@Infoseepage The reason I was wondering is, if everybody there who is in trouble are unvaccinated, then herd immunity doesn't seem to be working. The only solution would be for everybody to be vaccinated. But so far that's not certain I understand.

@trinsec Vaccinated people can certainly get in trouble with Delta, but they are far less likely to do so than had they been unvaccinated. They're both less likely to get infected in the first place and less likely for the disease to progress to a point needing hospitalization. Still, there are a LOT of vaccinated old people, so MOST of the people you are going to see in ICUs and dying in a highly vaccinated society like Israel's are going to be old people with other health problems.

@Infoseepage Makes sense, and totally what I expect. I'm just wondering about people who refuse to be vaccinated, and who secretly hope to enjoy the benefits of herd immunity...

@trinsec My personal guess is that the spread rate on this is so high that anyone practicing a pre-pandemic level of sociability and lack of precaution is going to get exposed at some point. The question will be whether they meet those exposure events with a vaccine that has a 66-80% chance of averting illness entirely (and much better for serious illness/death) or whether they will face it with just their body's natural unprimed immune response.

@trinsec There is already good evidence that Delta has significantly worse chances for hospitalization and severe outcomes than prior strains among the unvaccinated. To me, it is absolutely idiotic that people are choosing to face this without vaccination.

@Infoseepage Here in the media they claim that Delta is way more infectious, but that the end result is about the same as the other strains. So I don't think people feel as alarmed as they ought to be.

@trinsec I certainly think it is more infectious rather than simply having a longer infectious period or some other potential advantages. Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot more super spreading events than before and a lot of the contact tracing results out of Australia are showing it spread through extremely casual contact that wouldn't have been considered significant with prior strains.

@Infoseepage So, basically our 'anderhalvemetermaatregel' (I love that word :P) which basically means 'keep 1.5 meter distance from each other' would not be sufficient anymore? Not even outdoors? Wow, boy, are we in for some interesting times...

@trinsec I don't leave my residence without a N100 (you didn't read that wrong) on my face and I broadly avoid going anywhere outdoors where I might closely encounter another unmasked individual. The 2 meter rule has never been sound advice, imo. The distancing advice should have always been "maintain as much physical and temporal distance between yourself and other individuals and as is practical, regardless of circumstance."

@Infoseepage It helps that I'm usually at home just doing my own thing. But since the masks aren't mandatory anymore, I've stopped wearing them. I accept that I run a higher risk. I'm fully vaccinated, and I know it doesn't make me immune but I accept the risks at this point. We (my family) also try to avoid busy areas and such, so we're not totally braindead I hope! :D Public transport still requires masks, which makes sense as you can't maintain any distance whatsoever at all there.

It probably helps that I don't live in the hotspot areas like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I'd feel unsafe enough there to go wear a mask I'm sure.

@Infoseepage It probably also makes more sense that I don't like masks if you know that I'm deaf and rely on lipreading... :P

@trinsec I am sorry for that additional complication to your life. I know this pandemic has been particularly hard on people with various forms of disability.

I've got one friend with severe cerebral palsy who has halting speech and uses a power chair. I know he has talked about how it makes covidiot avoidance so much harder and limits your ability to exert personal control/choice when out and about in public life.

@trinsec Have you checked out some of the surgical masks which have a clear window for lip reading at least for use among your own circle of friends/family when out and about publicly? Obviously can't chose what strangers strap to their face, which must be the greater part of the difficulty. Not sure of the filtration efficiency on those. I avoid indoor environments almost entirely, but wouldn't wear anything less than an n95 anywhere indoors these days.

@Infoseepage The clear window mask is mediocre. You miss way too much of the nuances of facial expressions. It's not pure lipreading that deaf people do, it's the whole face. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I know you meant well. ;)

I do shop when I do need to shop, and the supermarket I consider 'fairly safe' due to ventilation (and I tend to go in early morning when it's not busy at all). I also do take walks out, we consider outdoors to be safe as well. Other than that, I'm pretty much staying home. But um... that was already the case before the pandemic, so not too much changed for me. ;)

We'll see if an event in late august will continue and whether we'll go there, depends on the severity of the infection spread. We've entering the 3rd wave now. This time it's the (still largely unvaccinated) youths of 19-29 years who absolutely have to go to dance events or to hotspot countries. Sheesh. We went from 100 infections a day to 10k in... 5 days? Wonderful. :P

@trinsec Yeah, I saw Netherlands went from ~1000 a day to 10k a day in a week. Really gives you an idea of just how contagious Delta is if it can do that in just one reproductive cycle. Really you have to greatly limit the opportunity for mass spread. No nightclubs, restaurants, schools, churches, sporting events, etc.

