The CDC just extended the eviction moratorium until the end of July
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Itās supposed to be 111F/44C here over the weekend and my office decided to tentatively re-open so that employees can go into the aircon if they need - a lot of people here do not have AC at home. Still requiring masks when not at your desk, social distancing, and masks for people who arenāt vaccinated at all times including at your desk except when eating or drinking, which are the state guidelines.
Looks like if this trial goes okay, theyāll be fully re-opened and available to employees to use starting in July, but I donāt think weāll go back to required in-office hours (used to have 4 required in-office hours per week of your choosing) any time soon. We also hired people from out of state during covid who are not going to come into portland once a week.
(My state is now at 68.7% fully vaxxed adults- slightly behind where we want to be, but overall still amazing).
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My DDās employer is only allowing people to return to the office if they are vaccinated and they are requiring everyone to return by mid September, soā¦
I assume they will allow medical exemptions or accommodations.
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Weāre a pretty small company (20 people) and Iām pretty sure the entirety of the staff has gotten vaccinated, but I havenāt actually run through slack messages to check. Certainly seems like everyone has taken at least one PTO day to get vaccinated/for side effects 
Out of 20, at least 2 of us are immunosuppressed. Iām probably fine, but my other coworker is on one of the medications that has really disappointing vaccine responses.
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I was talking to a friend who is involved at a lab doing work adjacent to the vaccine development (but not directly working on them). She has a same age child as me. Sheās super optimistic because she hasnāt seen any data indicating that the vaccine is setting off autoimmune MIS-C in teens and adolescents. So itās looking really promising on that front, especially because adolescents are having more MIS-C cases post acute COVID than younger children.
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My husbandās office has yellow stickers that say āvaccinatedā if they have submitted proof of vaccine to HR.
If you donāt submit proof of vaccine, which is optional, you must continue to wear a mask.
He has a lab mate who is a strict libertarian. And we know heās been vaccinated, because he complained about the side effects, and was out of work for a day with a fever, but he refuses to share that information with his company, so he wonāt get a sticker, and instead got a new mask that says āFreedomā on it.
My company has not yet said how they will ask for proof of vaccine, but we have to show it if we want to go back to the office. But also, they closed most of the offices so most people will be remote anyway.
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Yiiikes. Thatās a good reason to do a trial reopening!
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This is stupid. But I do have a hard time with formally submitting info to my company that I think is none of their business, so I sort of get it. Iād probably just wear the (plain) mask too.
My company is the complete opposite though. The CEO is a Covid hoax believer. Heās anti mask and constantly forwards conspiracy theory podcasts and articles that discuss how the vaccines are killing people. Sigh.
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Multiple instances in 2 states of Australia where fleeting transmission has caused infection in recent weeks. Some encounters captured on CCTV. Itās an airborne virus - close but fleeting contact between strangers and involving the delta variant was enough. No masks mandated other than on public transport, healthcare and some very specific settings until the recent outbreaks (caused by leakage from hotel quarantine) because weāve had no local transmission for months.
Vaccination rates in Australia are low - supply issues with mRNA vaccines, AstraZeneca not recommended in younger age groups due to blood clot risks vs COVID risk, and federal government mismanagement big time!
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This must have been rough to endure during the height of the pandemic. Yikes!!!
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It wasnāt for me so much because I worked from home the whole time, but a lot of people couldnāt and many of them were worried.
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Alright, make sure youāre actually in a good place to read this, but I recommend reading this thread from an epidemiologist about the delta variant in fully vaccinated people. Itās not good.
Full thread transcript under cut - a lot about delta variant and different vaccineās efficacy
Summary
45% of all #DeltaVariant deaths in England! in the past 1 week (June 8-14th) where among those fully vaccinated with 2 doses & post +14 days. Total Delta #COVID19 deaths up +31 in one weekāof 31, 14 deaths in fully vaxxed. #Delta breakthrough concerning!
To be clear, this is still a large benefit of vaccination. But we cannot say for certain that #DeltaVariant is ānothing to worryā about anymore. It is much faster transmission & 2.5x greater hospitalization risk than #Alphavariant which implies 4x hospitalization vs original.
We have to be worried when we see such numbers and the exponential rise of #DeltaVariant worldwide ā especially in low vaccinated countries, and under vaccinated parts of US that are vaccine hesitant.
#DeltaVariant is now >96% dominant in 3 major counties (UK, Russia, Portugal). It is surging exponentially in the US at now 31% of all cases, up from ~10% just a week ago. The #COVID19 rise & divergence hidden by fast dropping #AlphaVariant.
We are seeing a lot more #DeltaVariant related breakthrough infections. Israel is also heavily 2 dose vaccinated country tooāwith Pfizer no less. And itās seeing more Delta #COVID19 school outbreaks too, and breakthroughs in teachers. Must be vigilant. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-covid-delta-variant-two-month-record-1.9935923
Thinking about these tricky breakthrough deaths, from talking to many other experts Iāve conferred, is that a combination of age related waning of immunity as well as immunocompromised individuals not having sufficient vaccine immunity responsesācreates a pool of vulnerable.
Canadian federal government has now just declared that AZ is inferior to mRNA vaccines, thus advocating to people to switch to Pfizer and Moderna. Not a peep on J&J 1-shot regimen. (note- J&J is in same adenovirus-vector family as AZ, but J&J has special double-proline splint)
The reason we donāt know about J&J is that unlike AstraZeneca, J&J is an enhanced spike vaccine with a ādouble prolineā encode to splint & stabilize the spike proteināPfizer, Moderna, Novavax has this special enhancement as well. AstraZeneca does not.
