“When Sean Williams, 50, caught a breakthrough case of Covid-19 in November, he felt guilty and embarrassed. His 14-year-old tested positive, too; both were ‘double-vaxxed’ and probably caught it from his 11-year-old daughter, who got it in school two days before her scheduled first vaccination.
“‘It’s impossible to talk about without going through this whole tortured thing about how careful you were before you got it,’ says Williams, who lives with his family in New York City. ‘Also, this horrible feeling that you have to stutter your way through a clarification that you do believe in science, you did get vaccinated, you’re, like, not a fascist, even. It’s landmines all the way down.’
“When people who were fully vaccinated against Covid began testing positive for the virus in greater numbers during the rise of the Delta variant, it threw a wrench in the CDC’s summertime declaration that the pandemic was merely ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated.’ Instead, breakthrough cases proved that vaccines are both extremely helpful and imperfect in stopping the spread of illness. Mass vaccination is imperative; individual vaccination isn’t enough.
“Absent clear government guidance or the infrastructure to support overlapping safety measures, vaccinated individuals have been left on their own to decide what ‘responsible’ pandemic behavior should look like, beyond getting the vaccine. After testing positive for a breakthrough infection, many find themselves left to defend or reevaluate their actions. Now, as the Omicron variant accelerates a new seasonal surge – and fast-rising breakthrough cases – people are more frustrated and confused than ever…” (The Guardian).
News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian
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