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All your reasons are valid but this one is too true to ignore! 
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I think my DH is secretly crushing on all of you for taking the target off him when I must spew Covid data….
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@ninjasherrie I kept a respectful distance from your post. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with what I post or not. The issue is @PT was asking people violate their own conscience by supporting policies they don’t believe in. Whether it’s your situation or any of the other comments I’ve read in the forum or on chat, (out anywhere else) about the negative impact of masks, it demonstrates my reason why that’s not something I can do.
Seriously, we all just want this to be done. And it clearly isn’t. And something as innocuous as starting a third thread somehow kind of makes that more real, I think? Like admitting it to ourselves? But it is what it is.
I want to preface the following with acknowledging I have not listened to the audio of the media call yet nor seen any of the follow up interviews. Maybe I’ll feel completely differently after I muddle through those.
But at this point, I would like to switch to the “Hmmmm…something is not quite adding up here…” camp.
Maybe there has just been a growing body of evidence that has been nudging them towards this guidance change. Or maybe the rising numbers made them feel like they needed to do something…but…
My “overthink everything” nature tells me there is not-yet-published data that they are double, triple, and quadruple checking before they take it public, but they couldn’t wait until they completed that process before they changed the guidance. And that’s very not-good.
I will be happy to be wrong on this though!!!
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Well, I understand your hmmmmm’ing. I hope you’re wrong too.
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I was going to not have testing done before our trip to see relatives but now I’m changing my mind. How many days in advance do you think we should test? We are a family of 5 with nobody with symptoms and 4 fully vaccinated. I just want to be as sure as possible that we don’t bring something to grandma (fully vaccinated grandma, but still). I’ve had a test take 4 days to come back during the holidays, but our most recent one was only 1.5 days. I’m thinking to test 3 days in advance. I don’t want it to be too early. I can’t 100% isolate b/c I have 2 important dr appts the day before we leave that I can’t miss. But, those are really safe places, as places go.
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Part of what they talked about today is that vaccinated ppl are safe w/ other vaccinated ppl. The one unvaccinated child could be masked, but if you’ve isolated you should be ok. I agree doctor’s offices seem to be pretty safe since they are maintaining mask requirements. JMHO
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Interestingly, I actually have been trying to digest that India study mentioned by the CDC for several days now. I was digging around trying to find recent studies on transmission involving those vaccinated, and it was referenced on MIT’s website:
https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2021/07/deltas-here
I was trying to get a handle on the gist of the implications, especially with it being a different vaccine, before posting it here. But given it was cited by the CDC in its support for the change, it is pretty clearly relevant.
Below is the bit I had already flagged to share with y’all. I was debating condensing it, but I think it’s all worth reading (although several notches above my head on the more technical bits). The first paragraph is summary from the Abstract, the rest is from the detail in Results.
Mathematical modelling indicates that the growth advantage is most likely explained by a combination of increased transmissibility and immune evasion. Indeed in vitro, the delta variant is less sensitive to neutralising antibodies in sera from recovered individuals, with higher replication efficiency as compared to the Alpha variant. In an analysis of vaccine breakthrough in over 100 healthcare workers across three centres in India, the Delta variant not only dominates vaccine-breakthrough infections with higher respiratory viral loads compared to non- delta infections (Ct value of 16.5 versus 19), but also generates greater transmission between HCW as compared to B.1.1.7 or B.1.617.1 (mean cluster size 1.1 versus 3.3 p=0.03). …
…Having gathered epidemiological and biological evidence that the Delta variant’s growth advantage over other lineages might relate to increased transmissibility as well as re-infection in a population with very low vaccine coverage, we hypothesised that vaccine efficacy could be compromised by the Delta Variant.
Although overall national vaccination rates were low in India in the first quarter of 2021, vaccination of health care workers (HCW) started in early 2021 with the ChadOx-1 vaccine (Covishield). During the wave of infections during March and April an outbreak of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 was confirmed in 30 vaccinated staff members amongst an overall workforce of 3800 at a single tertiary centre in Delhi by RT-PCR of nasopharyngeal swabs (age range 27-77 years). Genomic data from India suggested B.1.1.7 dominance overall (Figure 1a) and in the Delhi area during the first quarter of 2021 (Figure 3a), with growth of B.1.617 during March 2021. 385 out of 604 sequences reported to GISAID in April 2021 for Delhi were B.1.617.2. Short-read sequencing10 of symptomatic individuals in the HCW outbreak revealed the majority were B.1.617.2 with a range of other B lineage viruses including B.1.1.7 (Figure 3b). There were no cases that required ventilation though one HCW received oxygen therapy. Further analysis of pairwise differences demonstrated a group of highly related, and in some cases, genetically indistinct sequences (Figure 3c). Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis of consensus sequences from symptomatic HCW breakthrough infections revealed that eleven B.1.617.2 viruses were almost identical and were sampled within one or two days of each other. These data are consistent with a single transmission from an infected individual (Figure 3c). To contextualise the outbreak sequences, a further phylogeny was inferred with a random subsample of Indian B.1.617 sequences downloaded from GISAID and the outbreak sequences added (Extended Data Figure 1), demonstrating clonal sequences that clustered within locally sequenced isolates. We next looked in greater detail at the vaccination history of cases. Nearly all had received two doses at least 21 days previously, and median time since second dose was 27 days (Figure 3c). …
Given this was a single outbreak of largely clonal sequences during a ‘super spreading’ event, we next sought to understand breakthrough infections in HCW in the absence of such an event. We obtained similar data on breakthrough infections and ChadOx-1 vaccination status in two other health facilities in Delhi with 4000 and 1100 HCW staff members respectively (Figure 2D). In hospital two there were 51 such sequences from 70 symptomatic infections for which reconstructed phylogenies from 57 with high quality whole genome coverage; in hospital three there were 118 symptomatic infections documented, with 57 used for reconstruction of phylogenies (Figure 3d,e, Extended Data Table 2). As expected, we observed that the Delta variant dominated vaccine-breakthrough infections in both centres, demonstrating significant respiratory viral load with median Ct values below 20 (Extended Data Figure 1). We proceed to analyse instances of onward transmissions within HCW, and we defined related or ‘linked’ infections as differing by six nucleotides or less. Importantly, in this vaccinated population across three hospitals, the Delta variant was associated with greater transmissions to other HCW as compared to B.1.1.7 or B.1.617.1 (mean cluster size 1.1 versus 3.3, p=0.03, Extended Data Figure 1). There were no clusters of non-Delta infections comprising >2 individuals, whereas there were ten such clusters for Delta variant. Importantly, the median Ct value of B.1.617.2 Delta variant infections was 16.5 versus 19 for non-Delta (p<0.05, Extended Data Figure 1), consistent with higher viral load in vaccine breakthrough infections where the Delta variant was responsible. The vaccine responses of HCW with subsequent breakthrough were measured and appeared similar to responses in a control group of HCW that did not test positive for SARS-CoV-2 subsequently (Extended Data Figure 1).
