Provincetown, Massachusetts is the city in which the CDC based its new mask mandate on the other day, but it looks like it’s not panning out for them at all. Check this out from the town manager:
The vaccines are working. Of the 900 cases related to the Provincetown cluster, there have been no deaths, 7 hospitalizations, and the symptoms are largely mild. Our positivity peaked at 15% on 7/15 and was only 4.8% yesterday. The outbreak is contained and Provincetown is safe.
— Alex Morse (@AlexBMorse) July 30, 2021
Mild symptoms and only 7 hospitalizations.
Town manager of Provincetown, MA, the town the subject of the outbreak story being shared as a part of then impetus for CDC reversing mask guidance —> https://t.co/3QLGxPfEbW
— Alicia Smith (@Alicia_Smith19) July 30, 2021
Wow. Ted Cruz is right about the CDC no longer being a trusted government agency. It’s like a bunch of political hacks are running the agency now.
Here’s more on the problems with this town being used to justify the mask guidance from…….Nate Silver:
Here, finally, is the Provincetown study, which includes several major caveats, most of which are almost completely missing from the hyperbolic news coverage around this.https://t.co/2psyPdVob6 pic.twitter.com/VngcGG8HrP
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2021
There is also one major caveat that the study authors don't mention: they are only looking at *people who chose to be tested*, which is a lot different than *all breakthrough infections*. Presumably people with symptoms are much more likely to be tested.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2021
*Symptomatic* breakthrough infections having similar viral loads to *symptomatic* unvaccinated infections would be much less of a problem, both because symptomatic breakthroughs are rare and because people can learn to be more careful (and get tested) when they have symptoms.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2021
Finally I'd note that the sample sizes here are tiny, leading to very wide confidence intervals. And the "real life" confidence intervals are likely even wider given that (as the study authors say) the sample isn't very diverse. (P-town = mostly affluent middle-aged gay men.) pic.twitter.com/llLfxC1jhK
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2021
Here’s the bottom line from Silver:
To take a self-selected, not-statistically-significant sample of ~200 nondiverse people during a party weekend that was an outlier in many respects, and use it to conclude that breakthrough infections are just as likely to transmit the virus, seems like quite the stretch.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 30, 2021