Welcome... It is unfortunate that you got sick, and I'm glad it has been mild. I hope others around you either don't get it or won't have bad cases.
I actually was just looking at a
similar article. (I've never been to Provincetown) It indicates that Provincetown is a town of 3000 people, but with visitors, it would swell to 60K in the summer. I was thinking that an outbreak of the residents wasn't too surprising with that many people packing it in, and the 3K serving them (restaurants, shops, etc).
The article I saw indicated the outbreak was 39 residents of the town, 50 others from the state and 43 others from out of state. So something like 2/3 were visitors. Note that the visitors got tested there, so presumably developed symptoms after they arrived and tested before (it isn't clear where/when they were exposed). The allegation that "the vast majority were vaccinated" is unsubstantiated with numbers so far.
I saw something very odd. The
CDC page on vaccinations by county in Mass. indicate 3 counties have less than 10% of the residents vaccinated. Barnstable (~220K, incl. Provincetown): 5.6%, Duke: 3.7%, Nantucket: 1.5%. The other counties are 50-72%. My expectation is this is a data collection error.
At 5.6%, Provincetown would only have about 168 vaccinated.
Vaccinations, nor a prior infection, do not give immunity, only resistance. As you may have seen in another thread that I posted yesterday, with enough exposure, a vaccinated person is LIKELY to get COVID.
And, of course, If vaccine effectiveness were 50%, then if 2/3 of the population is vaccinated and 1/3 is not, then one should expect about an equal
number (but at 50% rate) of infections among those vaccinated as among those not vaccinated. Those numbers aren't too far away from the situation in the US versus COVID Delta. And, at 90% vaccinated, the vast majority of infections will be among those that were vaccinated.
Obviously, it would be speculation now to hypothesize a new variant that exploded on the scene in Provincetown. It is possible. My first
guess is that this is just statistics of many exposures to many people resulting in many infections, but that wouldn't explain it if those with vaccines were infected more readily than those without.
There have been recent conflicting articles about the effectiveness of J&J against
getting COVID delta versus getting a
severe case of COVID delta. You have to read the details to see what they actually are measuring. J&J was less effective (69%) against getting an infection the original COVID than the mRNA vaccines. Its
clinical trial couched its effectiveness (85%) against getting a severe case.
Fauci was saying (in January/February) that everyone should get whatever vaccine they could. That's true. The J&J vaccine improved your chances of having no more than a mild case. You stayed out of the hospital. But, in terms of getting sick at all, the mRNA vaccines seem to have a better effectiveness against the original COVID. (I can't say for certain that it is the same for the Delta variant. They data is still coming in.)
If you don't mind, I have a few questions.
1. Relative to your 2 or 3 days in Provincetown, when did you or your wife's symptoms first show up? The roughly 10 cases that I personally know that got COVID (not Delta) got symptoms about 2 days after a known exposure.
2. Are you fairly certain you weren't exposed/infected before your trip? (For instance, if you took public transport to Provincetown, or attended a large event a day or so before going, then your exposure may be earlier.)
3. Did you get your test in Provincetown, or after you got home?
4. Was your J&J shot more than 28 days before your visit to Provincetown?
5. Has your community's contact tracing team contacted you and connected your infection to Provincetown? Has Provincetown's tracing team or the CDC contacted you? (I'm curious how thorough the health departments are at tracing these inter-community spread.)
5. Am I correct in presuming you haven't had COVID before?
