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.
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%.
There was a heated school board meeting last night down in Buncombe County, North Carolina, which includes Asheville. The topic was a new mask mandate for the county’s schools. But it’s a targeted one: the board voted to mandate masking for those who don’t show proof of vaccination. The vote was 4 to 2 in favor. Protesters insisted that this constituted dictatorship if the board didn’t agree to vote again.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The meeting attracted a pride of feral Trumpers who tried to disrupt it and pushed all sort of conspiracy theories about like “the fake vaccine is the plandemic.”
You can see one of the outbursts here.
Great deep dive into the American right-wing’s love affair with authoritarian nationalist Viktor Orbán. Tucker Carlson is actually late to the party.