Conversation 63, Part 6: Delta Changed Things (August 29, 2021)

This episode contains the sixth part of our conversation about COVID-19, the Delta variant, and the territory we’re all lost in.

In this part, Grace and I discuss the startling reality of how the CDC stopped tracking so-called “breakthrough” infections, even as many vaccinated people became dangerously sick. We talk about the pre-symptomatic, but highly infectious window, and the logic of how viruses undergo evolutionary pressure into more-lethal and less-lethal variants over short and long time periods. In the short term, COVID-19 has no “incentive” to become less lethal if it is very effectively transmitted before it kills its hosts. We talk about the importance of sampling lots of people, including those who aren’t reporting symptoms or exposures, to track the virus, which we aren’t doing, what it means to be “asymptomatic,” “presymptomatic,” or “subclinical,” and why this distinction is important. If someone is completely asymptomatic, not presymptomatic or subclinical, can that person spread the virus? And does that person develop immunity against reinfection? We could only tell this if we did universal testing. Meanwhile, why did the CDC tell vaccinated people not to get tested if they are exposed? And why do some people who want to get tested have trouble accessing tests? Why hasn’t the CDC done its job, even if the data it collected would make the Biden administration’s COVID response look bad? Despite the CDC’s many failings, we are starting to see data that reveals that vaccine immunity fades over time, especially in the elderly, resulting in more frantic backpedaling and narrative-shifting as the authorities acknowledge things that we predicted long ago. The United States has particular structural problems that guaranteed we would be hit particularly hard by this pandemic, and our lack of functional health system is the result of decades of bipartisan embrace of neoliberal policies. We then get into the weeds on “breakthrough” infection rates of the old variants compared to the new variants, and why we have to interrogate the reported numbers that rarely seem to add up. The CDC under the Biden administration continues to do a disastrously bad job tracking the reality of the pandemic.

Next, we talk about the ongoing narrative-shifting, which tells us that we should embrace “meeting the virus” because it is, or will be, not a big deal. This is eugenics talk, similar to what we’ve heard from the far right, about how COVID-19 will soon be just like the flu, only softer, sugar-coated, and wrapped in the language of science and protection of children. We work our way through an article from The Atlantic, which contains a combination of some good information and commentary, contradictory numbers, under-the-rug sweeping, awful framing, and happy talk about what might happen when COVID becomes endemic; that part is a dispatch from some future fantasy world.

Finally, we review a much saner article from New York magazine that is honest about the gap between the official numbers and reality - a gap big enough to drive many, many mortuary trailers through.

Show Notes

The ProPublica article “The CDC Only Tracks a Fraction of Breakthrough COVID-19 Infections, Even as Cases Surge” can be found here.

The Atlantic article “How the Pandemic Now Ends” by Adam Maida can be found here.

The New York Magazine article (which is partially an interview) called “Don’t Panic, but Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told” by David Wallace-Wells can be found here.

The music clips are from the song “Softcore Surge” by Sly and Robbie, from the album Drum & Bass Strip to the Bone by Howie B, released in 1998, and “Happy Talk” from the 1958 film of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

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