? Lovely. This could have saved us A LOT of pixels.
But then we would all be bored
ParentsOf4
Well-Known Member
I can't imagine Disney changing its mask policy but this CNN article is interesting:
Walking around my Brooklyn neighborhood as the country comes out of a long, Covid-depressed winter, I notice nearly everyone engaging in a curious pandemic ritual: as we stroll past brownstones, we all pull our masks up as soon as we see one another coming.
"Science is real," the yard signs on the block declare, and I suspect my neighbors and I generally agree, as we avoid eye contact over the tops of our KN95s.
Joggers in the park do this mask up, mask down business every few seconds, gasping for air when their faces are free. Restaurants dutifully squirt sanitizer onto diners' hands before seating them inside. Local scolds scan the horizon for the maskless, and meet them with a glare or some choice words. I've been there myself: in the first several months of the pandemic, I found myself irrationally angry at any maskless runner who passed me by.
But now that we better understand the real risks of Covid, and that vaccines are rolling out, might it be time to adjust our social mores?
These mores, of course, are not the same everywhere. In much of the country, people are living life as if there were no pandemic at all, as if more than half a million Americans weren't dead from a contagious respiratory illness. They are dining, shopping, barhopping, going to weddings and baby showers and doing it all inside and maskless.
It's no wonder that our individual responses to Covid change with our politics -- the pandemic has been politicized from the start. Many liberals (myself included) have emphasized that wearing masks isn't just about reducing personal risk -- it's about protecting the whole community, and especially the most vulnerable in it. Wearing a mask is no big deal, and we are happy to do it -- and not reluctant to shame others, in person or online, who refuse
But today we know much more about Covid than we did when mask mandates began. The evidence points to one conclusion: Being outside and away from others -- or even passing by others for a second or two at close distance -- is incredibly unlikely to spread Covid. It's not impossible, but it's so rare that researchers have had a hard time identifying many cases of outdoor transmission.
Indoors is a different story. It's clear that masks work, and that Covid thrives in contained spaces where people are breathing the same air. Masks remain necessary, and should be mandated, in the grocery store, on public transport, on airplanes and in airports, and anywhere else we're inside. And given that Covid rates continue to climb, it's absurd that we're allowing indoor dining, drinking and event-attending, particularly among the unvaccinated.
Crowded outdoor events are also a bad idea without masks. A concert where revelers are pressed together and everyone is screaming and singing for hours is practically inviting infections. Two unvaccinated people sitting inches away from each other and talking at length are taking a risk, even if they are outside.
Dr. Anthony Alberg, the chair of the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health, told the Charleston Post and Courier, for example, that issues like crowd density -- can people stay relatively far apart? -- are key for outdoor events, because "At a concert, people are going to be, depending on the kind of concert, likely to be yelling and shouting and cheering and that sort of thing. The more vocal we get the more likely we are to spread the coronavirus further distances."
All other things being equal, though, outdoors is preferable to indoors.
Maybe we should do what so many liberals demand and follow the science instead of our political beliefs. The directives could be pretty simple: mask up indoors, in a crowd or at close distance. Don't feel you have to if you're outdoors and vaccinated, or outdoors and not getting close to anyone for more than a few seconds.
The pandemic has made us more sedentary than ever, which is bad for our bodies and minds. People should be encouraged to go for a walk, jog or outdoor workout class -- and they should be able to do so in comfort and with the ability to breathe, which means maskless.
We are shifting toward a new normal, and that will be rocky -- our social skills are rusty and our anxieties high. Simply being near strangers pitches many of us into hypervigilance. And we want to demonstrate that we are doing our part to protect our communities.
But we can put a balanced public health perspective at the center of this readjustment, and trust that our fellow citizens know the difference between outside and in.
Right now, we're going about it in exactly the wrong way: Increasingly allowing masklessness inside, while socially enforcing mask-wearing outside. It's the worst of all worlds, especially as infections climb.
For the record, I'm still wearing my mask outside, because that is considerate behavior in my community.
But I'd love to reach a point where our mask-wearing norms more fully aligned with our values, and signaled that we believe in science and care about others -- that we value their mental health and overall well-being, and that we trust their ability to distinguish between high and low risk.
It's time to face the new reality on mask wearing
By Jill FilipovicWalking around my Brooklyn neighborhood as the country comes out of a long, Covid-depressed winter, I notice nearly everyone engaging in a curious pandemic ritual: as we stroll past brownstones, we all pull our masks up as soon as we see one another coming.
