Reuters is just reporting an event. Nobody goes to the front page of Reuters to see what stories are important. It’s aggregators like… hacker news… that are fanning the flames.
Reuters used to represent a “just the facts” news wire. But now it just isn’t. Yes this is an event in the same way that someone relapsing in cancer is an event. It alone is pointless and does not a trend make.
> Reuters used to represent a "just the facts" news wire.
After reading the article I'm still not seeing the problem. The sentences in the article are factual information, there is no obvious editorial bias like a CNN or Fox article, and there is nothing telling you how to feel (e.g. "You should be afraid" NYT title).
Reuters still seems pretty good compared to what's available out there.
Of course it's news. Governments are massively ramping up booster programmes specifically because of Omicron, and here are two doctors at the very same hospital who had it despite having had three shots. Note these are not "two random doctors separated in time by a large amount", they're two doctors who work together. Conclusion: booster shots do not stop people getting it or getting infected.
People flagging this thread are in denial. This is an event of direct relevance to the justification for government policies affecting billions of people, that's why Reuters considers it newsworthy.
> Conclusion: booster shots do not stop people getting it or getting infected.
...and that's a non-news. We know that, we didn't expect anything else for a long time now since it's also true for other variants. Booster policies were made with that information already taken into account.
A whole lot of people don't realize that. BBC News quoted just a few days ago someone saying that vaccine passports made her feel safe, because she knows everyone is tested, recovered or vaccinated. The fact that she can still get COVID from other vaccinated people hadn't registered and the BBC didn't bother pointing it out.
I'm honestly having trouble deciding if you're trolling or not. Do you really not understand that it's not binary but about the chances? isn't it simply how many out of a some big number of vaccinated got it and how bad did they get it, versus how many out of the same big number of non-vaccinated people got it, and how bad did they get it?
Yes, we all understand that. You have to use Bayesian reasoning here. The prior probability of one person infecting another they've spent little time next to, if the vaccines are "extremely effective" to use the claims we've all heard, is very, very low. That's the whole point of saying the vaccines are effective.
What you're arguing is that this event is merely an extreme fluke that a hungry press managed to dredge out of ... somewhere. That doesn't hold water because Omicron is only days old as a recognized variant at all, and these aren't 'two random people' but rather one clearly and recognizably infecting another in a low density space (e.g. not a conference or other big accumulation of people), despite that they're doctors and thus highly vaccinated.
Now, here's something to chew on. The claims of vaccine efficacy you keep reading are all wrong. They aren't measures of relative likelihoods of getting infected as you might imagine. They are heavily adjusted using a statistical methodology that's known to malfunction in the presence of variants. The raw, unadjusted data is unfortunately hidden almost everywhere, except England, where the public health authorities publish it alongside the adjusted numbers. And the raw numbers show that vaccination makes people more likely to get infected, not less. The rates per 100k are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
This has led to the ultimate absurdity of the UK public health agency claiming, "Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection".
News is a two way street. People want to stay informed about Coronavirus, Reuters is happy to run stories on the topic. They've probably got a few editors focused on the topic, and maybe today was what you might call a "slow news day" in the industry. You can't stand in front of the firehose and complain about being wet though.
I most certainly can when the person operating the firehose does so under the guise of professional standards where they claim to only use their granted powers to inform, not to convince or persuade. Reuters isn’t like CNN or Fox who hide their prime time talking heads behind some technicality of “entertainment vs news”. Reuters claims to be news, full stop. If they live by that sword they better be prepared to be judged by that sword
Journalists should strive for neutrality (good ones try to despite what boulevard tells you, they are on a completely different mission) even if they can never reach it. A case where neutrality fails often is deciding what is newsworthy and what is not.
That said, I don't see that as egregious and of interest because the effectiveness of the vaccine against this mutation is as well. It does not provide answers and the focus on the researchers is questionable, but I don't really see it as a problem or fear mongering.
