How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated • Hacker News Board

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#121

Post by Godel_unicode » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

steviedotboston wrote: post #55

erehweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death is not the only bad outcome from COVID, though, so some behavior modification could be justifiable based on risk tolerance.

The vast majority of cases for someone who is fully vaccinated are asymptomatic or mild. The risk of having a severe enough case to require any sort of medical attention is quite low, and for those people who do need it the new antivirals seem to be working very well.

I believe gp is talking about long COVID, I'm not aware of any studies into how well the vaccines protect against those effects.

Edit: this study in the lancet says 50% reduction in long COVID according to the summary. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#122

Post by ipspam » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #112

steviedotboston wrote: post #32

It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.

Is it? 0.2 percent of American's have already died from this. Or put another way, 99.98% is the current best real live actual number of how survivable Covid-19 is. Not some made up number with a bunch more 9's or 0's, but 99.98%. Three nines would be pathetic for a website's uptime. (I might be biased on that one, I do that professionally.) This puts it 3rd on the list of health reasons Americans die, behind cancer a…

Pretty bad comparison. Covid is massively front loaded. Almost every single person in the US has a much higher chance of dying from heart disease or whatever over a legitimate period of time.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#123

Post by zwieback » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

enchiridion wrote: post #110

jrd259 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are under 30, it appears your risk of death is low regardless of your status, but you will not forever be under 30, and perhaps you know some over-30 for whom the difference in death rate is important? Even if there's no one you care about who is over 30, to the extent that vaccination also reduces your risk of infecting others, it is polite to your society to be vaccinated. Perhaps you get no great benefit, b…

Does anyone have good stats to share on how vaccination impacts transmission? I’m curious.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Once a vaccinated person has a breakthrough infection they spread similarly but of course the chance to contract it is lower and the time to "virus clearance" is faster.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#124

Post by edmundsauto » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #41

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #19

Why is the death rate in the US plummeting among the unvaccinated? Is it just less spread all around?

Because Covid seems to be exceptionally efficient at killing those who are already sick. It's somewhat survivorship bias... Now that we have more effective means of protecting the at-risk (and plenty of them already died), the mortality rate is going down since the mix of people getting sick includes more healthy people as a %.

Recently infected people haven't had as much chance to succumb. There are also delays in reporting I believe. I also think your explanation carries much of the effect size, but the timing also matters.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#125

Post by gmm1990 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #50

The rate of death over what period? The site does not make that clear. Is it annualized? Should we compare it to the murder rate of 5 or 6 per 100k?

There are charts on that webpage that have the data per week if you scroll down a little.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#126

Post by nradov » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #93

HMH wrote: post #70

Maximum death rate for all age groups with Moderna, which at least according to these plots provides the lowest death rate, is at 0.8/100_000 in August 2021 for all age groups. Maximum death rate for the unvaccinated of age 12-17 is at 0.17/100_000, for age 18-29 it is 0.76/100_000, also in August 2021. So even unvaccinated younger people (age < 30) are better off than the average vaccinated Joe. The thing is, so far…

That perspective is only accurate egocentrically. If you look at population-level epidemiology you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread.

Sterilizing vaccines inhibit spread. The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines aren't sterilizing to any significant extent. Vaccinated individuals might be contagious for a slightly shorter period but in the long run that doesn't matter because the virus is now endemic and everyone will be exposed eventually. Fortunately the vaccines are still fairly effective at preventing deaths.

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

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#127

Post by hagbard_c » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #77

mint2 wrote: post #61

This is fine but still overlooks sample bias. I.e older and more susceptible to illness people like 70 year olds are more likely to be vaxxed than 25 year olds. Had the vaccination rate been constant across ages, the unvaccinated death rate would be far higher and the vaccinated death rate far lower. It’s bad stats to not account for the population differences like that one.

Another factor is that if the vaccination rate is very high, this also results in fewer deaths in the unvaccinated group, since it reduces the R factor.

This is actually debatable given that "fully" vaccinated people who get infected - a so-called 'breakthrough infection' - seem to transmit SARS2 at close to the same rate as those unvaccinated [1,2]: fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts

Whether the R-factor is reduced markedly depends on the number of breakthrough infections. In this study the infection rate in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals, i.e. the vaccinated run ⅔ of the risk of getting infected compared to the unvaccinated. Given that the vaccinated were of a younger age than the unvaccinated the actual risk reduction is likely to be even smaller than stated.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

[2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/fully-vaccinated-people...

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#128

Post by alibarber » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #112

steviedotboston wrote: post #32

It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.

Is it? 0.2 percent of American's have already died from this. Or put another way, 99.98% is the current best real live actual number of how survivable Covid-19 is. Not some made up number with a bunch more 9's or 0's, but 99.98%. Three nines would be pathetic for a website's uptime. (I might be biased on that one, I do that professionally.) This puts it 3rd on the list of health reasons Americans die, behind cancer a…

Reasonably sure that more people get cancer from things like smoking than their desire to build their own nuclear power plants.

People can still and will keep on buying cigarettes and smoke and give themselves cancer. Governments still permit their sale in a lot of places. I think the ship has sailed on support for the 'give up freedoms such as traveling to see your friends and family and engaging in social activities' preventative measure.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#129

Post by golemiprague » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

johndevor wrote: post #107

elif wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That perspective is only accurate egocentrically. If you look at population-level epidemiology you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread.

> you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread Is this true? Countries like Singapore and Israel are seeing huge spikes in cases despite having some of the highest vax rates. My suspicion is that vaccines have the downside of suppressing symptoms, thus making the vaxxed more likely to spread covid without knowing it.

I find it very hard to derive any meaning from the data because there are so many other factors and many times we can't put our hand on the raw data. Specifically regrading Singapore or Israel, two very small and congested countries. Israel also have a very porous border with the west bank where many people are not vaccinated and the idea of personal space is very different in comparison to the US. It is also have two distinct communities, the Arabs and the Orthodox Jews, together are about 30% of the population, with huge families and certain cultural norms which can affect behaviours. I don't know if those factors are relevant or not but they certainly exist and almost every country has some varying factors like that.

Re: How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

#130

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #112

steviedotboston wrote: post #32

It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.

Is it? 0.2 percent of American's have already died from this. Or put another way, 99.98% is the current best real live actual number of how survivable Covid-19 is. Not some made up number with a bunch more 9's or 0's, but 99.98%. Three nines would be pathetic for a website's uptime. (I might be biased on that one, I do that professionally.) This puts it 3rd on the list of health reasons Americans die, behind cancer a…

I set our target uptime at 99.95% believing that to be the most reasonable balance of availability and willingness to take risks to increase the pace of developing the product.

> 0.2 percent of American's have already died from this. Or put another way, 99.98% is the current best real live actual number of how survivable Covid-19 is.

Side note: 1 - 0.2% is 99.8%, not 99.98%.