Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[oceanbreeze77]

Very good thread

 

[wdwmagic]

Disney announces the return of Disney Cruise Line voyages from Florida in early August with masks and testing

The Disney Dream sets sail August 9 2021.

www.wdwmagic.com

 

[DisneyCane]

Very good thread

Essentialy it drives home the point that I've been making that if you are fully vaccinated you don't really have to be concerned about COVID, regardless of variant.

The other point that thread touches on is something I was going to formulate a post about. The current spike is highly unlikely to be a long term period of a crazy amount of cases where almost every unvaccinated person gets infected. He posted the curve from India which had a quick ramp up, a peak and then just as quickly the cases came back down.

The fact is that every single person doesn't end up coming into contact with an infected and contagious person, even indirect contact. Some percentage of people will just get lucky and never be in a transmission situation. Even if there was no vaccine and no mitigation this would be true. There is also some percentage of people who get exposed but are able to fight the infection without prior exposure or vaccination.

India had a spike for around 2 1/2 months. I would expect something similar in the US although having half of the population fully vaccinated will have some effect on the outbreak. I don't know if it will lower the duration or the peak or just "flatten the curve" and have a lower peak but longer duration but the level of vaccination will do something to make it different than the India curve.

Bottom line is that "the science" says if you want to have an extremely low risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, get vaccinated and once you are fully vaccinated you can live like it's 2019.

 

[DisneyCane]

Some potentially good news on the vaccine pace:

Encouragingly, Zients said the five states that have experienced the most significant rise in infections — Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, Nevada and Missouri — all also saw vaccination rates beat the national average for a second week in a row. But because immunity takes two weeks to develop, and the Delta variant spreads so rapidly, the benefits of the increased uptake of vaccinations may not be evident right away.

Florida, Missouri and Texas now account for 40% of new coronavirus cases in U.S.

Just three states are now driving the pandemic in the United States, as the divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated regions of the country becomes ever more stark, as the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads.

www.yahoo.com

I posted last week that I anecdotally saw more people in the post-vaccination waiting area of several stores with pharmacies in south Florida than I had noticed previously.

In this case, the media focus on "the numbers" is a good thing but they really need to keep driving home the percentage of "the numbers" that are unvaccinated vs. vaccinated.

It still won't make a difference to the 20% or so hard core anti-vax people but it will hopefully push those on the fence to get vaccinated or the ones who would eventually do it to do it sooner.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Essentialy it drives home the point that I've been making that if you are fully vaccinated you don't really have to be concerned about COVID, regardless of variant.

The other point that thread touches on is something I was going to formulate a post about. The current spike is highly unlikely to be a long term period of a crazy amount of cases where almost every unvaccinated person gets infected. He posted the curve from India which had a quick ramp up, a peak and then just as quickly the cases came back down.

The fact is that every single person doesn't end up coming into contact with an infected and contagious person, even indirect contact. Some percentage of people will just get lucky and never be in a transmission situation. Even if there was no vaccine and no mitigation this would be true. There is also some percentage of people who get exposed but are able to fight the infection without prior exposure or vaccination.

India had a spike for around 2 1/2 months. I would expect something similar in the US although having half of the population fully vaccinated will have some effect on the outbreak. I don't know if it will lower the duration or the peak or just "flatten the curve" and have a lower peak but longer duration but the level of vaccination will do something to make it different than the India curve.

Bottom line is that "the science" says if you want to have an extremely low risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, get vaccinated and once you are fully vaccinated you can live like it's 2019.

You left out what he said about not needing to constantly stress test the vaccines and wearing masks occasionally.

 

[DisneyCane]

You left out what he said about not needing to constantly stress test the vaccines and wearing masks occasionally.

Those were somewhat conservative statements he made, almost as an aside, which somewhat contradict the points he made earlier. If the vaccines are incredibly effective, why not stress test them? His mask comment was more of a "can't hurt so why not" kind of statement more than building a case to do so.

I got vaccinated (literally within minutes of having the opportunity) so that I could go back to normal. I'm not going to delay returning to normal because of people who won't get vaccinated. If Disney re-institutes masks and/or other measures, I will likely request a refund for the remaining time on my annual pass. I'm not interested in playing pandemic anymore when I, and everybody eligible in my family is fully vaccinated.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Maybe @Heppenheimer can answer this...

