Half vaxxed friends getting Delta

[Porridgeislife]

Has anyone had a notable uptick in friends getting Delta over the last week? I’ve now got 4 friends infected - one very sick (full week off work), two a bit under the weather and one only found out due to a PCR for foreign travel.

We are all mid to late 30s so half vaxxed with Pfizer or Moderna. One has a fully vaxxed mother & husband who haven't been infected whilst her unvaccinated young children have. All working from home and have been for 15 months.

I’ve been quite relaxed about Covid and just taking the usual masks, hands, space precautions suggested by the government (given my age) plus got vaccinated as soon as allowed. However throughout it all, I’ve never had so many friends sick at once - it seems Delta is much, much more contagious?

I am another fully vaccinated (pfizer) person who has caught covid from my child who caught it at school last week. My partner has tested positive too. I think if your children bring it home, you don’t stand much chance of not catching it due to high viral load in the home.

@Dustyboots

The double vaxxed colleague was very unwell so although that was a bit scary I guess it's good in a way as presumably he would have been even more unwell without the vaccination.

This mentality strikes me as brainwashed.

Sorry - whoever posted it. I"m not attacking you. I've read it so many times and it seems such a nonsense. It's a way of pacifying ourselves.

It's not brainwashed though. The evidence is there to show that the vaccine reduces, symptoms and reduces hospitalisation and death.

Really instead of suggesting people are brainwash actually look up peer reviewed evidence that shows this. Do you reallynot understand that?

@Gwenhwyfar

"On average, a person will experience a lower severity of symptoms once vaccinated. Of course for a certain % there's vaccine failure where you don't get any protection - but that's rare and tends to occur in older folk and those who are immunosuppressed"

No, but you really don't know if this person would have had it worse without the vaccination.

@Gwenhwyfar That's why I said "on average"

No one can know what would happen in a parallel universe where the person was not vaccinated. This is the bane of causal inference research - you need to know what would have happened if the scenario was identical but you took the intervention away but of course it's impossible. So epidemiologists try to approximate this with experimental designs and RCTs.

On a population level, vaccinations reduce illness severity. This means it is very likely the person in question would have been more severely affected without vaccination, but of course it's not the case for every single individual.

Yes, my daughter and many she knows at uni have had it, some quite badly too, considering they are young and otherwise healthy. She was vaccinated early but still had quite significant symptoms.

" I just think this 'lockdown lover' narrative is absolute rubbish. Who loves lockdown? It's absolutely fucking horrible. So I'd really prefer not to have another one."

There are plenty of people who love lockdown. I hate it, but I'm single and live alone. I know of people with small children who are happy not going out. My own brother said he was happy he didn't 'have' to do anything for his birthday.
The only problem he had was being slightly bored with walks in the same place.

On the other hand, I have an introvert friend who you'd think would be a great candidate for liking lockdown - he was already working from home for example, something that has been extremely difficult for me - but he has suffered from not being able to get out to the countryside and has probably missed human contact more than he expected.

There's a whole thread on here about people who haven't been out since March 2020. There are lots of lockdown lovers out there it seems!

Yes I think the vaccines aren't going to be much help in avoiding infection altogether from Delta sadly. There was an efficacy update from Israel today which puts Pfizer at 60% effective against infection by Delta after both doses- they aren't using AZ so no data on that. Hopefully they will still help with hospitalisations etc...but it's obvious that positive cases will skyrocket over the summer.

Yes, know 4 people personally and lots of friends of friends/colleagues. All in 30s, one is pretty sick (and had one dose).

Also our nursery is closed for the first time with a positive case.

We’ve had an outbreak at work, including one colleague who is double vaxxed and had two clear LFTs before it was confirmed by a PCR because she had symptoms (that were more cold like). We are not in a hotspot and the workplace has been open throughout with strong and up to now effective COVID safety measures. DDs friend is also isolating because her Dad has it.

"@Gwenhwyfar
That's why I said "on average""

The original poster. stated it as a fact about that one friend in hospital. We know the vaccines reduce severity, but not in which people, do we?

Yes - including one 26 year old who is quite poorly.

I note that this time around more people have typical cold/flu symptoms . So sore throat, sneezing, headaches.

"We are not in a hotspot and the workplace has been open throughout with strong and up to now effective COVID safety measures."

