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Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

fortune.com

141–150 of 259 posts

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#141
post #24

Buried the lede: > At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine.

The next sentence is: From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalization was 98.2%, compared with 93% from June 6 to July 3 That's a 4x higher chance of hospitalisation.

It's not as easy. Number of cases in that second period are ~10x the number of cases in that first period. Which means you have more propagation, potentially affecting more at-risk chunk of the population. E.g. the very few cases happening in May-June may have beeen predominantly occuring in young people with extensive social contacts, now that the transmission is going up it can spread to more isolated communities (e.g. old people with less social contacts, that are more at risk of isolation).

There is not a single number that you can look in isolation that will give you an answer.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#142

The critical info we are still missing: Effectiveness against long Covid.

Long Covid is ill defined, not especially common (~5-15% depending on the study), usually not that serious, and correlated with the intensity of the disease (so it will be lessened with vaccines avoiding hospitalization).

Pretty common, pretty serious.

- One million self-reporting long COVID in the UK, give or take

- 89% of them reporting symptoms at least 12 weeks after infection

- 40% of them reporting symptoms at least one year after infection

- 18.5% reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot"

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have autonomy over their own medical decisions.

You can have your medical decisions. You just aren't allowed to act irresponsibly and potentially infect people.

So by that logic, if the vaccine makes me more likely to have a 'walking case' of the virus, I shouldn't be allowed to get it unless I'm high-risk, right?

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long Covid is ill defined, not especially common (~5-15% depending on the study), usually not that serious, and correlated with the intensity of the disease (so it will be lessened with vaccines avoiding hospitalization).

Pretty common, pretty serious. - One million self-reporting long COVID in the UK, give or take - 89% of them reporting symptoms at least 12 weeks after infection - 40% of them reporting symptoms at least one year after infection - 18.5% reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot" https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

I’ve probably had some long COVID symptoms myself, but self reporting on something like this is next to worthless. You’ve got a mix of the placebo effect with people that had COVID attributing everything negative after to it, all backed with the media constantly reminding them of long COVID.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#145
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the big picture. Life is suffering with sparse sprinkles of happiness here and there. If you feel bad take a page from Budism, it's the best religion for your mind, and I am an avid agnostic. It's the "No bullshit" religion, basically it's your problem, fix it or learn to live with it. It teaches you to embrace suffering as part of living, everything is for you to endure, consider how to solve (or not) and g…

You're either a bloody liar, delusional, naïve, or don't have functioning eyes. - Famine in Yemen. Ongoing. - Famine in South Sudan. Ongoing. - Two years of drought in certain countries would push the world into global famine. Climate change weather patterns like Oregon/Canada and the ongoing mega drought in the US west and SW are just previews. - Millions and millions of homeless in America. I can see the camps and…

The famine in Yemen and Sudan is a result of logistic breakdown when the war etc. makes it very expensive to transport food.

US produces enough food to feed like 2-3 billions people. It is just the vast majority of it goes to feed animals to get cheap meat. So even with agricultural output drop like 50% the will be no famine in US. The meat will be much more expensive, but no calories shortage.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then turn off the news. You need to look for actual signals such as availability of emergency services. Hospital capacity.

Is it feasible to “turn off the news” in 2021? I’m not so sure.

I cut myself from consuming news and FB/Twitter feeds many years ago, maybe back in 2014 when MSM went ape shit in my region.

Can't say I was successful, for number of reasons. News still find their way into my head via HN headlines (although I disabled them via Tampermonkey scripts), via buzz in comments, via talks with (some) friends etc. Also, only bad news go through via these channels, so the world looks even more depressing because when something good happens, nobody brings it up.

Probably I need to cut myself from passive consumption of reddit/HN too.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#147
post #2

I'm so exhausted and demoralised by this endless cascade of things-getting-worse. It's taking a really big toll on my mental health and there's no resources available in my country to offer support (and there's nothing to be done except try to learn to live with it, anyways). The future looks bleak.

Do yourself a favour and disconnect from your TV / media. Now tell me, is COVID still here now that the fearmongering is gone?

yes, I've been lucky to not get it. But many friends/family got sick. Again, so far I was lucky that they are all ok. But there were scary moments, and a friend (even if somewhat distant one) is in ICU in hospital right now. Covid is very much present in our lives. I did not see those things ont TV, and luck has played a part in the outcome. I don't like pushing my luck for a long time, it hast to run out.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds worse than many places, ie Switzerland which is completely landlocked with diverse neighbors and open borders. Very few travel restrictions, mostly in spring 2020, just do your part and do the right choices in ie hygiene and travel destinations.

Switzerland has had just under 11,000 people die, NZ 26 (twenty-six). Not to mention, NZ had complete lockdown for all of two months. The rest of the time peoples daily lives were unchanged. No masks (generally), concerts with 10,000+ people no problem. Summer holidays etc etc.

New Zealand was exceptionally successful, and other areas which tried that strategy weren't so lucky. Some parts of Australia were shut down for something like 9 of the past 18 months. (Sydney is under lockdown orders today!) And I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of lockdowns in France, Spain, or Italy - their lockdowns just didn't fully eliminate transition, so we put them in the "weak lockdown" bucket, even though as a matter of government policy they were doing the same thing.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#149
post #24

Buried the lede: > At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine.

The next sentence is: From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalization was 98.2%, compared with 93% from June 6 to July 3 That's a 4x higher chance of hospitalisation.

Here's a similar study for Ontario, breaking down efficacy based on variant:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaCoronavirus/comments/oe6ajn/c...

Two observations:

* as the top comment points out, the confidence intervals matter

* the numbers are all over the place

I don't know the data for the Israel study, but I'm not sure we can confidently conclude something as specific as "4x higher chance of hospitalization".

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#150
post #2

I'm so exhausted and demoralised by this endless cascade of things-getting-worse. It's taking a really big toll on my mental health and there's no resources available in my country to offer support (and there's nothing to be done except try to learn to live with it, anyways). The future looks bleak.

" there's no resources available in my country to offer support"

What did your ancestors do for 10 000 years up until public healthcare in rich nations? How did they stick it out so that eventually you could prosper? And FYI I'm not sure there are any public resources in most rich nations for this kind of support anyhow.

We're over the worst of it, the data on D variant is just a warning to maintain vigilance.

Keep your chin up.

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