Where the virus is concerned, does the vaccine not being 100% effective against preventing infection mean that we could accidentally "teach" it how to get around them if enough vaccinated and/or previously infected people become infected/re-infected?

I mean, it's not like the vaccine completely removes vaccinated people from the pool of possibly being infected...it's like each vaccinated person still has a foot in there up to the ankle.

 

[mmascari]

Those were somewhat conservative statements he made, almost as an aside, which somewhat contradict the points he made earlier. If the vaccines are incredibly effective, why not stress test them? His mask comment was more of a "can't hurt so why not" kind of statement more than building a case to do so.

These are the 4 tweets in the thread.



It's a numbers game, and you only need to lose once.

So, if you're out and about, say in a Disney park, and community spread is low, maybe you have 10 exposure events that would have infected an unvaccinated person (more overall exposure events that neither person got). If the vaccine reduces the risk by 95%, that's 0.5 exposure that may have gotten you. With Delta, maybe it's 1 exposure instead of 0.5, just under 90% instead of 95% vs an unvaccinated person.

If instead, community spread is high, or rampant, instead of 10 exposure events that would have infected an unvaccinated person, maybe there are a 100 or 1,000. Now your 90% reduction is 10 or 100 exposures that may slip through the vaccine. That's still way less than the unvaccinated person. They were playing flip a coin 100 or 1,000 times vs the vaccinated 10 or 100. On top of that, if the unvaccinated person loses the coin flip, they move on to a more risky coin flip for hospital time and death. For the vaccinated person, the second game has much less risk too, way way less in fact.

I got vaccinated (literally within minutes of having the opportunity) so that I could go back to normal. I'm not going to delay returning to normal because of people who won't get vaccinated. If Disney re-institutes masks and/or other measures, I will likely request a refund for the remaining time on my annual pass. I'm not interested in playing pandemic anymore when I, and everybody eligible in my family is fully vaccinated.

I doubt Disney brings back any mitigations. They seem to be all in on the pandemic is over.

FL was doing well headed towards low spread but never quite got there. At low, that umbrella is great, you're not really getting wet. But, in the last week, FL seems to have reversed direction and gone from "almost low" to Substantial to High and looks to be headed to whatever dumpster fire level is beyond High.

Unfortunately, those people who won't get vaccinated are the environment you're exposed to. What they do has a direct effect on the environment you're wandering around in. If they're building a dumpster fire, that's what you're stuck with.

It's definitely your choice on the vaccinated risk level to live with. But, it's clear to remember it's not an absolute, but a relative protection. That umbrella isn't going to be great when the rain changes to a hurricane. It'll be better than the guy without one, but that's hardly inspiring once it is that bad. The hospital and death risk is way lower, so even in dumpster fire community spread, your increased risk is probably just to the other discomforts.

 

[Touchdown]

For the umpteenth time, the percent reduction is not your chance of getting covid during an exposure. That percent is the percent reduction of your chance of getting Covid compared to an unvaccinated individual. No exposure in the normal world has 100% chance of getting you infected. This is probably an overestimate but let’s say a normal person has a 20% chance of being infected. If that’s the case and there is a 90% reduction your chance is 2% and if it drops to 80% with delta (which again is much more of a reduction then what the data shows now) it drops to 4%. Still very small risks, and the chance of hospitalizations and deaths in vaccinated individuals remains infinitesimal.

 

[DisneyCane]

These are the 4 tweets in the thread.



It's a numbers game, and you only need to lose once.

So, if you're out and about, say in a Disney park, and community spread is low, maybe you have 10 exposure events that would have infected an unvaccinated person (more overall exposure events that neither person got). If the vaccine reduces the risk by 95%, that's 0.5 exposure that may have gotten you. With Delta, maybe it's 1 exposure instead of 0.5, just under 90% instead of 95% vs an unvaccinated person.

If instead, community spread is high, or rampant, instead of 10 exposure events that would have infected an unvaccinated person, maybe there are a 100 or 1,000. Now your 90% reduction is 10 or 100 exposures that may slip through the vaccine. That's still way less than the unvaccinated person. They were playing flip a coin 100 or 1,000 times vs the vaccinated 10 or 100. On top of that, if the unvaccinated person loses the coin flip, they move on to a more risky coin flip for hospital time and death. For the vaccinated person, the second game has much less risk too, way way less in fact.


