The CDC Was Wrong to Say the Delta Variant Is as Contagious as Chickenpox

This reminds me of the old story about the weather man and the Native Americans. As the story goes,

One late summer the weather forecast on the local news included a reminder that winter was coming and it was time to prepare. A Native American took the caution to heart and began to gather firewood.

The next week the local forecast included a stronger caution. This winter might be worse than usual. The Native American redoubled his effort to store up firewood.

The next week the forecaster predicted that the coming winter would be among the most severe in modern memory. The Native American cleared room for a larger wood pile and set about to lay in as much wood as he could.

The next week the weather forecaster repeated the strong urging for people to prepare for a historic winter season. The anchor was duly impressed and asked the weatherman how he was able to forecast this so early.

"I've been watching the Native Americans and they are preparing like crazy! I think they know something, and we all need to get ready."

The press is reporting announcements from the CDC which are based on numbers the CDC got from... the press.

> The value for the chickenpox (and other R0s in the slideshow) came from a graphic from The New York Times, which wasn't completely accurate.

If anyone from the CDC reads this, please reach out. I've seen some spicy Delta data on TikTok.

The text of the article says the Delta variant has an R0 of 6, but the graphic in the middle says it's 7. That's a smaller discrepancy, but it looks like the sources are not all agreeing yet.