Saw this today. Just posting it to rile the masses:
“I haven't said much about the rise of the delta variant and its relationship to vaccinations and masks. Now that Miami University has reinstated its mask orders for indoor activities effective Monday, I thought I'd explain the science in a way that might help anyone who's approaching the question in good faith. Maybe it will help you explain it to others too. I apologize for its length.
I am a scientist whose work has been focused on microbial respiratory disease for 23 years. Although I'm not an epidemiologist and I don't study transmission and spread of disease except in the most rudimentary way, I'm familiar enough with the methods to be confident in my evaluation of the data that propel me to my argument. For those of you who are also scientists, you may find some of my wording imprecise, but, I hope, not to the point of undermining my argument.
Vaccines don't prevent you from being exposed to their targets. All else being equal, a vaccinated person and a non-vaccinated person are essentially equally susceptible to being infected with the COVID virus. So why vaccinate?
Vaccines can be thought of as improving your immune system's response time. Someone who's never been exposed to the virus or, through vaccination, a key component of its structure, will have only the most basic ability to defend against it as it spreads in the body. We know from the incredible death toll associated with COVID as well as the many reports of chronic disease that result from this infection ("long COVID") that this ability is too often insufficient.
On the other hand, people who have either had COVID already or been fully vaccinated are ready for the virus as soon as it shows up, provided they have a healthy immune system. More than 99% of the time, such a person's immune system will attack the virus before the infection is out of control, keeping the individual from the worst of the disease, including hospitalization and death. If they're lucky, the immune system will eliminate the virus before they even have symptoms.
But not having symptoms doesn't mean that they're not infected, and it doesn't mean that they can't pass the virus to someone - potentially someone who's defenseless due to their immune system health or their age. As a vaccinated person, you may have less of the virus once you're infected, and you may have it for a shorter time, but it's enough to make others dangerously ill if you transmit it to them. This is especially important to consider in light of the fact that, due to our inability to catch up with the COVID virus before it could mutate to become more troublesome, we've entered an era in which the dominant varieties of the virus are those that have evolved to be more easily transmitted to others, like the delta variant.
So vaccination protects us once someone has transmitted it to us. It follows, then, that the other component of mitigating the damage from this disease is to limit its transmission.
The accepted, recommended, and effective tool for reducing transmission - not eliminating it, but significantly and meaningfully reducing it - is a face mask.
Is a mask inconvenient? Yes, usually. Is it uncomfortable? Yes, at least sometimes. Is your convenience and comfort more important than the health and livelihood of innocent people around you?
If your answer is anything but an unqualified "no," then we have issues.
I'm not going entertain arguments about this; I will delete any. Anyone who wants to share this is welcome to do so.”