Delta's Gift Is Hybrid Immunity

Politics is how we govern ourselves, so don’t imagine Covid data could ever have been unpoliticized. The CDC’s naming this week of a new analytics panel, featuring Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch and John Hopkins’s Caitlin Rivers, does not change this reality. It opens a new chapter.

How so? From the start, our mistake has been our strange reticence to recognize the reality of mild or symptomless Covid. It began on day one with the World Health Organization and certain experts choosing to exaggerate Covid’s deadliness by ignoring mild and unseen cases. The same myopia continues to play havoc today with our ability to answer a crucial question: How rampant is the Delta variant among the vaccinated? The U.S. is hopelessly trying to draw conclusions from unrepresentative data.

In the Massachusetts outbreak that set off government alarm bells, more than 300 vaccinated holiday-makers later tested positive. Were they 100% or 1% of those who returned home with the virus? No idea.

In Chicago, 127 of 203 cases associated with the Lollapalooza music festival were fully vaccinated people. Same question. Are they the tip or the whole iceberg? No clue.

With more young Covid victims landing in hospitals, is this because Delta is more virulent or because there’s a lot more Delta than we know? Again, your government doesn’t have the foggiest.