Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 102 posts

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

#61

Post by jonnycomputer »

baxtr wrote: post #50
jonnycomputer wrote: post #2

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…

Agree 100%. A friend of mine shared the article this morning and I basically said the same. By itself the 60% is a meaningless number and says nothing about the vaccine efficacy. > An embarrassing failure for science.org Yes. Looking at the author's bio, you would expect a more nuanced comment and not this kind of fear mongering. Meredith Wadman Meredith joined Science as a staff writer in September 2016, after cover…

I think it must be something about the incentives of publishing.

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

#62

Post by gtt »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #52
jonnycomputer wrote: post #2

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…

In my opinion science should be about Truth, the rest should be left to people and their leaders. Truth being central to the process of science is what makes science unique and allows for societies to accumulate knowledge.

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

#63

Post by nradov »

conception wrote: post #32
bequanna wrote: post #22

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 misinformation. The CDC estimates COVID-19 death rate to be 0.6%. And vaccination cuts that rate close to 0.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

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

#64

Post by bequanna »

helge9210 wrote: post #57
conception wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Right. So, an overwhelming majority of the people who “died from COVID” would have likely passed away in the near future from something unrelated. They just were unfortunate enough to catch COVID in their already incredibly fragile and deteriorating state and end up with COVID listed as their cause of death.

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

#65

Post by seoaeu »

trhway wrote: post #51
Retric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

Um, your graph shows that younger people are several times more likely to be unvaccinated than older people

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

#66

Post by e40 »

resource0x wrote: post #47

Some updates from Israel (based on Wednesday Sept 01 data) "Some 11,246 new cases out of around 145,000 tests that were performed on Wednesday were diagnosed with the virus, the Health Ministry reported on Thursday evening, with 7.9% of those screened testing positive – the highest percentage since the start of the pandemic. Israel is in first place in the world in the number of daily cases per capita in the last sev…

Does anyone know what Israel is doing in terms of lockdowns, etc? Are they back to business as usual, or something else?

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

#67

Post by dkural »

baxtr wrote: post #50
jonnycomputer wrote: post #2

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…

Agree 100%. A friend of mine shared the article this morning and I basically said the same. By itself the 60% is a meaningless number and says nothing about the vaccine efficacy. > An embarrassing failure for science.org Yes. Looking at the author's bio, you would expect a more nuanced comment and not this kind of fear mongering. Meredith Wadman Meredith joined Science as a staff writer in September 2016, after cover…

The 60% is also not adjusted for age, see here for good explanations:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/31/covid-isra...

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

This is such an important point, I think it's worth including the key table here:

Vaccine effectiveness vs. severe disease for younger (Vaccine effectiveness vs. severe disease for older (>50yr) = 1- 13.6/91.9 = 85.2%

But if you combine the two, you get 67.5% !!!! which is the # people have been wrongly focused on.

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

#68

Post by subsubzero »

What is not being said is some people are on the brink of death anyways and being vaccinated will not stop that trajectory(dying). The older you are the weaker your immune system is. A 97 year not vaccinated would most likely die after getting covid, either from the virus itself or an infection that happens after the body is weakened by the virus. The same fully vaccinated person may or may not die, if they do die its going to happen anyways but will be listed as a hospitalization/death from covid.

A few other things about Israels vaccine program.

- They started early(12/20) so I imagine alot of the populace is starting to run into vaccines that are less effective than if they were administered late Spring like US/UK and Europe.

- I don't know what the obesity levels are like in that country but the CDC says there is a strong correlation between being obese and covid severity with a person.

- Of the hospitalizations mentioned there is a strong indication of age being a cause for more severe illness:

>Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older

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

#69

Post by nradov »

How is this grim? Case numbers are mostly irrelevant now. What really matters is the death rate. Very few vaccinated people die, and the death rate for unvaccinated children is also extremely low. All of us are likely to become a "case" at some point no matter what we do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

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

#70

Post by rock_artist »

Israel indeed provides nice stats for Covid.

Especially where some of the population aren’t fully complying with suggested/requested measures. So we pretty much see the vaccination performance.

If it’s for health reasons (not leisure or traveling, PCR testing is free and there are many places available each day to test without scheduling.

Anyway, I was “fully vaccinated” on March 2020 iirc. I didn’t yet get the 3rd/booster shot. And I’m writing this being isolated with mild symptoms after testing positive for Covid. (Hoping symptoms will regress and I’ll be out within 10 days). I have no reliable assumption from where I got it and me and my oldest son are the only ones tested positive out of my close family and others we’ve been in touch with.

Post reply on HN