correcaminos
Well-Known Member
If 600k+ didn't do it, why would it change now?
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Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion
- Thread starter Parker in NYC
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It's time to acknowledge how little we know.
For a while, I warned that I didn't believe Covid was necessarily over, the danger of dropping mitigation too quickly, the danger of failing to vaccinate quickly enough, the threat of emerging variants. But being totally honest, I didn't foresee rises like we are seeing now. I believed we would be mostly out of this over the summer, with small spikes in the Fall.
There are those now predicting total doom and those who trying to argue that we are already close to the Delta peak and it will soon fall.
The truth is, we don't know.
Will Delta in the US follow the same path as the UK? Maybe, maybe not. With fewer people vaccinated, it could be worse here. On the other hand, they relied heavily on the AZ vaccine which is less effective against Delta, so maybe things will be better here. Maybe we are just as the start of the type of rise the UK saw, maybe we are closer to the peak. Maybe it will be less deadly here, maybe it will be more deadly.
My strong suspicion from following the science and medicine: We are really just starting to see the rise. Some regions (such as Missouri) may be closer to the peak than others. Yes, the biggest increases so far have hit low-vax states, but that may be partially coincidental. Florida is a mid-vax level state and getting hit the hardest, California is a high vax state and getting hit pretty hard. I suspect we are seeing a bit of seasonality at play -- the places being hit hardest were also largely hit hardest summer of 2020, and it's somewhat coincidental that they are low vax states. We are starting to see increases in the high-vax Northeast just now, I wouldn't rule out fairly large surges even in high vax areas. Israel, which is a high vax country, has gone from 14 cases per day to 1500 per day in 6 weeks, a 100x increase in 6 weeks and still rising.
The up-side is it's almost certain that this wave will be less deadly than past waves. The majority of adults are vaccinated, which offers a good amount of protection against serious illness. Most of the unvaxed are younger, and are at inherently lower risk. That's not to say it won't be dangerous and deadly, just not as bad as past waves.
But where do we go from here? I was strongly pro-mitigation for a long time. But circumstances change. I'm on the fence about masking back up. Delta is so transmissible that successful mitigation may only delay things. Further, let's face facts -- most of the unvaxed aren't going to mask back up. The people who comply willingly with masking recommendations are mostly vaccinated. So if the people who least need the masks wear them, and the people who most need them refuse to wear them... will they even have much effect?
Masking was critical mitigation to buy time for the vaccines. But the vaccines are here now. So what are we buying time for? We may have dropped indoor mask mandates prematurely, but hard to put the genie back in the bottle now.
Instead of re-fighting yesterday's battle about masking, we are overdue for the next necessary steps: vaccine passports/mandates. Employers should require vaccination, vaccination should be required for travel and yes -- for theme park entry.
On a Federal level, the government should impose a vaccination requirement on the entire Federal workforce and as a require for airline travel. As to Disney -- Disney should take a private sector lead in requiring their workforce to be vaccinated. Given their pressing labor shortage, I'm sure they don't want to do anything to further exacerbate their labor woes, but getting everyone vaccinated it really the best way out of this mess.
For a while, I warned that I didn't believe Covid was necessarily over, the danger of dropping mitigation too quickly, the danger of failing to vaccinate quickly enough, the threat of emerging variants. But being totally honest, I didn't foresee rises like we are seeing now. I believed we would be mostly out of this over the summer, with small spikes in the Fall.
There are those now predicting total doom and those who trying to argue that we are already close to the Delta peak and it will soon fall.
The truth is, we don't know.
Will Delta in the US follow the same path as the UK? Maybe, maybe not. With fewer people vaccinated, it could be worse here. On the other hand, they relied heavily on the AZ vaccine which is less effective against Delta, so maybe things will be better here. Maybe we are just as the start of the type of rise the UK saw, maybe we are closer to the peak. Maybe it will be less deadly here, maybe it will be more deadly.
My strong suspicion from following the science and medicine: We are really just starting to see the rise. Some regions (such as Missouri) may be closer to the peak than others. Yes, the biggest increases so far have hit low-vax states, but that may be partially coincidental. Florida is a mid-vax level state and getting hit the hardest, California is a high vax state and getting hit pretty hard. I suspect we are seeing a bit of seasonality at play -- the places being hit hardest were also largely hit hardest summer of 2020, and it's somewhat coincidental that they are low vax states. We are starting to see increases in the high-vax Northeast just now, I wouldn't rule out fairly large surges even in high vax areas. Israel, which is a high vax country, has gone from 14 cases per day to 1500 per day in 6 weeks, a 100x increase in 6 weeks and still rising.
