Most of them had mild symptoms (slight fever, running nose, body aches etc). Lasted 2-3 days and now they’re feeling ok.
Glad your family was vaccinated and has recovered well. Thank you for getting vaccinated as well.
In regards to masks I don’t think they actually work (the ones that aren’t N95 which is 99.9999% of mask wearers) so I’m not sure why there is this push to mask people up again.
Contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a matter of exposure through the air. That can be through breathing it in or through the eyes. The most common type of transmission is through breathing in a sufficient amount of viral material.
Wearing a mask filters out x percent of viral material. If all parties are wearing a mask the potential for transmission is reduced to less than x/2. If all parties have their eyes covered transmission potential further reduces and full face shields drop it even lower.
But x or x/2 still allow for transmission if x or x/2 is enough viral material for the virus to develop. Using example numbers, not real numbers, someone with a reasonably functional immune system who receives 1,000 viral particles might not develop the virus at all while 1,000,000 vp might cause a mild illness and 1,000,000,000 vp might cause an overwhelming illness that rapidly leads to disease. If wearing a mask reduces that 1,000,000 exposure to 1,000 then the wearer does not get sick and even in the 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000 scenario a severe illness becomes a mild illness.
My Aunt and Uncle may be a real life example of this. My Uncle strongly believed the disinformation pushed by politicians and foreign adversaries. His like minded preacher brought CoVID to a prayer breakfast. My quite unhealthy uncle experienced a few weeks of mild illness while my healthy, daily exercising, just retired, Aunt likely received a strong exposure while caring for him. Despite weeks of hospital care including the best wormers and anti-parasitic drugs my aunt did not survive the illness. Family reunions will not be the same.
My wife is a teacher. In her school the rate of infection among teachers was more than three times that in the community. Most weeks students were quarantined from her classroom. By wearing a quality mask and a face shield she was able to avoid contraction. In fact she did not have any illness at all during the year and was in the classroom every day.
But all of that is complicated by delta which may cause 1,000 times as much viral material to be emitted. (
Viral infection and transmission in a large well-traced outbreak caused by the Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant)
This year I purchased a stock of KN95 masks for the school year. They were recommended by a local epidemiologist for filtration and comfort. We find them to be easy to breathe and talk through and we bought a brand that was evaluated by the CDC during the mask shortage.
not big governments or anyone else to say what they must do.
From a constitutional perspective I do not believe that the federal government could force national vaccination. At a state or local level the United States Supreme Court has already ruled in favor of a vaccine mandate (
On this day, the Supreme Court rules on vaccines and public health - National Constitution Center). Such mandates are unlikely in the worst affected areas as both the suffering populations.
It’s like people are completely disregarding that yes numbers of cases are rising but the deaths are not following the same trends just after infection spikes like they were before.
This would be valid in an area that is mostly vaccinated. I live in an area that is 35% vaccinated. Out of 300,000 Arkansans infected by SARS-CoV-2 we have had more than 10,000 excess deaths and more than 6,000 deaths confirmed as CoVID. There are ~1,800,000 Arkansans who have not been vaccinated or had CoVID. It is thought that most unvaccinated Americans will contract delta. If that happens it is reasonable to expect 36,000 to 60,000 additional CoVID deaths in Arkansas.
Increases in deaths has always lagged behind increases in hospitalization which has lagged behind increases in positive test results. Arkansas has been in the lead in delta cases on a per capita basis. Our news cases level is half of what it was at our peak in January however our hospitals are near full and we have less than 50 ICU beds available in the state serving a population of 3,000,000. Our rate of death also is increasing.
The rate of increase in hospitalization has decreased since hospitals became full but just look at the sharp rate of increase recently. That is so much steeper than any prior point in this pandemic. You also can see how increase in ICU and ventilation have lagged behind hospital admission in the past. Increases in death lagged further behind these indicators.
) also consistently paddled by foreign adversaries. That's akin to crying "Fire" in a crowded theater.
