Live data from Hacker News

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

ourworldindata.org

221–230 of 330 posts

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

#221

I mean can we just get over this already? I feel like the more effort that we spend trying to prove that vaccines work, the more merit the anti-vax movement gains. Can we just ignore those people or simply just laugh at them and move on?

Agreed, convincing people who think the entire thing is orchestrated by dark forces is pointless. At this point, what I'd like to see: a) accept natural immunity alongside vaccination status, probably need some kind of antibody count test for that to work b) "incentives" for vaccinated population, e.g. 90% discount on COVID treatments while unvaccinated pay full price

Also 90% discount for nonfat people

90% discount on lung cancers of nonsmokers

General 30% discount for people exercising regularly

Etc...

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends and family who have had to delay lifesaving medical procedures because hospitals are still swamped and medical personnel are still overworked from dealing with the COVID cases we currently have. Societal standards for risk still need to take into account far, far more than just "Am I, personally, going to die from exactly this one risk factor?"

I agree, however the obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses, the same way that China did in 2020. Not plunge the economy into debt and force millions of people to change their behavior because of a broken system.

> the obvious answer is that society [ ... ]

Nobody could even get society to do basic pandemic stuff like wear masks or take vaccines. How would they ever coordinate "build more hospitals and train more nurses" ?

Also, what is this "society" you speak of? There are very very few hospital facilities in the USA built as public institutions, or even with (much) public funding. That's now how things work in capitalism.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the death rate in the ONS data from England is age adjusted. So among the same aged cohorts, the vaccinated are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. Almost twice as likely for the last 6 months straight.

I'm speaking specifically of the age 10 to 59 age group. For the last 6 months that age group, the vaccinated are almost twice as likely to die of any cause than the unvaccinated.

That age group is too wide to make a meaningful comparison without standardising for age. Less than 10% of under-18s and less than 60% in the 18-24 age group have been fully vaccinated, whereas it's more than 80% for the 55-59 group.

The unvaccinated population in that age group is significantly younger than the vaccinated population. As you would expect, older people tend to die more often.

This is also mentioned in a footnote in the ONS data (and this is why they tend to focus on age-standardised figures).

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

#224

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…

COVID19 is NOT a personal health emergency. As an American, your chance of dying from COVID are vanishingly small, and even your chance of being seriously ill or suffering from "long COVID" are extremely small.

But ... COVID19 IS a public health emergency. It is contagious enough and causes a need for hospitalization enough that it is fairly easy for it to overwhelm our public health care systems. This means that when you next cut your hand with a turkey carving knife, are involved in an automobile accident, turn out to have cancer, or suffer from any of an almost innumerable number of medical conditions, you (and everyone else) will face personal consequences (including risk of death) from COVID19's impact on health care systems.

This disease is not about you, or me, or individuals in general. It's about a threat to our public health systems because of large numbers (and the numbers don't have to be that large) of people catching COVID19, getting sick and overloading hospitals. It has nothing really to do with risk of death or long term consequences, although the friends and relatives of the hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, and the thousands of people with long covid might also want a word with you.

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

#225

The Public Health England weekly report, already adjusted for percentage of vaccinated, for the last few weeks clearly shows more deaths of the vaccinated from covid and other causes The USA having more deaths this year than last, with the Delta that spreads faster but is less deadly Personally not vaccinated, had covid recently, and have no plans of getting vaccinated. Caught from my Pfizer vaccinated wife, and we b…

Are you referring to the same ONS data mentioned in [1]? That figure is highly misleading.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323441

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

#226
post #218

Isn't their data also showing that Moderna is the most effective vaccine at preventing deaths?

Moderna seems to be slightly more effective but with slightly worse side effects. Dose is the most likely explanation (30µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100µg for Moderna).

An additional reason is that Pfizer/Biontech was available first, so old or otherwise vulnerable people are more likely to have been vaccinated with that.

That is, Moderna is probably more effective, but people vaccinated with it have an even lower death rate because they're less likely to have been in a vulnerable group.

This is also a major factor that can be missed when going over the vaxxed vs unvaxxed death rates. If (eg) 75% of the population is vaxxed, 5% chose not to take it and 20% are too young (and thus very unlikely to die of Covid), then the difference in death rate will be much smaller than you'd expect based on vaccine effectiveness.

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

#227
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What are the best resources to answer this question? ….seriously? Your doctor Good lord we are in for some bad times

And if you don't trust your doctor to give you good information, then find another doctor. And never go back to the doctor you can't trust again.

It's not so much about trusting your doctor. For me, it's more about utter absurdity of the image of every single patient of a GP calling said doctor to ask this question, and thinking that the answer given is going to be any more specific for most of those patients than, say, guidance from the CDC.

Yes, if you have existing medical conditions that your doctor is aware of, they may be in a better position to point out any potential interactions between those conditions, any treatment you already receive, and a booster. But I'm guessing that this isn't a description of most of the population.

I'm also not sure that most doctor's offices really want every single patient calling in to ask "Should I get the booster?", and might simply be unable to deal with such a flood of questions.

There's also the little detail of millions of Americans not actually having "a doctor" in the traditional sense.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's been the growing consensus for a while now.

Yes, and we are also pretty certain that the mechanism of action is the number of mRNA particles contained: 30 µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100 µg for Moderna. As a result, Germany e.g. uses half-doses for Moderna and vaccinates under 30s exclusively with Biontech.

Just to clarify: half-doses are only used for booster shots (following EMA recommendation). First and second shots still use full dosage.

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

#229
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the vaccine is also very efficient in preventing hospitalization. By a factor of ≈11 (average, ages 12-17 & 18-59) in the RKI (Germany) data[¹]. So even if you're aged 12 to 29, if you don't get vaccinated you're gambling at taking away someone else's hospital bed. Which will doom the rest of us. So, can everyone please get fricken vaccinated ffs? [¹] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges…

I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, but hyperbole isn't helpful. Occupying a hospital bed won't doom the rest of us. In any given year only a small fraction of the population gets admitted to a hospital for any reason.

> Occupying a hospital bed won't doom the rest of us.

https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/zeitreihen

Germany is getting quite close to exhausting ICU beds and ventilators. Non-"essential" procedures have already been postponed.

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

#230
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data there is clearly extremely noisy the way it jumps around so much

This observation always really irritates me; making no comment about this particular instance, data jumping around doesn't necessarily mean it's noisy. Some datasets have high variance.

Did you look at the USA data for 12 year olds?
Post reply on HN