Delta Variant Renders Herd Immunity From Covid 'Mythical' (theguardian.com) 520
AmiMoJo writes: Reaching herd immunity is "not a possibility" with the current Delta variant, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group has said. Giving evidence to MPs on Tuesday, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population was "mythical." "The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population," he told the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus. "The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who's still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus ... and we don't have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission."
Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19. The concept of herd or population immunity relies on a large majority of a population gaining immunity -- either through vaccination or previous infection -- which, in turn, provides indirect protection from an infectious disease for the unvaccinated and those who have never been previously infected. Data from a recent React study conducted by Imperial College London suggests that fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have about a 49% lower risk of being infected compared with unvaccinated people. The findings also indicated that fully vaccinated people were about half as likely to test positive after coming into contact with someone who had Covid (3.84%, down from 7.23%).
Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19. The concept of herd or population immunity relies on a large majority of a population gaining immunity -- either through vaccination or previous infection -- which, in turn, provides indirect protection from an infectious disease for the unvaccinated and those who have never been previously infected. Data from a recent React study conducted by Imperial College London suggests that fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have about a 49% lower risk of being infected compared with unvaccinated people. The findings also indicated that fully vaccinated people were about half as likely to test positive after coming into contact with someone who had Covid (3.84%, down from 7.23%).
So (Score:3, Funny)
Time to shut down borders again and lock down for 2 more weeks? No?
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No - because that won't do anything. It's time to work on getting the remaining population eligible for vaccination so that there's nobody left to protect.
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Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
By not caring anymore. They made their choice.
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Almost... the big messy part is children. I've got zero quams about letting a 25 year old get seriously ill, or even die because of his/her choice. We get a whole lot more complicated when it comes to kids. IE we certainly have no quams in our laws saying "if you are going to intentionally beat your kids", or "if you don't want to feed your kids" etc... and to some even foggier degree "if you don't want to educate your kids".
However, obviously there's the huge mess when it comes to more advanced medical le
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Penalty to whom for what?
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I think your proposal is impractical because it is too difficult to prove who infected whom. In your scenario, one of the "responsible" people might have unknowingly become infected prior to being exposed to the "irresponsible" person in question.
I think it might be reasonable to deny unvaccinated students physical access to public schools. The decision to remain unvaccinated includes the necessary burden of either homeschooling, online schooling, or going to a private school that is unvax-friendly. Simi
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal is to protect as many people as possible from the disease, while honoring personal autonomy.
People who cannot receive the vaccination are just as deserving of protection as everyone else. So long as this is a small number of people, then they benefit from the reduced risk of exposure that they would receive from being allowed in spaces that are otherwise full of vaccinated people.
If we do nothing, the high number of by-choice-unvaccinated people intermingling with everyone else will allow the disease to run rampant. If we restrict public places to vaccinated people and the small subset of people who cannot be vaccinated, then we hugely and significantly reduce the spread of the disease, and the harm it does, and that protection extends to and includes the most vulnerable segment of the population who have no other protection.
The only people who threaten to ruin this plan are the large number of people who refuse vaccination. So, we erect a few barriers to try and separate this group, so that the disease-resistance effect is still strong enough to do good for the other two groups.
Balancing everyone's rights is hard. No solution will be perfect. So we must find a balance that is merely "good enough" on all fronts, in order for it to be sustainable and effective.
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Fact is if they are unvaccinated allowing them into safe places is endangering that safe place as they can bring the virus in.
They can stay isolated. Lot of us did for 18 months so its doable.
When you start adding exceptions you start adding loopholes and eventually everything goes to shit.
At this point its pretty clear that while vaccinated can get infected , they dont really get sick and instead become asymptomatic carriers so I would encourage vaccinated to go
Re: So (Score:3, Insightful)
Rtfa. The pandemic will never be over. It's just that it will cease to be consequential once praxtically everyone has been exposed via vaccine or infection. Covid zero will no longer be a medically meaningful goal. The immunocompromised will be up the same shit creek they've always been with respect to colds and flus that could kill them dead.
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With their health intact without a vaccine.
The correct addressing is in setting stimulus, not punishments.
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That's racist - blacks and hispanics have lower vaccination numbers.
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Why should I pay for his ignorance?
At the very least, have them pay for the treatment in full.
