Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases • Hacker News Board

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#11

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

ajay-b wrote: post #2

Is it possible The vaccine has the opposite effect on some people, rather than helping them to defend, it makes it easier for them to become infected?

Some vaccine candidates can do this, but it would have been caught early on as it's one of the things researchers will look out for.

There are some citations here[1] when it comes to this phenomenon and COVID vaccines. It hasn't been observed in clinical trials, nor after mass inoculations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Antibo...

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#12

Post by djtriptych » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #4

i'm amazed at the number of people still believing high vaccination rates will get us rid of the covid, despite all the evidences of the previous year pointing in the opposite directions (people getting infected multiple times in a short period, variants mutating the spike protein a lot, and more recently vaccinated people still proven to be both carrier and transmitter of the virus). The final nail in the coffin bei…

???? Isreal's data proves that the vaccine helps reduce serious disease related to coronavirus infection.

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#13

Post by dom96 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

There is a similar story in the UK. This isn't all that surprising for the UK at least (I'm not familiar with how Israel is doing things): "freedom day" was now a month ago so of course more infections will happen.

The questions now are: will we see a variant that can escape the vaccines? Will the vaccines becomes significantly less effective at stopping hospitalisation/death within a few months?

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#14

Post by bsaul » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

djtriptych wrote: post #12

bsaul wrote: post #4

i'm amazed at the number of people still believing high vaccination rates will get us rid of the covid, despite all the evidences of the previous year pointing in the opposite directions (people getting infected multiple times in a short period, variants mutating the spike protein a lot, and more recently vaccinated people still proven to be both carrier and transmitter of the virus). The final nail in the coffin bei…

???? Isreal's data proves that the vaccine helps reduce serious disease related to coronavirus infection.

sure, i'm not talking about preventing vulnerable people from getting a serious case. This part seems to be working just fine, even in france. Hospitals aren't saturated anymore (except in some islands were people didn't vaccinate themselves for various reasons).

It seems to me that life could already be "back to normal" here, simply making sure old / obese people get regular shots.

It's the long-term strategy of wanting to get everyone a vaccine, including children who have close to 0 risks, in the hope of getting rid of the virus that i'm talking about.

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#15

Post by bsaul » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #9

bsaul wrote: post #4

i'm amazed at the number of people still believing high vaccination rates will get us rid of the covid, despite all the evidences of the previous year pointing in the opposite directions (people getting infected multiple times in a short period, variants mutating the spike protein a lot, and more recently vaccinated people still proven to be both carrier and transmitter of the virus). The final nail in the coffin bei…

> That means only 58% of Israel's total citizenry is fully vaccinated. Experts say that's not nearly high enough. 58% isn't that much higher than most other countries. France actually has a higher vaccination rate at 61%! So I'm not sure what you think the "country-sized experiment" is.

that's a very different take on the situation than what israel experts were saying just a few months ago. They reopened everything thanking the vaccine for that, and being happy of being the first country to heavily bet on mass vaccination. (note that the country is closed to people who don't have a pass, and people have to quarantine when they arrive).

It looks a bit like they're changing the narrative now that the next wave is coming, saying vaccination rates aren't high enough after all (i'm curious to see one expert provide a definitive number on the "good enough" threshold, based on models or anything else, but maybe 100% it is ?)

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#16

Post by belter » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #7

mixedCase wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What mechanism are you suggesting would be at fault for such an outcome?

A possible mechanism I have seen mentioned is Antibody Dependent Enhancement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement I am not a biologist and have no opinion on the matter, I have just seen it mentioned online.

Interesting. It seems that this was actually a concern and considered during initial development of COVID vaccines. It seems it was considered not likely to happen but there is this interesting part here from 2019 that caught my attention:

"Consensus summary report for CEPI/BC March 12–13, 2020 meeting: Assessment of risk of disease enhancement with COVID-19 vaccines"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7247514/

"A syndrome of “disease enhancement” has been reported in the past for a few viral vaccines where those immunized suffered increased severity or death when they later encountered the virus or were found to have an increased frequency of infection. Animal models allowed scientists to determine the underlying mechanism for the former in the case of Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and have been utilized to design and screen new RSV vaccine candidates. Because some Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and SARS-CoV-1 vaccines have shown evidence of disease enhancement in some animal models, this is a particular concern for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

To address this challenge, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Brighton Collaboration (BC) Safety Platform for Emergency vACcines (SPEAC) convened a scientific working meeting on March 12 and 13, 2020 of experts in the field of vaccine immunology and coronaviruses to consider what vaccine designs could reduce safety concerns and how animal models and immunological assessments in early clinical trials can help to assess the risk. This report summarizes the evidence presented and provides considerations for safety assessment of COVID-19 vaccine candidates in accelerated vaccine development."

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#17

Post by linuxhansl » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

Before anyone draws the wrong conclusions...

78.8% of the population above 12 are vaccinated. The remaining 21.2% make up about 40% of all hospitalizations.

The vaccines are incredibly effective and the situation in Israel does by no means indicate that they are not.

Edit: Fixed 11.2% to 21.2%.

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#18

Post by golemiprague » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

> Only vaccinated Palestinians are given permits to enter Israel and Israeli settlements

Many cross from the west bank without permissions, there are known opening in the fence there and the army is not really stopping them since there aren't many terror attacks in the last years.

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#19

Post by r00fus » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #8

ajay-b wrote: post #2

Is it possible The vaccine has the opposite effect on some people, rather than helping them to defend, it makes it easier for them to become infected?

From a purely scientific point a view, there is no reason for the post above (from ajay-b) to be downvoted.

Wild assertions without data or references are simply trolling.

Re: Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing a Dramatic Surge in New Covid Cases

#20

Post by peter422 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #5

> The good news is that among Israel's serious infections on Thursday of this week, according to Health Ministry data, the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people over age 60 (178.7 per 100,000) was nine times more than the rate among fully vaccinated people of the same age category, and the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people in the under-60 crowd (3.2 per 100,000) was a little more than double t…

Under 60 is not a specific enough age group for comparison of vaccinated vs unvaccinated cases. A 55 year old and a 12 year old have vastly different odds of serious disease, so much so that an unvaccinated 12 year old is less likely to get severe disease than a vaccinated 55 year old.

This easily could be biased by the older end of that range being significantly more vaccinated than the younger end.

If you want to compare vaccinated efficacy, look for 10 year age group comparisons. Anything else is really leaving you wide open to misleading interpretations.