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Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
Nothing has changed. We still should mask, wash our hands, and keep a social distance while we wait for 80% of the population to be vaccinated.
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Unfortunately, a learning from the article is since the Delta varient generates a three log ncrease in viral load, herd Immunity will require greater than 85-90% of the global population have immunity which is unlikely to happen.
3. Much more infectious. This much higher load plus the ultra “stickiness” of the delta strains for adhering to human cells makes it remarkably more infectious than previous strains. You may have heard of R0 (Pronounced R naught) which is, in a nutshell, the number of people to which an infected person would be expected to transmit the virus. Early versions of the virus had a 2 to 2.5 R0 value. So one infected person would infect two or so people on average. Delta has an R0 of about eight! In the infectious disease world, that’s almost unheard of. Chickenpox and measles are about all we have ever seen that spread that efficiently from human to human. This changes the story line completely from earlier in the pandemic and makes this surge, in many ways, like a completely different pandemic event."