I Was Part of the July Fourth Provincetown “Breakthrough” COVID Cluster. It’s Been a Sobering Experience. - Slate

While vaccines appear to remain strong against the virus, new evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people with so-called breakthrough infections may be every bit as infectious as those yet to receive their shots, even if their own cases remain relatively mild.

According to a report the agency released on Friday, the CDC’s latest findings were based on a July 4 COVID-19 outbreak in queer mecca Provincetown, Massachusetts, where among a cluster of 469 (with no deaths) at the time of study, an astonishing three-quarters of the infected had been fully vaccinated.

This year, my partner and I were among thousands from all over the country who descended on Provincetown in early July.

Unable to stop coughing, he and his boyfriend drove to Outer Cape Health Services, where he tested positive for COVID and immediately fled the cape.

In two days, I could count on both hands the number of positive, vaccinated cases I’d heard of.

“What on earth?” I wondered aloud online, as we all contacted one another about new breakthrough cases and compared our symptoms at virtual book club meetings.

For months, the CDC had advised us that breakthrough cases among the vaccinated were rare events, that even if sickened by delta, we should be only mildly symptomatic—“mild,” of course, losing its meaning when you can’t taste your food for more than a week.

Suddenly, my illness was being casually equated with promiscuity, as if personal behavior, and not poor public health guidance and quickly shifting science, was the culprit.

Forty years almost to the day after the New York Times first reported on the “rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals,” here we were again, confused and angry participants in a public health emergency.

Many of us began sounding the alarm just after the July Fourth holiday, and by midmonth the Massachusetts Department of Public Health had started collaborating with the CDC to track the new cluster.

“The people involved in the Provincetown outbreak were meticulous in making lists of their contacts and exposures.”.