| This week's edition of the Covid Q&A is a lightning round on the delta variant. In hopes of making this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosis picks one question sent in by readers and puts it to experts in the field. For this week's edition, we're doing something different. It's a safe bet that the delta variant is at the forefront of most people's minds after suddenly being pushed back to virus panic mode. We asked two of our favorite regular Sunday Covid Q&A experts — Monica Gandhi of University of California, San Francisco, and Bertha Hidalgo of the University of Alabama at Birmingham — to answer questions about the variant during a live Q&A for Bloomberg Terminal subscribers last week. Today, we're giving our newsletter readers a peek at what our experts had to say. Here are some excerpts:
How should vaccinated people be changing their behavior based on new data about breakthrough cases and the delta variant? Gandhi and Hidalgo had slightly different takes on that question — a good reminder that with the data (and virus) constantly in flux, even scientists are often left thinking on their feet about how to react. That means that sometimes opinions on the same data differ.
"Delta has really changed the game for us," Hidalgo said. She urged even vaccinated people to wear masks indoors around non-household members, especially in areas with high levels of viral spread. "People should know that the vaccines do not create magical force fields off of which the virus is repelled," she said.  Monica Gandhi and Bertha Hidalgo. Gandhi, however, is a bit more optimistic about recent developments. She said it appears that the vaccines are still doing their primary job of keeping people from becoming extremely ill and hospitalized. "Asymptomatic people are unlikely to spread if vaccinated, so they're probably safe in gatherings without masks," she said. Still, masks aren't a bad idea either, she said.
With all this conflicting data, one of our subscribers wondered how our experts are thinking about vaccine efficacy right now. Does it appear to be waning, as some data have suggested?
Here, both our experts were emphatic: "Dr. Hidalgo and I both agree: Protection from severe disease remains very high with the vaccines," Gandhi said.
Hidalgo: "The effectiveness of the vaccine has decreased somewhat in the face of delta. However, generally, what we continue to see is that vaccinated individuals do continue to have great protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death."
With a new wave of the virus, and many places around the world behind in rolling out vaccines, what is the long-term outlook?
"Immunity is the only way out of the pandemic, and we do not have enough immunity to combat the transmissible delta variant," said Gandhi. She pointed to places in the U.S. such as Arkansas that were particularly under-vaccinated and hit hard by delta. "That is why masks, distancing, ventilation are still needed until immunity is higher."
Key to getting there, she said, will be a combination of vaccine uptake, passports, mandates and the natural immunity people develop through infection. And, she stressed, it's important for those things to happen all around the world.
"We need to get rid of any notion that we will be back to normal any time soon," Hidalgo said. We need vast vaccine coverage, she said, but also a return to other prevention measures like masking. "We need to shift our thinking," she said, from seeing the vaccine as a cure-all, to "the vaccine is going to help us get out of this sooner, and the sooner we all work together, the faster we will get a handle on all of this."
Thanks to all of you for writing in this week! Next Sunday, we'll be answering the best question we receive again. So if you have any, we want to hear from you. Write to us at CovidQs@bloomberg.net—Kristen V. Brown | 
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