The up-side is it's almost certain that this wave will be less deadly than past waves. The majority of adults are vaccinated, which offers a good amount of protection against serious illness. Most of the unvaxed are younger, and are at inherently lower risk. That's not to say it won't be dangerous and deadly, just not as bad as past waves.
But where do we go from here? I was strongly pro-mitigation for a long time. But circumstances change. I'm on the fence about masking back up. Delta is so transmissible that successful mitigation may only delay things. Further, let's face facts -- most of the unvaxed aren't going to mask back up. The people who comply willingly with masking recommendations are mostly vaccinated. So if the people who least need the masks wear them, and the people who most need them refuse to wear them... will they even have much effect?
Masking was critical mitigation to buy time for the vaccines. But the vaccines are here now. So what are we buying time for? We may have dropped indoor mask mandates prematurely, but hard to put the genie back in the bottle now.
Instead of re-fighting yesterday's battle about masking, we are overdue for the next necessary steps: vaccine passports/mandates. Employers should require vaccination, vaccination should be required for travel and yes -- for theme park entry.
On a Federal level, the government should impose a vaccination requirement on the entire Federal workforce and as a require for airline travel. As to Disney -- Disney should take a private sector lead in requiring their workforce to be vaccinated. Given their pressing labor shortage, I'm sure they don't want to do anything to further exacerbate their labor woes, but getting everyone vaccinated it really the best way out of this mess.
How many cases a day is going to be related to the behavior going on in the state AND the vaccination rate. I'm in wisconsin where Bucks in six was a HUGE celebration and for several nights 65,000+ celebrated cramed in the Deer district and yesterday we had 1000 covid positive when before we were hovering around 150-250 7 day average. Not that I didn't want the Bucks to be in the finals and win but there were celebrations all over the state and now I am holding my breath for the next couple of weeks.
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Wisconsin started rising a week after the fourth. If the three month trend holds true, we’re hopefully only 2-3 weeks away from our peak. We’ll see.
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
Not easily. The first thing that would have to be done is Congress would have to pass a bill banning the banning of vaccine passports. Of they did and it was signed into law then it would be challenged in about 10 seconds. It won't come to that because I don't think the votes would be there to even pass the house.
They might be able to require showing proof of vaccination to go through TSA security to fly but I don't really think having a vaccine passport for domestic flying will move the needle much, if at all.
disneygeek90
Well-Known Member
Latest data on Florida-
Heppenheimer
Well-Known Member
Yup. Being nice, being patient, having compassion, explaining the underlying science over and over again, including trying to show again and again that 90% and 99.9999% aren't even close when you're dealing with millions of individuals, offering incentives, etc. None of this has worked. It's time to start putting on our big boy pants laying down the hammer. If you want to participate in society, you need to take the necessary steps to keep society healthy and safe.
The government doesn't ask us nicely to pay taxes, and speed limits are not discretionary (despite what some drivers seem to think...), and theoretically. These are things we are expected to do as adults, and there's laws to enforce compliance. Now that it appears COVID-19 has become an existential threat to our way of life, it's time for governments and private businesses to do what it right, and what we've done before for polio, measles, smallpox, meningitis, pertussis, diptheria and several other diseases- no vaccine, no play, no fun, no work.
I also think it would be a hell of a motivator if you also had to pay your hospital bill IF you chose not to get vaccinated.
I really really wish that people would stop suggesting AZ is an inferior vaccine. If anyone looks at the UK’s figures they will know what population has the biggest cases (under 30s), then they will also know that all of this age group have had either Pfizer or Moderna (and no j and j). Our rates in the elderly and vulnerable are minuscule by comparison and show how well protected they are with AZ - AZ May take longer to ge to full protection but when it gets there it’s as good as any! And some reports suggesting may actually be better
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
Only if the law was changed so you can't file bankruptcy to get rid of it or qualify for any government assistance until you paid your bills.
correcaminos
Well-Known Member
To be fair I think you're a bit over protective of AZ/Oxford and reading into posts in ways that are meant to be factual and not a dig on the vaccine. Nothing wrong with a shot not being as effective against variants. They are all still amazing!
From a week ago https://www.reuters.com/business/he...against-delta-variant-study-finds-2021-07-21/
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Of course behavior and personal actions play a big factor. What I’m talking about is more big picture. Yes, we are seeing cases go up, but most people knew that Covid wasn’t over and we would see further waves. I think many people expected to see that in the Fall/Winter again and we very well may see that. Where we are seeing the true power of the vaccines is in hospitalizations and eventually deaths. In areas with high vaccination rates we are not seeing hospitals approach capacity and become overwhelmed. So cases will go up and cases will come back down but the vast majority of new cases are still in the unvaccinated and almost all hospitalizations and deaths are in the unvaccinated. As was predicted several months ago and discussed here we are seeing the fracturing of the country into 2 realities (vaccinated vs unvaccinated). I think by the end of the year once all kids are eligible and vaccinated this will become even more stark of a contrast and many more people in the vaccinated camp will come around to the idea that we can’t do much about the unvaccinated, they made their beds and now they are lying in them. It’s really hard to do that today since kids aren’t all eligible. That’s why schools will be back to masks again too.
