Live data from Hacker News

A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

science.org

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#51
post #37
post #6

78% vaccination, more than half of new are breakthrough, i.e. the vaccinated chances to get infected is more than 28% of that of unvaccinated. Similar numbers to MA https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/08/31/massachusetts-report... - 65% vaccination rate - out of the 1144 current average new daily infections the 500+ are breakthrough, ie. the chances are 40%. The data is probably skewed by the fact that vaccines smooth…

Vaccination is heavily correlated with age and age is heavily correlated with risk. So, you really need to do a more complex breakdown to understand what’s going on. Aka if 90% of the 80+ year old population is vaccinated and 0% of the under 12 year old population is vaccinated then being unvaccinated starts to look like a good option. Except what you really want is to be young.

>Vaccination is heavily correlated with age

not really https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/IL%2004.jpg

Except for teenagers as it was pointed out, though i usually didn't consider them because of being outliers wrt. history of vaccination. Well, lets consider them too. That is new cases by age http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/25295.jpeg

Let's look at opposites:

60-69 - 90% vaccination, 8% cases, 0.5M population

10-19 - 25% vaccination, 40% cases, 1.4M population.

I.e. almost 3x population, 5x cases with 25% vs 90% vaccination rate. Simple arithmetic - vaccinated chances to get infected are ~35% that of unvaccinated. Whatever way you slice and dice these numbers or the available numbers from other well vaccinated places like MA, UK, Singapore you always get in the 25%-40% ballpark.

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#52

This article never really tackles the fact that p(infected|vaccinated) != p(vaccinated|infected). With high-vaccination rates in Israel, that matters a lot. In fact, the scariest statistic it gives--that nearly 60% of serious hospitalizations are fully vaccinated) gives the p(vaccinated|infected), not p(infected|vaccinated). Trivially, and to make the point, if 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of hospitalizat…

I think the science always knew this, but they mislead the population because being vaccinated is still better than not. The whole vaccination thing is a white lie.

We have never eradicated the flu, it mutates too fast. Same is true with Covid-19. The medical establishment has always known this, yet they spread propaganda because, again, being vaccinated is safer. The numbers about 99% effective were a lie, they knew it would mutate and that would see a drastic drop.

I would argue this is a dangerous game they are playing with public trust.

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#53

I don't think the vaccine is creating a strong memory cell response. The vaccine is probably just ramping up the immune system response for a few months. That alone would prevent death and since we don't really have anything else, it's still better than nothing.

Please don't post conjecture like this that has been categorically shown to be untrue. Vaccines are effective and have been shown to decrease infection and serious illness rates.

It's not conjecture[1] -- what is misinformation is the assertion "...has been categorically shown to be untrue". Citation?

I find that when people use "categorically" in an assertion (denial), then there's good reason for doubt.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/08/25/vaccine-p...

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu was the perfect crisis hiding right under our noses. Variants have been circulating throughout the population causing a high number of deaths for all of modern history. Now that we’ve encountered a somewhat more deadly and contagious version than normal and the “danger” of this version has been super hyped, we’re quite sensitive to all flu related news, all flu variants, all flu deaths, etc. Confirmation bias at…

> somewhat more deadly A magnitude more deadly. Flu's death rate is ~.1%, Covid's is about 2-3%.

That is an insane, alarmist claim if I ever saw one. The death rate is absolutely not 2-3%.

What percentage of the population do think has been infected?

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#55
post #37
post #6

78% vaccination, more than half of new are breakthrough, i.e. the vaccinated chances to get infected is more than 28% of that of unvaccinated. Similar numbers to MA https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/08/31/massachusetts-report... - 65% vaccination rate - out of the 1144 current average new daily infections the 500+ are breakthrough, ie. the chances are 40%. The data is probably skewed by the fact that vaccines smooth…

Vaccination is heavily correlated with age and age is heavily correlated with risk. So, you really need to do a more complex breakdown to understand what’s going on. Aka if 90% of the 80+ year old population is vaccinated and 0% of the under 12 year old population is vaccinated then being unvaccinated starts to look like a good option. Except what you really want is to be young.

