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Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

reuters.com

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Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#201

Post by oblio »

thu2111 wrote: post #190
throwaway4good wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't understand why it is so unpopular to ask this obvious question? The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Given how much further Israel is, one would have expected it to stick much more out in the statistics. But it does not?

The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Probably the latter. Mortality doesn't seem to be affected by (covid specific) policy: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27719/w277... https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/20-06.html https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/arti…

Interesting. In Luxembourg at least you can see the clear seasonal variation and also the enforcement of stricter lockdowns pretty much 1:1 in death rates and infection rates, accounting for the ~2-3 week delay in infection intervals.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#202

Post by hef19898 »

Robin_Message wrote: post #127
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If EU countries had the same supply as the UK, they would also have vaccinated roughly the same percentage of people.

EU approved the vaccines over a month later IIRC, and Germany and France won't use the easy to distribute vaccine (astraveneca) in over 65s, the major target group. So I'm not sure it's only a supply issue.

The AZ story is a very interessting one. This whole debate started after the Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, pblished an article saying that the AZ vaccine is only 8% effective for people over 65. Totally wrng of course, as 8% was the number of trial patients above thaage. Yet, the source was apparently someone in the German Ministry of Health. Obviously, that story went viral, it got all the uplift it needed when Bild and Spiegel jumped on the bandwagon. The latter has a, IMHO, obvious pro-Biontech agenda. With countries like France having already a problem with low vaccine willingness, and some smaller screw ups in AZs trial data, EMA restricted the AZ use for patients over 65 due to "insufficeint data", even if EMA thinks AZ will be effective. That detal, obviously, is way too small for online news.

My pet theory is, that someone looked for a scapegoat why German vaccinations are so low. AZ was a welcome one, especially after the question of whether AZ had to use its UK factories for EU orders. After that stunt, I have the impression AZ is somewhat pissed.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#203

Post by oblio »

benja123 wrote: post #138
jansan wrote: post #10

The Google COVID-19 statistics for Israel show that cases and deaths are declining, but not at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world. Reported deaths lag behind sometimes for weeks and new deaths were caused by infections weeks ago, so vaccination may not have much effect on deaths, yet. But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably with 50% of the population vaccinated. Are all these aympto…

Israel is dealing with a more aggressive strain right now (the UK mutation). What they have found, according to our news sites at least, is that it is causing a lot more of the under 65 group to become severely ill. Some groups are more affected than others (for instance they are seeing that a relatively large amount of women who are in their late term of pregnancy are hit hard by this variant) Making matters a bit w…

> Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted.

This should be a criminal offense. It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment in a more roundabout way.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#204

Post by oblio »

bryanwb wrote: post #125
jsharf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has many different population groups. The Haredi population is acting like covid doesn’t exist and has insanely high numbers of cases. I suspect that despite the vaccine working well on your everyday science-trusting Israeli, the Haredi population is throwing off the average significantly. Source: I have family there. Recently the police tried to enforce the lockdown Bnei Brak (a city with a lot of Haredis). T…

kudos to the Haredim of Bnei Brak for choosing to be human. I used to live near there.

Human how?

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#205

Post by yokaze »

throwaway_Ie8th wrote: post #188
lucd wrote: post #104

Here is some chart showing vaccination effect on hospitalization for severe forms. Very telling. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/israel-severe-hospitaliza...

The chart shows that patients below age 60 have been hospitalized 80% more for severe Covid after vaccination. Hard to not comment this cynically. That is bad. Early vaccinated patients over 60 have 40% improvement. Keep in mind that the group older 60 is smaller in size compared to under 60, and the effect is smaller that adverse response in younger. Net negative.

That is hospitalisation in _regions_ where vaccination started early or late.

It does not explicitly discriminate between vaccinated people or non-vaccinated, only possibly by proxy of age. People under the age of 35 were previously not included in the vaccination scheme. At the same time, the two more infectious variants are spreading.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#206

Post by throwaway_Ie8th »

graeme wrote: post #199
it_robot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ehhhh im not sure how you are reading this but the chart looks quite bad

Remember that hospitalizations take at least 2-3 weeks post infection to occur, and that you don’t see protection from the first dose for at least five days or so. So you’d expect hospitalizations to lag 18-26 days or so. Also the chart is not saying all those groups had vaccines: those under 60 largely haven’t been. The labels could have been clearer. It’s just a chart of change in hospitalization by age from a star…

You are saying "Late vaccinated 0-59 years old" should be read as "Unvaccinated and late vaccinated 0-59 years old"?

