Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

If I'm not mistaken, Royal has the same policy. NCL is requiring 100% vax, so no one under 12 is even allowed on the ship under any circumstances.

Pretty sure Royal requires a negative PCR or antigen test for anyone over 2 test as well as vaccination for anyone over 12. I’ve been watching a cruise vlog that left from Miami and the ship is not crowded at all. Looks really nice. I know as soon as I book it will be booked at 110% with the way my luck goes…

I'm interested in your guys' opinion on the breakthrough cases that are happening. A friend of mine (in his 70s) got covid months after being vaccinated, and we are planning a day hiking trip this week. He's all better now, but he doesn't always mask up and is around lots of people who don't wear a mask. My concern is being in the car with him for a few hours.

If he's picked up another strain, I could carry it and give it to someone.. or get sick myself (low probability, I'm healthy and had my vaccines in the spring). From what I gather, breakthrough cases seem to be about one in a thousand. Thoughts?

You’ve heard the phrase “when in doubt…”?
Are you not able to say to everyone “Hey, in light of recent developments I think we’d all be a lot safer and comfortable if we agree to wear our masks for the car ride and any other indoor activity”?
And if there’s resistance then pull yourself right out of there. Hiking can resume one day when it’s all safe, right? I’m assuming this guy should be sympathetic if not overly cautious.
I lost an old friend the other day to Covid. And by old I mean he was 97. He was also fully vaxed but lived in Florida. I think he felt that being vaccinated gave him the freedom to do things like go to play cards with other seniors who were unvaccinated deniers that refused to wear masks. It’s coming clear that there’s a lot we don’t know and being safe is better than being sorry.

The odds of a vaxed person getting hospitalized having been infected are very low, though a colleague of mine who is fully vaxed just got out of the hospital on o2. The odds of having symptoms or contracting enough to transmit are non-trivial. I definitely think it’s greater than 0.1%. The vax was only 95% effective on alpha, so it’s definitely less than that for delta.

If your friend is still positive (hasn’t had a negative at least 5 days after positive), there’s no way in hell I’d be in a car for multiple hours. If not for me, than for the people I might transmit to. CDC recommends that any positive case, vaxed or not, isolate for 10-14 days. I would not be near someone during their prescribed isolation period.

Masks would help, ventilation would help, but that’s a small enclosed space. The rule of thumb I’ve heard is imagining trying to avoid second hand smoke. Clearly there’s not much avoiding going on there.

If he’s past his isolation window, I’d wear a mask and trybto increase ventilation while in the car, but it’s probably not the worst thing in the world. My understanding is that masks + vaccine is pretty strong protection.

As for the vaccine itself, I’m sure you’ve heard that they start to lose effectiveness after six months or so. We don’t know rxactly how much or exactly when, but I definitely wouldn’t be counting on mine which I got in April.

Yeah, there's always some amount of risk to be around unvaccinated people, but if someone who is vaccinated but was infected is around you, presumably they're super-immune at that point, and even less likely to carry, let alone transmit. If you're hiking and outdoors it's likely a non-issue, but to Andy's point, long car rides with anyone not in your pod has more risk.

Thanks for the advice guys, I'm gonna call my friend and say "let's wait." I'll still go, but alone this time.

Realistically, if there are 200 million fully vaccinated people (I know we are not there yet, just making the math easier), and the vaccine is 95% effective, that means there could be 10 million breakthrough infections. A non-trivial number, being 25% of the official count currently.

We are fully vaccinated (April) and still mask indoors and avoid crowded spaces outdoors. Would not consider a car trip with anyone outside our (small) pod. Not yet. We still have a solid 6 months to go with this (opinion, as always YMMV).

It’s taken me a while, but I’m generally ok not wearing a mask outdoors in small groups. I still like to wear a mask outdoors in large groups, or inside public spaces, regardless of the crowd. If I were in your position, I would be a bit nervous about a couple hour car ride.

This was the top story in the NY Times morning newsletter today, which makes me feel relatively good about continuing on (mostly) as normal in my day to day routine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/briefing/risk-breakthrough-infec...delta.html

That is pretty reassuring. Although it's still a conclusion based on averages, and we're really good at Covid here in Flori-duh, but even 1 in 1,000 isn't something I'm super worried about.

Chance per day is sort of a weird metric, though I'm not sure what a better metric would be. It'd probably be useful to have "chance of infection given that I was exposed to a Covid positive person indoors without a mask."

But the odds I assume include that likelihood, right?

Yeah. But there are a lot of assumptions about behavior to arrive at the “chance per day” figure and those behaviors may vary widely. It’s more helpful to me to understand what happens in different situations and then I can choose whoch of those situations are within my rick tolerance. This data seems to just be painting with enormously broad strokes.

Not really... that article deliberately calls out the apparent correlation to community vaccination and infection levels.

ApolloAndy said:

my rick tolerance

Mine's pretty low.

Covid Survival Calculator

Supposedly Cleveland Clinic was involved in developing this personalized “Covid Survival Calculator.” I’d take it with a grain of salt. But it is educational (entertaining?) in the sense that you can personalize your own risk profile.

Obviously there is more than just surviving to consider. But if you want an unbiased risk assessment the next time you have to take a long car ride with your unvaccinated friend…here’s a nifty tool…

Note that it appears the assumptions are based for the unvaccinated…unless they haven’t updated their methods page. So if you are vaccinated, decent chance your odds are even better than this tool would suggest.

Interesting. That calculator put my odds at about 1:70 on my first pass. For my second pass, I remained diabetic, but dropped the hypertension (since that's treated) and my odds went...up to 1:64. Interesting.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

That site has been around since spring of last year. It's not useful.

^ That is totally low-balling it. The site is a flaming pile of crap.

My risk is 4X the average for dying of Covid. With no chronic conditions. Seriously?