Latest CDC guidance for vaccinated persons

The latest info from the CDC for vaccinated persons, from an email I received this evening. (Note that this is CDC advice: individual states may  have their own criteria).

In new guidance today, the CDC stated that fully vaccinated people can engage in more activities including:

    Not restricted from work following an exposure as long as they are asymptomatic
    If a resident of non-healthcare congregate settings, no longer need to quarantine following a known exposure
    Visit with fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
    Visit with unvaccinated people (including children) from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
    Participate in outdoor activities and recreation without a mask, except in certain crowded settings and venues
    Resume domestic travel and refrain from testing before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel
    Refrain from testing before leaving the United States for international travel (unless required by the destination) and refrain from self-quarantine after arriving back in the United States.
    Refrain from testing following a known exposure, if asymptomatic, with some exceptions for specific settings
    Refrain from quarantine following a known exposure if asymptomatic
    Refrain from routine screening testing if asymptomatic and feasible (in non-healthcare settings)

The CDC’s guidance cited a study, which concluded that fewer than 10% of COVID-19 infections occurred outdoors and that the odds for transmission are almost 19 times higher indoors than outdoors. The report noted that among the factors associated with outdoor infections were the duration and frequency of personal contact, lack of personal protective equipment, and occasional indoor gathering during a largely outdoor experience.  The report noted that the likelihood of a super-spreading event is 33 times higher indoors than outdoors.

The USA is really living an alternative reality.  The vaccines are great.  But there are too many variants that can escape them. To not still take *some* level as precaution is short sighted and unethical in my view.

The USA is really living an alternative reality.  The vaccines are great.  But there are too many variants that can escape them. To not still take *some* level as precaution is short sighted and unethical in my view.

Horrifying in my view! 

Granted the infection rate here (locally) is currently running at about 2%, but it's just sheer folly to open it all wide up again. The Daughter and I are continuing with exactly the same protocols we've used all along. [My mask is in the bathroom sink bleaching right now.] We've had one, count 'em one, meal in a restaurant since we were fully immunized, and that was only because there were literally no other patrons in the place. We scouted a few places and didn't go in because there were too many other diners. We do take-away occasionally, but I still don't like going into a place where people are sitting around chatting over a meal even if it's just to pick up our food.  And now they're going to be able to get drunk while doing so. Or without food - they've dropped the requirement that someone needs to order food in order to have a drink. Lovely. 

To add to it, although half the adult population here has had at least one of the two shots required, half have not. They are practically begging (in some cases actually begging) people to get vaccinated. They have plenty of available appointment slots and they are going unfilled. It's all "walk in when you want to" now, no appointments needed. Anybody over age 16 can get immunized. They are sending the local EMS out to people's houses who phone to get the vaccine but cannot get to a center. They are actually closing some of the immunization centers because of lack of demand.

Oh. My. God.

And then there's that idiot on Fox TV the other night who was railing on about the vaccine being useless and urging his viewers to confront people who were wearing masks and give them a hard time for wearing masks. That, actually, is not surprising. I grew up in the Texas culture that fostered people like  him and Rump. It ain't pretty, but it's relatively ubiquitous in some populations here. People [on UKY] have occasionally said during the Rump years that it wasn't the America they knew. I was kind of amazed, because it was pretty much the one I grew up in (and moved to California to escape, although it was there, too - just not as overtly). Not a lot has changed, really, here. Although, thank God, we've got Biden for a few years now.

The CDC also says the following about fully vaccinated people as of April 27th; (bold is mine for emphasis as it is a continuation of the OP)

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated-guidance.html

Fully vaccinated people can:

Visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
Visit with unvaccinated people (including children) from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
Participate in outdoor activities and recreation without a mask, except in certain crowded settings and venues
Resume domestic travel and refrain from testing before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel
Refrain from testing before leaving the United States for international travel (unless required by the destination) and refrain from self-quarantine after arriving back in the United States
Refrain from testing following a known exposure, if asymptomatic, with some exceptions for specific settings
Refrain from quarantine following a known exposure if asymptomatic
Refrain from routine screening testing if asymptomatic and feasible
For now, fully vaccinated people should continue to:

Take precautions in indoor public settings like wearing a well-fitted mask
Wear well-fitted masks when visiting indoors with unvaccinated people who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease or who have an unvaccinated household member who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease
Wear well-fitted masks when visiting indoors with unvaccinated people from multiple households
Avoid indoor large-sized in-person gatherings
Get tested if experiencing COVID-19 symptoms
Follow guidance issued by individual employers
Follow CDC and health department travel requirements and recommendations

A problem with rules allowing vaccinated people to mix is that we can't easily know who is vaccinated.  I was recently contacted at random by the ONS in junction with Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI to take part in their latest survey of who has antibodies against Covid in their blood.  It involves a home blood sample test kit and is part of the REACT 2 Study.  Every 6 weeks roughly 100,000 randomly selected volunteers are sent a finger prick blood test kit to test for the presence of Covid antibodies and asked to report back the results.

