We did a fascinating Inside Briefing this morning with Dr. Monica Gandhi discussing vaccines, different layers of the human immune system and what really counts as an infection. It’s really critical information when thinking about personal decisions about risk and about policies for society at large. Thanks to the Inside members who joined for the discussion. We’ll be publishing the full interview for all members either later today or at latest tomorrow. Don’t miss it.
At TPM, we’ve been harping on the fact that the whole bipartisan back-and-forth that unfolded over the last two months — and that might conclude early tomorrow morning — doesn’t really matter that much. It’s the reconciliation package that matters. If it passes in a form similar to what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined this morning, it would be the most significant progressive legislation in at least a decade.
It might also be the last significant progressive legislation for at least a decade.
As we’ve been discussing there is a paucity of information on the precise effectiveness of vaccines vs the Delta variant and the contours of the pandemic in the new circumstances of the last eight weeks or so. We know in general that vaccines continue to be highly effective at preventing severe illness. But the details are not as easy as they should be to come by. This seems to be both the product of very new facts which studies are only catching up with and a continued paucity of good national data from the CDC. That vacuum is filled by anecdotal information.
I was raised by a man steeped in the life sciences. He wasn’t a climate scientist. He was a marine botanist who spent the first and last parts of his career teaching general biology at various colleges. But this professional description doesn’t capture the depth of the imprint on him and thus indirectly on me. For him it was an entire ethic and worldview, one rooted in evolutionary theory and furnished from various domains of knowledge: archeology, paleontology, paleo-zoology, ecology, astronomy in addition to biology.
A good run-down of the cataclysmic and imminent changes to the global climate sketched out in today’s big climate report.
The much-heralded bipartisan mini-bill actually seems on its way to passage in the Senate. On the critical (and mind-numbing) vote to allow a majority vote, 18 Republicans ended up voting in the affirmative. It now seems very likely that Biden will get his bipartisan deal while also managing to pass close to his entire fiscal, infrastructure and climate agenda. If that happens – and it is likely to happen notwithstanding a few more months of haggling and drama – it will be a major, major accomplishment.
Yet in a guest opinion piece Friday in The New York Times Alex Pareene argued that it is in fact a “pyrrhic victory in a broken Senate.” I’m almost never in the practice of responding to people in the Editors’ Blog. But I wanted to do so in this case because Pareene is a gifted writer and incisive political observer. So it’s important to explain why he’s wrong.
As we’ve been discussing in recent days, I’ve been looking for apples to apples data on the trends of vaccine efficacy around the US. Changes are likely driven by the Delta variant. But some waning of immunity among the vaccinated could also be playing a role. So could expanding immunity among the unvaccinated – because so many of them are getting sick. That would reduce the difference in infection rates between the two groups even though protection from the vaccine remains unaffected.
Now we have some new information from Oregon.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been on a destructive path for some time, buckling himself to the former president’s Big Lie crusade with near blind allegiance.
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A central mystery of the Delta variant in recent weeks hasn’t just been limited data but also wildly inconsistent data. The Israeli health ministry has been placing vaccine efficacy somewhere near 40% against infection – vastly lower than the original clinical trials and much lower than other current measurements. But a slew of Israeli public health experts have challenged those tabulations. A UK study in that went through May and was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on July 21st placed efficacy against the Delta variant at 88%, only slightly less than against the Alpha variant. But yesterday another UK study was released by the Imperial College London which showed substantially reduced efficacy against infection – though apparently not hospitalization and disease.
This study puts vaccine efficacy against all infection at 49% and against symptomatic infection at 59%.