I don’t really trust reports that don’t focus on recent weeks. A lot of relatives and friends that don’t even live anywhere near this hotspot that I’m in that were fully vaccinated have come down with COVID in the past few weeks. And I’m awaiting the results of a test to be sure, but I think I can add myself to that list as well. And I’ve had only seconds of contact with strangers unmasked the past few weeks. This delta variant is nasty.
Now, probably none of the people I’m talking about will be in ICU or die, so that’s great, but I fully suspect the messaging around breakthrough cases being “rare” will change soon as the truth comes to light. The vaccine can help save your life, but it sucks when talking about the delta variation in terms of milder disease compared to earlier variants.
And to be clear, by came down with COVID, I mean they were significantly symptomatic enough to get themselves tested. Not talking about random testing of asymptomatic people that happened to catch some.
Based on the recommendations of numerous doctors (including some right here on FR), I would strongly suggest that if you or anyone you know begins to show symptoms alongside a positive COVID-19 test, you immediately seek out an infusion center that can provide monoclonal antibody therapy. The research and the reports from actual doctors using it show that it’s extremely effective at preventing cases from escalating. It’s what they gave President Trump when he was hospitalized with COVID-19.
The risk of serious illness for vaccinated people is very, very low. Even those who are hospitalized end up leaving after a couple days. But even if the chances are 1 in a million, why not drop that risk to 1 in 100 million instead?
In terms of the vaccines, I think that Pfizer and Moderna are just waiting for their BLA (full FDA approval) to come through. It should be here soon, and once it does, they can release a Delta-specific shot under a BLA addendum like how the updated flu shots are each year. That should be trivial for them to do (just update the nucleotide sequence and start producing the new version), but right now they’d have to spend nearly a year doing clinical trials to get it out the door. If/when they can do it, I would expect it to have similar efficacy as the existing vaccines had pre-Delta. That means blocking transmissions very effectively.