Tidbit: UK, being 0-17 and unvaccinated bears a smaller risk of covid related death than being >40 and vaccinated.

https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1420401034376224775

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#56

This article never really tackles the fact that p(infected|vaccinated) != p(vaccinated|infected). With high-vaccination rates in Israel, that matters a lot. In fact, the scariest statistic it gives--that nearly 60% of serious hospitalizations are fully vaccinated) gives the p(vaccinated|infected), not p(infected|vaccinated). Trivially, and to make the point, if 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of hospitalizat…

You make a good point about the conditional probabilities.

The article also said "most". There is some relatively good data from Israel, but, still, in practice most doesn't just mean > 50% but is essentially wildly undefined. So apparently the author(s) of the article like to write with emotional adjectives instead of important numerical data.

The authors were trained in belle lettre (maybe art as in communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion or VEFEEE -- vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience entertainment) or just like to grab people by the heart, the gut, below the belt to get eyeballs for ad revenue? Whatever, when they got to most I quit reading.

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu was the perfect crisis hiding right under our noses. Variants have been circulating throughout the population causing a high number of deaths for all of modern history. Now that we’ve encountered a somewhat more deadly and contagious version than normal and the “danger” of this version has been super hyped, we’re quite sensitive to all flu related news, all flu variants, all flu deaths, etc. Confirmation bias at…

> somewhat more deadly A magnitude more deadly. Flu's death rate is ~.1%, Covid's is about 2-3%.

> Covid's is about 2-3%.

0.7% in Israel. Much much less if you exclude terminal cancer, obesity and immunosuppressed transplant recipients.

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#58

I keep hearing that Covid is never going away (see recent Atlantic article). How is it surprising when vaccines designed to prevent hospitalization don't prevent infection.

I have heard similarly from various outlets that "we'll just have to learn to live with Covid-19, like we do with the flu and other viruses that we're unable to eradicate". What I find curious is that SARS-CoV-1 (e.g. the original SARS circa 2003) seemed to eventually disappear overnight. It leaves me pondering two questions: 1. Did SARS-CoV-1 actually disappear or do we just not hear about it anymore? 2. What is dif…

There were only ever 8000 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-1. It was able to be contained. Wikipedia mentions that quarantines were very effective because it wasn't often asymptomatically contagious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#59

This article never really tackles the fact that p(infected|vaccinated) != p(vaccinated|infected). With high-vaccination rates in Israel, that matters a lot. In fact, the scariest statistic it gives--that nearly 60% of serious hospitalizations are fully vaccinated) gives the p(vaccinated|infected), not p(infected|vaccinated). Trivially, and to make the point, if 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of hospitalizat…

> Trivially, and to make the point, if 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of hospitalizations will be among the vaccinated I mean, that's still scary, people were hoping for exactly 0% of covid-related hospitalization if you're vaccinated

I can't argue about what general public thought; but I think the epidemiological consensus even before we had experience with these vaccines is that vaccine effectiveness wouldn't be 100%--based on our experience with other vaccines. Instead, we rely on population effects to do the work.

If susceptibility to infection is above some point in the general population, then infections become a self-sustaining cascade through social networks (of course, the composition and structure of that network also matter--I'm simplifying). But if you can push susceptibility lower enough, the infections will not cause self-sustaining cascades.

This is, btw, why I consider anti-vaxxers (in the before times) as free-loaders who relied on those around them being vaccinated to protect them.

Re: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#60

I keep hearing that Covid is never going away (see recent Atlantic article). How is it surprising when vaccines designed to prevent hospitalization don't prevent infection.

I have heard similarly from various outlets that "we'll just have to learn to live with Covid-19, like we do with the flu and other viruses that we're unable to eradicate". What I find curious is that SARS-CoV-1 (e.g. the original SARS circa 2003) seemed to eventually disappear overnight. It leaves me pondering two questions: 1. Did SARS-CoV-1 actually disappear or do we just not hear about it anymore? 2. What is dif…

SARS-CoV was less contagious and had a higher fatality rate, so it burned out quickly. There's no reliable evidence that it's still circulating in humans.

SARS-CoV-2 is more contagious and less fatal so it has already spread worldwide. It also has multiple animal reservoirs so even if there was some way to simultaneously eliminate the virus from every human (there isn't), we would just catch it again from dogs or deer or something and the pandemic would restart.

Post reply on HN