Update, Covid Style

 I'd been mulling over something about Jeff Bezos and his recent trip to space, and other things... but first I guess I'll write about Covid.

I've mostly stopped talking about it because minds seem to be made up. People either are taking it seriously and getting vaccinated, or they aren't. At this point the people holding out seem to be either children under 12 (and thus ineligible for the vaccine), minorities who have reasons to distrust the state, people who have a hard time getting to a vaccine location, and MAGA folks. I've seen some discussions trying to say that it's more than just MAGA, but honestly I'd like to see a breakdown of how many fit each category. It's still worth trying to do outreach, but the hardcore holdouts seem to be MAGA.

The big issue is Delta, of course. (And people were predicting mutations over a year ago, so it's not exactly a surprise, but still).

I had heard of 'breakthrough' cases, and was seeing enough examples and attention to it to believe that it's more common than we had hoped, but as Israel shows... it does appear that the correlation between new case rates and the death rates a week or two later has been broken (decoupled) in fully vaccinated populations. Israel is seeing an increase in new cases, but they haven't yet seen the equivalent bump in death rates.

Of course, the US hasn't done such a great job at vaccinating everyone... so I imagine we'll still see some correlation. I'm just not sure how much (i.e. there are states with low vaccination rates that have seen a rather scary increase in cases, but it still should take a week or two to see how badly that affects the death rate.)

From all accounts it does appear as though Delta is more contagious, and hits harder. I keep hearing that younger people are catching it and winding up in the hospital. So...  That's not good.

What's also scary is that even if someone sees the increase and decides to get vaccinated now, it'll still take a month or so before they're considered fully vaccinated. And Delta is moving fast, which means they might not have that month.

By fast, I'm referring to how Florida (and other states) have seen their new cases spike to rates almost as bad as our winter peak, and at least to their summer peak last year. Except that it took months to reach that state before, and now we're seeing it within a couple of weeks? Yeah, it's moving fast, and there's not a lot of time.

While on the personal level I am sorry for anyone suffering, and I hope as many people can be persuaded to get vaccinated as possible, it does seem pretty obvious that this is hitting the Republican base the worst.

Which is, again, something that was predictable. It seem strange that they didn't realize that earlier, but then I guess short-sightedness is pretty common these days.

Anyways, not much to do except mitigate my own risks (we had been returning to the office, but then someone tested positive and I pretty much said I was going to keep working from home unless they insist. And I've decided to mask up when going anywhere public again, mostly because vaccinated people can still be carriers.)

We'll see what the rates are in the next month or so.