Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated States (... of America)
There are about two or three competing strategies for ending the pandemic
Publisher’s Riff
President Biden’s recent mandate 1) requiring vaccinations for all federal employees and contractors while 2) imposing federal vaccine and testing regulations on businesses with more than 100 employees presents a last straw moment for an administration that should’ve had it a long time ago.
This is an enormous moment since it effects over 6 million combined federal workers and nearly 100 million private sector employees. How much it pushes American society closer to that essential “herd immunity” and helps end the pandemic - or, at least, the worst of it - is an open question.
As dramatic as it might seem, Biden is still giving concessions to what he rightfully called the “distinct minority” of Americans who’ve been holding the rest of us back: the new Department of Labor guidance still offers - as Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN described it - an “off ramp” for the unvaccinated by requiring an alternate weekly COVID testing regimen. What’s happening here is that policymakers, even as they’re struggling to promote the best possible pandemic response, still overestimate the influence of that “distinct minority” despite polling showing that the percentage of those opposed to measures such as vaccine mandates has pretty much stayed stagnant …
Weekly testing is not really stopping the virus from hospitalizing and killing people - it just tracks and diagnoses it. Vaccine is what stops the virus from hospitalizing and killing people.
But, it’s still about time the administration do something this dramatic and hard-line in a bid to get us nearer to pandemic closure. There’s also an added bonus: for those federal employees who resist the mandate, it’s very likely many of them were aligned with those political interests that either still believe the 2020 election of Biden was illegitimate or who are not truly supportive of the public good. This mandate can serve as an effective purging of those individuals from federal institutions, which may include a quiet assortment of white nationalists who shouldn’t be working for the government in the first place.
Strategies for Ending Pandemic
Now, let’s just say that it’s safe to assume the vast majority of Americans want the pandemic to end. If you don’t want the pandemic to end, you’re just into chaos or you’re an agent for a geopolitical rival or you really want to usher in a fascist, authoritarian state.
With that being said, we’re then seeing three very different and competing strategies on how to end the pandemic: 1) the strategy of the fully vaccinated; 2) the strategy of the unvaccinated; and 2) the strategy of the unmasked.
1) The strategy of the vaccinated is rather cautious in varying degrees, and that’s a good thing since it heavily relies on a model that stresses basic public health guidance. It’s this simple: 1) get vaccinated as soon as you can while, 2) we all stay masked in every situation, 3) maintain social distancing or avoiding crowded situations, while 4) we also keep washing our hands in every situation and reduce exposure to viral agents.
Science and evidence-based research completely backs this strategy up: Vaccines from J&J to Pfizer range from 70 percent - 91 percent effectiveness against COVID. Studies show masking ranges from 50 percent - 80 percent effective. Other research shows a 20-second handwash with soap dramatically reduces your chances of infection. In addition, if you’re vaccinated you can spread COVID, but you’re dramatically less likely to spread it …. versus if you’re unvaccinated, you just dramatically increased your chances of spreading it, especially the Delta variant.
And, lastly, the research conclusively shows: if you’re vaccinated you’re less likely to end up in the hospital and you’re way less likely to die. So-called “breakthrough infections” are averaging somewhere between 1 in every 5,000 vaccinated adults per day in the average state; if you’re in a high vaccine average state like Massachusetts or Rhode Island, it’s 1 in every 20,000 adults.
2) The strategy of the unvaccinated is less cautious or more cynical, and is misled by a very deep distrust of anything that calls itself “government” or official: Just 32% of Americans in a recent Gallup poll, for example, trust the CDC has done a good job. This group is not buying into the guidance from the CDC or the WHO (and neither institution is helping their cause due to the muddled messaging).
This population now looks very skeptically at the ingredients in the vaccine - which is weird, because it never looked at the ingredients in anything else before, including past vaccines, with this much rigor. But, the overall strategy is to just not get vaccinated - according to that strategy, it’s worse getting vaccinated than getting infected with COVID or, in some cases, you can roll the dice and not get COVID if you mask up and social distance and maybe dose up heavy on vitamins and supplements (which, do they check the ingredients on those like they’re checking for ingredients in the vaccine?). Many following this strategy are also putting a lot of faith in self-medicating schemes with dangerous treatments like Ivermectin. Meanwhile, there’s been a 163 percent spike in calls to poison control centers about Ivermectin. The strategy does, however, put stock in proven and effective COVID treatments like monoclonal anti-bodies and Remdesivir; but, it’s crucial that you get to a hospital and get those treatments within 10 days of the infection (monoclonal is also for pre-emergency situations and you can’t already be on the ventilator; Remdesivir is for the most extreme and urgent situations). Going beyond that seriously elevates the risk of severe infection and death … plus, there’s no guarantee, these days, that you can get into a hospital considering how overwhelmed they are. For the most part, the hospital system is, in a state of collapse right now, as Vishal Khetpal writes recently in Slate.
Here’s the thing, however: There is little, if any, science or evidence-based/evidence-backed research showing the unvaccinated strategy reduces pandemic cases, hospitalizations or deaths. We haven’t seen any. What we do see from data: the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths involve unvaccinated adults and a growing number of unvaccinated children (especially as schools re-open). The latest CDC report just dropped, reports the Washington Post …
People who were not fully vaccinated this spring and summer were over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die of covid-19 than those who were fully vaccinated, according to one of three major studies published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that highlight the continued efficacy of all three vaccines amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.
A second study showed the Moderna coronavirus vaccine was moderately more effective in preventing hospitalizations than its counterparts from Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson. That assessment was based on the largest U.S. study to date of the real-world effectiveness of all three vaccines, involving about 32,000 patients seen in hospitals, emergency departments and urgent care clinics across nine states from June through early August.
We also see that unvaccinated adults are dramatically more likely to spread COVID and other variants. And, we’re also seeing that alternative treatments like Ivermectin are poisoning people or even making many men sterile, as this recent study out of Nigeria shows.
3) The strategy of the unmasked is also unveiling some stark dividing lines between those who are navigating the pandemic responsibly and those who refuse to. It appears as a spin-off of the unvaccinated strategy, with a quarter of Americans not masking regularly, and many unvaccinated adults expressing reservations about masking. We’re seeing the masking debate play out in very real, dark and dangerous ways in school districts, especially, a debate that’s putting children at risk and also school staff. But, while that’s happening in the schools, we’re actually still seeing a rather high number of adults who refuse to mask and/or are busy trying to force other people and their children from masking.
Again: no scientifc evidence or study showing that the act of being unmasked stops the spread of COVID. In fact, all the science shows that not masking significantly increases your chances of catching COVID.
What’s unclear here is if those who promote the strategy of the unvaccinated and unmasked are expecting the pandemic to end through the use of these approaches. What do they think will end the pandemic if it’s not vaccinating and masking?