My Virtual Reading Room

ICU is full of the unvaccinated – my patience with them is wearing thin, by a pulmonologist in the UK, from The Guardian
(thanks to elenbarathi for the link!)

From Medscape:

Breakthrough COVID-19 Raises Risk of Health Problems, Death

Reuters) - COVID-19 is generally less severe in vaccinated patients but that does not mean breakthrough infections will be benign, a large study shows.

US COVID-19 Deaths in 2021 Surpass 2020 Total

The number of COVID-19 deaths recorded so far in 2021 has surpassed the total for 2020, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Overall, more than 771,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic. About 385,000 were reported in 2020, according to CDC data, and more than 386,000 have been reported this year.

The 2021 total will continue to increase in coming weeks as COVID-19 cases rise again in 30 states, according to The Hill. The national average for new daily cases has surpassed 90,000 again.

GOP Embraces Natural Immunity as Substitute for Vaccines

Scientists acknowledge that people previously infected with COVID-19 have some level of immunity but that vaccines offer a more consistent level of protection. Natural immunity is also far from a one-size-fits-all scenario, making it complicated to enact sweeping exemptions to vaccines.

That's because how much immunity COVID-19 survivors have depends on how long ago they were infected, how sick they were, and if the virus variant they had is different from mutants circulating now. For example, a person who had a minor case one year ago is much different than a person who had a severe case over the summer when the delta variant was raging through the country. It's also difficult to reliably test whether someone is protected from future infections.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August that COVID-19 survivors who ignored advice to get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to get infected again. A more recent study from the CDC, looking at data from nearly 190 hospitals in nine states, determined that unvaccinated people who had been infected months earlier were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who didn't have a prior infection.

Vaccine Passports Would Likely Allow Many Infections to Be Missed

(Reuters) - "Vaccine passports" that exempt vaccinated people from regular COVID-19 testing would allow many infections to be missed, Israeli data suggest.