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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 460 posts

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

#311

Post by TedPetrou »

Daishiman wrote: post #308
TedPetrou wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excess mortality for the elderly in Israel in the last 6 weeks is the highest it's been (by far) in the last 5 years. Check euroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Given that mortality comes usually between 3 to 8 weeks after infection it makes total sense.

Does it also make sense that they are currently ranked #2 in the world in cases per million in the last week for countries with more that 1 million population?

This is even after a down week in cases. Next door Lebanon is seeing cases fall at the same or faster pace and they peaked at the same time as Israel. Lebanon has yet to start vaccinating.

Case fatality rate has not fallen either. You would expect a huge drop in CFR if the elderly were protected, but this hasn't been the case.

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

#312

Post by wittyreference »

TedPetrou wrote: post #307
baybal2 wrote: post #2

Reassuring news! A hope for some normalcy coming with ongoing vaccinations.

Excess mortality for the elderly in Israel in the last 6 weeks is the highest it's been (by far) in the last 5 years. Check euroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

That was a helpful link!

Your comment is surprisingly true! And utterly out of context.

As of today, Israel's deaths - both for the 65-and-overs and all-ages - is nearly down to its historical normal range, per your link.

Going back two weeks there was a huge peak at a z-score of 9.7; and going back eight weeks it was at a statistically anomalous low, at a z-score of -2.2.

I'd be tempted to point out the period of the low was the high holidays; the enormous deflection to positive slope started a week after the high holidays, and continued for three weeks. So, you know, "a bunch of people broke all quarantine for the high holidays and new year and did their level best to stay home rather than go to the doctor, and caused a giant spike, which has receded as the cases associated with that spike calmed down."

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

#313

Post by wittyreference »

TedPetrou wrote: post #311
Daishiman wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that mortality comes usually between 3 to 8 weeks after infection it makes total sense.

Does it also make sense that they are currently ranked #2 in the world in cases per million in the last week for countries with more that 1 million population? This is even after a down week in cases. Next door Lebanon is seeing cases fall at the same or faster pace and they peaked at the same time as Israel. Lebanon has yet to start vaccinating. Case fatality rate has not fallen either. You would expect a huge drop…

Israel's issue has been and continues to be a very large orthodox and ultra-orthodox community which has flouted all quarantine laws and appeals to vaccination, in a tiny dense country where said orthodox and ultra-orthodox can't be meaningfully avoided.

That said, their statistics regarding the symptomatic case rate speak for themselves.

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

#314

Post by marshmallow_12 »

strulovich wrote: post #282
mola wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israeli here. Their way of life is not threatened by a vaccine nor by lockdown. No more than any other citizen of israel. Their leadership still has ghetto mentality and sees the state as their enemy, so they always choose to go against it while crying Nazis. It doesn't matter that these so called Nazis are jews themselves. This is the sort of mentality that 2000 years of diaspora creates. Their way of life is now de…

Israeli here as well. The Haredim way of life is less than 250 years old. Also, name calling authorities you don’t like is a not even a national sport, it’s a global one. There’s a lot of good arguments against them, but they require more nuance.

>The Haredim way of life is less than 250 years old. They will argue that its actually 3500 years old. Non hareidi judaism started .250 years ago with the haskala.

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

#315

Post by amrx431 »

daliusd wrote: post #118
amrx431 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India. It is an enigma that why is India's response to Covid-19 gets ignored. India to date has vaccinated more people than Israel and has one of the least CFR per capita.

Now I will get downvotes from India, but let's try: It is percent of population that matters not absolute number of vaccinated people. Israel is near 70%, while India is only 0.5% [1]. CFR per capita, while looks good (113.97 deaths per million) is not actually good compared to Mongolia (0.62 deaths per million)[2]. You know, who else is doing well - Belarus (195.31 deaths per million). I don't believe Belarus number…

> It is percent of population that matters not absolute number of vaccinated people. Israel is near 70%, while India is only 0.5% [1].

Which is more commendable considering the vastness of the land itself. Israel == Delhi and surrounding reasons.

Given the economic parameters of the country, it has better CFR than US, Italy, Germany and UK. Thats pretty amazing considering the health expenditure and wealth of US, Italy, Germany, UK is enormously high than India.

As when number fudging that is not happening.You can look at data from independent foreign houses stationed in India.

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

#316

Post by bajsejohannes »

bzbarsky wrote: post #305
bajsejohannes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck is vaccine production. It doesn't matter how fast you vaccinate. Sure, Israel did a great job negotiating for vaccines, but it's a zero-sum game so only a few countries could have pulled this off.

> The bottleneck is vaccine production Given claims like "I have 70m doses that I can’t ship because they have been purchased but not approved. They have a shelf life of six months; these expire in April." from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/w... it seems like claiming that the bottleneck is production needs some serious caveats....

Huh, I hadn't seen this. Thanks for enlightening me.

I'm curious where these 70M doses are bought but not approved. As far as I can tell, AstraZeneca is approved all over Europe.

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

#317

Post by chromaton »

EvgeniyZh wrote: post #260
corty wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. But still, don't worry yet, worry when it hasn't shown improvement in a few weeks. Edit: Also, when you look at the JHU data (e.g. via google), it shows a peak at Jan 15th in the number of cases followed by a steady decline. The number of deaths peaks on Jan 28th, followed by a similar, steady decline. Which is as expected, so I would say we are already seeing the effects on the number of deaths. Sorry that I…

I'm looking on case fatality rate: cases and death count are too volatile and depend on many factors. My hypothesis (it's not mine but I agree with it): if population with high death risks is disproportionately vaccinated, at the level it can make visible effect on case count for this population, it should have effect on case fatality rate. Of course, multiple factors can reduce/slow down the decline, but it should b…

The media and the CDC aren't talking about it yet, but I noticed the same thing independently as did a Facebook friend.

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

#318

Post by throwawayy1112 »

hef19898 wrote: post #148
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why am i getting downvotes? The hareidim ignore lockdown because their way of life is more important to them even then some deaths. Difficult for an outsider to understand. As for being anti vax, the vaccine is practically being forced down their throats. There will be a pushback (not that i agree). (and yes there could be more compliance, this is not the forum).

IMHO the downvotes have two reasons: Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic. Complaining or commenting about downvotes is not regarded well on HN.

> Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic.

I wonder if all the people who upvote this would take offense to the same statement applied to black people or whatever identity you want to swap in.

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

#319

Post by pid_0 »

scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

Why is this getting down voted? Anti-Israel users I guess? Mad that Israel has its shit together?

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

#320

Post by helge9210 »

eladFrizi wrote: post #132
mytailorisrich wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the involvement of the health plans in periodic drills of responses to military bioterror exercises [32] have apparently honed their capacity to work with the IDF and other organizations in emergency situations. In addition to nurses employed by the health plans, supplemental staff were recruited from the Home Front Command of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), private companies, and others. In the current vaccination…

The fact that healthcare providers could use external staff such as IDF medics only strengthen my point. Even though is just a drop in the ocean of the vaccine task force. I haven't seen any other resource says IDF transporting the vaccines. Teva is the responsible of that and it's not an issue. Neither about anyone who is not soldier and got vaccine at IDF. The Covid tests in Israel are nothing to be proud of.

There is no such thing as "external IDF medics". If you're putting some medic in uniform you have to pull him from some healthcare provider or hospital.
Post reply on HN