Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting 25-Jun-2021 Edition

MA is doing well comparatively to other states with our vaccination rate.  We're currently third, behind Vermont and just behind Maine (behind by 0.1%)

With that said, we're only at 60.2% and the rate of at-least-one-dose is increasing at only 0.12% per day.  With our current at-least-one-dose being 69.7%, that means in about a month we'll be close to 70% fully vaccinated but it will take us another 85 days after that (at our current rate) to reach 80%.

Of course, reaching 80% was always going to be hard as long as only 12+ year olds are eligible.  13% of our population is under 10 years old (I don't have the number of 10-11 year olds), which means we need nearly everybody else getting vaccinated to reach 80% until this fall when we're expecting to see additional children become eligible.  Given that we're really REALLY far from everybody else being vaccinated, it's not surprising we would be missing the mark so badly.

The percentage of each age range that is fully vaccinated:

• 12-15 year olds: 35%
• 16-19 year olds: 49% 
• 10-29 year olds: 55% 
• 30-49 year olds: 68% 
• 50-64 year olds: 76% 
• 65-74 year olds: 85% 
• 75+ year olds:    82%

(Just a super-quick aside here, how are the 75+ rates this low?!?)

But none of this appears to be stopping families from coming together and having parties in parks with no social distancing or masks.  There has been a lot of news about how passing each other on the street has negligible risk to spreading COVID-19, but the key here is understanding all the different elements that add to risk and thus cause big get-togethers like this to still be concerning:

• Outdoors vs Indoors: Indoors is a much greater risk because the particles don't go away as quickly.  The reason for indoors being so much greater risk also has to do with why proper ventilation and air-flow is so important when indoors.  That isn't to say there's no risk when outdoors when the other elements that increase risk aren't managed properly.
• Masked vs Unmasked: (or as I like to say it... my mask primarily protects you but it also protects me ... and by protecting me it protects me from harming you) Wearing a mask helps prevent the spread in a couple different methods.  The most important is protecting others from the mask-wearer, and this is important, even if they don't know they have COVID-19 (typically because they're asymptomatic but could also just be that they chalk their symptoms up to allergies or a cold or the flu).  Wearing a mask for the recipient of the virus is also helpful as it reduces the end-result because it reduces the amount that is inhaled, which is how this disease spreads most efficiently and causes the most impact on our systems.  All in all, it's a good idea to wear a mask if you're comfortable doing so, regardless of any other factors.
• Social Distancing: The further away you can be, the better.  6 feet is a good distance to target, but if you can be just slightly further, that's even better.  It's all about the drop-off in how likely it is that aerosols from one person's breathing will reach you.  The further away you are, the more likely it is that those aerosols will drop or float in another direction.
• Time in Proximity: Ok, here's the thing about these parties where people are admittedly outdoors but are unmasked and in close proximity and why this isn't like when we're passing each other in the street... time plays a role.  And this is somewhat related to the rationale for wearing a mask as the target of the virus.  The longer you're around people that are breathing out the virus, the more of the virus comes out of their lungs and the more of the virus will get to you.  The more virus gets to you, the higher the risk to you of getting infected to the point of being able to spread.  This isn't just about you getting sick enough to have symptoms because the spread of COVID-19 doesn't require that at all.  Back a year ago, we understood that asymptomatic spread was the most common type and this was because people were taking precautions when they felt symptoms.  So the longer we spend near each other, the greater the risk that we will perpetuate the spread if someone is breathing out the virus during that time.
• Large crowds or wide networks: This one takes some thinking but let's start with the large crowd factor.  The more people present the more likely it is that one of them has been exposed to COVID-19 and is currently contagious.  Additionally, the more people present when there is a person who is contagious, the more people that person can spread the virus to.  Ok, here's the tricky bit... if you're in a group and the others in the group have been in other groups recently, then you're essentially putting yourself in contact with all the people in the extended groups.  So a party with 40 kids, if each of those kids have seen 3 other kids in the last 7 days, each of the kids at the party are effectively in a network with 159 other kids... if each of the kids has seen an average of 6 other kids in the last 7 days, that network has increased to being 239 kids.  If there are two parties that a kid has gone to... you can see where this is leading.  
• Fully vaccinated vs Not: There's a lot of hay that has been made about how good the vaccines.  And it's good hay.  There's a lot to be excited about with the vaccines, not the least of which is that it frees up our healthcare system to deal with things that aren't related to the pandemic.  But the vaccines were not designed to stop the spread.  The vaccines were designed to keep people from getting extremely ill and dying.  And they do what they were designed to do.  They happen to also reduce the spread but they DO NOT stop the spread.  So, yes, being fully vaccinated reduces the risk of spread... but it does not mean you can consider yourself to not be a risk to those around you, in particular those that are unvaccinated (you know, like your friends' kids or your kids' friends).

One more number for you to think about... the number of kids under 10 years old (we don't have the counts for those that are 10-11 separated out since the age range in the reporting goes <5, 5-9, 10-14).  155 in the last 2 weeks... which is roughly 11% of the new cases in those 2 weeks.  Read that again.  11% of the new cases in the last 2 weeks have been in 0-9 year olds.

So... coming back to those big get-togethers where adults and young kids from lots of households are getting together with no masks, no social distancing, for reasonably long periods of time (yeah, they're in a park having a party, they're not just passing by each other) and pretty much all the kids can be assumed to not be vaccinated (because of age restrictions)... they've selected to tick all the high-risk elements except for being indoors.  Yes, it's lower risk now than it has been previously due to the lower spread we're experiencing and yes, they've reduced the risk by having the get-together outside... but there's the rest of the risk factors.

The spread right now is low but we could get it even lower and then maybe we'd be able to see a day where nobody died of COVID-19 in our state.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed