Coronavirus

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 0.1%.

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

President Biden has earned high marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but the government’s effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible continues to face hurdles, including resistance among people who identify as Republicans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Private gatherings have been harder for researchers to measure than big public events — they’re private, after all. And there has been a fierce debate for months among epidemiologists about just how big a factor they have been in how coronavirus moved from person to person.

But a team of Harvard researchers used a creative method for finding them: Using health insurance claims data, they looked at the Covid rates of families in the two weeks after one of them had a birthday. Overall, their paper, published in Jama Internal Medicine, found that a recent family birthday increased Covid risk by nearly a third in counties where the virus was widespread.

Their theory is that the increased risk is almost certainly explained by birthday parties. Though the insurance claims don’t show whether any individual Covid patient had actually held a birthday party, several aspects of the data strongly suggest a connection.

For one, when researchers looked at other days of the year by randomly assigning birthdays instead of using actual birthdays, or examined diagnoses in weeks before birthdays, they found no such pattern. But, perhaps more significantly, they found the biggest infection risk in the weeks after the birthday of a child.
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Birthday parties, of course, often involve groups huddling in close quarters, perhaps to watch a child blow out candles on a cake.

The study considered data from last year, when Covid was much more common and fewer Americans were vaccinated. But its conclusions are still relevant for Americans who are unvaccinated today — a group that includes all children under 12. That may be especially true as the new, more contagious Delta variant begins to circulate in more states.
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For many Americans, birthday parties have gotten much safer in recent months. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s safe for fully vaccinated people to gather indoors without wearing face coverings.

But for those who remain unvaccinated, the study is a reminder that even activities that feel the most safe pose a threat of infection. In many parts of the country, unvaccinated people are clustered by region or social group, meaning that birthday parties — and other such festive, private occasions — can still be risky.

This is what I mean about the hopelessly naïve.