I wonder how under-reported mild breakthrough cases are, due to self testing?
I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, and I had what I suspect is Omicron about 10 days ago. I had a mild fever (approaching, but not reaching 101), a sore throat, sneezing and nasal congestion for 3-4 days, and I tested positive with an over the counter rapid test. Overall, it was like a very minor cold. My girlfriend also tested positive, and she had no symptoms at all.
I never got any "official" test (I didn't want to put additional strain on the health care system), so my case was not counted in any official stats. If I hadn't tested positive, my girlfriend would not have even tested, and her case would have been totally unknown.
The number --- 871 cases per day per 100,000 unvax'd, for the week preceding 1/10-- is an amazing rate (7 day average). It tells us that 6.1% of the unvaxxed population became a case during a 1 week period. This doesn't count people who were infected and did not test or did not test in a way that got reported.
Your point about whether mild infections are slipping through is interesting. Probably the vaccinated have more paucisymptomatic infections. The unvaccinated and vaccinated probably test at different rates (which way? required workplace testing of unvaxxed vs. unvaxxed more likely to be deniers who don't want to test). Etc. So there's some confounds here, for sure. But boy that 871 per 100k number is fascinating.
Without reinfection (which we don't suspect is likely for Omicron-following-Omicron), it certainly can't stay at 6% of the population per week for long. I doubt they have spotted more than a third of infections.
A quick warning: be wary of that computation because of how it's likely made, and it's worse than higher the vaccination rate gets.
The sources section says:
> Sources: California Reportable Disease Information Exchange; California Department of Public Health, California Immunization Registry; the U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.
So the the numerator (number of cases) from the reportable disease database and/or department of health data (which probably includes vaccination status, or alternatively is matched against the registry). The denominator for the rate amongst the total population is the population estimate from the census bureau. The denominator for the rate amongst vaccinated comes from the immunization registry.
The rate against the unvaccinated? There is no count of them, so instead you subtract the number vaccinated from the population. The problem is that both of those are estimates, and as they get closer the error on that denominator goes through the roof. So the rate amongst the unvaccinated becomes meaningless.
As an example, take a hypothetical place with around 100 people. Might actually be anywhere from 98–102, that is ±2%. If you've got a very high vaccination rate (yeah!), say there are 96 people on the immunization registry. You could have anywhere from 2 to 6 people unvaccinated. You'd report 4, but the error is now ±50%, which is huge. And when you use that as the denominator, you get very different answers. (OTOH, of half the village was unvaccinated, 50±4% is a much smaller error!)
Yes, this is a good point. On the other hand, while S.C.C. has a high vaccination rate, it's not high enough that a small population uncertainty makes such a huge difference.
Here in Ontario Canada, the official government guidance is to not get tested if you have a mild case, due to a province-wide shortage of PCR tests [1]. Several friends have likely contracted COVID in the past 2 weeks (38-39 degree fever for 2-4 days with some coughing). Nothing serious enough to go to the hospital, but enough to take some time off work. All their cases are also unreported.
I have heard of people hoarding tests (I’m in the US) and regularly testing even with no symptoms, I honestly don’t understand that. I imagine these are the same types of folks who double mask when they are driving alone.
Is it really important to report mild cases determined by self testing? Frankly if I have the sniffles due to a cold, allergies, or even covid…I simply don’t see why the government needs to know. If I am not utilizing health care resources and self isolating, its nobody’s damned business but my own.
It’s useful for virologists and policy makers to understand the transmission rate of COVID and its accompanying variants since it’s a novel virus.
If unreported cases are 10-50x reported cases, then the hospitalization and death rates become minuscule. And then it means we might actually be closer to natural herd immunity.
Point taken about balancing this with a right to privacy though and I think that’s why no one is seriously pushing for reporting at that level and why it is optional to report your at home test results. The use case of contact tracing is long gone.
But, there are many valid, non-authoritarian reasons for wanting data as granular as possible with a new virus.
hundreds of thousands in NYC alone. I'm one of them too, similar situation to your gf. Triple vaxed, was asymptomatic but got positive home tests across different brands. Was unable to get a PCR test, so I didn't get in the official numbers.
I agree. However I am fed up with the cdc, youtube, facebook and others trying to control the narrative in any way they can. For instance not considering past infection as equal to a vaccination. Follow the science or don’t but do whatever truthfully. The next time when the cdc needs us to have faith in their recommendations we won’t have. This shouldn’t even be fathomable but here we are.
> For instance not considering past infection as equal to a vaccination
The CDC has published data on this multiple times... Vaccination seems to be more protective than a past infection. A past infection is approximately equal to a single dose of a two-dose vaccine.
e.g. CDC MMWR August 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm "These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection. To reduce their risk of infection, all eligible persons should be offered vaccination, even if they have been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2."
The linked study does NOT say that past infection is less protective than two vaccine doses. It says that getting vaccinated in addition to having a past infection provides additional protection. It says nothing about the protection provided by past infection only versus two doses without past infection.
Just looked at the press release and there doesn’t appear to be any misrepresentation involved. The press release clearly talks about the benefits of vaccination even after a previous COVID-19 infection, just as the study did.
