You won't need a sword to enter Grendel's Den, but you will need proof of vaccination

The rash of delta COVID on the cape happened to mostly vaccinated people. No one was hospitalized, but as much we think we’re ok in MA is silly. This is our life for years—one strain after another—Fauci was right—now is the time to prepare the vaccinations for the next strain.

We don't have hard numbers yet.

First some background:
* The endpoints for the vaccine trials were moderate or severe illness (depending on the trial) and death. That is, easily verifiable events. This was done for pragmatic reasons including having as the highest concern preventing hospitalizations, severe illness with long-lasting consequences, and death..
* The vaccine trials did not check for mild or asymptomatic infections. Again, pragmatic reasons including needing answers quickly, the difficulties involved in trying to ascertain whether thousands of trial participants had asymptomatic infections (how many fewer people would have volunteered if participation meant being swabbed every week?).
* NO vaccine for anything is 100% effective, just like no treatment is 100% effective.

What we do know is that
* People who've been vaccinated are much less like likely to get symptomatic illness, and if they do get ill are less likely to die or require hospitalization.
* There is reason to believe that vaccinated people with asymptomatic infections of the delta variant are more contagious than with previous variants where viral loads tended to be low.

As someone high risk, I have never topped wearing a mask in stores and other situations where I'm around multiple people outside my household. The more people you are in contact, the higher the chance of getting infected. In May I felt comfortable taking Amtrak to NYC to visit my elderly mother. Now I'm unwilling to be cooped up in a crowded train for 4 hours, even if everyone's masked when they aren't eating or drinking.

If I lived with anyone who couldn't be vaccinated (young children, people with medical contra-indications), I would minimize the chances of bringing home an infection I might not be aware of. If a worker needs to enter my home, I have both of us mask and open windows.

This WaPo article has a good discussion of what we've learned from the Provincetown outbreak: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/30/provincetown-covid-outb...

MG
Statistician doing (non-coronavirus) infectious disease clinical trials

The important things to remember with Delta:
1. is very highly contagious. Massively more so than Original COVID.
2. Vaccinated people can catch it, but will have a strong immune response preventing serious damage in most cases.
3. Vaccinated people can spread it.

So, what to do?
1. Get vaccinated if you are able to and have not already done so
2. Wear a mask indoors and outdoors in crowded places
3. Stay home if you have symptoms, except to get testing done.
4. Limit your time around other humans, especially unvaccinated ones, if you are at high risk or cannot be vaccinated.

I hadn't heard the "walked past each other" bit, and it sounds kind of hearsay flavored to me. If it did happen then I would suspect a crowd scene with multiple spreaders may have been involved.