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. For the most part, the U.S. federal government has picked up the tab for Covid costs, and then some. But we need to wind this down fast and start allocating the costs directly. Resources are allocated to their most efficient uses when the prices reflect the all the costs associated (I cribbed this from somewhere)
If the market has deemed that your health insurance premium needs to rise by $ XXX.XX dollars per month because you choose to be unvaccinated against covid so be it. Just like smoking there are statistically derived costs to your behavior and you should not be given a free ride. And this "money talks, BS walks" is great because it applies evenly to people no matter their geographic location, age, ethnicity, it's just actuarial accounting, plain and simple. If you don't like the premium your insurer has applied, you can choose another, choose Obama-care, self insure, or move to Canada. You have choices, but one of those choices shouldn't be subsidizing you.
Being vaccinated my risk of being put on an expensive ventilator in the ICU is low, ergo my risk premium is low. If you choose non-vaccination for religious, political, whatever reasons it is fair to have you pay a higher risk premium for that chance you will cost $1 million to keep alive
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
Partially effective vaccines provide significantly more evolutionary pressure.
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No matter if we vaccinated everyone tomorrow, it would still be here.
It should still spread...the only main difference would be that not as many people would be clogging ICU's and dying.
It's pretty obvious that pretty much everyone in their life will catch covid...the main choice you have is wether you will vaccinated or un-vaccinated.
The virus will not go away.
It will mutate...thats what viruses do.
The only hope is that it seems for the most par
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I'm not arguing the validity of that thinking either way, but condemning someone because they have personal reasons to not take a medicine. Why do so many people want to punish others?
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1) They risk infecting other people - people who can not be vaccinated; people who have been vaccinated but their immune systems are weak; and people who are vaccinated but suffer a "breakthrough" infection.
2) The cost of taking care of the infected people is non-trivial. In fact, it's pretty darn high. Taxpayers will foot that bill, all of us.
3) They keep this frightful issue going. Keep the hospitals
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Sensitive to politics given the very loud partisan discussion happening in the US as well as other countries, and thus not trusting the government to do right by them
2) Dealing with all sorts of stresses from kids at home, 1 or both partners being out of work due to lock downs, worried about paying bills and getting by, and/or worried about the health of their loved ones, most likely parents but also their kids who are unvaccinated and are yet untested on these vaccines. While you might argue that's a logical reason to get vaccinated to eliminate many of those stresses, many people cna simply be overwhelmed with all the talk and have trouble thinking clearly; throwing facts at them will only add to the confusion.
3) from an ethnic group that has a history with government mistrust, such as African Americans or Latinos. African Americans have a historically valid fear when it comes to vaccines, and latinos come from countries where the healthcare system is poor at best and downright corrupt at worst.
If you stopped judging and stereotyping people and actually talked to a person who is not getting vaccinated, you'd find that these are just humans with real fears and completely justified confusion given most governments inability to communicate effective policy (Trump, the WHO, the CDC, the Chinese government and many others are all issuing conflicting statements, propaganda, and policy missteps that has just served to confuse the issue). I know it's hard to listen to another person rant about their fears and concerns; I've done it about 6 times now, but down in the rant is real fear and explaining facts does nothing to assuage fear.
Every vaccine rollout has faced pushback. The model should be the Smallpox vaccine, which eliminated Smallpox. Particularly in former Spanish Empire countries who have a mistrust of healthcare, they tried explaining the facts, they tried mandates, they tried even paying people to get vaccinated. You know what worked? A festival. They ended up throwing a big festival and used that as a message to explain that vaccination was a good thing, and that the elimination of a disease that has ravaged communities is something worth celebrating. They appealed to the emotional needs of people, rather than their intellectual ones, and vaccination rates went up several fold, ultimately eliminating the disease.
Try treating people like humans and communicating rather than dictating and judging; show people that you're there with them and they don't have to be scared. Hell, learn some basic empathy. You'd be surprised how effective it is when you treat people like humans and not statistics or dead weight to be pushed out of the boat.
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't *not caring*. It's something else.
The biggest evolutionary advantage to the human species of having enormous brains isn't just intelligence per se; it's behavioral diversity. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD took about two days, preceded by two days of earthquakes. We know from both documentary and archaeological evidence there were a range of responses as the disaster unfolded, from people who must have left or prepared to leave as or even before the volcano was erupting, to ones that tried to ride out the eruption by sheltering in place.
We can take a judgmental stance and call the people who stayed "denialists", but if the eruption had petered out without the huge pyroclasic flows that killed those people, we could just as easily call the others who left "alarmists". That is projecting modern scientific awareness of geology on people living next to a volcano which hadn't erupted on that scale in thousands of years. Through all of our species' existence until the last past century or so we have had not had the knowledge to anticipate a catastrophe or to track its progress in real time. Our species has relied on its unmatched behavioral diversity to spread its evolutionary risks.