CDC credibility seems intact here, but online anti vaxxer credibility continues to decline…
The title of the press release is "New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection". That is false. The first paragraph of the release says "These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone". That is false.
Seems like you stopped reading . The full sentence you quote is “These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.”
Reinfections is the key word here indicating the study is about reinfections. You’re assuming it’s about initial infections. If they didn’t repeatedly say the word “reinfections” in the press release, you might have a point, but the reality is the CDC summary is accurate, as is the headline message that people will get stronger protection if they get vaccinated.
If someone says "X and Y", and X is false, then what they say is false.
You're arguing that someone who already knows what the study says can re-interpret the statements in the press release as being true, by adding a few additional qualifiers like "among the already infected" here and there, on the assumption that they were just omitted for brevity. But the intended reader, who doesn't already know what the study really says, will read the statements as written, and will receive a false communication.
The “only 1% will die” argument, sure I remember that one from early days.
But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people. My advice is don’t break your arm or get in a car accident or have a heart attack right now - it could be lethal because health care resources are at a breaking point (in the US).
I am under the impression that many hospitals are overwhelmed because they have a lack of nurses, not a lack of rooms.
lacking nurses because they were already sparsely hired in efforts to maximize profits over patient comfort pre-pandemic,
of those that were working the field; many have left their job to make 5 times more money as a traveling nurse elsewhere (?) - many have left the job because they find it too stressful for the benefits it offers them - and many are out sick.
Does anyone think that hospitals are going to raise what they pay nurses now? are we going to invest in nursing in ways that gets lots more to choose it as a career path because X and Y things are going to be so much greater for them in the future?
I'm not holding my breathe that hospitals are going to change the pay rate for the most missed resource, or that they will hire twice as many as they've had in the past.. and that the future of nursing is going to be any better - so we better hope that treatment pills become a thing.
I don't think this is as widespread as people believe. Certain locales tend to be overwhelmed at any given time, but I don't think that's the case for the majority of hospitals in the country. Unfortunately I don't have any statistics.
>But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people
This has been the narrative for a while now, but as vaccination rates increase the ratio of vaccinated:unvaccinated hospitalized patients is approaching and surpassing parity. And some not so recent government data from the UK[0] (I haven't seen any media report on it) suggests that for a number of age ranges, vaccinated individuals have a similar death rate per person-year, i.e. vaccines are not doing nearly as much as claimed. This data is pre omicron.
Check the death statistics instead of headlines and you'll see it truly is a novel situation - no previous year saw as many Americans die as 2020 and 2021. And excess deaths correspond closely to regions that saw high reported COVID-19 deaths, indicating "COVID-19 deaths" are people who would not have died had they not been infected with and killed by COVID-19.
2022 death rates are still high, nearing 2000 people killed by COVID-19 daily. We can hope that due to the death toll hitting mostly the unvaccinated, plus omicron being a somewhat milder than Delta, we won't possibly be able to hit the same high death rates all year long.
I think activating “crisis standards of care” is a bit more substantial and worrying than any previous claims of being simply “overwhelmed” which could be subjective. This is what we are seeing here in the US.
>Current estimates of cases and hospitalizations by vaccine status, and vaccine effectiveness
Estimate is the key word here. It's really difficult for me to trust official figures given that omicron appears to be spreading virtually unabated across the world regardless of vaccination rates. There's far too much political (state and corporate) pressure to paint a "safe and effective" picture.
As others have pointed out, people in the US are simply not reporting breakthrough cases. There is no incentive. The majority of my fully vaccinated remote workers at have recently tested positive, presumably for omicron. Yet our small startup has still chosen to announce mandates for all, including remote workers. This all feels a lot more like blind faith than science at this point.
It is really hard to find stats. “Vaccinated” is such a difficult term because it can encompass J&J from nearly a year ago for example. I see some breakdowns by vax supplier vs hospitalizations.
Really would like to know how many people who have taken the booster have died from covid ideally with age data.
> A total of 843,208 participants met the eligibility criteria, of whom 758,118 (90%) received the booster during the 54-day study period. Death due to Covid-19 occurred in 65 participants in the booster group (0.16 per 100,000 persons per day) and in 137 participants in the nonbooster group (2.98 per 100,000 persons per day). The adjusted hazard ratio for death due to Covid-19 in the booster group, as compared with the nonbooster group, was 0.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.07 to 0.14; P<0.001).
One thing to note is that the effectiveness metric also includes the behavioral and populational differences.
I'd personally really like to know what the metric would be if (hypothetically, just for analysis) the vaccine was a placebo. For example, if the people who get the vaccine are generally more able to work from home, then the metric would still be significantly above zero.
Just for clarity, I believe that the vaccine is effective, but I question the measurement methodology.
Well, one important confounder is age (older people tend to be more vaccinated), but they control for that.
Many other confounders cannot easily be controlled for, but is there any reason to assume that they're correlated with the outcome? It could be that vaccinated people are more careful in terms of meeting other people.
At any rate, we had big RCTs at the beginning that demonstrated efficacy against the then prevailing variant (alpha, I assume).
I don't really get the example of being able to work from home, but I would expect differences are extremely regional/national.
