Tag: Anthony S. Fauci

CDC reverses indoor mask policy, saying fully vaccinated people and kids should wear them indoors

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/cdc-to-reverse-indoor-mask-policy-to-recommend-them-for-fully-vaccinated-people-in-covid-hot-spots.html

Excerpt:

The CDC recommended that fully vaccinated people begin wearing masks indoors again in places with high Covid transmission rates.


The updated guidance comes ahead of the fall, when the delta variant is expected to cause another surge in new coronavirus cases and many large employers plan to bring workers back to the office.


Experts say Covid prevention strategies remain critical to protect people from the virus, especially in areas of moderate-to-high community transmission levels.

Author(s): Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Meg Tirrell, Associated Press

Publication Date: 27 July 2021

Publication Site: CNBC

The Power of Natural Immunity

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-natural-immunity-11623171303?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Excerpt:

The contribution of natural immunity should speed up the timeline for returning fully to normal. With more than 8 in 10 adults protected from either contracting or transmitting the virus, it can’t readily propagate by jumping around in the population. In public health, we call that herd immunity, defined broadly on the Johns Hopkins Covid information webpage as “when most of a population is immune.” It’s not eradication, but it’s powerful.

Without accounting for natural immunity, we are far from Anthony Fauci’s stated target of 70% to 85% of the population becoming immune through full vaccination. But the effect of natural immunity is all around us. The plummeting case numbers in late April and May weren’t the result of vaccination alone, and they came amid a loosening of both restrictions and behavior.

…..

Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic published a study this week of 1,359 people previously infected with Covid who were unvaccinated. None of the subjects subsequently became infected, leading the researchers to conclude that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”

Author(s): Marty Makary

Publication Date: 8 June 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejme2002387

Excerpt:

On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2

Author(s): Anthony S. Fauci, H. Clifford Lane, Robert R. Redfield

Publication Date: 26 March 2020

Publication Site: New England Journal of Medicine