It is very relevant.
It means that States are reporting their numbers in a misleading manner., whether unintentionally, or otherwise.
Take Florida, for example.
Florida is not really one State, but two, sharing the same geographic space.
About half the Florida population is vaccinated, about half isn’t.
Almost all the new cases and every other concerning COVID19 number are among the unvaccinated demographic.
That means if Florida’s aggregate positivity rate is 15%, and almost all of that is the unvaccinated population with the state, the unvaccinated population’s positivity rate is probably closer to 30%.
That also means that within the unvaccinated population in Florida, these are the worst COVID19 numbers that population has ever seen since the pandemic began.
Thankfully, even though I do not like how DeSantis is not exactly transparent with the public about the numbers, etc, he has done a wonderful job throughout the pandemic of reinforcing ICU capacity.
But one hopes that a perfect storm of continued increase combined with red tide will not present a new problem, or that a continued rise in numbers will not coincide with a major hurricane.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not saying vaccinated people cannot get or transmit COVID19. And I did not discuss the Delta variant, and that is another issue worth keeping an eye on)
It’s not fearmongering. Fearmongering is what the anti-vax and anti-PPE cults do, and they are responsible for potentially millions of deaths along with their political enablers… The CDC isn’t in the business of spreading fear. They are in the business of saving lives, and if you believe otherwise your cynicism can go fuck itself.
It’s relevant because it illustrates how COVID transmission is becoming less probablistic and more specific to changes to “high risk” categories.
At the start, high risk meant certain pre existing conditions, age, etc. Many of those high risk people either got Vid, got vaccinated beforehand, or both. Or just died.
Now high risk is becoming less associated with health conditions and more strongly associated with political voting patterns and the influence of junk science propaganda (e.g. QAnon, etc), as predicted by numerous authorities months ago with the conjunction of multiple conspiracy theorists (legacy antivax millions through the current millions that believe there are chips and aborted baby parts in the shot and it’s all a big hoax designed to control yer freeeeeeedoms).
I see it as a reflection of the Monty Hall problem, which manages to trip up even seasoned and professional mathematicians, now and then. Well, then there’s Delta, but still - we have removed a significant portion of the entire population from being able to get infected, ostensibly, and big pharma is saying their shit works against Delta, too.
So, the percentages of the whole haven’t changed, you have just changed the conversation to the percentage of what’s left.
In the Monte Hall problem, the only thing that changes is the conditional probability, if one has Monte remove a wrong door from the choice conditions.
But in this case, the conditional probabilities move externally separate and in addition to the conditional probability change variable of vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Imagine a Monte Hall problem, where the number of doors change, in real time, as one is making one’s decision.
Which begs the question, if we wanted to get Cheech and Chong about it in the abstract, would the number of doors Monte could or can take away change as well, or just remain one, as the number of doors fluctuates?
It matters.
According to data in Israel Pfizer may not be too far behind when the second injection is given three weeks after the first.
In the UK it seams to be performing better but we postponed the second injection 8-12 weeks after the first which has shown to produce a stronger antibody response.
Something that’s getting skipped in the news is the actual diversity of variants (an unfortunate outcome of so much willful and ignorant vaccine avoidance).
There are lambda, kappa, eta, and zeta variants, for example, none of which are a big deal at the moment.
Alpha, delta, gamma are the bad boys, but all three are still short of the worst class of Vid expected (“high consequence”).
The UK is the world leader in genomic sequencing at present and made the decision recently to remove all restrictions in part because they believed that the Delta variant was out performing all the others which in a sense was very helpful because it was destroying by way of out competing the more deadly and concerning variants like that of South Africa .
At present our infections are dropping faster than anyone predicted following the unlocking as this has never been achieved without a lock down before let alone zero restrictions.
We wont know for a few weeks yet if they have got this right but it does look promising.
Judging from your stats you in the US are also being taken over by the Delta so this could actually end up being good news for you.
From what i have seen viruses dont tend to be good at everything so a more deadly virus may not be as transmissible as its predecessor and thus dies on the vine if a mutation becomes more transmissible but that more transmissible is more likely to be less deadly.
This is why hemorraghic fevers haven’t killed everyone on Earth.
Unfortunately, it’s always a possibility. There is nothing preventing another Black Death, and COVID proved that if there was another global plague, billions wouldn’t even believe in it.