@Infoseepage It's also part of our government's mishaps. They have set up the slogan 'Dansen met Jansen' means 'If you get a Johnson vaccination, you can immediately go dance at night clubs after!' to promote vaccinations.

They had to pull that back after our infection rates increase... *boggles* And now they say that you have to wait 14 days before you're considered fully vaccinated, so no more immediately visiting night clubs after vaccination... jeez, people really can't think, can they?

@trinsec I saw one which was basically a plastic sheet with some sort of anti-fog coating with foam at the top and bottom but OPEN at the sides ?!?!? Basically just a face shield with little filtration potential. What a joke. Saw another one which was basically a surgical mask with a clear window around the mouth, but with much less ability to see the overall face.

@Infoseepage Here... we don't wear masks like N95 or N100 or so. We wear masks to limit the spread, not to fully eliminate it. That's why we need to keep distance. Of course, that was before the delta variant came into the picture. I don't know if we're going to get around to having to wear more effective masks. I have a simple surgical mask one for areas where masks are still mandatory.

I did once see a guy with a gas mask. :D You know, dark green... :D Wonder if that really helps.

I also know a guy who wears half a spacesuit... oh man.. But you could see his whole face at least. Just wonder how he's going to scratch his nose.

@trinsec There is pretty good evidence that if everyone consistently wore at least a high filtrate surgical mask outside the home, this pandemic would have been over long ago.

Places like South Korea that had both ready supplies of masks and social pressure to use them have fared far better throughout the pandemic. Vaccines + % of population with prior infection + NPIs could have been the recipe for beating this.

@Infoseepage I think at the start of the pandemic so much went wrong here. First, masks were barely if any available. They got hoarded, and the majority of the population didn't get a chance to get masks and they were so expensive too. (To compare, I can easily buy 50 for under 2 euro now).

So our RIVM said 'masks do not really matter, it's the distance that matters'. That's still stuck in our heads...

Oh man, in hindsight there were so many lousy decisions made. Add to that that our society is pretty much individualistic (though not as bad as USA), and you've got a population who's very tired of all those stupid decisions and are starting to get recalcitrant.

@trinsec I kinda like the aesthetic of these. I think I could totally pull off the stylish, high tech, plague ridden, future dystopia aesthetic.

I think one of them I saw has a zipper that attaches to a sleeve which enters the hood, so you can stick your hand in and indirectly scratch your nose.

@Infoseepage That first picture is roughly what that guy I know with the space suit is wearing.

@trinsec I wonder how many people have died in this pandemic because they didn't want to appear foolish or scared? Personally, I think he is being perfectly sensible.

@Infoseepage I dunno. Seems a bit weird to me. And not everybody can afford a $300+ protection. This was at the start of the pandemic. He got that protection gear pretty quick.

@trinsec Really no good solution short of going with a full on PAPR. Those would certainly work for lip reading. Problem is getting the OTHER person to wear it. Hard enough to get the general public to even strap a 30 cent surgical mask to their face. Believe it or not, I almost spend $1100 on one early in the pandemic when it was impossible to get N95's...but you could still get a PAPR from welding supply stores. Go big or go home!

@Infoseepage That's certainly extravagant. :P

@trinsec At the time I was living at my parent's home in WA (both 70+ with multiple health problems) and helping with the live-in care of my 94 yo grandmother. Seattle was one of the hardest hit places in the US and there was a retirement home near us where 46 people died very early on.

By early March 2020 I'd curtailed virtually all non-essential activities and was going to great lengths to keep my family safe.

@Infoseepage I fully understand that, and I'd probably have done the same if I had to take care for my parents (also elderly, but independent). I felt a huge relief when they finally got vaccinated and visited them more often. And when I finally got vaccinated, I even visited them right after work instead of having a few days downtime.