The latest results show that 70% of the adult population have Covid antibodies.  This is up from their study in February which showed 14%.  I don't think we can be too far away now from the so-called "herd immunity" where enough folks have resistance to Covid that the chances of catching it are extremely low.


https://news.sky.com/story/almost-70-of-adults-in-england-now-have-coronavirus-antibodies-latest-figures-suggest-12289249

Almost 70% of the adult population in England now have COVID antibodies, latest figures suggest.

An estimated seven in 10 adults (68.3%) in private households were likely to have tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in the week to 11 April, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

REACT Study

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research-and-impact/groups/react-study/

(ref Reply 3) Yeah, it's good advice. 

The problem is, besides the journalistic tendency here that your bolded info is not what is being splashed out [they leave that part out of the broadcasts and news articles and that I suspect very few people actually bother to look up what the CDC says on their website], once the CDC lightened up on recommended restrictions many states ran away with it, citing CDC guidance for their actions. There's a very disheartening trend to to throw everything back to pre-Covid status. Some states have dropped mask mandates completely - if they had them. (1,2) And if it's not mandated, it won't happen. [Actually, even if it is mandated it sometimes won't happen and in some places there have been no consequences at all.]  And there will be the un-vaccinated who will say they are vaccinated because they hate the masks, etc.

For example: in my favorite whipping-boy state (which I can slam because I'm "from there") they have opened everything wide with full capacity at bars, restaurants, and other venues and no mask mandate. But you have to remember that this is a state where the Lt. Governor went on TV and basically said old people should be happy to die of Covid to keep the Texas/US economy running. (3)


(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/us/states-face-mask-rules.html

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html

(3) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-suggests-he-other-seniors-willing-n1167341


[Apologies for the poor grammar. I'm off coffee for a while and it's definitely showing.]

A problem with rules allowing vaccinated people to mix is that we can't easily know who is vaccinated.  I was recently contacted at random by the ONS in junction with Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI to take part in their latest survey of who has antibodies against Covid in their blood.  It involves a home blood sample test kit and is part of the REACT 2 Study.  Every 6 weeks roughly 100,000 randomly selected volunteers are sent a finger prick blood test kit to test for the presence of Covid antibodies and asked to report back the results.

The latest results show that 70% of the adult population have Covid antibodies.  This is up from their study in February which showed 14%.  I don't think we can be too far away now from the so-called "herd immunity" where enough folks have resistance to Covid that the chances of catching it are extremely low.


https://news.sky.com/story/almost-70-of-adults-in-england-now-have-coronavirus-antibodies-latest-figures-suggest-12289249


REACT Study

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research-and-impact/groups/react-study/

YOIKS! The UK paid a hell of a price in deaths and Long-Haulers to get that herd immunity. I wonder if that wasn't your government's plan all along, when they seemed to just want it to run it's course at the beginning. [But then had to back-pedal on that when the economic and emotional toll doing the "allow herd immunity to build" hit the general public.] Water under the bridge, but what a cost. 

But now I wonder - will it protect against the evolving variants, I wonder, or are you going to get to do it over?

YOIKS! The UK paid a hell of a price in deaths and Long-Haulers to get that herd immunity. I wonder if that wasn't your government's plan all along, when they seemed to just want it to run it's course at the beginning. [But then had to back-pedal on that when the economic and emotional toll doing the "allow herd immunity to build" hit the general public.] Water under the bridge, but what a cost. 

But now I wonder - will it protect against the evolving variants, I wonder, or are you going to get to do it over?

As far as deaths/million are concerned the UK ranks as 13th in the world which is nothing to be proud of, assuming all countries in the world measure deaths from Covid in the same way. Given that the figures on antibodies was only 14% at the end of February and the vast majority of deaths occurred before then and the vast majority of folks vaccinated occurred after then, it is another data point indicating the effectiveness of the vaccines.

It probably won’t work fully against new variants which is why the UK government has just ordered another 60m doses from Pfizer to start booster vaccinations in September. I think annual shots could well be on the cards for a few years to come.