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

#51

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #33

linuxhansl wrote: post #17

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%.

I think it's still concerning that 60% of hospitalizations are vaccinated patients. Even if 79% of the population is vaccinated.

You're misrepresenting the situation. As the article says, only 58% of the population is vaccinated. Only 78.8% of the eligible population is vaccinated.

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

#52

Post by ibejoeb » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:17 PM UTC

linuxhansl wrote: post #27

dogma1138 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the GP was asking a question, not stating it as a fact.

A question that would take 2-3 minutes of Googling to answer. I did not downvote that question, but I still think it didn't have any place here.

This is discussion forum. People here are supposed to be curious, thoughtful, and scientifically minded.

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

#53

Post by markdown » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #43

dom96 wrote: post #13

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?

What is freedom day?

A day to celebrate the needs of the selfish individual over the needs of the tribe.

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

#54

Post by hammock » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #11

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...

Outcomes suggestive of Antibody Dependent Enhancement (what we are talking about) were seen in animal trials, but the animal trials were canceled.

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

#55

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

tracyhenry wrote: post #36

linuxhansl wrote: post #17

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%.

I will get downvoted... but really, 60% of the hospitalizations come from vaccinated population, does that really count as "incredibly effective"? Is that really what people were hoping for when Pfizer & Moderna announced 94%+ effectiveness?

You're getting down voted because you're falling into a statistical fallacy. For example, If 100% of the population was vaccinated, by definition 100% of those in the hospital would be vaccinated. That gives you no information on the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.

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

#56

Post by hammock » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #53

irrational wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is freedom day?

A day to celebrate the needs of the selfish individual over the needs of the tribe.

I know a guy down the street from me who has been waiting for a kidney for 10+ years. Can you help?

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

#57

Post by mthoms » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

tracyhenry wrote: post #36

linuxhansl wrote: post #17

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%.

I will get downvoted... but really, 60% of the hospitalizations come from vaccinated population, does that really count as "incredibly effective"? Is that really what people were hoping for when Pfizer & Moderna announced 94%+ effectiveness?

>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 the rate among vaccinated people in that age bracket.

From the article. Emphasis is mine.

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

#58

Post by somewhereoutth » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #50

DanielDent wrote: post #35

Things that matter a lot these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox Someone that's done some analysis using the above mental models: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

Notwithstanding any fallacies that may exist (can you point out a specific one?), the best available scientific evidence suggests that natural immunity is much stronger than the vaccines against COVID: "Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection". https://archive.is/RlwBc

By natural immunity I think you meant to say disease induced immunity. Just to be clear about what that actually entails.

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

#59

Post by foxhill » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

tracyhenry wrote: post #36

linuxhansl wrote: post #17

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%.

I will get downvoted... but really, 60% of the hospitalizations come from vaccinated population, does that really count as "incredibly effective"? Is that really what people were hoping for when Pfizer & Moderna announced 94%+ effectiveness?

in principle you shouldn’t be downvoted if you’re adding to the conversation, and whilst i don’t agree with your overall thesis, i think you have a valid concern.

the OP’s statistics line up with the assertion that vaccines are certainly effective. if they weren’t, we’d expect to see similar proportions of vaccinated peoples hospitalised with covid.

certainly, the vaccines have lost some of their efficacy. it can probably be attributed to “slow” rollout, and - probably more significantly - vaccine hesitancy/denial. israel’s high rollout percentage is relatively meaningless in the global context, unfortunately. the virus has more chances to interact with vaccinated individuals. in a similar fashion to not finishing antibiotics, it was inevitable that the virus would mutate to overcome the existing vaccines at some level.

at this point, our only hope is that vaccines will at least make the virus less lethal. it’s not the ideal outcome, but given everything that’s happened thus far, i think it’s the best we can hope for.

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

#60

Post by lucb1e » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 11:24 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.

It's often really tough to make the call on whether someone is genuinely asking and when they're seeding doubt (people going back and forth on a topic makes something seem under debate) or even plain trolling and trying to waste other's time (since it's so much quicker to ask the question than to adequately answer it). This particular case is a pretty plain question, I'm more speaking of the general case.

What might also be worth to realize that the illusory truth effect is a thing, i.e. "the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure." "[A 2015] study suggested that the truth effect can influence participants who actually knew the correct answer to begin with, but who were swayed to believe otherwise through the repetition of a falsehood." (From Wikipedia.) I can understand why one might choose to downvote such a "genuine" question when it's easy to find that the answer is "no" (it's mentioned on the COVID-19 misinformation Wikipedia page).