That continues to today. For the most part people don't use their knowledge to make decisions. They use their knowledge to rationalize whatever behavior that comes naturally to them. There are limits to this of course; when you see the next street get wiped out by a pyroclastic flow, you'll probably change your mind. But some people wouldn't until the ash is burying them in the basement, and few of those might actually survive just through luck. This exact kind of diversity shows up every time there is a hurricane evacuation ordered. It has historically shown itself in every past epidemic.
Since 70% or more of the eligible US population has been vaccinated at least once, remaining voluntarily unvaccinated people here are those whose behavior is considerably more refractory than average. They won't be convinced by more evidence per se, but by *direct experience* of COVID-19 in their families and social circle. As each individual's threshold for directness is crossed he'll change his mind. But some will never change their mind, either through being lucky, or being so far out on the denial bell curve that no experience could change their mind.
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Why? As a vaccinated person, I"m not in any fear of an unvaccinated person.
If the science is right, I should be in no more fear of catching covid and dying from being around non-vaccinated people than being around vaccinated people.
The un-vaccinated, well the onus is upon them to protect themselves and live with the consequences of their own actions.
But their inaction really has no effect upon me as a vaccinated person.
So,
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow the health insurance companies to charge higher premiums for anyone who's eligible for the vaccine, has not received it, and doesn't have an exemption that's real (e.g. no "my buddy got it and got sick anyway" excuses allowed). People may not listen to the truth, but they usually listen to their checkbook.
I'd hope that the insurance companies would then lower the premiums for those who are vaccinated.
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Did you not even read the summary? Not only does the vaccine not offer personal protection...
Before accusing someone else of not reading the summary perhaps you should give it go...
"Data from a recent React study conducted by Imperial College London suggests that fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have about a 49% lower risk of being infected compared with unvaccinated people
Anything that cuts the risk in half is huge! Not only that, if infected you are much less likely of clogging up hospitals, ICU, death, etc and impacting the overall economy. In addition, much less likely from suffering "lo
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Let's hope, fingers crossed.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically its time to accept that COVID-19 and variants thereof are here to stay. Get your vaccine - get the booster shots or follow up vaccines that doctors recommend. If you're sick, stay home until you're better.
Do all of that, but we need to stop acting like we're in some phase that will pass. It won't. When it was a few dozen or even up to a few thousand cases there may have been some chance at containing and stomping out COVID, but its now spread across the entire globe with hundreds of millions of infections. Particularly given that the virus nor vaccines grant permanent immunity, this will NEVER just be gone, not matter how much locking down we do.
Entire economies are now on the verge of collapsing (particularly anywhere whose primary industry was tourism). Average mental health is so bad that I'd wager there will soon be a noticeable uptick in the global suicide rate.
The big push was to hunker down until the vaccines were created. We made it to that milestone. There is no further realistic milestone left to achieve. I will put my utmost support behind encouraging people to vaccinate, but this lockdown shit has to end.
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Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except in children, where the rates went up to 100% in Canada: https://www.wsws.org/en/articl... [wsws.org]
You mean by 100%? "To 100%" implies there are no children left in Canada now.
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CDC basically said that heard immunity is unrealistic in late 2020. You can search the CDC website to try to find information about herd immunity, and you won't find anything about it for COVID. That's because they have steadfastly refused to define what it is, or to say that herd immunity will ever happen. Because it's not going to happen, and CDC has acknowledged this. I'm not faulting the CDC for being realistic about the prospects of herd immunity, I'm faulti
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There is no further realistic milestone left to achieve.
Less than 16% of the world population [bing.com] is fully vaccinated at this point. That falls to 0% for children under 12, because no vaccines have yet been approved for that age group. That wasn't such a big deal with the original variant, since severe illness in children was very rare, but delta has made it a lot more common.
COVID is with us for the long term. Eventually we'll reach a point where vaccines are widely available to everyone who wants them. It will become just another illness like the flu, somethi
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The US is basically just broken in some places, where those in charge of the government are literally more interested in their own political image than the lives and well-being of their constituents.
Think about it this way though: what scores them points for the political image is doing what is popular amongst the voters. If the majority of people in an area don't want to wear masks, don't want to shut things down, and want to get on with their lives, then that is the Democratic thing to do. Even if it truly is the correct course of action I consider it wrong for a government to oppose the will of the people "for their own good".
And a mask mandate isn't a lockdown, but those are past when I'm willing
Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)
This assumes no further progress in vaccines. But I've already seen work on vaccines that are given nasally to stimulate immunity in the nasal track so the body doesn't wait till it gets to the lungs to react. Apparently the delayed reaction is why Delta is being transmitted by vaccinated people.