Thus, J&J is unique. It doesnāt quite fit in with adenovirus vector AstraZeneca due to double-proline difference, and it doesnāt fit in with protein based Novavax, nor mRNA like Pfizer or Moderna. Itās hard to infer what J&J efficacy isāor what to do about it being 1 dose.
Vaccine effectiveness against #DeltaVariant according to
ā averaging AstraZeneca & Pfizer together (even if different), you can see a substantial drop for 1 dose. But even 2 doses has a ~8% drop as well. Also AZās 2 dose is actually 60%. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1406617039750455296ā¦?
Problem for UK is that while over half of adults are fully vaccinated, 2/3 of all shots are the 60% 2-dose efficacy AstraZeneca vaccine.
Doing the math, @GosiaGasperoPhD says we can only stop the fast #DeltaVariant if we have >90% efficacy vaccine used by 70% of the total population (not just by adults). But no country on Earth is at that level yet for 2 doses, and with 90% efficacy for Delta. Thatās the worry
In addition to deaths, 10% of all hospitalizations in the UK last week were among those fully 2 dose vaccinated. This is not a small handful of breakthroughs anymore.
(Sidenote- hospitalizations is much larger numbers than deaths - more stable (less prone to fluctuations).
Not just severity and vaccine breakthroughs, but #DeltaVariant is also incredibly transmissible via just āfleetingā short casual exposure. Several documented and proven cases of such short āsecondsā long exposures from Australia 
detailed tracing.
I would like to point out that while UK has more 1st dose than Israel, it is only 46% vaccinated (~2/3 of which is AstraZeneca), which is decent but not remotely enough to remove mitigations as shown above, for stopping #DeltaVariant via vaccine alone.
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Ok but since there are lots of anxious people on the thread, as a fellow anxious person, Eric Feifl-Ding himself says that he often biases action without complete data and is necessarily louder and more alarmist to get policy people to listenā¦
This was 14 deaths with 2 shots. Age? Complications? We donāt know.
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This is really good to know. I wasnāt actually feeling anxious til I started seeing reports from fully vaxxed people getting covid - some for the 2nd time, then I went to look up some science, then I got a little anxious after reading that thread.
I hope Iām not spiraling, but percentages matter a lot more than raw numbers when it comes to efficacy, right? I mean, thatās 50% of total deaths in fully vaxxed people, and deaths lag behind hospitalizations by about a month, and the delta variant has only been in the UK for about a month and London has only been out of lockdown for a few weeks.
Weāve gone from 0 deaths or hospitalization in the clinical trials for the vaccines against the alpha covid, to closer to 70% protection based on recent data . the data is still thin though, but we literally donāt know the efficacy of several vaccines (J&J, Sinovac, Covaxin) against delta because theyāre not in use in the places that have delta as the primary strain and also are producing studies.
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If you read some of the QTs on that thread, part of the problem is likely that the UK has mostly used AstraZeneca, which is much weaker against Delta. Pfizer, Moderna have not shown the same kind of reduced efficacy.
Delta variant is definitely scary BUT we have tools to fight it.
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Excellent point, that makes me spiral less- all the folks I know at least tangentially that are getting breakthrough infections from delta are in the US (Miami and LA) and got Pfizer, which is what is what started me on this whole worry trend.
I received J&J which we donāt know about yet, which makes me nervous, but even more nervous about Covaxin since thatās the one the majority of the global south is getting, and as far as I understand is similar to AZ.
Ugh I am tired of feeling like i need to be an amateur epidemiologist 
I just want to know what level of other precautions I should be taking post j&j and immunosuppressed
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Iām not worried about this at all yet. I think most of us here donāt usually follow diseases, treatments, and the two steps forward one step back nature of medical science in general, but this isnāt that surprising to me. Iām sure this new variant will be watched closely (good thing) and Iām even surer it will be reported on endlessly (bad thing). There is still big business in hysteria and sharing terrible news and there is still no money at all in balanced unbiased reporting. I think itās important to remember that. Any bad news about the covid vaccine will be loudly projected by every news outlet as a potential doomsday warning. Every measure of success will be undercut with a ābutā or āso farā or a point that shows things are still really bad and unfair, etc.
Example: I had chicken pox twice. Most people donāt even think thatās possible! Why isnāt every parent terrified about this happening? Why arenāt adults worried that it could happen to them? Easy! Because it doesnāt happen to most people. Most things that donāt happen to most people are never even in the public knowledge. I think itās important to keep in mind that this is a strange instance where unlikely reactions are being reported, so it feels proportionally more dangerous and frightening. But, unlikely reactions are normal in any type of treatment, especially if so many people get it. Some people die getting nose jobs, for example, but not that many people get nose jobs. It isnāt news. If nose jobs started increasing in popularity to where 40% of Americans were getting them, the total deaths from nose jobs might rise enough that theyād finally get reported on.
Iām not saying there is no risk at all, or that we shouldnāt take note, but there is so much variation in human reactions to medical interventions and medical problems.
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I recently saw a medscape piece that pointed out that, while long COVID is certainly a concern, we donāt talk about ālong fluā, in spite of 10% of people having a very similar host of lasting effects after flu (mental fog, fatigue, visualizable lung tissue changes, etc).
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My bff from childhood is a nurse and she made the same point about long flu! I had never even heard of it, lol.
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Eyyyy, me too! Iām glad that kids these days can just get the vaccine.
I am glad that post viral syndromes are getting more attention now, but I agree with your general point about hysteria reporting. Humans are bad at estimating probabilities!
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