July 26, 2021

What To Do About The Delta Variant?

The above map is from The New York Times and current as of July 22nd, 2021. It represents new COVID infections. A majority of those hospitalized as a result of these infections — 97%! — are the unvaccinated.

The below map comes from a ‘Risk Assessment Planning Tool.’ It’s showing an image of the risk level of encountering one person with Covid per 50 people. You can adjust the number of people involved, but 50 is a decent enough number for our purposes now. (Powder River, Montana and Dimmit, Texas each show an 80% chance of encountering one person with Covid per 50 people.)

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 21st, 2021 examined 4,000-plus cases of the Delta variant and found that mRNA two dose vaccines were 88% effective against any symptomatic infection. Astrazeneca — which shares some similarities with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine1 — was about 67% effective. (Regarding Johnson and Johnson: there are conflicting accounts as to J&J’s effectiveness.)

These figures aren’t meant to show that The Delta Variant isn’t something worth keeping an eye on — it absolutely is.

So what should a hypothetical individual do about The Delta Variant?

Here’s what we’d argue:

1. Keep an eye on the maps the same way you might keep an eye on the weather.

2. Get everyone around you vaccinated.

3. If you’re vaccinated and it looks like the figurative weather might change around you, mask up. (This brief argument from The Atlantic puts it well.)