In some countries there's a formal labor law for doctors notes after X days that is known by all and which might mean your doctor checks and registers the case(?) in other places it is total discretion if a manager demands a note but rarely does in places that aren't shift work oriented.
With the WFH example - suppose that 1) WFH is issued by companies as a blanket policy (different from 2-week isolation from getting sick) 2) people who get the vaccine tend to be the ones that WFH, and 3) WFH allows for less exposure. In that case, the people who get the vaccine tend to have less exposure and fewer chances to get sick, regardless of vaccine efficacy.
There's definite vaccine rate differences in industries, but much of that might be largely explained by age demographics of industries..
Given two people who WFH the vaccinated one can conveniently eat in a restaurant and go to the gym while the unvaccinated needs to get take out or is getting regular tests. I think vaccinated people have much more interaction with the virus unmasked in an indoor environment but much less likelihood of ever being tested when having light or no symptoms.
> I don't really get the example of being able to work from home, but I would expect differences are extremely regional/national.
In some countries (the US is an example); there's a social class aspect to vaccination; highly educated people are more likely to be vaccinated, and also more likely to work from home.
However, if this was a big factor you'd expect vaccines to appear dramatically less effective in near-universal-vaccination countries, like Portugal. That doesn't seem to be the case.
I was serious with that comment. You can do longitudinal studies now, and people do, comparing infection/hospitalisation/death rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But those have very serious confounders, namely that those who are still unvaccinated might behave rather different from everyone else.
To overcome this, you'd need an RCT. But you're unlikely to find either a) unvaccinated people that want to be vaccinated, yet would be ok to get a placebo instead, or b) unvaccinated people that don't want to be vaccinated yet would be ok to get a vaccination instead.
Interesting that while the odds of the vaccine protecting against infection are near all-time lows (mid 70s), vaccine protection against hospitalization is near all-time highs (mid-90s).
Also interesting that this data treats 14-days+ after last shot as fully vaccinated, so presumably two-shot and three-shot people are both treated as “fully vaccinated”.
> Fully-vaccinated people may have received additional or booster doses, which are not specifically accounted for in this analysis.
That's probably essentially what you'd expect with omicron, which is more effective at immune escape but appears less effective at causing serious illness (at least in vaccinated and previously infected people).
If it provides immunity to the other more deadly variants and competes with them, then yes, but I haven’t seen that data yet. Otherwise, it’s just a supplemental virus.
you are protected from infection only if you have a huge number of antibodies since they can immediately overpower the virus when it gets in. when the antibodies are few and the virus comes in you have to wait for the trained t-cells to produce enough of them to again overpower the virus, so you get sick for a short time and then get better.
of course the quality of a vaccine determines how quickly and effectively the dormant t-cells are able to produce antibodies, so a very very very good vaccine can even protect from infection years after inoculation, and that's why the CDC has recently asked for more research in order to produce these kind of vaccines for the long term
I wouldn't even call it "very very very good vaccine". It's just a different problem each vaccine has to solve. Some problems are inherently harder: flu, coronavirus, hiv
Interesting point I heard about why we don’t (yet) have a vaccine for HIV where we do for COVID - the human body can fight COVID. Ie we mount an immune response and some people survive and recover on their own. This is largely not true with HIV - the human body hasalmost no ability to mount its own response.
Making a vaccine is more straightforward (ie we expect to be able to) when we know there is a response by our own immune systems - hence we expected to be able to make a COVID vaccine (although the time scale is still an amazing accomplishment - thanks 20+ years of mRNA research!). And we are still working on a vaccine for HIV.
I know, but with the technology we are able to employ nowadays I think it's reasonable to push for vaccines that protect people for 20 years like the one for hepatitis. Hell, now we can even think about curing cancer with mRNA, I think a strong flu/corona virus might be within our limits
Maybe the data you are citing is "simply wrong". Or maybe different studies at different locations and times with different methodologies have different outcomes. Science is messy.
I'm full vaccinated and boosted. This week my antigen test is positive. I had some flu symptoms (fever, pain in my body, coughing) but nothing really hard. I'm still not 100%, but I'm fine. I'm 40 years old, on my weight and do regular sports (5x week). I dont smoke neither drink. Got it probably in the fitness studio. I will stay at home until my test is negative. I have 0 incentive to go to the hospital do a PCR test and be officially forced in a 2 weeks isolation.
I don't know where you are located but here in Switzerland I would definitely want the positive PCR test as proof. Although it may no longer be needed as it looks like this will be over soon the confirmation of an infection is treated here almost like a vaccination. So you will get a certificate extension etc. The isolation time here has been reduced to 5 days with minimum 2 days symptom free.
Germany, but what is the upside to do the PCR test? You get officially in Isolation and can get a visit from the regulatory office to check if you are at home. AFAICS there is no upside. You won't get any treatment protocol, any help. You just get more pressure over you. I won't have the proof of recovery, but actually I don't need it since I have all certificates (2 shots + booster). That's make me think if this whole thing makes sense: As it is now, I can go everywhere (even with an antigen positive), because I have the booster certificate and therefore I don't have to test myself. The only real meaningful approach would be test everyone, everywhere regardless of the vaccination.
