(Associated Press) — In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
Health officials on Friday released details of that research, which was key in this week’s decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant is fueling infection surges. The authors said the findings suggest that the CDC’s mask guidance should be expanded to include the entire country, even outside of hot spots.
The findings have the potential to upend past thinking about how the disease is spread. Previously, vaccinated people who got infected were thought to have low levels of virus and to be unlikely to pass it to others. But the new data shows that is not the case with the delta variant.
The outbreak in Provincetown — a seaside tourist spot on Cape Cod in the county with Massachusetts’ highest vaccination rate — has so far included more than 900 cases. About three-quarters of them were people who were fully vaccinated.
Travis Dagenais, who was among the many vaccinated people infected, said “throwing caution to the wind” and partying in crowds for long nights over the July Fourth holiday was a mistake in hindsight.
“The dominant public messaging has been that the vaccine means a return to normal,” the 35-year-old Boston resident said Thursday. “Unfortunately, I’ve now learned it’s a few steps toward normal, not the zero-to-sixty that we seem to have undertaken.”
Dagenais credits being vaccinated with easing the worst of the flu-like symptoms in a couple of days. He has recovered.
Like many states, Massachusetts lifted all COVID-19 restrictions in late May, ahead of the traditional Memorial Day start of the summer season. Provincetown this week reinstated an indoor mask requirement for everyone.
Leaked internal documents on breakthrough infections and the delta variant suggest the CDC may be considering other changes in advice on how the nation fights the coronavirus, such as recommending masks for everyone and requiring vaccines for doctors and other health workers.
The delta variant, first detected in India, causes infections that are more contagious than the common cold, flu, smallpox and the Ebola virus, and it is as infectious as chickenpox, according to the documents, which mentioned the Provincetown cases.
The documents were obtained by The Washington Post. As they note, COVID-19 vaccines are still highly effective against the delta variant at preventing serious illness and death.
The Provincetown outbreak and the documents highlight the enormous challenge the CDC faces in encouraging vaccination while acknowledging that breakthrough cases can occur and can be contagious but are uncommon.
The documents appear to be talking points for CDC staff to use with the public. One point advised: “Acknowledge the war has changed,” an apparent reference to deepening concern that many millions of vaccinated people could be a source of wide-ranging spread.
An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents.
The White House on Friday defended its approach to rising virus cases and shifting public health guidelines, repeatedly deferred to the CDC while stressing the need for vaccinations.
“The most important takeaway is actually pretty simple. We need more people to get vaccinated,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Pressed about the changing guidance, Jean-Pierre repeatedly said, “We don’t make those types of decisions from here.”
People with breakthrough infections make up an increasing portion of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths among COVID-19 patients, coinciding with the spread of the delta variant, according to the leaked documents.
Although experts generally agreed with the CDC’s revised indoor masking stance, some said the report on the Provincetown outbreak does not prove that vaccinated people are a significant source of new infections.
“There’s scientific plausibility for the (CDC) recommendation. But it’s not derived from this study,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.
The CDC report is based on about 470 COVID-19 cases linked to the Provincetown festivities, which included densely packed indoor and outdoor holiday events at bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes.
Researchers ran tests on a portion of them and found roughly the same level of virus in those who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.
Three-quarters of the infections were in fully vaccinated individuals. Among those fully vaccinated, about 80% experienced symptoms with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, muscle aches and fever.
Dagenais said he started to feel ill the evening he returned home and initially chalked it up to long nights of partying in packed Provincetown nightclubs.
But as the days wore on and the fever, chills, muscle aches and fatigue set in, he knew it was something more.
In the report, the measure researchers used to assess how much virus an infected person is carrying does not indicate whether they are actually transmitting the virus to other people, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
CDC officials say more data is coming. They are tracking breakthrough cases as part of much larger studies that involve following tens of thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people across the country over time.
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Who is surprised?
How many times have they said this wait you all were not listening?
So why are we taking this jab?
Has there ever been this much controversy over any vaccine? The goalpost keeps shifting as the rhetoric has to be adjusted to suit the contradictory data as it unfolds. Can you say “experimental vaccines?”
Have a look at these numbers
DEATH AND ADVERSE REACTION TOLLS
VAERS (USA) Latest Numbers:
DEATHS: 11,405 (as of July 16, 2021)
ADVERSE REACTIONS: 491,217 (as of July 16, 2021)
EudraVigilance (E.U.) Latest Numbers:
DEATHS: 18,928 (as of July 17, 2021)
ADVERSE REACTIONS: 1,823,219 (as of July 17, 2021)
These are the stats for these “vaccines” you will not find on mainstream media.
