Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Have a trip planned to gulf coast in Alabama. Maybe a good time to check the refund policy.

Some small number of vaccinated people were always going to still get infected, regardless of the variant. That doesn't make the vaccines a failure. Quite the opposite, given the fairly rapid decline in case counts over the last few months.

Yes, exactly. Anti-vaxers were all over the comments when 2 people aboard a Royal Caribbean ship tested positive, like it's some big vaccine failure. But they had no symptoms, and would never have known had they not been required to get tested before disembarking. That's the difference. No one said it was 100% on stopping the virus, but it is damn near 100% at keeping you from getting sick.

Disney delayed their test sailing, but in their case, they're battling inconclusive testing. They had a handful of crew test positive, then test negative, and none of them were symptomatic at all. Out of 600 crew, those few would meet the expected number of false positives, in fact.

Study shows Ohio vax-lottery didn't increase vaccination rates. State touted increased vaccination rates in first 2 weeks of the program (was pretty much silent thereafter). But study indicates that a similar increase was seen across the country at that time.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2021/07/03/ohio-vaccin...521b146bff

The most impressive part of the whole Vax-A-Million campaign was how quickly people seemed to lose interest in it.

I'm starting to feel bad for school districts (again). Decisions about mask policies for the fall school year are going to put them in the spotlight again, in basically a no win situation. Many states are pushing the decision entirely to the local level, and there will be angry parents (again) on both sides.

On the "no masks" side, most of the articles I've seen have lots of quotes about "needing to get back to normal" and "getting kid's education back on track", but certainly no scientific arguments.

This article gives a breakdown by state. Seems there are still a few that might hold onto the mandates for kids.

https://www.romper.com/parenting/will-kids-wear-masks-in-school-next-year

As a parent, I'm kind of expecting the decision to be: go to school in person with no masks, or be fully remote from home. I don't have much faith that the majority are going to support masks in schools given a choice about it.

Our local district is likely to not require masks since they stopped requiring them as soon as the state mandate was dropped. My youngest graduated this year so it doesn't really affect my kids at this point. My nephew initially signed his kids up for school in person when they were told masks or shields would be acceptable but then the governor mandated masks. Their kids started in person but their son with asthma was having an issue with the mask so they changed them all to remote. The building I'm currently assigned to is a county program with an administrator who is particularly paranoid and I'm being required to wear a mask AND a shield the entire school day and if this is still the case when we return in the fall I'll be looking for a different job.

Sooo...is the current uptick in cases because of Delta variant, because of non-existent restrictions in most of the country, or because of summer cabin fever (see 2020)? I June, I was under the assumption that we were pretty much "pandemic over." but I guess not?

From what I gather, when I pay attention, the upticks appear to be localized not a general trend nationwide.

I've read a lot of anecdotal reports about breakthrough cases among vaccinated folks, but most reported statistics seem to indicate the vast majority of cases are among those who are not.

So, the answer is probably "all of the above, but mostly because not enough people are vaccinated."

Paisley said:

From what I gather, when I pay attention, the upticks appear to be localized not a general trend nationwide.

It's not "everywhere, everywhere" but there's aren't many states where the numbers are still going down.

From what I heard, the current uptick is mostly in states with very low (~30%) vaccination rates. Low vaccination rates + delta variant = more cases. I would not be surprised at all to have a need for additional restrictions once we get into fall / winter.

Remember all that talk about “flattening the curve”? Well, that’s certainly what’s happening here in Ohio. The new case curve is looking pretty qnza flat. I liked it better when it was falling rapidly.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

Breakthrough cases are below where they expected based on the trial data, which made odds of infection around 1 in 20. The reality has been more like 1 in 500, which you would expect because there are fewer chances in the first place to be exposed.

The uptick is largely centered on areas with low vaccination rates, which is completely ridiculous because there's no reason for it to happen. Nearly every death at this point in the US is preventable. We finally have a situation where you can obtain the simplest form of healthcare regardless of your income and employment status, and we've failed as a society to get it done. I find that very demoralizing.

But these people are still getting on planes and going to different states. And they're the ones fighting the loudest and taking their masks off mid-flight.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Tuesday that fully vaccinated Americans in parts of the country with "substantial or high transmission" of COVID-19 should return to wearing masks indoors, citing new data on the highly contagious Delta variant."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-mask-guidelines-vaccinated-indoors/

The red counties of Ohio for the most part do not surprise me, but overall I am surprised at how yellow Ohio is. I wonder if it is just taking a bit longer for it to come our way.

I was thinking the same thing. Pretty sure our vaccination rate in Ohio is still pathetically below 50%.

I suspect the northeast/midwest is at least in part about "we don't need to be indoors in AC constantly."