You should be isolating either way. Just because you can go everywhere doesn't mean you should. People going out and about while unknowingly positive is why this thing won't end. Testing positive and deliberately not isolating is even worse.
You're right though: If you look at it only through the lens of individual incentives, the official test has no upside. One of the huge problems with governments' responses to this pandemic is they are not closing these loopholes. People will take the most convenient option, not necessarily the one benefiting public health. To align individual and societal incentives, governments need to make not-isolating when infectious more inconvenient/costly than isolating.
but did you read what I wrote? I will stay at home isolated until I'm negative. So for sure I will stay home. What I question is how good is the idea of "vaccination + booster" vs "lets test everyone, everywhere" specially now that is more or less clear that Omicron can go through the vaccines.
I think getting a PCR test would be pretty good, since with catching it. You have an "additional protection" lasting several months.
Since the booster stays effective ~10 weeks, it could be possible that you don't need to get an additional booster between March-June. ( depends on a lot of variables ofc. I'm currently vaccinated and not boostered and not immediately planning on taking a booster based on the previous variant for a "relatively" harmless virus for vaccinated people)
If you get a long covid symptom and want to be treated for that it might be smart to keep your medical records up to date. Hard to know what the future brings on long covid and treatments for it.
Or conceivably in a year they have two vaccines, one is more suitable for those that are recovered, the other more suitable for those who never had it. Which one will they give you?
I think thats FUD. I will be able to tell if I had it or not. Maybe I had it while not in here? Maybe I had it and didn't realize? It is for sure not an incentive to do the bureaucratic necessary dance.
I know this isn’t as much the case these days, but as of late 2020 several of the long COVID clinics in my area were only accepting patients if they could demonstrate a positive test. Presumably that requirement has laxed lately though.
A problem in the US is that many people who are politically right-leaning have been talking up natural immunity, which means the left-leaning people in charge of the local, state, and federal government where mandates are in place are unwilling to acknowledge natural immunity because they want to "own the cons" or something like that.
I think this is a mistake. By not acknowledging any natural immunity you give them tools to promote their anti Vax side because natural immunity does exist but maybe not for covid or depending on variant. Completely dismissing it is bad.
We have antivaxers in Switzerland as well, (quite a few saddly). However they have to dig very deep in the conspiracy bucket to fight their stance. Natural immunity is not talked about by the antivaxers but this doesn't mean the state gives natural immunity the same level of protection as vaccinated. If you have natural immunity you only get a 6 month certificate vs a year if you are double vaxxed. After that you need to take a anitbody test to get a 3 month extension or the booster shot. 2G+ is only valid if you had covid less than 4 months ago or the last shot.
I just got the booster, because it makes the life easier. For example: To go to fitness studio or restaurants. Either you are double vaxed + 24 hours test or you are double vaxed + boosted, then you don't need a test. So I boosted. 3 shots biontech/pfizer. Now I'm positive. If I wanted, I could still go to fitness studio and restaurant, even being positive, which really doesn't make sense to me.
Firstly you have succumbed to coercion by getting vaccinated to resuming your normal previous life activities. After 6 months you'll need another booster to continue having a valid pass. It's a never-ending cycle now.
Secondly you have realised first hand that vaccines passes give a false of sense of security.
I got vaccinated because I don't want to play Russian roulette again.
I got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines. I got "lucky"--high fever for a little over 2 weeks, swelling in places that I never knew could swell, and my stamina shot to shit. It's taken me a year to put myself back together.
I went and got both vaccines and a booster, thanks.
I have a relative by marriage who is an anti-vaxxer and is about the same age and about the same healthiness as I was. He got Covid. He played Russian Roulette and lost. He's currently on ECMO and would be DEAD if he hadn't lucked into getting the last ECMO bed for 400 miles. And, when all is said and done, it's going to take probably years of therapy for him to be even a shadow of his former self.
And now we're starting to see that Covid increases the chances of Type-2 diabetes in children. So, the whole "Vaccines have more side-effects in children than Covid" (which was never actually true anyway) now has enough cases opposing it that we have medically valid data.
You can persist in anti-vax as a shibboleth for whatever social group you're in. However, nothing factual was ever on your side, and the evidence continues to mount against you.
The only "good" thing about Omicron is that it is so contagious that it will solve the anti-vax problem by itself. In 60 days, there will be no point in restrictions, anymore.
> I have a relative by marriage who is an anti-vaxxer and is about the same age and about the same healthiness as I was. He got Covid. He played Russian Roulette and lost. He's currently on ECMO and would be DEAD if he hadn't lucked into getting the last ECMO bed for 400 miles. And, when all is said and done, it's going to take probably years of therapy for him to be even a shadow of his former self.
How many other people do you know who that didn't happen to? Remember, everyone who got it in 2020 was unvaccinated. And if we're to accept this anecdote, then we also need to accept all of the anecdotes about the vaccine harming people.
> And now we're starting to see that Covid increases the chances of Type-2 diabetes in children.
Really? Last time I heard about that, it was because someone forgot to control for weight or BMI, and doing so made the whole effect disappear.
> How many other people do you know who that didn't happen to? Remember, everyone who got it in 2020 was unvaccinated. And if we're to accept this anecdote, then we also need to accept all of the anecdotes about the vaccine harming people.