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I believe that's what tonsils are for, to trap and pre-catch stuff on the way to the lungs, to get the immune system started a day or two earlier, to lower lung damage.
Go write a paper on it.
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You shouldn't. Mouth breathing is good reserve to have, yet keep it for those most special moments.
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*sigh*
Getting the alpha variant does not automatically preclude you from getting the delta variant any more than getting the vaccine developed for the alpha variant precludes you from getting the delta variant.
It's called a breakthrough infection and can absolutely happen.
I even have an anecdotal story to go along with this. My dumb-ass brother in law got alpha last year ... and again two weeks ago. No vaccine, so he's just lucky as hell he was a relatively mild case in both instances.
And the death rate is... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the death rate for the fully vaccinated? How about serious injury/hospitalization? I don't actually care if I get it, if it's going to suck for at most a few days and then I'm fine. I care if it's serious.
Everybody in most developed countries who wants the vaccine can get it. So now it matters as to what the risk with it is, not the risk of catching the disease.
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Everybody in most developed countries who wants the vaccine can get it. So now it matters as to what the risk with it is, not the risk of catching the disease.
Persons under 12 and those who are immunocompromised are unable to be vaccinated. Do you care that you could infect them as a vaccinated person?
Re:And the death rate is... (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't as clear cut as it gets tossed about as being.
I'm immunocompromised. When I checked into it, I'm still able to get the vaccine and did. There are some blanket excuses that i fear are being overused. I have no doubt that some small percentage have a real issue with this, but I think the perceived stats and those waving that flag around are perhaps overstating the issue.
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The immunocompromised can definitely get vaccinated. Some of the vaccines are more effective for certain types of immunocompromise than others, so it pays to check into anecdotal data (since studies are probably not available) before selecting a vaccine. It's better to have a 20% effective vaccine than 0% protection.
Re:And the death rate is... (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't that immunocompromised CAN'T get the vaccine (in most cases it is a damn good idea to get it!)
It is that we aren't sure how effective it will be. It's better than nothing, but it may not work well if your immune system does its job as well as me at the tail end of a week-long bender.
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This is correct. I have relatives who are immunocompromised. They did get the vaccine. They have been tested after the fact and still aren't able to develop the antibodies required to fight COVID-19 if they get it.
I know, I am presenting anecdotal evidence. From talking to their doctors, this is a common situation.
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Just make sure you're not one of the 596. Got it. Shark attacks kill 1/10th of that worldwide each year and still people think taking basic precautions around sharks is worthwhile.
Nevermind that long-term low level infections and Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome is much harder to detect and it will be years before some of these cases are even diagnosed. These are way more common in children vs. the quickly lethal respiratory effects.
They will have herd immunity soon, and might have it now
You pretty much missed even the headline.
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The under 12s have never been at serious risk, the rate of serious illness and death in the very young has been a rounding error hence why there has been less focus on getting vaccines approved for this age group.
If someone is immunocompromised then they are already at serious risk of serious illness or death. There are hundreds of otherwise minor diseases that could finish them off, having one more to worry about isn't going to make a massive difference to them.
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The claim is that 'herd immunity' will not be attainable. It does not mean that you shouldn't get the vaccine. Even though people who are vaccinated still get infected, which is defined as the pathogen entering their bodies and are multiplying, having a prepared immune system still should cut down the time frame during which the pathogen can multiply and spread, as well as cutting down the time frame during w
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Everybody in most developed countries who wants the vaccine can get it.
Except the people who can't or won't take the vaccine. Anti-vaxxers anger me, but we should still care about their health. Not to mention the kids.
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Mostly, side effects have been reported, with serious implications being rare. It is, however, for consideration if our case could be such.
This, along with outright poor education, is something to oppose the governments' will of total vaccination.
Re: And the death rate is... (Score:3)
> I don't actually care if I get it, if it's going to suck for at most a few days and then I'm fine.
But you may get it and die. Or get long covid, or pass the virus along to someone else who gets the same, or maybe can't be vaccinated.
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Exactly.
The metrics for Covid seem so far off base.
I'm in Ontario, Canada and in my opinion, the metrics seemed mainly
1. control the virus spread (number of cases)
2. not make the healthcare system look bad (number of ICU beds)
The ICU cases is interesting because Ontario has 14 million people and had roughly 2000 ICU beds in total. They've added more of course in recent times. But basically it meant that we couldn't handle any more than like 1000 covid ICU cases. People getting regular ICU needs still happen
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The way to look at it was Ontario started screaming the healthcare system is collapsing if 0.007% of the population (1000/14000000*100) ended up in the ICU due to covid.
