RE: Delta is more infectious, and gets to younger folks more (over half of Israel’s Delta cases are among minors, who they do not vaccinate (except for exceptional co-morbidities). The number vaccinated adults becoming symptomatic with the Delta variant in Israel is on the order of dozens per day.
The question is this — of the younger folks, what is the AVERAGE condition of their infection severity? Mild, Asymptomatic or serious?
You said the hospitalized are only a few dozen — how many of these are vaccinated and how many are unvaccinated?
I may be wrong, but from the looks of it, although the Delta Variant is aggressive in looking for a human host ( very transmissive ), it’s severity and lethality is not as strong as the original Coronavirus.
“I may be wrong, but from the looks of it, although the Delta Variant is aggressive in looking for a human host ( very transmissive ), it’s severity and lethality is not as strong as the original Coronavirus.”
Or is that a result of the weak and old having been innoculated so the Delta is in healthier hosts who fight it off better?
We just don’t know yet.
I think the first good evidence will be shortened hospitalizations- from UK.
I see a lot of studies are being done on protection of vax and natural infection against Delta, but they’re just done in a lab dish.
They show prev infection and one dose of vax is very good, as good as 2 doses of vax. But they do not reflect the whole immune response. Which I would expect to be better.
Delta definitely spreads significantly faster/more efficiently than the original COVID (higher Ro). As such, you need higher levels of immunity to achieve herd immunity, and choke off wild transmission (1 - 1/Ro) - closer to 80% immunity for Delta, compared to 60% for the original strain.
The two mutations that characterize it make it spread more effectively, but are not related to severity or lethality.
It may be that the lower severity and lethality that we are seeing in the USA, is more an effect of the most vulnerable people being mostly removed from the cases, due to vaccine protection.
Delta was plenty lethal when it first shot through India, with low vaccination rates among the elderly.