Well, I know of 27 people in my circle who got Covid. 2 are dead. 1 is currently on ventilation. 2 went on ventilation and recovered and have been in therapy every since. 3 have severe long Covid that is impacting their lives detrimentally. 7 have mild long Covid (myself included) that we probably should just classify as "viruses do more damage and take longer to get rid of than we thought". So, that leaves 12 who are basically fully recovered--and most of those were post-vaccination.
Of course, this leaves out people who got Covid but either didn't get tested or were so mild that they didn't notice.
Let us contrast this to the vaccine: Out of all the people I know of who got the vaccine (probably 50+) as well as people who participated in the testing phase (7 of them) I know this many who had any symptoms from the vaccine after 2 weeks:
Exactly zero.
And, since vaccination, I know of this many vaccinated people who have had to even go to the hospital let alone be ventilated or die:
Exactly zero.
I'm sure someone, somewhere has had a bad reaction to the vaccine. Anaphylaxis is a thing.
However, if I apply a statistical analysis even to my weak anecdotal data, I'm going to come up with a strong signal.
That view is not supported by all vaccination researchers. The argument against that line of thought is that your immune response to, say, omicron is very specific toward that variant. Consequently, if you catch omicron, that does not mean you're automatically protected against other variants.
It makes it easier for most cases of international travel. In a lot of contexts if you're vaccinated + boosted + recovered in the last 90 days, you can just travel and not worry about the result of the COVID test you need to return to the United States as long as you have a letter stating recovery.
Not in my experience. Despite being fully vaxxed, I had to get tested every time I entered a country including coming back to the US. A recent two leg EU trip required a total of 6 tests - each of them with complex timing requirements and the total cost was ~$500.
This data is really quite poor. It’s adjusted based on a 2000 census. It’s also showing a 2 dose effectiveness of over 70% against Omicron which we know to be under 10%. If you’re using this as an argument to get vaccinated, it’s a bad one.
It would be possible if the hospitalization rate due to Omicron is also 7x lower than for the earlier variants. I don't have numbers in either direction, but given case loads rising everywhere yet recorded deaths remaining relatively stable, it's not a priori an impossibility.
(edit: just checked the UK's stats over the past month: infections have peaked at 200k/day, 5x the baseline rate over the past few months. Daily deaths have doubled but not yet peaked, suggesting Omicron has at most a 2.5x reduction in severity -- usual caveats apply, this is very coarse data, IANAE etc)
Search for "hospital but not the ICU". Look above it for ICU stats.
For "Not in ICU", it can be argued that even 10% is an overstatement.
The author of the article, meanwhile, doesn't provide any sources whatsoever.
The Ontario dashboard for "Not in ICU" currently shows 739 unvaccinated and 2050 vaccinated. But since effectiveness compares rates, not absolute numbers, one needs to normalize those numbers by the size of each subpopulation. Since roughly 80 percent of Ontarios are vaxxed, the relative risk for being unvaccinated is approximately
This report provides only age-adjusted numbers for vaccine effectiveness, but doesn't provide the model used to arrive at those numbers. If you look at the raw numbers, a different picture emerges:
Chances of not being hospitalized with Covid:
Unvaccinated: 99.9%
Vaccinated: 99.99%
Instead of providing a useful picture, the report compares two tiny numbers from each group and makes it a point to amplify the differences.
We don't always care about relative risk reduction when the absolute risk is considered negligible. That is how we narrow focus and decide on what to spend our limited resources.
B/A' and B/A are nonsensical statistics that nobody tracks. The figures people report are infected vaccinated individuals over A and infected unvaccinated individuals over A'.
Figure it’s relevant to this thread - Eric Topol (very credentialed medical researcher) does a pretty good overview & summary on how the vaccines are doing.
If there were enough vaccines for everyone around the world to get the protection equivalent of 3-shots, and people took them, the pandemic would be over now
This is a very bizarre assertion.
Given that, the vaccinated spread covid, even with no symptoms, vaccination status does not limit spread.
No amount of vaccinated people, will end the pandemic.
Note that, to spread covid, it must be replicating in the body. Therefore, as it is replicating in the vaccinated, it will continue to mutate and evolve.
There will never, ever be an end to the pandemic, due to existing vaccines.
I mean, I think it really all comes down to numbers, and also agreeing on reasonable definitions of what words like "over now" mean.
That being said, vaccines have stopped effectively ended viruses before, e.g. polio (again, for counter examples please refer to my comment about reasonable definitions). Therefore it's clear that vaccines can achieve this effect, and really what lies in question is how hard is it?
So, I think there are people who study this stuff, and I think it's also probably pretty complicated because there are a lot of variables as well as unknowns. E.g. how effective is the vaccine, how contagious is the virus, how does it spread, the incubation period, for how long is it contagious, etc..
Ok, bearing all that in mind saying
> No amount of vaccinated people, will end the pandemic.
Is itself a bizarre assertion. Maybe in your gut it seems that way, but that's not really how we know stuff in real life. The author even said
1.) if there were enough vaccines for everyone for
2.) 3-shots of protection and
3.) if people took them
Then the pandemic would be over... I think that more or less makes sense. I'm not saying it's realistic, because #3 seems to be the problem in countries that have enough vaccines for everyone (like the USA).
