Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Tres Leches]

Unvaccinated people are 'variant factories'
cnn.com

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They're also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say.

That's because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.

I'm not worried about the 'variants'. Coronavirus is here with our species forever and the virus will continue to mutate as it's done since December 2019. Its job is not to kill all of us hosts as that means it would have no more hosts. Its job is to replicate.

The screaming headlines about variants conveniently ignore that many variants are only just as fit, or less fit, than prior versions of the virus. The fitter versions (or the "variants" dominating the headlines) that come along do not automatically mean more total cases or hospitalizations/ deaths. In fact, there's no denying that the numbers of US daily cases and deaths are significantly lower now than last winter, when the delta variant wasn't around scaring the pants off everyone. This is despite millions of Americans refusing the vaccine.

The H1N1 influenza virus today is believed to be a variant of the influenza virus that killed millions in the 1918 pandemic. Why do you think every year the influenza vaccine changes? Because the virus - like all good, clever viruses - is constantly changing. 

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/keyfacts.htm

The coronavirus also can and does spread among the vaccinated. The vaccines are meant to help prevent serious illness/ death, not to eradicate the virus off the face of the earth. 
Not to mention that the vast majority of the world's population is NOT vaccinated at this point so it's facile to blame Americans who are unvaccinated for worldwide variants like the "delta variant".

-Teresa