Conavirus......

[happystuff]

Our county is also second highest in the state with 75% fully and 87% partially vaccinated.

It's nice to see that vaccinations are still rising - albeit still slowly in some areas. I just hope people understand that they can still catch and pass on the virus despite having been vaccinated. Yes, the vaccine makes you less likely to die or be sick enough to be hospitalized from COVID, but it doesn't prevent you or others from getting sick. There are getting to be quite a few variants to this virus out there, and I, personally, believe there is still a lot to be learned over the long haul.

Wishing continued safety and health to all.

[JaneV2.0]

What was the response to a more catchy variant arising in India? Immediately stop flights from there a la post 9/11? No. It was delay and then finally stop noncitizens from flying in, but still allow citizens to travel back and forth from India. Now the Indian variant has spread throughout the country and is the dominant one in some states. The solution the government has come up with? Rename it the delta variant so people from India don't feel bad.

It seems logical to assign neutral identifiers to variants as they arise. With luck, doing so will prevent a huge jump in violent morons assaulting people perceived to be Indian.

[bae]

It seems logical to assign neutral identifiers to variants as they arise. With luck, doing so will prevent a huge jump in violent morons assaulting people perceived to be Indian.

Some folks on this forum have repeatedly made their views on people of other colors and cultures quite clear...

[Tybee]

Good point, Jane, and by the way it swept through the nursing homes here, we're just lucky they didn't name it the "old white lady virus."

[Yppej]

It seems logical to assign neutral identifiers to variants as they arise. With luck, doing so will prevent a huge jump in violent morons assaulting people perceived to be Indian.

Was there a huge jump in assaults on people from Britain when the UK variant was named UK variant? What about people from South Africa or Brazil when those variants came out, named after their countries of origin?

[jp1]

Fun fact. It is believed that the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago did not, in fact, originate in Spain.

[JaneV2.0]

Was there a huge jump in assaults on people from Britain when the UK variant was named UK variant? What about people from South Africa or Brazil when those variants came out, named after their countries of origin?

So far, COVID-related assault victims have been Asian. How would one sort out British or South African citizens in a crowd? It seems prudent and easy to designate variants using Greek letters, and not get the violent morons riled up.

[Yppej]

How would one sort out British or South African citizens in a crowd?

By their accents.

But my main point is instead of banning travel to and from India when it would have made a difference we fussed around with nomenclature instead.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Banning travel to and from Indian doesn't make any sense, unless you also ban travel to and from anywhere else that allows travel to India (and any countries that allow travel from any countries that allow travel to India etc.). I mean suppose the UK allows travel from India and Canada allows travel from the UK, then you need to ban travel from Canada. Or tell me why my thinking on this is wrong?

The variant has now spread to more than 80 countries. So even if you were trying to stop the spread of Delta from a U.S. perspective, without a globally coordinated plan, it would be a rapidly escalating number of countries travel would need to be banned from and if we tried to base it on countries with detected cases that would lag the spread, many countries testing (including ours, we aren't even good keeping track of variants) wouldn't find it that quickly.

Now having testing and quarantine of a few weeks when you get into the U.S., that might be doable, except the borders are pretty porous. One could maybe say a country that has a new variant should ban travel from it. But we didn't do that, I mean the U.S. also invented whole new versions, remember that California variant? I do. We didn't stop all outgoing travel because of it.

[bae]

By their accents.

But my main point is instead of banning travel to and from India when it would have made a difference we fussed around with nomenclature instead.

Once again your understanding of epidemiology is well beyond the state-of-the-art. You should definitely be in charge.