In any case, he's a doctor, I think he knows more than you do, I trust his reasoning is based off well-informed assumptions, and you're just convinced that it could never happen.
So do you care to elaborate how "No amount of vaccinated people, will end the pandemic."? If 100% of people were vaccinated, would that not end the pandemic? I think it comes down to the numbers, so how do the numbers support your argument?
The numbers say that no amount of vaccinated people would end the pandemic. Vaccines reduce R0 and are worth it, but in isolation, don't reduce it below 1 for omicron. It's possible future vaccines will, and it's possible future omicrons will circumvent those vaccines.
I think universal N95/KN95/KF94 masks would bring R0 below 1 (even without vaccines), but with animal reservoirs, even that's no longer a long-term viable strategy.
The trillion dollar question is long COVID and impacts of COVID on the brain, both with and without vaccines.
You should probably take Viral 101 over again. Vaccines definitely reduce transmission - current vaccines, however, are barely, if at all, effective against Omicron.
IF we had been able to vaccinate 90%+ of the world by the start of last summer, this pandemic had a good chance of ending. Delta made it much more difficult, and Omicron crushed that option.
"it's possible for a variant to come out that gets around all vaccinations every time, so therefore vaccines can't stop the pandemic" means that you definitely failed Viral 101.
You should probably take Viral 101 over again. Vaccines definitely reduce transmission
This is a third order effect, not first. They do not reduce transmission, instead they increase immune response, thus reducing replication, thus reducing transmission.
This is a vital point here.
Second, please take care. At no point did I ever say "vaccines don't reduce transmission". That is a general statement, mine was specific, about current covid vaccines only.
Covid is a unique beast, able to spread for weeks without creating a strong immune response, and therefore, symptoms. Other viruses seem to spread much later, and typically only when symptoms are shown.
This is what makes covid so spreadable, dangerous. It may also be why successful spread is difficult to stop even when vaccinated. After all, this happened with delta too.
EDIT: going to add here.
COVID is in mice, deer, dogs and cats as a minimum, and other mammals are strongly suspected.
A recent HN story cited a paper, where a researcher believes covid jumped from human to mouse, mutated to omicron, and jumped back to human.
So, regardless of the spread and mutation happening in the currently vaccinated, we have spread and mutation in other mammals. Including ones in our homes.
> This is a third order effect, not first. They do not reduce transmission, instead they increase immune response, thus reducing replication, thus reducing transmission.
That's literally what is meant by "vaccines reduce transmission". Vaccines are not some nanobots that form a forcefield around your body preventing viruses from getting to you.
Even with Omicron, if everybody were vaccinated, the pandemic would be over, and we could open up society with endemic Covid, with hospitalization for a fully vaccinated population being lower than seasonal flu.
With universal vaccination and boosting (possibly regular boosting), assuming Omicron stays dominant (which is a big assumption), then it would probably be reasonable to call the pandemic over; you could argue over definitions, but transmission would be significantly slowed, and due to the reduction in severity it probably would no longer be sufficiently serious to be a major concern; we'd go back to the main concern being influenza. Some people would continue to get very sick, but it would be a manageable number.
Even quite a small hole in vaccination may be a problem, though; very highly vaccinated countries like Ireland are seeing ICU pressure primarily from the 5% or so of unvaccinated adults.
Given that Omicron is assumed to have replicated in an animal population (mice) for a year, we should expect there to be other variants in animals. Even if we managed to vaccinate all humans at the same time, we'd likely see a new breakout a year or so down the line when immunity wanes in the human population.
Covd19 has been endemic for two years now. And it will be endemic until we find better vaccines. At that point, we'll probably be ready to wipe out the flu as well.
No one gets a free pass, for sure, but he’s a pretty qualified thinker of things medical and health. So coming here and calling him out on it should probably warrant a bit more than a “uhn uhn”.
(Edited - asimpletune above said it more eloquently than I did!)
Sure, perhaps I was inarticulate - he’s a world leading medical researcher who heads up a world leading medical research institution; he is one of the 10 most cited medical researchers in the world. Yadda yadda…
To enjoy an interesting and arguably also somewhat more accurate experience reading articles such as these, try mentally replacing the term "vaccine breakthrough" with "vaccine failure". Going to hospital is not protection.
The vaccine does two things; it reduces the chance of getting covid (not terribly effectively, for Omicron), and it reduces the average severity of cases (very effectively). "Breakthrough" is where it fails on the first point; failure would imply failing in _both_ cases. So you could possibly call the hospitalised cases failure (though even then, hospitalised vaccinated cases are on average less severe and less likely to die than hospitalised unvaccinated, so it's a stretch), but it would be very misleading to call the first case failure.
This depends on which definition of the vaccine you've chosen to adopt. As the product has not changed, only the manufacturers claims about it, the original definition is the most applicable in terms of its success or failure.
What's misleading is to pretend that a product, sold as a "vaccine", sold as originally possessing many of the commonly-understood qualifiers of the use of that term, turns out in reality to possess none of them.
