THERE'S a certain genre of news story that didn't exist before the pandemic, but is inescapable now; let's call it the Covid Horror Story.
These spread like wildfire and involve pandemic scenarios seemingly designed to keep you clicking and sleepless. AREA MAN CATCHES CORONAVIRUS THREE TIMES or A LIZARD GAVE ME COVID! Often they're not worth the agita.
But now, Bloomberg Opinion is home to one such story: Mary Duenwald, who once edited this very newsletter, contracted coronavirus more than two weeks after getting both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is so top-shelf that some people are turning down other vaccines in favour of it.
Yikes, right? How is this possible?
Well, Sam Fazeli explains to Mary and us that most vaccines don't actually prevent you from being infected with a disease; they just keep you from getting very sick or dying from it.
And sure enough, Mary's case of Covid-19 is very mild. (I believe her immune system was strengthened by months of editing this newsletter but lack the data to confirm that.)
It's also possible Mary was infected by one of the many variants flying around, some of which seem more contagious. These make the puzzle of how quickly to reopen economies more difficult, writes Lionel Laurent.
They also make it tough for the vaccinated to know how to behave, or for agencies such as the CDC to offer guidance.
Ever since modern science started whipping up effective Covid vaccines at record speed, many of us have thought of them as magic elixirs that would simply turn off the pandemic like a switch. But they don't work like that.
They're absolutely still worth getting, including even the supposedly less effective ones. Mary's story shouldn't keep you awake at night or keep you from getting vaccinated. But it should inspire you to stay careful a little while longer. – BLOOMBERG
The writer is a columnist for Bloomberg