I doubt Disney brings back any mitigations. They seem to be all in on the pandemic is over.

FL was doing well headed towards low spread but never quite got there. At low, that umbrella is great, you're not really getting wet. But, in the last week, FL seems to have reversed direction and gone from "almost low" to Substantial to High and looks to be headed to whatever dumpster fire level is beyond High.

Unfortunately, those people who won't get vaccinated are the environment you're exposed to. What they do has a direct effect on the environment you're wandering around in. If they're building a dumpster fire, that's what you're stuck with.

It's definitely your choice on the vaccinated risk level to live with. But, it's clear to remember it's not an absolute, but a relative protection. That umbrella isn't going to be great when the rain changes to a hurricane. It'll be better than the guy without one, but that's hardly inspiring once it is that bad. The hospital and death risk is way lower, so even in dumpster fire community spread, your increased risk is probably just to the other discomforts.

My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that the independent events with respect to vaccine effectiveness are the vaccinated people, not the exposures.

Basically, if a vaccine is 90% effective at preventing infection, that doesn't mean it improves my immune system by 90%, it means that there is a 90% chance that my immune system will learn to prevent infection.

If the vaccine worked on me to the point where I am immune from infection, I will not be infected no matter how many times I am exposed. If it was Russian roulette, each person pulls the trigger once.

Like I said, that is my understanding so an expert on the topic should correct me if I'm wrong.

Either way, my risk based on my age and health was very low with respect to serious illness or death before I was vaccinated. Now that I'm vaccinated, the risk is irrelevant to me.

 

[mmascari]

For the umpteenth time, the percent reduction is not your chance of getting covid during an exposure. That percent is the percent reduction of your chance of getting Covid compared to an unvaccinated individual. No exposure in the normal world has 100% chance of getting you infected. This is probably an overestimate but let’s say a normal person has a 20% chance of being infected. If that’s the case and there is a 90% reduction your chance is 2% and if it drops to 80% with delta (which again is much more of a reduction then what the data shows now) it drops to 4%. Still very small risks, and the chance of hospitalizations and deaths in vaccinated individuals remains infinitesimal.

Is that not what I said?

Using these numbers (for consistency), meaning if someone out in the wild has 100 exposures. Then 20%, 20 of them may have infected them, not the 100, not even saying 20 would have, but were possible to, not the full 100. Vaccinate them, and it's reduced even further, just 4 chances.

They point is, they're all "reductions based on overall chances" not absolute. So, when you increase the number of chances, you increase the absolute numbers.

The 100 starting point is the unknown. It represents community spread. Maybe 100 is low, maybe it's high as an absolute, but it doesn't matter. If you increase the 100 to 1000, the absolute numbers after the reductions are larger. Meaning an individual wandering the world in an area of high transmission is facing more chances every day than an individual wandering the world in an area of low transmission.

 

[danlb_2000]

Maybe @Heppenheimer can answer this...

Where the virus is concerned, does the vaccine not being 100% effective against preventing infection mean that we could accidentally "teach" it how to get around them if enough vaccinated and/or previously infected people become infected/re-infected?

I mean, it's not like the vaccine completely removes vaccinated people from the pool of possibly being infected...it's like each vaccinated person still has a foot in there up to the ankle.

I don't if the vaccines can "teach" the virus to be more resistant, but resistance will build due to natural selection. As the virus mutates, the mutations that are less impacted by the vaccines are the ones that are logically going to survive longer and thus spread more. The question is, can the virus mutate far enough to significantly avoid the vaccine, but still be a viable virus.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

I don't if the vaccines can "teach" the virus to be more resistant, but resistance will build due to natural selection. As the virus mutates, the mutations that are less impacted by the vaccines are the ones that are logically going to survive longer and thus spread more. The question is, can the virus mutate far enough to significantly avoid the vaccine, but still be a viable virus.

Absolutely...but I feel like we're vaccinated, so that greatly lessens our chance of being infected. But now all the (most if not all, depending on where you live) mitigations are gone, too, which re-added a bunch of opportunities for infection. And I'm seeing with my own eyes people behaving as if vaccination is a force field..."stress testing" the vaccines, as it were.

 

[Touchdown]

Is that not what I said?

Using these numbers (for consistency), meaning if someone out in the wild has 100 exposures. Then 20%, 20 of them may have infected them, not the 100, not even saying 20 would have, but were possible to, not the full 100. Vaccinate them, and it's reduced even further, just 4 chances.