Now the situation is a bit more relaxed, though we don't go out often except for walks or necessary shopping.

@trinsec I'd personally avoid mass transit, period. Way too many cases linked to use and the evidence is that most forms of MT are really poorly ventilated.

Some of the first strong evidence that Covid was airborne came from early contact tracing reports from China where people 4-5 meters away from the infected individual and facing the opposite direction were getting infected. They also found cases where people who entered buses 30+m after the infected person left got infected.

@Infoseepage Mass transit here is relatively safe I've understood. Well, in my area anyway. Masks are mandatory. I don't use mass transit though, I bike around. Even healthier that way! Here, the main cause of spread are the pubs and clubs and big (dance) events. That's why now, with the rise of the 3rd wave, clubs and pubs and festivals have been limited again.

The club owners are all 'whine whine' and they claimed during the last lockdown that they weren't the cause. But since we opened them up and our rates increased unbelievably fast... they're still like 'whine whine' but I have zero empathy for them because it's now so friggin' obvious that their venues are superspreading areas. It's pretty frustrating to see people not getting it that they're part of the problem.

@trinsec I have a highly portable co2 monitor. co2 measurement, in the absence of any active filtration, is a good measure of what fractional % of someone else's exhalations you are breathing in. They did a guerilla data gathering exercise on Riga's various forms of mass transit and the results were not good.

https://aranet.com/riga-public-transport-a-guerrilla-project/

Belgium is actually going to require such co2 monitoring in most public venues and it will be a major health code violation if it ever gets too high.

@Infoseepage I wonder, were those buses with the windows closed? I see our buses have often windows open. Well, I think I saw that, I'm not really much paying attention but I wonder if that'd make a big difference.

@trinsec More ventilation the better. I think they said the street cars which have some permanently open apertures fared much better than most other options.

@Infoseepage Whenever I see a bus pass next time I'll look if they have open windows. Just out of curiousity. Not gonna use public transport, already disliked them before the pandemic anyway. ;) I'll rather bike!

@trinsec Part of the overall spread advantage Delta may have is that fully vaccinated individuals still have a decent chance of being infected and of passing the disease on to others. The household attack rate FROM fully vaccinated individuals who bring it into their homes is ~50% higher with Delta than with previous strains and with the prior strains the UK concluded that vaccinated people spread at maybe 60% of the rate as unvaccinated individuals.

@trinsec The US CDC's advice to vaccinated individuals that they could take off their masks and do whatever the F they liked was bad advice not grounded in data at the time and actively contradicted by data since. It was an attempt at inducing unvaccinated people and unwarranted political triumphalism. It was horrible as both personal medical advice, but especially as public health advice. Everyone should be wearing masks and taking significant precautions, regardless of vaccination status.

@Infoseepage We don't take advice from the US CDC thankfully. We have our RIVM who advises our government. Though our government sometimes allows a bit more than the RIVM would've liked.

@trinsec The US CDC has been a deep embarrassment throughout this pandemic. I personally look closely at the data and messaging being provided by the most successful public health authorities, not the least.

@trinsec The situation is already shaping up differently in less vaccinated societies like the US, where you have less vaccine uptake across a range of age groups. I know one doctor working in Springfield (where they've got 130+ hospitalized cases) said something to the effect of "The first few waves our ICUs were filled mostly with minorities and people with high contact jobs. Today, they are filled almost entirely with people who've refused vaccination."

@Infoseepage Thanks for the insight, it's what I expected would happen. I guess we'll be facing this kind of situation here soon as well. The only people I feel for are the ones who simply cannot be vaccinated because of, for example, an auto-immune illness or something. But for people like one of my coworkers who claim 'this is all a big experiment, I refuse to be part of it' I won't feel pity if they get in trouble. :P

There's more and more exposure in the media here about young used-to-be-fit people having Long Covid and can barely do anything anymore.

I suspect we might have like 25-33% of people refusing to vaccinate.

@Infoseepage Yeah. I've read that vaccinated people can still get sick, just less severe. But that means that even vaccinated people can still spread Covid... which means herd immunity is pretty much non-existant.