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I think you might be reassured reading the MIT article (first link in my post above).
This is where they land it:
So, should you continue to mask up in public? For vaccinated individuals like you, with still-unvaccinated or otherwise vulnerable family members, that extra caution makes a lot of sense. But, says Medical Director Cecilia Stuopis, dealing with this new variant may demand some extra caution from all of us. “We don’t need to panic,” she says, “but we do need to take personal responsibility for doing what’s necessary to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities.” That starts with getting vaccinated, she emphasizes, but it doesn’t end there. “You can still wear a mask,” she says. “You can still avoid crowded indoor situations. You can still avoid eating in large groups.”
You’re taking Delta with an appropriate degree of seriousness. Getting tested before you go certainly adds to that. But if you’re not taking unnecessary risks with exposure and no one is symptomatic, you really are taking a pretty minimal amount of risk.
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I suspect the same.
About a week ago there was a rumor floating around about a yet to be published study out of Israel showing Pfizer to be only 40% effective in preventing infection. A few days later the results were made public. I read there were potential some qualms with that study like a small sample size, but overall the results were not good news.
I’ve read some anecdotes of fully vaccinated parents that believe they transmitted Covid to their unvaccinated children. Rich Eisen (ESPN) said something along these lines in a tv interview last week that he thinks it is likely that he (fully vaccinated) transmitted the virus to his 7 year old.
There is enough smoke here (and the CDC must be seeing more of it than we are) that the CDC likely couldn’t wait any longer for this change. For obvious reasons, the CDC must have really not wanted to flip/flop and make this change (which probably means the evidence is even stronger than we are being told).
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Any thoughts on whether this means indoor only or outside too?
I would guess inside? The guidance still seems pretty positive that outside is very low risk. I’d at least try to maintain some physical spacing if possible (not sitting shoulder to shoulder at a picnic table, for instance)
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I just wanted to jump in and say thank you for keeping this thread going. I mostly post in chat but greatly appreciate having this thread to come to when covid numbers start increasing to see what y’all have to say. The discussion is helpful and respectful, so thanks.
I listened to the CDC call live yesterday and the impression I had was the initial information Dr. Walensky (and others she was consulting with) were reviewing was alarming enough to change guidance. They felt it was too compelling to wait for more information. Also to be clear the inside mask guidance is for only certain counties with high spread. It’s not for the entire country. Y’all may have discussed that already but I feel like some of that was getting buried in some news coverage.
Thanks again.
Edited: corrected my spelling of Dr. Walensky
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Moderator message
We had intended to stop the covid thread when the second one automatically locked. Under the circumstances, with rising cases in Florida being very much connected to Disney discussions, we will let this thread continue.
However, we will not hesitate to lock it if it starts to go off the rails. Keep it respectful please.
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Ha! I was asking people to stop the threats and to be respectful (even when they disagree) to the leaders that are the verge of collapse but I love your interpretation. I honestly appreciate the insight in another view.
Editing to add: I am going to respectfully ask if anyone is going to reference me in their post to please use @PrincipalTinker. On chat PT and @PT works, but it does not tag here.
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I added that 10:30 mark on the last thread. I don’t think that aligns with the begging of the audio and something is “off” in the way it is being reported. Either there is something more or they just don’t know and are throwing it all at the wall hoping something will stick?
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Everything I’ve seen/heard so far does state that indoor masking is recommended in high surge areas. Orlando FL… well all of FL would fall in that category 
I can see how it could be overlooked though.
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The news today reported that that indoor guidance applies to 4-5 MA counties. With our vaccination rate, Delta is kicking our a**. That Provincetown outbreak is still climbing. The great news is only three are hospitalized.
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This is hilarious but also true. Lets keep this board open. If folks don’t like it then don’t read it.
This is a real issue and this board has maintained respect far longer than I thought possible.
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