New COVID-19 data from Utah, Virginia, and King County where Seattle is located suggests that the real chance of a vaccinated person getting a breakthrough infection is around one in 5,000 each day. According to David Leonhardt writing in the New York Times's Morning Newsletter, "the chances are surely higher in the places with the worst Covid outbreaks, like the Southeast. And in places with many fewer cases — like the Northeast, as well as the Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco areas — the chances are lower, probably less than 1 in 10,000" (each day).
In reality, the risks of getting any version of the virus remain small for the vaccinated, and the risks of getting badly sick remain minuscule[…]
But even with Delta, the overall risks for the vaccinated remain extremely small. As Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Friday, "The messaging over the last month in the U.S. has basically served to terrify the vaccinated and make unvaccinated eligible adults doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines." Neither of those views is warranted.
image: Electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virions with visible coronae, NAID (CC BY 2.0)
