(CNN)Washington Post: CDC Document Warns Fully Vaccinated Might Spread Delta at Same Rate as Unvaccinated

(CNN) Washington Post: CDC document warns Delta variant appears to spread as easily as chicken pox and cause more severe infection. Quoting,

The document — a slide presentation — outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people [edit 7/31: with breakthrough infections] might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people, according to the Post.

The CDC findings are much worse than the possibilities of Pfizer Booster is Needed? Breakthrough Case Infectivity; Managing Public Health Communications, when I wrote,

Yet it allows the possibility that in Arkansas, and even in locales with borderline vaccine uptake, such as LA, community infectivity may overwhelm the protection of the vaccine.

It may be worse. A few more mutations could threaten regions with high vaccination rates. We must rid ourselves of the idea that the COVID threat is stationary. It appears to evolve faster than our thinking:  Pfizer versus FDA & CDC; Booster Shot Needed Sooner than Later.

In this light, the FDA/CDC rebuke of Pfizer’s booster shot intent is tragic nonsense. Yet FDA/CDC staff are individuals of high intelligence. How can this be explained? The FDA/CDC are policy driven bureaucracies.

  • Policies are instruction manuals for bureaucracies on how to execute statutory responsibilities. In the best of times, a policy is optimal for  the scenario.
  • Bureaucracies are constrained by, or in the extreme, prisoners of policies.
  • A policy drives a typically suboptimal response, the cost of insurance against expensive or dangerous error.
  • In the extreme, a policy obstructs a necessary response, while providing no substitute value, such as consumer safety.

In the future, new policies can address threats like this. There is no time now. We need to roll our own.

In (CNN) Fauci: You get vaccinated… Smouldering Epidemic or Western Wildfire?, I wrote,

I hope with Dr. Fauci for no worse than a smouldering epidemic. The above logic allows for much worse, a  Western wildfire.

Had I said more, the accusation of yellow journalism might have resulted.  So in a very soft voice,

***Welcome to 2020.***