Close encounters ...

Close encounters of a deadly kind is in play with the Delta variant of COVID-19. It gives one pause as to whether it might be a good idea to get the jab, right?

It lasted only a few seconds: One man walked past another man in a mall in Sydney. When officials later watched CCTV footage of the encounter, they saw that this was the only interaction between the two. But it was enough for one of the men, who didn’t realize that he was infected with the delta variant of the coronavirus, to infect the other.

As COVID-19 cases from the delta variant continue to swell, it’s clear that some things are fairly risky—it isn’t an ideal time to spend hours sitting unmasked in a crowded bar, especially with unvaccinated people. But how risky is it to quickly pass someone at a grocery store or wait in line at a bank?

Some facts about Delta ...

Others have suggested that it’s more likely to happen with delta than with the original virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had originally estimated that “close contact” with an infected person meant spending 15 minutes together, unmasked and indoors. A recent, not-yet-peer-reviewed study suggests that the delta variant may have a viral load that is 1,000 times higher than the original virus. If that’s correct, Céline Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, roughly calculated that the equivalent amount of time for the delta variant would be one second of contact rather than 15 minutes. Still, 15 minutes was never a magic number—the CDC later revised it to say that a cumulative 15 minutes throughout the day would also be considered close contact, and it’s likely that some people were unlucky enough to catch the original virus much faster.

End game

The bottom line: It’s crucial to get vaccinated. There’s still a chance you’ll get sick, but it’s less likely, and it’s much less likely that you’ll end up severely ill or dead. 

As followup ...

A major worry right now is Delta, a highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, which was first identified in India in December. It swept rapidly through that country and Great Britain before reaching the U.S., where it is now the predominant variant. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described Delta as more transmissible than the common cold and influenza, as well as the viruses that cause smallpox, MERS, SARS, and Ebola—and called it as contagious as chickenpox in an internal document, a copy of which was obtained by and reported on in The New York Times. The highest spread of cases and severe outcomes is happening in places with low vaccination rates, and virtually all hospitalizations and deaths have been among the unvaccinated, the CDC says. But the CDC released data in July that showed vaccinated people also can transmit Delta, which officials did not believe to be the case with other variants, and which led the agency to make a prompt revision to its masking guidelines.

Sounds like a plan does it not?