So it turns out there’s some specific circumstances surrounding the Provincetown cluster that may help explain why 85% of the infected folks were men, and give some reason to be hopeful that it won’t be especially typical of virus behavior among vaccinated folks moving forward.
First of all, I want to be super clear that I’m not victim blaming here. Most of the infected in the Provincetown cluster were fully-vaccinated folks who were relying on the advice of a number of public health professionals at the time who stated that life for the fully-vaccinated could largely go back to normal.
That said, Provincetown has an annual well-attended (and awesome) “Bear Week” in early July, and while it was “officially” canceled this year a lot of folks attended anyway. According to a (gay) doctor friend of my sister who is familiar with the event, this festival tends to include a fair number of folks making out with strangers. This doctor speculates that under those circumstances much more virus is shared between respiratory tracts than other types of socialization such as indoor dining. It would appear that such high levels of virus can overwhelm the immune systems of even the fully vaccinated and lead to higher levels of illness than would be expected from lesser exposures.
So do what you will with that information.
