The U.S. now faces a dispiriting dilemma. Last year, many people were content to buy time for vaccines to be developed and deployed. But vaccines are now here, uptake has plateaued, and the first surge of the vaccine era is ongoing. What, now, is the point of masking, distancing, and other precautions?
Please be safe, and mask up!
The Delta coronavirus variant surging across the United States appears to cause more severe illness and spread as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal document from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The document -- a slide presentation -- outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people.
When designating a “variant of concern,” the WHO and CDC look for specific mutations that might cause that variant to be more transmissible, more severe, more likely to evade the protection conferred by prior infection or vaccination, and/or more difficult to treat or diagnose. Delta checks off at least two of those boxes in a big way.
