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CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

forbes.com

11–20 of 37 posts

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#11
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter in countries like the US where the vaccine is free to anyone who wants it. We know the vaccine improves survival regardless of previous infections. https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disea... It's a little bit like mixing and matching vaccines to get better protection (which some countries are forced to do because they don't have access to the best single vaccine).

Nothing in your link supports the claim "we know the vaccine improves survival regardless of previous infections." > It doesn't matter in countries like the US where the vaccine is free to anyone who wants it How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event? Are those free for anyone who has to pay them? These considerations matter when we're talking about administering a vaccine which may provide very s…

> How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event?

Like when you get seriously ill with Covid and have to be hospitalized in the ICU? That's more likely than an adverse reaction to a vaccine, if we're assuming that everyone will get Covid at some point.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in your link supports the claim "we know the vaccine improves survival regardless of previous infections." > It doesn't matter in countries like the US where the vaccine is free to anyone who wants it How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event? Are those free for anyone who has to pay them? These considerations matter when we're talking about administering a vaccine which may provide very s…

There’s a CDC study that shows vaccinating while previously infected, further boosts your immunity by more than double https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... What they don’t mention is that previous infection alone is at least as good as vaccination alone. According to data from Israel, previous infection is about 6x more effective in fact. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccin…

What that study shows is that unvaccinated people in the study cohort were twice as likely to experience a reinfection. A lot of things could explain that and it's a far cry from establishing that it boosts immunity. The study period was also during the point when effectiveness of the initial mRNA vaccine doses was probably peaking.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in your link supports the claim "we know the vaccine improves survival regardless of previous infections." > It doesn't matter in countries like the US where the vaccine is free to anyone who wants it How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event? Are those free for anyone who has to pay them? These considerations matter when we're talking about administering a vaccine which may provide very s…

> How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event? Like when you get seriously ill with Covid and have to be hospitalized in the ICU? That's more likely than an adverse reaction to a vaccine, if we're assuming that everyone will get Covid at some point.

We're specifically discussing people with immunity from having recovered from a prior Covid infection, in whom serious life-altering illness from a reinfection is also extraordinarily rare.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about the medical bills for a life-altering adverse event? Like when you get seriously ill with Covid and have to be hospitalized in the ICU? That's more likely than an adverse reaction to a vaccine, if we're assuming that everyone will get Covid at some point.

We're specifically discussing people with immunity from having recovered from a prior Covid infection, in whom serious life-altering illness from a reinfection is also extraordinarily rare.

> in whom serious life-altering illness from a reinfection is also extraordinarily rare.

Only as far as we're talking about reinfections from currently known variants. We've seen that current vaccines are still pretty good against Delta despite not being tailored to it. Is it not possible for vaccines to provide immunity against a future variant that's much deadlier upon reinfection?

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#15
post #7

I do not understand what the 5 year plan is. Even less what the 50 year plan is. On one hand: We are blessed to have access to mass genetic vector vaccines. Genetic vector vaccines are amazing at shaving off the sharp edge of the pandemic. Even after effectiveness drops against infection, they are still amazing at preventing severe infections. "VE for severe disease is *still high* after 6 months - 94% for ages 40-59…

Everyone’s going to get COVID eventually. Natural immunity + 3 rounds of the vaccine are probably enough to make it acceptable level of deadly. “Zero COVID” was never possible.

Only for New Zealand who locked down an entire country over one case

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#16
Will journalist ever report confidence intervals? The report says:

> Adjusted VE during this Delta predominant period was 66% (95% CI = 26%–84%) compared with 91% (95% CI = 81%–96%) during the months preceding Delta predominance

So it's not much accurate the 66%, it could be anywhere between 26% to 84%.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#17
post #7

I do not understand what the 5 year plan is. Even less what the 50 year plan is. On one hand: We are blessed to have access to mass genetic vector vaccines. Genetic vector vaccines are amazing at shaving off the sharp edge of the pandemic. Even after effectiveness drops against infection, they are still amazing at preventing severe infections. "VE for severe disease is *still high* after 6 months - 94% for ages 40-59…

We pretty much can play with vaccines forever.

Every healthy responsible person gets a flu shot every single fall, we already do this and no one complains about the long term flu plan.

You might be allowing the current discourse to knock your reasoning off track. Not trying to attack you, it's easy to get carried away with something so impactful to all of us.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone’s going to get COVID eventually. Natural immunity + 3 rounds of the vaccine are probably enough to make it acceptable level of deadly. “Zero COVID” was never possible.

Only for New Zealand who locked down an entire country over one case

Unless they lockdown forever it's literally not going to matter. Additionally the longer they delay the acquisition of natural immunity the worse it will eventually be. The best course of action in the begining would have been to encourage only the vulnerable to isolate. Natural immunity is much better than the vaccines. COVID currently is worse for vaccinated people than it was for unvaccinated a year ago. The rate of severe infection with Delta among vaccinated is higher than the rate of severe infection of the general population a year ago with Original COVID. Natural immunity has less than 1% reinfection rate vs a nearly 40% infection rate for fully vaccinated. We talk about how all the current deaths of unvaccinated people could be prevented with vaccines, but skip that they could have also been prevented in 99% of cases by them simply catching COVID last year. Im all for vaccines and vaccine + COVID infection is currently the best protection, but that is an actually riskier proposition than simply having caught COVID in the begining for normal healthy people.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#19

Does anyone know how the 66% effectiveness of the vacine compares to people who were exposed to COVID but never got the vaccine?

Reinfection rate is less than 1%. The biggest issue is that there were lots of false positives with certain tests if you had Flu or other coronavirus colds even if asymptomatic. Even current antibody testing can't distinguish COVID-19 from other coronavirus based colds.

If you had asymptomatic or low symptoms and positive test there's a fair chance you didn't really have COVID. If you had symptoms with shortness of breath and loss of smell without heavy congestion you probably did have COVID.

Re: CDC: Covid vaccine effectiveness fell from 91% to 66% with Delta variant

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for New Zealand who locked down an entire country over one case

Unless they lockdown forever it's literally not going to matter. Additionally the longer they delay the acquisition of natural immunity the worse it will eventually be. The best course of action in the begining would have been to encourage only the vulnerable to isolate. Natural immunity is much better than the vaccines. COVID currently is worse for vaccinated people than it was for unvaccinated a year ago. The rate…

Last medical paper I read was using a cohort of 20,000 people. This paper concluded that natural covid immunity doesn't last forever. Median time to reinfection was 160+ days.

Is there new research or something? I keep seeing people talk about this and no one ever provides a source.

source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.13.21249642v...

Additionally here's a bunch of data that makes me doubt your point about naturally immunity being superior to vaccines:

https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrou...

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