The latest Covid-19 CDC guidance for the fully vaccinated has folks wondering if mask mandates and lockdown restrictions are coming again.
Vaccinated people may be able to spread the coronavirus and should resume wearing masks under certain circumstances, the nation’s top public health official said Tuesday in a gloomy acknowledgment that the mutated delta variant has reversed the promising trend lines of spring.
Speaking to reporters in an afternoon news briefing, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expressed disappointment and dismay that the summer surge in cases, driven by the delta variant’s startling transmissibility and low vaccination rates in many areas, had forced her agency’s hand.
“It is not a welcome piece of news that masking is going to be a part of people’s lives who have already been vaccinated,” Walensky acknowledged. “This new guidance weighs heavily on me.”
The agency advised that people who live in high-transmission communities wear masks in indoor public spaces, even if they’ve been vaccinated. It also recommended that vaccinated people with vulnerable household members, including young children and those who are immunocompromised, wear masks indoors in public spaces.
The agency also called for universal masking for teachers, staff members and students in schools, regardless of their vaccination status. The CDC continues to recommend that students return to in-person learning in the fall.
The changed guidance comes as confirmed coronavirus infections nationwide have quadrupled in July, from about 13,000 cases per day on average at the start of the month to more than 56,000 now, according to Washington Post tracking. Faced with a resurgent virus thanks to the highly transmissible delta variant, a growing number of public and private employers have also imposed vaccine mandates in recent days. President Biden said Tuesday that requiring the federal workforce to get vaccinated was “under consideration right now.”
Walensky described the delta variant as, in effect, a different virus, capable of generating outbreaks of infection even among some people who are vaccinated, although those are likely to be far less severe. “The delta variant is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us and to be an opportunist in areas where we have not shown a fortified response against it,” she said.
Although the vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and death, they do not form an impenetrable shield. New data suggests that people who are vaccinated and have breakthrough infections from the delta variant may have as much viral load as a person who is unvaccinated, which suggests they may be able to spread it to others, Walensky said. Such transmission did not happen in any significant way with earlier versions of the virus.
Read the CDC guidance for the fully vaccinated for yourself here:
CDC Guidance
I’m deeply skeptical of the claim that there’s no difference in viral load or transmission rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Limiting viral load is how vaccines reduce severity, isn’t it? If you get the same viral load, then you should get the same symptoms, vaccine or no.
On a related (to the flyer) note, I saw a news story today about how a bunch of people in Tokyo got infected by going out drinking immediately after getting their first shots.Report
I would note the word “may” as the weasel word that makes an outrageous claim unfalsifiable. It may be possible that in extreme circumstances a vaccinated person may have as much viral load as a person who is unvaccinated. The vaccine may not have been effected, the vaccinated person may have inhaled a quantity of virus usually reserved for lab animals (gas masks), while the unvaccinated person may have good natural immunity and cleared a minor exposure quickly.
There are studies showing the vaccine reduces viral spread, but the primary purpose of vaccines is to reduce severe disease and death.
How vaccines workReport
Right, I get all that, but my point is that in order to reduce severe disease and death, a vaccine has to reduce peak, or at least AUC, viral load. The whole point of a vaccine is that by allowing your immune system to produce antibodies to a virus ASAP, it’s able to get things under control before the virus can reproduce to the point where viral load reaches harmful levels. I don’t see how it can help at all without doing that.
I mean, I guess if you compare outliers, you might find a bit of overlap, but certainly on average it must have a huge impact on viral load.Report
Yeah, I guess I think the vaccine has to clear the virus efficiently. But one of the points made in my link is that antibodies are just one tool of our immune system to block infection. Perhaps better made here:
“The importance of antibody versus T cells in controlling infection depends on the virus. For many viruses, antibody can block infection, but T cells are important for recovery. In COVID-19, antibodies rise late in the course of infection, when virus titers are already declining. This observation is in line with the resolution of infection by T cells.”
T cells will save us from COVID-19
Antibody response appears slow, but T cells kill virus infected cells and are not impacted by variants of concern, which is why I’m emphasizing them. CDC is emphasizing the latest variant, which might have some antibody avoidance features, which may be irrelevant.Report
More to the point:
“The study found that people given a single dose of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines – and who became infected at least three weeks later – were between 38% and 49% less likely to pass the virus on to people living in their homes, compared with those who were unvaccinated.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/28/single-dose-of-covid-vaccine-can-nearly-halve-transmission-of-virus-study-findsReport
White House pushes back:
“VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.”
https://twitter.com/benwakana46/status/1421182153224818694Report
Holy crap. The internals must be atrocious.
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IT’S ALL CAPS ON DECK!!!!Report
I take it as a shot across the conservatives’ bow. The FTC now has explicit statutory authority to impose civil and criminal penalties on companies and people who spread misinformation about preventing or treating Covid-19. So far, they’ve gone after people who basically advertise “Miracle herbal cure!” My working assumption about the recent change in Fox’s official line is that the FTC had a nice chat with their legal department about vaccine claims. I anticipate that by Monday, most of the people who want to say anything negative about the vaccines are going to find the larger media players turning them down cold.Report
This is because the delibrately unvaccinated aren’t doing their share.Report
I don’t think this really does any good, it seems to me that the states where vaccination rates are low, compliance with a mask mandate will also be low. And where vaccination rates are high, masking is unnecessary.
And at this point, if I were surrounded by vaccine-refusers, I’d be really resistant to keep wearing a mask. I mean if people don’t want to be protected from COVID, why not oblige them?Report
Basically summarizes it. This is bureaucratic posterior covering more than anything.Report