They point is, they're all "reductions based on overall chances" not absolute. So, when you increase the number of chances, you increase the absolute numbers.

The 100 starting point is the unknown. It represents community spread. Maybe 100 is low, maybe it's high as an absolute, but it doesn't matter. If you increase the 100 to 1000, the absolute numbers after the reductions are larger. Meaning an individual wandering the world in an area of high transmission is facing more chances every day than an individual wandering the world in an area of low transmission.

You are assuming each exposure has a 100% of infecting a non vaccinated person. That is not true, 20% is an overestimate but easy for math. An unvaccinated person would have a 98% risk of getting Covid, a vaccinated individual would have 33% risk. As you can see ridiculous number, the US would be exploding with that number. But you can see the massive decrease vaccines can offer.

 

[mmascari]

My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that the independent events with respect to vaccine effectiveness are the vaccinated people, not the exposures.

Basically, if a vaccine is 90% effective at preventing infection, that doesn't mean it improves my immune system by 90%, it means that there is a 90% chance that my immune system will learn to prevent infection.

If the vaccine worked on me to the point where I am immune from infection, I will not be infected no matter how many times I am exposed. If it was Russian roulette, each person pulls the trigger once.

Like I said, that is my understanding so an expert on the topic should correct me if I'm wrong.

That's a good question, and I don't know either. Sitting here staring at the screen wondering which data would tell is this, or how it might look different based on the different mechanisms and statistics.

From the studies where the 90% comes from what it means is: A vaccinated person in the same population as an unvaccinated person doing similar behaviors and community exposure is 90% less likely to be infected than an unvaccinated person.

As you point out, this is a statistics problem not an individual event.

One of the reasons it's hard to use those numbers from different studies to compare different vaccines. A study from July 2020, January 2021, and June 2021 are comparing vaccine effectiveness with completely different behaviors, community exposure, and variants. Something that was great in July 2020 may be very different in the conditions in June 2021. It's why we keep seeing updated reports on the effectiveness of each vaccine with the different variants. To compare two vaccines, we need that number from the same time period and community instead of from completely different ones.

I'm trying to think how the numbers on protection would change over time depending of if it's the "vaccinated people" or the "exposure event" that is the larger driver. My gut is saying breakthroughs would be higher if it was "vaccinated people" since a larger absolute number of them would be walking around thinking they have protection when they don't. But, my gut is a poor scientific metric, not to be trusted on it's own.

Either way, my risk based on my age and health was very low with respect to serious illness or death before I was vaccinated. Now that I'm vaccinated, the risk is irrelevant to me.

That's fair. The death risk after vaccination is clearly many orders of magnitude less risk.

I still wouldn't want to be in an area of high spread, I dislike the other impacts too. I mean not as much as I dislike death, but still.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

I still wouldn't want to be in an area of high spread, I dislike the other impacts too. I mean not as much as I dislike death, but still.

Yeah...MA is low community spread, but rising very quickly. We've got a high vaccination rate (thankfully), but this is why I'm posing the questions I am. I haven't seen a single soul (aside from me and my 10-year-old) still masking up and it's very concerning.

 

[mmascari]

Is that not what I said?

Using these numbers (for consistency), meaning if someone out in the wild has 100 exposures. Then 20%, 20 of them may have infected them, not the 100, not even saying 20 would have, but were possible to, not the full 100. Vaccinate them, and it's reduced even further, just 4 chances.

They point is, they're all "reductions based on overall chances" not absolute. So, when you increase the number of chances, you increase the absolute numbers.

The 100 starting point is the unknown. It represents community spread. Maybe 100 is low, maybe it's high as an absolute, but it doesn't matter. If you increase the 100 to 1000, the absolute numbers after the reductions are larger. Meaning an individual wandering the world in an area of high transmission is facing more chances every day than an individual wandering the world in an area of low transmission.

You are assuming each exposure has a 100% of infecting a non vaccinated person. That is not true, 20% is an overestimate but easy for math. An unvaccinated person would have a 98% risk of getting Covid, a vaccinated individual would have 33% risk. As you can see ridiculous number, the US would be exploding with that number. But you can see the massive decrease vaccines can offer.