Be vigilant. Trust noone, question everything? We just don’t know who is on the take.
Can we trust the numbers put out by these agencies. I wouldn’t be surprise if the numbers are much higher than what they report.
And you would be right as far as the VARES numbers are concerned. A report submitted to the dept. of health and human services stated…” fewer than1% of vaccine adverse events are reported by the VARES system;” yes, the numbers are vastly higher. This recent reveal by the CDC is to acclimate people to the reason why the new lockdown is necessary.The “covidiots, conspiracy theorist and anti vaxxer” saw this coming.
That’s the thing about this pandemic. The powers that be have tried and succeeded with telling half truths and damn lies for the whole year. The fact is that the science behind this has been known for many years before this pandemic started. It was already determined years before that these viral diseases caused by RNA viruses cannot be permanently stopped by vaccines and there is no possibility of achieving herd immunity for these even via community infection. In fact, it’s potentially dangerous to try to utilize vaccination against these types because nasty things can happen when immunoglobulin from prior exposure become weakly binding due to ongoing viral mutation. Dengue and its deadly hemorrhagic fever offers a classic example. There’s a vaccine for dengue…. but they know they can’t dare use it. So they tell you to be careful instead. They’ll tell you to take the coronavirus vaccines, but they’re actually crossing their fingers and hoping for the best long-term.
The vaccines were always going to fail. That’s because it’s the nature of coronaviruses to mutate too rapid for any vaccines to stop them. The flu virus is also an RNA virus. Notice how how hopeless the flu vaccine has always been? Never once has the flu vaccine stopped a flu season. Have you noticed yet how washing hands and wearing a mask and social distancing cancelled last year’s flu season? And it’s also known for years that our human immune system has never been able to maintain immunity against any of the other six coronaviruses that are known to infect humans for more than a year, two at best. So when they told you that you were immune for life after taking a vaccine made to combat a version of the coronavirus from a whole year ago, they LIED to you. They told you that breakthrough infection was rare, even as news kept breaking about entire groups of unrelated vaccinated people catching the virus at the same damn time! C’mon man, if an infection pattern is rare in the real world, it can only statistically happen to individuals, not entire groups of people! Instead of telling the truth, they played games with words and now we have articles like the above.
From the very beginning there was this concerted effort to paint this new virus with the appearances of the flu. And they’re still doing it. They’ll talk about mild flu symptoms for the vaccinated whenever evidence of vaccine failure shows up, but they won’t talk about the fact that researchers in China and now the US found the virus still alive in some of the tissue samples taken from autopsied persons many months after they had tested negative via nasal swabs. In fact, they even found the virus alive and well and hiding inside testicles. This was found even in persons who were asymptomatic during their infection. And the latest studies on long covid patients indicate a collection of over 400 symptoms that point to multiple organ disease. So at least some of the previously infected actually still have the virus and only years from now will they find out the consequences. This is not the flu, folks. This is a virus that uses the ACE2 receptor to get inside our cells… period…. and it doesn’t care where in the body it finds them. The virus is trying to do what it was doing inside bats … which is to set up permanent residence inside the human body. It didn’t specialize in giving bats a cold so why did assume from the onset that this was the limit of the virus’s interaction with humans? That’s not science and they know better.
The virus continues to mutate. There are at least two new versions of the Delta. Today they will try to talk up all sorts of benefits of getting vaccinated but they don’t tell you that at best it’s fading away by the month. So…. keep thinking you can just let vaccinated people walk right into the country, or go to bars and restaurants and take no precautions as if they’re no longer participating in this pandemic. Because they are now the easiest targets for the virus because you lied to them and made them believe it was safe to take off their masks.
@ AJ well written and a nice read .
It’s amazing how all these wackos on this platforrm keep repeating the talking points of those that know better.
Like sheep to the slaughter house.
GOOD JOB THOUGH.
Well written, but what is the alternative against this pandemic?
Please read and understand the vaccine and it’s effectiveness. The vaccine prevents severe illness. Polio, Rubella, Tetanus, Yellow Fever, Malaria. The list is endless and prevents deaths. There was no caution for these inoculations’ or treatments. We have a vaccine for a new virus. Please consider and think for all of those you love. I have had my 2 jabs and looking forward to my booster in September. It should always be a choice but never forget we have No Smallpox, Polio, and other HELL because of vaccines. Read decent news and decide. I love Antigua from afar.
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