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COVID outbreak…at a beach?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 30–INTERESTING COMMENTS, BELOW (NOTE, IN PARTICULAR, THAT THE WEATHER WAS BAD THAT WEEKEND, SO MOST TRANSMISSION ALMOST CERTAINLY OCCURRED INDOORS)

This is allegedly why the Center for Disease Control in the U.S. has reinstituted mask mandates:

As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.

Before Provincetown, health officials had been operating under the assumption that it was extraordinarily rare for a vaccinated person to become infected with the virus. And if they did, they probably wouldn't end up passing it on to others, such as children too young to qualify for the vaccine or people who were medically vulnerable.

The idea that vaccines halt transmission of the virus was largely behind the CDC's decision in May suggesting vaccinated people could safely go without their masks indoors and in crowds, even if others were unvaccinated….

When a vaccinated person gets infected with delta — called a "breakthrough infection" — "the level of virus in their nasopharynx is about 1,000 times higher than with the alpha variant," Fauci said in an interview Wednesday with MSNBC.

All indications now are that the Provincetown outbreak investigation is among the pieces of new evidence behind the CDC's decision to ask Americans to once again put on their masks indoors, even if they are vaccinated….

One thing this article leaves unclear is whether the infections were thought to occur at the beach, or rather in indoor facilities near the beach.  If readers have seen more details elsewhere, or informed commentary on this, please post links.  Thanks.

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6 responses to “COVID outbreak…at a beach?”

  1. Diane Dunbar

    I saw on Twitter that the weather was bad so most people were crowded into the little bars and restaurants.

    https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1421108977165864963?s=20

    Reply
  2. Emily

    From the MMWR report: "Persons with COVID-19 reported attending densely packed indoor and outdoor events at venues that included bars, restaurants, guest houses, and rental homes." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_w

    Reply
  3. Kenny Easwaran

    Provincetown is a major gay party destination, particularly in the summer. It would be surprising if most of the people weren't *also* at bars at night after spending the day at the beach.

    Reply
  4. Kelly Gaus

    The Globe, unsurprisingly, has a lot of coverage of this (e.g., https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/01/nation/provincetown-covid-19-hits-14-friends-show-delta-variants-might/), which confirm what others are saying: indoor dining and bars/nightclubs seem the most likely culprits. Nonetheless, as P Town is one of the most vaccinated areas in one of the most vaccinated states in the most vaccinated region of the country, the facts are pretty sobering.

    Reply
  5. Kenny Easwaran

    We don't know what fraction of total attendees at all the relevant parties were vaccinated. It looks like adults in the Boston suburbs are about 75% fully vaccinated, but it would not be surprising if the population of gay men traveling to a resort town this summer is substantially more vaccinated than the general adult population. We can do various calculations with Bayes' Theorem.

    We do know that for every 1 infection in unvaccinated people, there were 3 infections in vaccinated people. If the underlying ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated people was 9 to 1 (i.e., 90% vaccinated) then the vaccines reduced that ratio by a factor of 3 (i.e., they were 66% effective). If the underlying ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated people was 15 to 1 (i.e., ~94% vaccinated) then the vaccines reduced that ratio by a factor of 5 (i.e., they were 86% effective). Unless the underlying ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated people was 60 to 1 (i.e., 98.4% vaccinated) the vaccines seem to be reaching less than the factor of 20 (i.e., 95% effective) that was originally advertised. But we already knew that the vaccines are somewhat less effective against the delta strain than against the strains they were testing against a year ago.

    But I think the big takeaway is that even those of us that are vaccinated probably shouldn't be piling into crowded bars for drunken weekends. Given that this is approximately how I celebrated my birthday, and my partner's birthday, back in June, this is an appropriate note of caution that we were in retrospect probably a bit lucky that we did it during the few weeks of lowest virus prevalence in Texas.

    Reply
  6. Christopher Ruth

    What does "fully immunized" mean?

    BL: 2 shots of an RNA vaccine, or 1 shot of JNJ.

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    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

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