FL is an interesting case study. I think what the state highlights is that you can’t just look at a state as a whole and see the whole story. FL is middle of the pack overall in vaccinations. Not the bottom and not near the top, but those stats are for the whole population. When we break it down further FL has a pretty high vaccination rate among 65+ (lots of retired NE transplants) and they also are among the top states with 65+ population. I don’t have the stats to compare, but I wonder how FL’s vaccine rate in under 65 compares to other states. If 65+ is average or slightly above average and the total is about average or slightly under that means under 65 must be below average. We know the current case surge is primarily driven by younger unvaccinated people. I think sometimes we get too high level with looking at state totals but there are levels under that when you start to peal the onion that tell the story. We talked about Cape Cod yesterday too. Same thing. Looking at MA state numbers the outbreak at Cape Cod makes less sense until you dive deeper.
Archie123
Well-Known Member
It won't but unfortunately there is more than one way to get to the herd immunity that we are trying to get to.
ABQ
Well-Known Member
Hopefully the trend shown here continues. Cases dropping as fast, or even faster, than they last spiked. See if that holds true under, what is it called, Step 4?
I question if maybe Florida is not as vaccinated as we think. I question how many vaccine tourists in those early days falsely claimed Florida residency to get an early shot, not to mention how many have flown in from South America once the requirement got lifted. It just doesn’t make sense why Florida would be acting this way. California has areas of very heavy vaccinated population (San Franscisco/San Jose) where cases are down, but Florida it’s wide spread. California may also be suffering from vaccine tourism inflated numbers too.
I really do hope so - not only for us but I do genuinely believe that it will give you guys a pointer to where you will go as well.Dreaming of Disney World
Well-Known Member
We can buy time for children to be eligible for the vaccine. It's not fair to them to force them to go to school and out in the world unprotected.
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We can completely say that if a new variant is more resistant to current vaccines so that it is able to replicate and infect others after a vaccinated person that this competitive advantage will likely lead to it becoming the dominant variant and supplanting all the prior ones. We can also say, this would be bad.
You're right we cannot say it will definitely happen. We could vaccinate everyone fast enough to reduce overall spread before this virus advantageous mutation happens. Alternatively, we could cultivate and encourage as many virus and vaccinated encounters as possible. Maximize the number of mutations that are tried against the vaccine. Thereby encouraging natural selection of exactly the virus mutation with the competitive advantage.
I mean, that's not a great plan, but we could totally do it.
Do the work to discourage bad, or wait until bad get's here, maybe even help it arrive, then react when it's already bad. It shouldn't' be a hard choice.
Between May and July, the community spread changed.
In May, many said the guidance change was too aggressive. The pushback was that it was fine based on the science and it wasn't the guidance change that people were commenting on, it was really the policy changes that came with the change. The unvaccinated guidance hasn't changed in months.
Now, in June, there's much more spread going on.
Many will say the new guidance change is too conservative. If they had said, change this everywhere, I would agree that sounds too conservative, based on the "maybe you can spread delta". Which, at least if you're going to be conservative, doing it on the side of before you know you're in trouble is the right side. But, they didn't go that far. The little change they made was, if you're in a bad area, better to be safe until we know for sure. If you're in a better area, it's probably fine waiting until we know for sure.
Just like before, the real pushback is going to be on the policy changes that come with this, or don't come with this.
The original message, before we layer on the policy implementation of that message feels relatively consistent. The vaccines work great. They're not perfect, but super good. They work best (as all vaccines do) when spread is relatively low and they keep it that way then.
It's all the raincoat and umbrella analogies going on and the weather changed from a light rain to a storm and is headed towards a hurricane. Of course that impacts how to react.
DisneyCane
Well-Known Member
Then we have the curious case of South Dakota. Middle of the pack vaccinations, high summer tourism (relative to population), very low mitigation behavior throughout, 3rd highest state for total cases per 100k and the current community transmission map looks better than almost all states. Maybe South Dakota gives some insight into the combination of vaccination with natural immunity from infections.
So far, the UK is following the same curve as India for the Delta spike. If that continues, I expect the USA to follow as well. The only difference between the three being how high the peak level is.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
There is also the curious case of Canada. High vaccination rate and low case levels. Hmmmm.
Wait I forgot, most don't know it exists
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