It does not vaccinate against the disease. It does not vaccinate against being infected, harmed or killed by the disease. It is for all intents and purposes, not a "vaccine" by any prior widely-accepted definition.
These "vaccines" limited effects at reducing symptoms (the only remaining claim of late), do not even persist more than a week or two before beginning to wane to nothing. These are at best therapeutic drugs, not vaccines.
That is, they are - broadly - failures. Quibbling about ever narrower definitions of what constitutes the failure bears little useful relevance to the unfortunate reality, instead only seeming to facilitate manufacturer public relations.
> It does not vaccinate against the disease. It does not vaccinate against being infected, harmed or killed by the disease
It reduces the chances of all three, and _dramatically_ reduces the chances of the last two. That's what vaccines do. Now, it's not a _great_ vaccine. There are a couple of magic bullet near-100% effective vaccines (for instance, only 3% of people with the MMR vaccine exposed to Measles will get Measles, and the smallpox vaccine is 95% effective), and there are some... less effective ones (assuming the right strain is targeted the flu vaccine is 40-60% effective at preventing infection, and reduces chances of death somewhat).
Hopefully better vaccines will become available, but for now we are where we are.
I mean, if you want to say "only things with >90% efficacy at preventing infection are vaccines"... okay, but what do you want to call all the vaccines that that excludes?
> These "vaccines" limited effects at reducing symptoms (the only remaining claim of late), do not even persist more than a week or two before beginning to wane to nothing
Eh? Where are you getting that? It does look like efficacy vs _infection_ diminishes rapidly (at least for two doses; insufficient evidence to say anything with great certainty about three doses so far), but a two-dose course from last year remains quite effective at preventing severe outcomes (though less effective than three doses).
> These are at best therapeutic drugs, not vaccines.
They're not therapeutic drugs at all; if you give the vaccine to someone who _currently has covid_ it won't help them (at least for that particular case of covid).
> That is, they are - broadly - failures.
In Ireland, we have about 95% adult vaccination. Most of our current ICU cases are unvaccinated under-65s; there are almost no vaccinated under-65s, and a small number of vaccinated over-65s (essentially all over-65s are vaccinated). I would not call this a _failure_, at all. If the ICU rate was the same in the general population as in the unvaccinated population, ICU capacity would be exhausted and people would die needlessly. Preventing that is a success.
Even the CEO of Pfizer recently stated 1 or 2 shots "offer very limited protection, if any" (my emphasis), whilst saying the booster offers good protection. But the booster is the same substance... the formulation hasn't changed. He's literally saying 1 shot of it does nothing, 2 shots of it does nothing, but 3 shots of it is magically great. (And I still remember a time when "fully vaccinated" meant you were done at two, and anyone saying there'd be more was a conspiracy theorist.)
Meanwhile in Queensland which had suffered 29 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, the health minister just announced that 7 more people died overnight, and they were all vaccinated - but not "boosted". Ie, two shots of, as the Pfizer CEO put it, a vaccine of "limited effectiveness, if any". So there we have it, two shots and not three and you're dead, apparently. Who's clogging up the ICU's there?
And have a look out of the proverbial window. Almost everywhere there's more cases, more hospitalisations and more deaths. That is, if the vaccines worked: they'd work.
But they haven't, and don't. In many places we're in a worse position than before we had them.
That is, they're failures.
Meanwhile things that do actually work, and even have their mechanisms of action completely understood underlying why they work, are sidelined, suppressed or even banned.
If indeed in Ireland you have "95% vaccination", why do you have any cases, hospitalisations or deaths? If it doesn't work at 95% take-up, when does it work? How can the R-value even do anything remotely ICU-clogging with a single digit percentage? On the surface, it doesn't add up.
But a little deeper, and it maybe begins to... because when you're counting "vaccinated" people, be sure not to mix up who is "vaccinated" and who isn't, according to the latest shift in the goal posts. In some places for example, if you have been "fully vaccinated" but not had a third shot, you're considered "unvaccinated" again, and will die in that category. Further, were you "fully vaccinated", by whatever definition, but have only been so for 14 days, and die, in some places indeed you'll also die considered "unvaccinated".
Or to put it another way, how many of the people dying and clogging ICU's never had any shot at all, and how many did?
So if someone was permanently disabled it's a success? What about in hospital 8 weeks but eventually recovered? It's hard to understand why this needs to be debated. Why is it so bad to simply admit it failed to protect?
Even if we set the bar at death I guarantee someone would step up and say: "Yes, but they would've died even sooner without the vaccine! Oh come ye let us praise it". The religious fervour is bizarre. Let's face it - the vaccines are a bit shit.
It creates a more neutral impression of the vaccines efficacy. The use of the term "breakthrough case" seems entirely geared toward downplaying ineffectiveness. Why not simply call it failure when the vaccine fails?
The article starts with a statistic (as opposed to anecdote):
> These findings demonstrate that such cases and hospitalizations have occurred in New York State, but at levels substantially lower than among unvaccinated people
Of course, one could argue that New York State doesn't make a large scale statistic, but it's still far from being anecdata.
Basically, statistics only matter when it shows what they want you to see, but when it says that triple vaxxed are 8% more likely to get Omicron than unvaxxed then you are drawing conclusions.
