We always marked those big round numbers. So yeah, we passed the big 100k Wednesday per CDC. I should say we have passed it again. That's in one day. First time we've been there since Feb. 6. The president was only inaugurated Jan. 20 so this wipes out all but the first seventeen days.
So discouraging. It was not too long ago I made fun of predictions of doom, concluded POJO had licked this sucker. Some headline triggered me to look. We had 12,000 cases on average daily. Now our average daily per CDC is 89,976. It's demoralizing. I laughed standing on the gallows today at the headline to Ezra Klein's column in the Times, Is the Future Just a Spike Protein Stamping on a Human Face, Forever? It seems like it, doesn't it. Dr. Fauci Sunday said flatly, "It's going to get worse." A nurse somewhere, maybe Santa Monica, said wearily, "When will it ever end?"
Look at the roller-coaster ride we've been on since Jan. 2020:
Vertigo from March 16-April 10, 2020, the bends from April 11 to June 3. Up again till July 20; down again till Sept. 13. And then the moonshot, a short steep drop, another outer space ride higher than ever, another deep drop and then to the outer limits, 254k on Jan. 10. Then the bottom drops out, rises a bit, drops to its nadir and is now back to 100k. I've used the analogy to rocket flight but the human body would be a mass of jelly after the pressure of those rises and the decompression of the drops. No human being could survive.
To the CDC's mantra that the vaccines work in preventing hospitalization even against Delta I wave the bloody shirt of that all-time hospitalizations graph. Our vaccine rate on August 3 was 70%. I don't know what it was on March 1 but it wasn't anywhere near 70%. CDC counters with "increased transmissibility" of Delta to the unvaxed. But the latter doesn't, to my mind, help their case. We have been right below, at, and now slightly above 70% vaxed for several days. Cases have risen to the earliest dates of vaccination; hospitalizations to early (I repeat, I don't know how many people were vaccinated on March 1 but it wasn't much.). From the Times website we reached our 7-day daily average vaccinations peak, 3,384,387, on April 13. For the week ending March 1 the daily average was 1,817,502, 54% of April 13. March 1 was near the high for the daily average before that; almost every other iteration was lower. Almost every iteration after March 1 was higher. The only point is that hospitalizations have risen dramatically in conjunction with a dramatic increase in vaccinations. That is not what you expect to see.
The Times says CDC first detected Delta in the U.S. "in March" ,and in "early April" Delta accounted for only 0.1%
of U.S. cases. By early May, 1.3%, early June 9.5%. By the date of that Times article, June 22, Delta represented 82.2% of cases. Sounds to me that by June 22 Delta was a big problem, and had been for sometime before, whatever CDC's "big problem" threshold was. You know what cases 7-day average daily was on June 22? 11,683. Delta had 9,603 of those. Pussy-ass shit. On Aug. 4 the 7-day daily average cases was almost 90k, 93% of which were Delta infections. CDC repeats: "the new war," (transmissibility), the hospitalizations are among unvaxed (99% in California). Nationwide 97%. How many, vaxed people are getting infected? It was 35,000/week in that secret slide presentation. CDC didn't expect that. How many vaxed are transmitting to other vaxed or unvaxed? That last is a key question. Dr. Fauci says they don't how many vaxed are transmitting. We know that Delta is up to 1,000 times more transmissibile. We know of the "breakthrough" infections among the vaxed (the 35,000/week). But I have to accept as a rational science-reliant individual that all of those near perfect percentages are game, set and match for the proposition that vaccines work across the board for infection, hospitalization, death from Delta, that it is an "epidemic of the unvaccinated."
My final thrust at CDC would be in the form of a question. If I had all the major epidemiologists at CDC in a room I would ask one question,
"Given this lead pipe cinch data, how many of you predicted back in March or April or May or early June or on June 22 that cases would top 100k on Aug. 3, and hospitalizations would be 45k/day?"
Not a goddamned hand would go up. Rachelle Walensky's wouldn't.
Delta gave them plenty of notice, too. Delta send them a certified letter, they signed for it in early March. The truth is they didn't take it seriously enough to change their mantra or their message.
India has phones. They could call them in mid-May and ask about transmissibility of Delta before they told all us vaxed to chillax. “Yeah but India was unvaxed.” K. But, you acknowledge that in mid-May and June none of you conceived that we would have a pandemic of our unvaccinated.
You had the Israeli study that showed the vaccines were only 39% effective against Delta. “Yeah, but that was an outlier, statistical artifact.”
You had the Scottish study showing ~70-ish% effectiveness. “Yeah, but that was the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.”
On May 13, Dr. Walensky advised that the vaxed could forgo masking in "most settings." The lede and sublede in the Times on May 14 were,
Why the C.D.C. Changed Its Advice on Masks
Two scientific findings altered the calculus: Vaccinated people rarely transmit the virus, and the shots are effective against variants.
CDC blew off Pfizer’s recommendation of booster shots as corporate greed! “No evidence they’re needed.” Now, just yesterday, Dr. Fauci said third shots for the immunocompromised were a "very high priority."
Most important, CDC had their own data from the U.S. showing Delta was 82% of cases on June 22. It had blown up here just as it did in India. Yet, they didn’t walk back their advice that the vaxed can relax until July 27. “We relied on our vaccines.” GOTCHA!
Two months and thirteen days later Dr Walensky advised the vaccinated should mask up again, citing again, "new science" that the vaccinated were transmitting (and if they were transmitting they were first contracting.). They weren't convinced of that until Provincetown. All of their dismissals of the other science from other countries was misplaced because they relied on our vaccines. Our vaccines were not as effective as they expected. Yet, they still, to this day, are a one-note Johnny: “GET VAXED! GET VAXED! GET VAXXXXXED!”
The unvaccinated should get vaccinated. I full 100 believe and support that. So what then is my point, to bitch and Monday Morning Quarterback? Yes, it is, I admit, but there are other points not involving pure schadenfreude. We know that COVID-19 is a most artful dodger. You give that thing time to mutate and it's going to run circles around you. Pick your own start date: early March, when Delta was first detected here? Early April (0.1%)? Early May (1.3%)? Early June (9.5%)? June 22% (82.2%). No, not that late. How many of you would pick JULY 27 to start fighting this "new war" against Delta, which is when CDC did? How many of you would have laid down arms against Delta on May 13, when Dr. Walensky did?
What does "start fighting Delta" mean? Tell the drug companies to start working on a vaccine against transmittal, since a doctor actually suggested that that's what we need, and since it is now increasingly obvious that the loop wasn't closed, that preventing infection did not prevent transmission in "breakthroughs." A new vaccine would not be ready yet even if ordered in early March. I would have fought it by ordering development of a transmittal vaccine and continuing to urge masking among all in mid-May when Delta was between 1.3% and 9.5%. I would have stressed the importance of continuing to mask on the date Dr. Walensky said the vaxed could unmask and would have placed the order for the new vaccine on the same day. Delta and its offspring still would have had an immense head start on us, but it is fair criticism, not schadenfreude, not Monday morning quarterbacking, to point out that responsible public health officials would not continue to shout their mantra that people must get vaccinated with the original vaccines because they "work."
The CDC can claim with confidence that I share that the vaccines are effective against Delta deaths. Deaths averaged a daily 377 on August 4, but there is a caveat there too, I don't think it will ever amount to the catastrophic death we have seen here or that India saw, but the caveat is the death interval. Those 100k and near average daily cases just occurred. It will take a month for them to work themselves through hospitalization to, unfortunately, death. The CDC experts would have predicted a moderate rise in deaths, I am sure. That, for now, is all that we are seeing.
