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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

#371
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 had a pretty large population that doesn’t want to be vaccinated so to get this number they compared people that were vaccinated against people that weren’t.

It turns out that almost all people that get sick are the people that were not vaccinated.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that hard to understand. People usually die several weeks after exposure. Only 27% of the population has received both doses; a few weeks ago that number was much smaller. In addition, the ultra orthodox community has continued to flout rules on a nearly universal basis. I’m going to go check your comment history — pretty sure you’ll have been wrong about everything related to COVID so far. Edit: shocked (no…

> Edit: shocked (not shocked) you were an early COVID vaccine skeptic, justified your belief with poor interpretation of statistics, and now that a huge amount of data have validated initial findings, you have instead decided to double down on your original gut feel! I won't defend the comment author's (apparent) anti-vaccine stance. However, it's almost universally frowned upon to dig into HN users archives and lamb…

I’m very happy to lambast vaccine truthers, and it’s good for the discourse to point out that individuals making incorrect vaccine skeptic comments were also making incorrect vaccine skeptic comments in the past.

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

#374

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…

Except for Palestinians of course where they refuse their legal duties as an occupying power to render medical aid. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/israel-giving-5000-vaccine-d...

they should not be denied vaccines but it seems the palestinian authority are anyway happier to shoot themselves in the foot in order to make israel look bad https://www.ynetnews.com/article/S1EnkZNjU and https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/world/middleeast/annexati... and as far as not providing medical aid; https://cufi.org/issue/pa-stops-referring-palestinian-patien... [EDIT]: feel free to explain why i'm wrong to hold israel to the same standards as the PA.

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

#375

Anyone know if the similar mRNA process can be used to create vaccine for normal FLU virus.

I don’t recall where, but there’s some optimism we can create a universal vaccine for all corona viruses. Maybe we can finally cure the common cold.

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

#376

Anyone know if the similar mRNA process can be used to create vaccine for normal FLU virus.

I believe that's what they were working towards. I have said it before but I believe that this might be the start of something paradigm shift big like antibiotics were. look at the plague being treatable by antibiotics but before that it was a huge death sentence. time will tell.

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

#377

Anyone know if the similar mRNA process can be used to create vaccine for normal FLU virus.

The same process can be used to target vaccines for other protein structures.

So there is still the work to find a suitable target on the flu virus. Much of the science on the SARS 2 virus benefitted from the work that had been done on SARS.

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

#378

Israel is experiencing very high excess deaths with respect to its elderly in 2021 (see euroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ ) This is despite over 80% of its 70+ age group having both doses of the vaccine. At least half of the 70+ were fully vaccinated by January 23rd. It is the elderly all cause mortality that ultimately matters to me. If elderly are dying of other causes, then there are problems. Rega…

As a general rule of thumb there is at least a 2 week delay from getting COVID to death, so it's too early to say going off of a death count. Alternatively, looking up how many new cases of people vaccinated are getting COVID could be used, which doesn't have the delay.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/israel-severe-hospitaliza...

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

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Israel. There a three big points to make: 1 - There is a delay. While now we have more and more vaccinated people, much of the current cases in the hospital got infected before that. 2 - It changes from community to community but in general we have many people that are really not "disciplined". Either they believe coronovirus does not exist or it won't get them or that god will save them or the herd immunit…

> While in some places you have 70% in other communities you have 2%. (and those with 2% act like there's no coronavirus, see point 2) I've come to notice this over the last year. We now effectively live in two completely diverged realities. In one, coronavirus is a serious danger that affects our behavior and dominates every aspect of life, where we follow the news of new vaccines and declining case numbers with gra…

I'm somewhere in between. For myself, because I'm young and healthy, I'm not overly concerned about catching it myself.

However, I can also appreciate that in aggregate, the medical impact is higher than a normal flu. Hospitals have been overwhelmed (in Italy most famously, but here in Iceland it was also dicey for a bit around the peak). In that sense, I see it as being socially irresponsible not to take low-cost/low-effort preventative measures (mask/sanitizer).

Where it gets murkier for me is in the shutdown of businesses. I'm not sure I really have an opinion one way or the other on that. On one hand I can appreciate it sucks hard for those impacted. On the other, Iceland's second wave originated from an outbreak in a bar, so some kind of precautions are clearly needed. On the other other hand, at that time life was back to normal, so even normal precautions were completely ignored, so maybe we could have kept businesses open but just with precautions, which is the path we're taking now which seems to be working so far, though right now we're quite strict on international travel.

And though I've been drawing observations from anecdotes in Iceland, Iceland's numbers have never been very high because there just aren't that many people. Maybe the optimal approach is different in a higher-density location like New York.

IMO the solution to merging the realities is to humbly admit although we have statistics, none of us have all the answers. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Also, IMO, relationships are far more important than politics, especially politics as transitory as pandemic response. I argue with family about our differing perceptions of the pandemic, but at the end of the day I still believe they're doing the best they can and how wrong I think they are about some things is totally irrelevant to the relationship.

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

#380
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are real, to different people, in different communities.

Exactly my point. I don't know enough to make a value judgement one way or the other, simply pointing out how shocking it is when you come into contact with someone from an alternate reality to your own.

And I don't mean real as in "belief", I mean real as in actual factual reality.

So it's not an "alternate" reality (that's usually used as pejorative), it's a different situation to your own.

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