Do you know how colleagues have been transmitting it to each other? Is it just passing in the air, or have they been too close to each other/not worn masks?

I work in healthcare and all my colleagues were dropping like flies at the beginning of the pandemic. Now we have all (we'll all who want to jab) have been vaccinated we're all ok at the moment. I know quite a few people who have tested positive and they are the unvaccinated in their early 30s late 20s.
I not sure if it's more contagious or the fact that there's more socialising and close contact happening especially with the younger generation.
As long as the hospital admissions and deaths remain low it shows that the vulnerable are mostly protected through vaccination x

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Those of you who know lots of people who have it, do you have young children?

I have young children and know quite a few people who've had it. But also, these threads always seem to find posters who know scores of people who've ended up in hospital or dead despite being young /healthy/fully vaccinated and either this board is a magnet for bizarre statistical anomalies or a lot of posters have very vivid imaginations.

Also where I live is a hotspot at the moment

Brother aged 52. Double Pfizer for a few months ; no underlying conditions. Very very unwell last week with Covid. Worried for vulnerable folk who can’t have vaccine, or with underlying conditions. According to Boris, people are to make their own informed decisions. However, distancing/mask wearing is primarily to protect others (& many are likely to make selfish decisions, ignoring the need of the vulnerable to be protected).

I have young children and know quite a few people who've had it. But also, these threads always seem to find posters who know scores of people who've ended up in hospital or dead despite being young /healthy/fully vaccinated and either this board is a magnet for bizarre statistical anomalies or a lot of posters have very vivid imaginations.

I know, I'm trying to make some sense of it.

I got Covid after my first jab - in fact, I tested positive the day my second jab was due.

Looking back, I am sure I had the delta variant - I had all the symptoms of a nasty summer cold (head ache, runny nose, sore throat) but none of the Covid symptoms (cough, loss of taste/smell, fever) - until the day my second jab was due, when I lost my sense of taste and smell.

Now they are saying that the symptoms I thought was a bad cold, are symptoms of the delta variant, hence I am sure that is what I had.

I did end up in hospital for a few days, but I just needed steroids and supplemental oxygen (my saturations were down at 88% at the point where I came over faint, and we rang NHS24), but I didn’t need more invasive treatment. It’s about 6 weeks now, since I tested positive, and I am still breathless if I do anything - I have to stop and have a rest after a shower, before I get dressed, and again before I go downstairs, I’m still very tired, and get exhausted really easily, and my sense of smell/taste isn’t fully returned either.

I still don't know in daily life (2019 or 2021 life) anyone who has had covid.

My cousin's husband's dad -- he died of covid back in April. I met the deceased once at a party, briefly, maybe 18 yrs ago. That's how well I "know" anyone who has ever had covid.

Until I got it, I was in the same boat, @lljkk.

Actually - no - one neighbour had it last year - I forgot. I blame my age!

I think it's hard to gauge reality from this post. So many people on here seem to know so many people with covid and so many who are seriously ill. It just doesn't match the statistics. Even though I live in London this is not my experience, nor the experience of most people I know. I know of only one person who has had covid recently and haven't heard of anyone double jabbed who has tested positive. My DH has had 3 hospital appointments in the last 3 weeks, all for routine things which are happening again.

It's a positive story in my view.

I work in a school and we broke up on Friday. In the last week a close colleagues' DH, and 2 of her 3 children tested positive. She and her 3rd child still haven't tested positive.

Since Friday I have heard of 4 year 12s and 2 more teachers testing positive. Most of these have not got symptoms, and only had a PCR test due to positive lateral flows. All of the teachers had received one of their vaccinations.

Although people feel awful and need quite a time to recover, i think we need to remember that that’s still classified as ‘mild covid’ to be bumped up to moderate you need to be admitted to hospital. It’s not a nice illness at all for many, but they weren’t dangerously ill

Yes, it is much more infectious. Which is why everyone should be vaccinated. 92-96% protection after second injection quoted on radio 4 news today.

Ultimately though, hospitalisations and deaths are what count. If they stay very low, the number of infections really don’t matter. That’s sounds a bit flippant: what I mean is, very frail people currently die of ‘flu, seriously immunosupressed people can be in big trouble with a cold.

Our society is going to have to (hate the phrase) learn to live with this. It would be phenomenally worse without the mind-bogglingly effective vaccines.

Thank you, scientists.