I haven't had a chance to watch this video yet (because I spend my time typing overly long forum posts instead) but I strongly suspect that post-infection immunity is going to be a necessary part of the path to herd immunity.
If it turns out to be true that the vaccinated are just as contagious with delta as the unvaccinated, that'll happen relatively quickly. This isn't known yet, as far as I know at least - the peak viral loads are the same but I don't think anyone knows yet whether the peak is equally long, or what. For all I know, it's longer, I have no idea. I can't think of a reason it would be, I'm just saying we don't know.
Anyway, if you have a whole lot of asymptomatic, contagious people walking around...having naturally induced immunity as part of your plan probably isn't a bad call. All of this stuff factored into my personal shift in risk math (just to be clear I don't actually sit down with a calculator and try to work out the actual math, I'm just talking about the conceptual approach to risk here) that led me to get vaccinated and push my wife to get vaccinated ahead of a fall delta surge: the number of people who now may have no idea they're infected is going to increase, because the vaccines seem to really blunt the symptoms. And how do people usually find out they're infected? By getting tested, after they have symptoms that lead them to worry they might have covid. If you don't develop symptoms, you probably won't ever get tested. If you're equally contagious to an unvaccinated, infected person for that 3-4 day period where the viral load is peaking...yeah, going to see a lot of community transmission under those circumstances.
Granted, since we don't really know all of the above to be true, we may not see a huge spike in community transmission over the fall but that was a big part of the risk math I did for myself as far as whether it was worth being vaccinated before heading into the winter.
I do think the 5825 number is worth considering, in both directions.
On one hand...heart disease kills something like 6500 people in BC every year. And most of us don't walk around worrying about getting a heart attack every day, so some perspective is warranted there. It's not that it's not serious, but in terms of the level of anxiety it generates in people, I think a lot of us could stand to dial down the emotional response.
On the other hand, after cancer, heart disease is the second leading cause of death. So far, the overwhelming majority of covid deaths have been people who were probably in the last few years of their lives...but then, wouldn't the same be true of heart attacks?
So you have a new, infectious disease that's pretty rapidly climbed the charts on cause of death, and the new variant does seem to be going after a broader demographic. I know in some states it's displaced heart disease as the second leading cause of death...that's no joke. I'm sure it's in the top ten in BC by now, maybe the top five.
At the same time, the last time I looked at BC CDC mortality numbers, the average age of people killed by covid here was 86. That's despite a case distribution that looks like this:
View attachment 70455
Therefore, I continue to believe that it's worth being cautious but I also think it's worth being calm. Delta really is worse and I think it's worth being prepared for that. But BC has really high vaccine uptake now, and I just don't think there's much to be gained by screaming and stamping your feet at the unvaccinated. Statistically, if the numbers seriously climb, many of them will get covid, the overwhelming majority will survive with no medical intervention at all, and then we'll really be able to talk about herd immunity.