Did you read the whole article you linked? It doesn't say the vaccinated get Covid more often than unvaccinated. (They don't.) It doesn't say the vaccinated get Omicron more than unvaccinated. (They don't.)
It merely says the vaccinated are infected by Omicron more than other variants like Delta. That's it. In other words, the vaccines are quite effective against Delta, but due to mutation, Omicron can slip past immunity a little easier.
The vast majority of folks in hospitals and the morgues from Covid (Alpha, Delta, or Omicron) nowadays are unvaccinated.
“Note that this is the probability of an infection being Omicron given a person is infected, so it doesn’t tell us how likely a person is to test positive in the first place.”
It’s ironic that the article is about people using the study to spread misinformation about the results of the study.
Social media users are misrepresenting these findings (on Omicron’s apparent ability to breakthrough vaccine protection) by saying those vaccinated are more susceptible to infection overall.
That's interesting. I wonder if most of the unvaccinated population has already been infected with an older variant of covid-19, and if that previous infection provides a more effective immune response than the vaccine for omicron?
Either that, or vaccinated people are behaving as if they are fully protected and do not take care, while unvaccinated are more cautious. Recent data from Denmark shows the similr outcomes.
"those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated"
You cut the sentence in the middle: "though individuals who had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine continued to be less likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant." Which does not mean the unvaccinated are more likely to get omicron like you originally claimed. Just that if they are infected it is more likely to be omicron. Which means the vaccine is less effective against omicron than other variants, which we already know.
That... Is a different statement. It says that they are more likely to have a specific variant, given that they got infected. It did not say they are more likely to get infected. Right?
When you are given priors you have to be very careful about what answer you are getting actually says. It says there are different viral profile in one group vs the other when we explicitly select for people with virus. Doesn't really tell us the detail involved of actually getting the virus.
Feels like that’s more a statement about the efficacy of the vaccine against Delta vs Omicron. “…and test positive for COVID-19…” already narrows the groups down to only the positive cases, it’s not a statement about those groups’ relative sizes.
"Vaccination status: those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated, though individuals who had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine continued to be less likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant. It is too early to draw conclusions from our data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant."
“Note that this is the probability of an infection being Omicron given a person is infected, so it doesn’t tell us how likely a person is to test positive in the first place.”
"Everyone I know" is anecdotal and most people that use this language are outright lying. Trump is an expert at "They're saying things are bad" and of course some people believe this nonsense. "Everyone" and "They" are propaganda tools.
Make a claim. Provide the evidence.
Otherwise you're just one of the people that refuses to accept reality.
What a ridiculous comment. The OP is not "denying reality" if his experience is as he stated. On the contrary, he would be denying reality if he would believe his observations have to be wrong.
It is not reasonable to ask for "evidence" for his observations, either, as that is impossible to provide. Not even the article posted here provides any evidence, you just chose to trust them as an institution.
He did not write an article for publication, it is just a comment in an internet forum. It is absolutely OK to report personal experiences in that context.
Your criticism comes across as very close to what you're criticising. You've provided only your anecdotal evidence, whilst creating another "they" - "one of those people" - that you same-breath decry as the tool of propagandists.
Did you even read the article you posted below (since flagged, not by me)? It outlines the study's results, which very clearly say that the results only show that omicron is effective at evading vaccines, and do not indicate any increased susceptibility based on vaccine use. It describes its results as "a measure of how well Omicron evades the vaccines compared to Delta." It also states, "from our recent characteristics release, we also see that unvaccinated people overall are more likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant" (emphasis mine). Not to mention the test-hesitancy of the un-vaccinated population. You need to stop spreading misleading interpretations.
Did you read it? It shows that triple boosted had a higher rate of contracting Omicron than unvaxxed. Funny how if it said the opposite, even hypothetically, that they'd be screaming it far and wide as facts and using it for fact checking, but if it indicates the opposite, then we can't draw any conclusions.
Yes I did, and you are still misinterpreting its results. Omicron is more prevalent because it’s the one with the most vaccine breakthrough potential. In a vaccinated individual, omicron is the variant with the highest probability to be present. In the unvaccinated population, you all variants are competing for same infection, and you have a higher overall risk of infection regardless of variant.
Did the downstream thread get flagged? I replied to this comment and I only see 3-4 replies now. I can still view my own comment in context but it isn’t appearing.
We can conclude that information used for statistics is easily manipulated, and if it indicates something, even hypothetical, that supports vaccines then it is considered unquestionable fact that vaccines are the only solution, but if it indicates negatives about vaccines, then we shouldn't draw any conclusions.
I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, and I had what I suspect is Omicron about 10 days ago. I had a mild fever (approaching, but not reaching 101), a sore throat, sneezing and nasal congestion for 3-4 days, and I tested positive with an over the counter rapid test. Overall, it was like a very minor cold. My girlfriend also tested positive, and she had no symptoms at all.
I never got any "official" test (I didn't want to put additional strain on the health care system), so my case was not counted in any official stats. If I hadn't tested positive, my girlfriend would not have even tested, and her case would have been totally unknown.