I went to a party with 14 other vaccinated people; 11 of us got COVID

[OhioChick]

AUG 03, 2021 AT 10:37 AM

I was sitting on an examination table at an urgent care clinic in Timonium, giving my history to a physician’s assistant. An hour later, she would call me to confirm that I was positive for COVID-19.

Given the way that I felt, it was what I expected. But it wasn’t supposed to happen: I’ve been fully vaccinated for months.

Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us fully vaccinated. The next day, our host started to feel sick. The day after that, she tested positive for COVID-19. She let all of us know right away. I wasn’t too worried. It was bad luck for my friend, but surely she wasn’t that contagious. Surely all of us were immune. I’d been sitting across the room from her. I figured I’d stay home and isolate from my family for a few days, and that would be that. And even that seemed like overkill.

The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline stated that, since I was fully vaccinated, I didn’t need to do anything different unless I started developing symptoms. I’m an epidemiologist at a major medical research university, which has a dedicated COVID exposure hotline for staff. I called it, and workers said I didn’t need to do anything.

Then, I started to hear that a few other people who had been at the party were getting sick. Then a few more. At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested positive for COVID.

More: https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0804-breakthrough-covid-20210803-t32trfpiwzdf5okfar45f64whi-story.html

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[SheltieLover]

2. And I have to wonder

How many of these folks will suffer with long haul?

According to Dr. Ding's twitter, approx 19% of fully vaxed people do.

[PortTack]

6. Oh boy! That makes me all the more willing to stay home

[SheltieLover]

9. Same here!

Personally, I'm not nearly as concerned about dying as I am fearful of living through an infection & being captive in a long haul body. 😷

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

State and local health departments, and the CDC, need to do a better job collecting and reporting data on breakthrough infections. The CDC announced in May that it was only going to collect data on breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death, which are fortunately rare. But that means that outbreaks like ours will fly under the radar. Any of us could infect others, apparently including other vaccinated people. It’s not clear if our group got sick because of a particularly virulent variant, because the vaccine is wearing off or for some other reason. Without good data, we’ll never know.

Fully vaccinated people exposed to COVID need to isolate at home and get tested. I thought I might be overreacting by leaving work in the middle of the day and immediately moving to our basement at home. Now I’m glad I did.

Governments and businesses should consider bringing back masking requirements, even for vaccinated people. We’re still at risk of getting sick, and we’re still at risk of infecting others. The CDC recently recommended masks for vaccinated people in areas with over 50 new infections per 100,000 people per week. In the seven days before my exposure, Montgomery County had 19.4 new infections per 100,000 people.

Pharmaceutical companies, research institutions and governments should prioritize research into booster vaccines. At one point it seemed like two mRNA doses or a single Janssen dose might be the answer. But apparently, whether because of variants or fading immunity, being “fully vaccinated” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re immune.

[LonePirate]

4. I wonder if someone in that group was lying about being vaccinated.

Hopefully all of them will recover quickly.

[PortTack]

7. Makes one wonder! Althou the viral load in the nasopharynx with delta can be quite high

[LisaL]

14. You have missed the whole point of the article.

Vaccinated people can still get infected and spread it around.

[Larissa]

24. So the CDC's advice

. . . for the vaccinated to fling their masks off and party like it's 1999 was a bit premature. As long as there is virus circulating somewhere, we are never out of the woods. The virus reconfigures itself based upon our behavior.

[LisaL]

30. Virus is working on its goal to infect as many as possible.

NT

[OhioChick]

25. Thank you n/t

[Renew Deal]

17. I know of a "breakthrough" case that got pretty rough.

Laid out for a week. This happened last week.

[brush]

18. My thought too.

[lapfog_1]

8. It was abundantly clear

even from the vaccine trials... that the vaccines do NOT prevent infection, at least not 100%.

What they prevent is serious illness as your own immune system is trained (by the vaccine) to mount a defense against the virus preventing it from becoming a serious infection... and your immune system (late to the party) overwhelms your body trying to fight the infection.

And, for and unlucky small percentage of us, the training of the immune system fails ( for various reasons ).

The vaccine made infection MORE difficult, and less likely (pre Delta) to pass to others and less serious (even post Delta ) than before the vaccine.

The longer this virus circulates in the world, the more likely there will arise a variant that avoids the vaccine entirely.

[LisaL]

16. It worked much better before delta at preventing infections.

NT

[lapfog_1]

20. yes, at least symptomatic infections

unless there was universal testing... it would be hard to know about non-symptomatic infection rates in vaccinated people.

It is abundantly clear that the Delta variant is much more dangerous.

[LisaL]

23. There were some studies done indicating

vaccines were able to prevent infections (including asymptomatic) before delta.

[elleng]

10. Damn!

I thought MD was doing well.

[SoCalDavidS]

11. It Is

Comparatively speaking, they absolutely are. Overall, they're not that bad #'s wise.

But right now, almost every state is on shaky ground.

[elleng]

13. Foolishly, left mask in car while @ grocery;

gotta REMEMBER.

[Skittles]

12. parties during a pandemic

stupid, stupid, stupid

[LisaL]

15. Vaccinated people were told they can continue their life as normal.

NT

[NJCher]

26. No way

Would I have gone to a party, even knowing what the CDC said at the time.

[BigmanPigman]

19. I expect that every time I get sick with a fever, aches

and chills I will wonder if it is Covid, which is what happened 3 weeks ago. Since I didn't have the respiratory problems people who are infected seem to have, I assume it wasn't Covid. I also expect this to be the same scenario for the next 2 years. I hate being a hostage of the anti-vaxxers. Fuck all of them for purposely doing this to the citizens who have more than a 2 digit IQ. I am mad as Hell!

[joetheman]

21. Was everyone at the party masked, including the host?

If there were some masked, did they get sick also?

[LisaL]

22. Highly unlikely anyone was masked.

They were all vaxxed and presumably believed that was going to protect them from getting infected.

[Cheezoholic]

27. I think most intelligent people realize this virus is here to stay

Of course each individual needs to their part to fight it but I think it's found a main viable host for the foreseeable future. It may take 2-3 years or longer for the battle between our immune systems in combination with vaccines and the ability of the virus to mutate and evade as we SLOWLY make the human petri dish smaller and smaller until the virus and its host are in balance, similar to the other human corona viruses we live with every day. So far mass replication is working for it. I think right now we're dealing with the tyranny of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation when it comes to this. While the OP is alarming it should be expected to happen. I really think this is going to be a long difficult road, we can't fight over masks forever. But humans have a consciously sick but probably essential trait evolutionary wise, the ability to rationalize mass death for self preservation. Hopefully the virus wont take advantage of that. We're pretty damn good at that already.

[Demsrule86]

28. Really? The only folks I know who are sick are the unvaccinated. I live in Ohio.

[OhioChick]

29. As am I n/t