How The US is Getting a Crash Course in Scientific Uncertainty Due to the Pandemic - The New York Times

How The US is Getting a Crash Course in Scientific Uncertainty Due to the Pandemic - The New York Times:

Federal agencies have an unenviable task: Creating guidelines needed to live with an unfamiliar and rapidly spreading virus. But health officials have not acknowledged clearly or often enough that their recommendations may — and very probably would — change as the virus, and their knowledge of it, evolved.

“Since the beginning of this pandemic, it’s been a piss-poor job, to say it in the nicest way,” said Dr. Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

Leaders in the United States and Britain have promised too much too soon, and have had to backtrack. Health officials have failed to frame changing advice as necessary when scientists learn more about the virus.

Let's watch as the entire country discovers that science is a sloppy mess, and that authority is slowly constructed over time, like a Jenga tower.

The Delta Variant requires a higher quality mask

N95 masks and delta variant: What you need to know - The Washington Post:

because the delta variant is much more easily transmissible than previously circulating strains of the coronavirus, “we really need highly protective masks along with everything else,” Marr said. “Where a simple cloth mask was helpful before, it’s not helpful enough now,” particularly for people who remain unvaccinated.

My work held an in-person meeting recently and was handing out N95 masks, the cool black ones.  I filled my satchel with them.

Delta Has Changed the Pandemic Endgame - The Atlantic

Delta Has Changed the Pandemic Endgame - The Atlantic:

Delta’s extreme transmissibility negates some of the community-level protection that vaccines offer. If no other precautions are taken, Delta can spread through a half-vaccinated country more quickly than the original virus could in a completely unvaccinated country. It can even cause outbreaks in places with 90 percent vaccination rates but no other defenses. 

This is disheartening.  Also, science writer Ed Yong is a national treasure.

Dramatic video shows alligator attacking trainer before visitor jumps in to rescue her - CBS News

Dramatic video shows alligator attacking trainer before visitor jumps in to rescue her - CBS News: One of the guests, later identified as Donnie Wiseman, yelled "We've got trouble in here!" before jumping into the water and climbing on top of the reptile.

This has nothing to do with the Delta variant, but this guy jumped into an alligator pool to rescue the trainer from the animal's jaws.  He's a freaking hero.

27 vaccinated people test positive for Covid on a Carnival cruise ship

27 vaccinated people test positive for Covid on a Carnival cruise ship: Twenty-seven vaccinated people aboard a Carnival cruise ship that docked in Belize tested positive for Covid-19 this week. Only one of the positive cases was a passenger; the remaining 26 were crew members. All 27 people are experiencing mild or no symptoms.

I'm wondering what this means--are these breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, who have contracted the Delta variant?  Does the cruise ship require proof of vaccination among passengers?  Given the events of the past 10 years, I tend to think of cruise ships as floating petri dishes.  Looking at the infection rates in New York City, perhaps we are going to live in a less dense future.  However, Hong Kong has had 212 deaths.  Someone needs to write more about this.

When the Delta Variant Came to Provincetown - The Atlantic

When the Delta Variant Came to Provincetown - The Atlantic

 from July 3 to July 17, the per-day COVID-19 case rate among residents spiked from zero per 100,000 people to 177 per 100,000 people. Among Massachusetts residents who tested positive there, three-fourths were fully vaccinated, and among those vaccinated people, 79 percent—274 individuals—experienced symptoms, mild in most cases. These numbers, along with numbers gathered elsewhere, suggested that breakthroughs were turning out to be more common and more serious than the CDC previously expected. The shots still reduce the severity and deadliness of infections, but compared with the original coronavirus, the Delta variant increases the chance that, if infected, vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say: The Delta outbreak is going to get much worse, warns Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who leads the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "The number of intensive-care beds needed could be higher than any time we've seen," he says. He adds that his team's analysis shows that almost every single one of the 100 million unvaccinated Americans who hasn't had COVID-19 yet will likely get it in the coming months, short of taking the sort of strong isolation and masking precautions that seem unlikely in the vaccine-hesitant population.

I've been on vacation for two weeks. I highly recommend camping at the beach on the Oregon coast, but dress warm as the wind on the beach gets nippy when it is only 60 degrees outside.

With a mutating Covid, perhaps all of our vacations will be socially distanced in the future.