A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) document obtained by ABC News shows that “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections — among those who are already vaccinated — are extremely rare, despite headlines and scare stories in the media.
More than 156 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. The CDC estimates that there have been approximately 153,000 infections among vaccinated individuals — about 0.098 percent. This number comes from an unpublished internal CDC document obtained by ABC News.
“The risk to fully vaccinated people is dramatically less than that to unvaccinated individuals. The occurrence of breakthrough cases is expected and, at this point, is not at a level that should raise any concerns about the performance of the currently available vaccines,” said Matthew Ferrari, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University.
Coronavirus cases are now at their highest point since early May, according to CDC data, with the U.S. average nearly quadrupling since June to 47,000 new cases a day, largely driven by the highly infectious delta variant, which now accounts for more than 83% of new cases nationwide.
Virus-related hospitalizations have also increased, with more than 27,000 patients hospitalized around the country, though that number is still significantly lower than in January, when over 125,000 patients were receiving care at one time.
The media hype suggests that it’s still not safe even if you’re fully vaccinated. This New York Times article — despite giving the obligatory nod to the rarity of breakthrough infections — still tries to gin up panic about the virus.
A wedding in Oklahoma leads to 15 vaccinated guests becoming infected with the coronavirus. Raucous Fourth of July celebrations disperse the virus from Provincetown, Mass., to dozens of places across the country, sometimes carried by fully vaccinated celebrants.
As the Delta variant surges across the nation, reports of infections in vaccinated people have become increasingly frequent — including, most recently, among at least six Texas Democrats, a White House aide and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The reports are becoming “increasingly frequent” because the media is choosing to cover the issue. One supposes the justification is that the “man bites dog” story is newsworthy. But breakthrough infections are expected, which raises the issue of what’s so newsworthy about them. More from The Times:
But as worrying as the trend may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts said, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated.
They are not “relatively uncommon.” They’re damn near invisible.
If you have been vaccinated, you don’t have to worry about spreading COVID. You don’t need to wear a mask. Any mask mandates at this point are ludicrous. Vaccinated people don’t need them and the unvaccinated won’t wear them, anyway. It would be a useless gesture that may make the mask wearers feel good about themselves but as a COVID mitigation strategy, it’s pure virtue signaling.
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There is resistance from the media and the Left to ending the pandemic and returning to normal. The media will hate to see the pandemic lose its status as a major news story as they’ve been bleeding viewers since Donald Trump left office. Declaring the pandemic over might finish them.
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