I explicitly did not assume assuming each exposure has a 100% of infecting a non vaccinated person. They have some number of exposures that's larger. It doesn't matter what that number is. The 100 I used was the subset of that larger number that were actually likely to infect them. If we're using 20%, then the start would have been 500. If we use 2% of exposures are likely to infect, that start would be 5,000 exposures with 2% likely to infect is 100. If we use 0.02% of exposures are likely infect an unvaccinated person, to get to 100 likely infections they would need 500,000 exposures.

But, it doesn't matter in this context what the starting number is. Whatever it is, that number is larger in an area with high spread vs an area with low spread. So, if you start with a larger number and then reduce it by the chance of infection for an unvaccinated person, and then reduce it again for the chance of infection of a vaccinated individual the absolute number you end up with is larger when community spread is larger.

Exposures * Chance of Infection * Vaccine Reduction = Some absolute number. Make the starting number bigger and the final number gets bigger in the absolute.

 

[LaughingGravy]

We are back to masking up for sure when in stores and getting in and out asap. In all stores I've been in during the past two weeks, except for some clearly privately owned establishments, employees are masked, though there is currently no state mandate.
Our vaccination rate is pretty good, but I still get looks from unmasked people, which I read as disapproval, which is weird.
IMO, either they think I am unvaxed, or, that there is no mandate/legal requirement to mask, why would I do so (overprotective , Ha Ha If no mandate, it can't be that serious)? But, that's pure speculation on my part, as no sounds are exchanged.
I'm fully vaxed, but I still don't know who else is, and why invite Delta further than I need to when in the general public?
My vaccination provides a level of comfort to going out and doing things vs. just having things delivered.

 

[Heppenheimer]

Maybe @Heppenheimer can answer this...

Where the virus is concerned, does the vaccine not being 100% effective against preventing infection mean that we could accidentally "teach" it how to get around them if enough vaccinated and/or previously infected people become infected/re-infected?

I mean, it's not like the vaccine completely removes vaccinated people from the pool of possibly being infected...it's like each vaccinated person still has a foot in there up to the ankle.

Probably not. The virus is prone to frequent mutations because unlike DNA viruses, which rely on the enzyme DNA polymerase that has a built-in "spell-check" function, RNA viruses have no such corrective mechanism. So, give the virus as much chance to replicate as possible, it may eventually develop a spike protein configuration that existing antibodies can not bind tightly to (although this change could also make the spike protein less effective as well). The vaccines make it much harder for the virus to replicate, and so sharply reduces the chances for a random mutation to develop that allows the virus to escape the antibodies, that it is far more likely to arise in the unvaccinated population. It really is just a numbers game.

A similar situation developed with HIV. When the disease was raging out of control, it was almost an arms race to develop new medications before the virus became resistant to them. But by aggressively treating all known cases with multiple medications at once, we drove viral replication down to minimal levels, and thus denied it the opportunities it needed to mutate. Now, HIV has gone from a virtual death sentence, to a chronic disease that is actually rather easy to keep under control. Bush II will always be controversial in American's memory, but the single greatest thing he did as a president was speeding the supply of cheap HIV drugs to the US and world hotspots like Africa and SE Asia. It was a game-changer in the fight against AIDS.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Probably not. The virus is prone to frequent mutations because unlike DNA viruses, which rely on the enzyme DNA polymerase that has a built-in "spell-check" function, RNA viruses have no such corrective mechanism. So, give the virus as much chance to replicate as possible, it may eventually develop a spike protein configuration that existing antibodies can not bind tightly to (although this change could also make the spike protein less effective as well). The vaccines make it much harder for the virus to replicate, and so sharply reduces the chances for a random mutation to develop that allows the virus to escape the antibodies, that it is far more likely to arise in the unvaccinated population. It really is just a numbers game.

A similar situation developed with HIV. When the disease was raging out of control, it was almost an arms race to develop new medications before the virus became resistant to them. But by aggressively treating all known cases with multiple medications at once, we drove viral replication down to minimal levels, and thus denied it the opportunities it needed to mutate. Now, HIV has gone from a virtual death sentence, to a chronic disease that is actually rather easy to keep under control. Bush II will always be controversial in American's memory, but the single greatest thing he did as a president was speeding the supply of cheap HIV drugs to the US and world hotspots like Africa and SE Asia. It was a game-changer in the fight against AIDS.

Well the reduced replication certainly is comforting.

(My brain automatically went "Oh, we gave it a partial vasectomy" )