"Science is real," the yard signs on the block declare, and I suspect my neighbors and I generally agree, as we avoid eye contact over the tops of our KN95s.
Joggers in the park do this mask up, mask down business every few seconds, gasping for air when their faces are free. Restaurants dutifully squirt sanitizer onto diners' hands before seating them inside. Local scolds scan the horizon for the maskless, and meet them with a glare or some choice words. I've been there myself: in the first several months of the pandemic, I found myself irrationally angry at any maskless runner who passed me by.
But now that we better understand the real risks of Covid, and that vaccines are rolling out, might it be time to adjust our social mores?
These mores, of course, are not the same everywhere. In much of the country, people are living life as if there were no pandemic at all, as if more than half a million Americans weren't dead from a contagious respiratory illness. They are dining, shopping, barhopping, going to weddings and baby showers and doing it all inside and maskless.
It's no wonder that our individual responses to Covid change with our politics -- the pandemic has been politicized from the start. Many liberals (myself included) have emphasized that wearing masks isn't just about reducing personal risk -- it's about protecting the whole community, and especially the most vulnerable in it. Wearing a mask is no big deal, and we are happy to do it -- and not reluctant to shame others, in person or online, who refuse
But today we know much more about Covid than we did when mask mandates began. The evidence points to one conclusion: Being outside and away from others -- or even passing by others for a second or two at close distance -- is incredibly unlikely to spread Covid. It's not impossible, but it's so rare that researchers have had a hard time identifying many cases of outdoor transmission.
Indoors is a different story. It's clear that masks work, and that Covid thrives in contained spaces where people are breathing the same air. Masks remain necessary, and should be mandated, in the grocery store, on public transport, on airplanes and in airports, and anywhere else we're inside. And given that Covid rates continue to climb, it's absurd that we're allowing indoor dining, drinking and event-attending, particularly among the unvaccinated.
Crowded outdoor events are also a bad idea without masks. A concert where revelers are pressed together and everyone is screaming and singing for hours is practically inviting infections. Two unvaccinated people sitting inches away from each other and talking at length are taking a risk, even if they are outside.
Dr. Anthony Alberg, the chair of the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health, told the Charleston Post and Courier, for example, that issues like crowd density -- can people stay relatively far apart? -- are key for outdoor events, because "At a concert, people are going to be, depending on the kind of concert, likely to be yelling and shouting and cheering and that sort of thing. The more vocal we get the more likely we are to spread the coronavirus further distances."
All other things being equal, though, outdoors is preferable to indoors.
Maybe we should do what so many liberals demand and follow the science instead of our political beliefs. The directives could be pretty simple: mask up indoors, in a crowd or at close distance. Don't feel you have to if you're outdoors and vaccinated, or outdoors and not getting close to anyone for more than a few seconds.
The pandemic has made us more sedentary than ever, which is bad for our bodies and minds. People should be encouraged to go for a walk, jog or outdoor workout class -- and they should be able to do so in comfort and with the ability to breathe, which means maskless.
We are shifting toward a new normal, and that will be rocky -- our social skills are rusty and our anxieties high. Simply being near strangers pitches many of us into hypervigilance. And we want to demonstrate that we are doing our part to protect our communities.
But we can put a balanced public health perspective at the center of this readjustment, and trust that our fellow citizens know the difference between outside and in.
Right now, we're going about it in exactly the wrong way: Increasingly allowing masklessness inside, while socially enforcing mask-wearing outside. It's the worst of all worlds, especially as infections climb.
For the record, I'm still wearing my mask outside, because that is considerate behavior in my community.
But I'd love to reach a point where our mask-wearing norms more fully aligned with our values, and signaled that we believe in science and care about others -- that we value their mental health and overall well-being, and that we trust their ability to distinguish between high and low risk.
pixie225
Well-Known Member
I found this very interesting, and very disturbing: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-survivors-diagnosed-neurological-mental-health-conditions/
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
Significant spread has never been traced to any outdoor environment so the part I bolded is speculation. There are plenty of examples of large numbers of people close together for various political events (both demonstrations and rallies) last summer and fall and there wasn't spread traced to either.
Somebody will bring up the soccer match in Italy (I think) where people got infected and brought it back to Spain (I think). However, the spread was never traced to the game. The out of town fans were eating out and going to bars in the host city and those indoor environments are likely where the spread took place. Same thing for spring break 2020 spread.
There has never been any reason to require masks outdoors at WDW except for the logistical complications of trying to enforce it when people go indoors. For that reason, I don't think they will drop the requirement in phases. It will likely stay as is and then get dropped completely at some point.
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