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

#111

Post by pmkiwi » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #108

jayd16 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam

My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job.

The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here.

Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relatively speaking - quite a while ago so protection migh be indeed waning and the overall % is not that high (pretty surprised tbh).

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

#112

Post by gizmo686 » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #108

jayd16 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam

The original standard the CDC decided to use before we had data on any of the vaccines was that 50% protection would be the threshhold for "effective"; although I am not sure what level of infection they were planning on measuring (e.g. the vaccines appear more effective at preventing severe disease than symptomatic, and symptomatic than asymptomatic).

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

#113

Post by jayd16 » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #108

jayd16 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam

Well you're just making up a scenario with no numbers and then asking what people will consider so it's impossible to answer you in any constructive way.

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

#114

Post by charbonneau » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #95

charbonneau wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: What's the difference between un-/vaccinated people >60? Why aren't they vaccinated? Different opinions? Health-related reasons? Without this information, it's tough to draw conclusions.

Why would their opinions matter? As for health, I think you might be alluding to pre-existing conditions? Can you elaborate on how you would see this affecting the result?

Extreme example: Person A with perfect health gets vaccinated. Person B undergoes palliative care and chooses not to get vaccinated. Person B's routine SARS-CoV-2 PCR test is positive and they're therefore classified as a hospitalized/severe case.

It's a miracle that Israel even offers age-stratified hospitalizations data. But it's still not enough.

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

#115

Post by higherup » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

pmkiwi wrote: post #111

higherup wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam

My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job. The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here. Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relativ…

> they are doing the job.

As per https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-isra...

>Dr Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, stated that the majority of coronavirus patients in an Israeli hospital are fully vaccinated, including those with severe disease.

>Dr Haviv further specified that: “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated,” adding “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people” and the hospital is “opening more and more COVID wards.” This has led him to conclude that “the effectiveness of the vaccine is fading out.”

Note that I am not point out the fact that 95% is vaccinated. But that they are still overwhelming the hospitals, so it seems that your point no longer hold.

Also from the same article

> In other words, the TGA never saw or requested the patient data from Pfizer and simply accepted their reporting of their study as true.This means that when the head of the TGA John Skerritt said that “the safety evidence is pretty thorough” on February 6, his words would ring hollow to most Australians who have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the TGA had actually looked at the patient data before granting any such approval. As noted by Doctors for Covid Ethics on its website, it is currently not known whether any of the major government agencies around the globe (FDA, MHRA or EMA) has independently verified, or attempted to verify, Pfizer’s data, before proceeding with provisional/emergency authorisation of Pfizer’s mRNA therapy vaccine.

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

#116

Post by pmkiwi » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #115

pmkiwi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job. The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here. Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relativ…

> they are doing the job. As per https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-isra... >Dr Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, stated that the majority of coronavirus patients in an Israeli hospital are fully vaccinated, including those with severe disease. >Dr Haviv further specified that: “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated,” adding “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in f…

It is possible indeed that the Pfizer vaccine is not particularly efficient against Delta but, at the same time, Israel is only one country among a growing list of countries facing a new wave of Covid and what we can see over there does not show up (yet?) in other countries such as the UK or France.

Even if Dr Haviv is correct and the protection offered by the Pfizer vaccine is only valid for 7/8 months, many lives have still been saved in the meantime (Israel got almost no cases and deaths in Q2 2021 for example).

I guess more data is required to see how it goes but it is ackowledged that not all the vaccines have lifetime effects and some only work against specific variant (like the flu one).

To finish, I would like to reiterate that the Delta variant is a game changer so a quote from February needs to be taken with a grain of salt because the situation has changed completely since then.

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

#117

Post by edanm » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #108

jayd16 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam

> So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right?

Umm, of course?

If we had a vaccine for e.g. the flu, that cut hospitalizations in half, we would call that effective. Or maybe not - effective here is a very vague word. We'd more correctly say "this vaccine reduces hospitalizations by 50%".

If it were a particularly bad flu season and literally everyone got the flu (as well as everyone getting vaccinated), hospitals would be overwhelmed, because cutting in half isn't enough. But that wouldn't change the base fact - this hypothetical vaccine cut hospitalizations in half.

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

#118

Post by edanm » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #98

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do properly grasp statistics, and your conclusion is unwarranted. If 79% of people are vaccinated, then if hypothetically 79% of the hospitalized people were vaccinated, it would mean the vaccine had absolutely 0% effectiveness. The fact that only 60% of the hospitalized are vaccinated means the vaccine is more effective than nothing (and the data on death is even better), but as time goes on it becomes clearer the…

> If 79% of people are vaccinated, then if hypothetically 79% of the hospitalized people were vaccinated, it would mean the vaccine had absolutely 0% effectiveness. Incorrect. The vaccinations are targeted at the most vulnerable not distributed uniformly so this is not exactly right.

Just to be clear, I agree with your point that there is a difference in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population (e.g. average age).

But when you say "targeted" at the most vulnerable, I'm not sure how true that is. There's a pretty big push to get everyone vaccinated, including populations that have been reluctant to get vaccinated until now.

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

#119

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 11:46 AM UTC

higherup wrote: post #106

lucb1e wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. Like when someone say "vaccines are safe and effective", "vaccines are safe and effective", repeatedly, when the statement itself is very wrong because of the generalisation of "vaccines"...

Anything they're likely to get in a rich country will be safe and effective. Can't speak for places like Egypt of course, but you make it sound as if there is real risk involved for people on HN which there generally is not.

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

#120

Post by armona » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

The current figures are:

- There are 21.9 hospitalized in severe condition per 100K vaccinated above the age of 60.

- There are 225.9 hospitalized in severe condition per 100K un-vaccinated above the age of 60.

Vaccines are incredibly effective, you are 10 times as likely to be hospitalized in severe condition if you are above 60 if not vaccinated.