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THREAD: what we know about COVID, a primer for folks who are overwhelmed and do not have time or energy to catch up on the latest info about transmission, vaccines, masks, etc. (This is mostly for my friends & I am just a woman with a laptop and anxiety--correct me if I'm wrong.)
COVID spreads through the air; it does not really spread via surfaces. There are no known cases of surface transmission. Disinfecting high touch surfaces is still a good idea, especially bc other viruses DO spread through surfaces, but you are very unlikely to get COVID that way.
source on surface transmission: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/covid-19-airborne-transmission-cleaning-surfaces/
COVID spreads primarily indoors, esp in areas where ventilation is poor & there is not a lot of fresh air exchange. There are studies that show really clearly (with diagrams) how the airflow in a room directly causes COVID cases. Ventilation is king. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/
There was this wild study that showed that one infectious person spread COVID to people sitting across the room in a restaurant because of how the AC flowed in the room and where the vents were—but people nearby, not in the path of the vents, did not get COVID!
wild restaurant study: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article (the figure is really easy to understand/makes the point really clearly)
That’s why indoor dining is not a great idea, given still-low vax rates. Tables 6 feet apart is better than having them crunched together, but without adequate ventilation, you can get COVID all the way across the room from an unmasked person. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-indoor-dining-debate-isnt-a-debate-at-all
COVID is much less likely to spread outdoors, where there is fresh air & aerosols from an infectious person will disperse quickly. It's still important to distance & mask outside if you’re in a big group or spending time talking 1-1 with someone. But outdoors is much, much safer.
sources on outdoor transmission (there are many others): a. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/04/21/989104800/masks-remain-extremely-effective-indoors-but-are-they-necessary-outside
b. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/it-okay-go-beach/613849/
b. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/it-okay-go-beach/613849/
Vaccines are extremely effective. They are so, so good. They were very good in the controlled studies done by the drug companies, and they have proven to be good in real-life situations, too.
a. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-vaccines-infographic
b. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7013e3.htm
a. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-vaccines-infographic
b. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7013e3.htm
“95% efficacy” does not mean that 5% of people who get the vaccine will get COVID! It means people who had received the vaccine were 95% less likely to get COVID in the study than people who didn't get the vaccine—in the Pfizer study, fewer than 1% of the vaxed folks got COVID.
source: efficacy and what it means https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson3/section6.html
“Breakthrough cases,” where you’re vaxed but get COVID, do happen, but they are rare. (More common: people who got vaccinated but contracted COVID before fully vaccinated.) Typically in these cases, people have way milder symptoms, if any at all. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/health/covid-cases-vaccinated-people.html
Vaccines work against the variants. It’s something scientists are watching for, but currently, there is no evidence that shows more vaccine breakthrough with variants. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/well/live/covid-variants-vaccine.html?name=styln-vaccines-combo®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Interactive&variant=1_Show&is_new=false
That said, variants ARE something to watch, & they’re part of the reason it’s so important to get the world vaccinated; as infectious disease researcher Laurel Bristow (kinggutterbaby on IG) points out, if the virus has fewer bodies to infect, it has fewer chances to mutate.
In the US, vaccines are widely available to people 16+. Pfizer is approved for 16+, Moderna for 18+, and J&J for 18+. The risk of blood clots from J&J has been deemed to be very low (less than 1 in a million). https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/04/23/990001856/whats-next-for-the-j-j-vaccine-u-s-health-authorities-discuss-resuming-shots
Trials are underway for vaccines in kids 12-15. It looks good so far. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/are-we-one-step-closer-to-a-covid-19-vaccine-for-kids/
Trials are also underway for vaccines in kids under 12. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/health/coronavirus-children-vaccinations-pfizer.html
The vaccination numbers in the US look good so far. Almost 54% of adults have at least one dose. A third of the entire country, all ages, is fully vaccinated. There is a lot of reason to hope. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
Ok, so this is the part of the thread where I get to “what you can do when you’re fully vaccinated,” which is harder. There is a lot of research on stuff like surface transmission. There is less research on vaccines because they’ve been out for less time.
The science educators I follow on social media are by and large cautious about what vaccinated people can do, especially in public spaces around potentially unvaxed folks. This is because they are good scientists—they want data.
Again, the vaccines are really, really good. They are so good. Here’s some more stuff about how good they are. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/covid-19-long-term-care-deaths-and-cases-are-at-an-all-time-low-though-a-rise-in-ltc-cases-in-a-few-states-may-be-cause-for-concern/
another source about how swell vaccines are (a lot of focus on nursing homes because high vax rate, and also extremely high risk population + congregate living + repeated exposure, etc.): https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/03/30/covid-cases-drop-96-in-nursing-homes-after-vaccine-rollout-study-reports/?sh=c47fa2d7ef94
Vaccines reduce transmission; if you’re vaccinated and become one of the (comparatively rare) breakthrough cases, you’re a lot less likely to spread it. But we are still learning! Rare breakthroughs = smaller population to research among. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccine-walensky.html
But what I think is important to consider even if you’re vaccinated is the rate of COVID still in your community. A group of vaccinated people is much, much safer than a mixed group.
In the vaccinated group, everyone is protected in multiple ways: less chance of infection around them, less chance of transmission, and less chance of severe illness. In the mixed group, you take away some of those layers of protection.
So public spaces where you don’t know who’s vaccinated and who isn’t are more dangerous because there are fewer layers of protection for everyone in the group. You might be safer, but the person eating next to you might not be.
And we wanna protect that person next to us, even if we're selfish, because remember that more bodies infected = more opportunities for the virus to mutate.
In terms of your personal safety, you can also see it as a numbers game. As Laurel Bristow says, a vaccine is like a shield, and a shield is more effective against 1 person throwing rocks at you than 100 people throwing rocks at you.
Overall, the science educators I follow are saying that private indoor gatherings of vaccinated folks and public settings where you’re outdoors are a go, but for them, public indoor gatherings where folks won’t be wearing masks (e.g., restaurants and bars) are a no-for-now.
Here's the folks I follow. On IG: kinggutterbaby, jessicamalatyrivera, dr.risahoshino, doctor.darien. On Twitter: @zeynep, @ashishkjha, @aslavitt46, @MonicaGandhi9. There are lots of others. I get my news from @TheAtlantic, @npr, and @nytimes, mostly, but I read other things too.
My biggest advice if you're ~~doing your own research~~ is to read more than the headlines. If you hear a claim, do a Google. Try not to let yourself solidify a fact as "true" until you've read (skimming is ok!) a couple articles on it.
Look for internal validity (does the article match the headline? is the publication legit? what sources do they cite?) as well as lateral validity (have other outlets published on this? what do other experts say about it?)
would like to follow up this thread with another tweet that emphasizes what we all know to be true: vaccines are good and Joe Rogan is bad
also in light of the CDC guidance today, gonna reshare this very good article from @zeynep--I shared it earlier in this thread but it's worth mentioning again that outdoor activities have ALWAYS been MUCH safer than indoors, vaccinated or not. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/it-okay-go-beach/613849/
I STRONGLY suggest reading actual articles about outdoor transmission (like the one above). Don't just read Twitter. There are some absolutely atrocious takes on here that, as @zeynep has been talking about for over a year, ignore the difference between indoors and outdoors.