Why didn't they use that label then?

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#207

Post by corty »

Reason077 wrote: post #185
corty wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world will get it's vaccines after the first-world states are all vaccinated. And while it sucks to live in a third-world country where vaccinations will come 2022 or 2023 maybe, I can't see any other way, except if the third world would do their own production. Letting more people in the first world die to save some in the third world would be politically impossible.

The problem is that letting the virus continue to circulate unchecked in the developing world just gives it more opportunities to mutate into new, possibly vaccine-resistant variants. Variants can then spread back to infect the first world, and as we've already seen, this can happen quite quickly. A global vaccination strategy is needed if we really want to get on top of Covid for the long term.

There are two possible strategies for the problem you describe:

Either you vaccinate everyone world-wide at the same time as quickly as possible. Then mutations that make the virus resistant to vaccinations only have the time to occur during the time it takes to vaccinate. However, we do not have sufficient production capacity for doing this. We would have to wait a few years before even starting the vaccinations, otherwise the virus would "mutate away" from the vaccine. Or it would mutate away, if the campaign took too long, because everyone is waiting for the slow drip of doses...

Or you do divide and conquer: Put up travel restrictions, quarantine and testing regimes to split up the problem into smaller areas and subsets of the global population. Quickly vaccinate each of those, so that the virus doesn't have time to mutate away. If possible eradicate the virus in those regions. Then start with the next set of regions and populations, possibly adapting the vaccine to the variants that have occured there. Eradicate the virus there. Then lift the travel restrictions between the regions where the virus has been eradicated. Repeat until done.

Accidentally, the latter one is what we are doing. However, I fear the travel restrictions are too lax to really make it work, because it isn't really planned, just accidential.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#208

Post by nicoburns »

throwaway_Ie8th wrote: post #206
graeme wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that hospitalizations take at least 2-3 weeks post infection to occur, and that you don’t see protection from the first dose for at least five days or so. So you’d expect hospitalizations to lag 18-26 days or so. Also the chart is not saying all those groups had vaccines: those under 60 largely haven’t been. The labels could have been clearer. It’s just a chart of change in hospitalization by age from a star…

You are saying "Late vaccinated 0-59 years old" should be read as "Unvaccinated and late vaccinated 0-59 years old"? Why didn't they use that label then?

Because they have been vaccinated. The vaccine just (likely) hasn't taken affect and started affecting the statistics yet.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#209

Post by benja123 »

oblio wrote: post #203
benja123 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is dealing with a more aggressive strain right now (the UK mutation). What they have found, according to our news sites at least, is that it is causing a lot more of the under 65 group to become severely ill. Some groups are more affected than others (for instance they are seeing that a relatively large amount of women who are in their late term of pregnancy are hit hard by this variant) Making matters a bit w…

> Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. This should be a criminal offense. It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment in a more roundabout way.

It is, but I am not sure how you enforce it as it is extremely hard to prove. I think they should be going after the people who have been making posts encouraging this type of behavior.

Unfortunately the anti-vaxxers in Israel are extremely aggressive and they use a lot of fear tactics and deceptive “marketing”. An approximate translation of the largest anti-vaccine group in Israel’s Facebook page title is “Vaccines, an educated choice”.

I do think that more recently the tide has turned against them as Facebook has become much more aggressive in hiding their propaganda.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#210

Post by oblio »

jacquesm wrote: post #144
rock_artist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give some balance. Just as I got my second jab and waiting the 10min needed for surveillance. (Tel Aviv, Israel) > Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. It's a mixed situation here. * Israel supposedly paid 3 times more than others per shot (but if it works, it's cheaper than the economy losses). * Israel has free public health care. * All public health care…

> Israel supposedly paid 3 times more than others per shot More than that even, closer to a factor of 10. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/the-cost-of-vaccinating-is... $47 / head! VS closer to $5 in other countries.

It's still cheap in the grand scheme of things.
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