Or more correctly, Ontario started screaming the healthcare system is collapsing if 0.007% of the population (1000/14000000*100) ended up in the ICU due to covid at the same time. People in ICU tend to either die, or spend a long time there (sometimes both), but still the illness in that 14,000,000 was effectively spread out over a period of 18 months.
It's jarring at this point where we're at like 70% vaccinated in Ontario and they're still reporting case numbers as if that's what we should be worried about.
The problem now is that even 20% unvaccinated still leaves 2.8 million people there exposed, which is still plenty enough people to overwhelm your ICU if t
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I agree, but it is a bit more complex. For example, COVID anti-vaxxers kill people in other ways. Any one of them that takes an ICU space will likely delay some urgent but not emergency operations. And the ICU times for COVID are long. For example, waiting for cardio-surgery (which _will_ require ICU time, usually just a few days though) kills people. Any needlessly taken ICU place will make that worse.
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This is how I feel - I'm unvaccinated, under 50, not obese, and I'm taking vitamin D and zinc (along with the iver* drug, truncated to avoid removal). I believe this drug will prevent the variants better than out of date vaccines, and even if it doesn't, I'm not likely to need hospitalization or die.
I also don't want to get on the vaccination treadmill—they're setting us up for continuous boosters every 6 to 12 months, and I don't want to prematurely age [nih.gov] my immune system (I'll need it when I'm older).
so masks (Score:4, Insightful)
The direct implication on policy decision making I'm hearing is: people that are vaccinated should not be excused from masking policies
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For as long as there are people who can't get the vaccine, that is correct. Once everyone is eligible for the vaccine and sufficient time has been given to make the choice they're going to make and get the vaccines that are wanted, there is no longer any reason for preventative measures. I'm all for people who want to risk their own lives - even it's mostly due to believing misinformation. It's when they cause others harm that I think we should step in.
That is, I never followed CDC guidance to stop with
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We should still get vaccinated (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if we can reach herd immunity or not. We should still aim for 100% of eligible (12+) to be vaccinated.
1. Vaccinated people are half as likely to be infected, and therefore at least half as likely to transmit the virus.
2. If the virus continue to spread, we should make sure hospitals are not overloaded. Vaccinated people have a much lower hospitalization or death risk.
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An extra point: Vaccinated people recover faster from infection and therefore will be transmitting the virus for less time
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Exactly.
Using this as a clarion call for anti-vax is just another trip down Fearmonger Avenue!
Vaccine effectiveness (Score:2)
The vaccine effectiveness is only 90%. That means you still have a 10% chance of getting the virus, even if you have the vaccine. If you look at the numbers, they are roughly what you would expect in that scenario: that is, the vaccine is mostly effective, people who don't get the vaccine have a high rate of infection, and people who got the vaccine have a low rate of infection.
Even with delta the vaccine is pretty effective.
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The vaccine effectiveness is only 90%. That means you still have a 10% chance of getting the virus, even if you have the vaccine. If you look at the numbers, they are roughly what you would expect in that scenario: that is, the vaccine is mostly effective, people who don't get the vaccine have a high rate of infection, and people who got the vaccine have a low rate of infection.
Even with delta the vaccine is pretty effective.
Yes but the vaccinated are now all magnetic and have a bloodstream full of nanorobot spying devices. When in the presence of of a vaccinated person, do not speak and do not get between them and the cutlery drawer.
Re:Vaccine effectiveness (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Vaccine effectiveness (Score:3)
Under the same conditions, meaning the same regime of countermeasures. Compared to different behaviour, different countermeasures, etc, it's most likely 1/20 or 5% chance to get infected compared to the uninfected. If the conditions are wildly different, the ratios might even be different, such as strong exposure. Which is why it's so great that infections are much milder in vaccinated people
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"That means you still have a 10% chance of getting the virus, even if you have the vaccine."
No, it means you have a chance of getting the ILLNESS. Vaccines cannot prevent exposure to the virus at all, they can only (possibly) interrupt transmission so that a person is not exposed to begin with.
"Rates of infection" is being misused here. There are rates of diagnosed infection i.e. rates of illness. This is different from rates of infection.
There is a difference between the illness and the virus that cause
Vaccines are a legitimate manmade miracle. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's been two great advancements in human ingenuity and science that have saved more human lives than anything else:
1. Vaccines.
and
2. Fertilizers.
Each of these have saved hundreds of millions of human lives from disease and starvation at the very least, and more every day.
Also each of them is also vilified essentially for being various flavors of unnatural.
But the thing is - these are the things nature is pretty bad at doing on the scale of a human lifetime.
Population level immunity for more deadly forms of disease usually takes out a pretty huge chunk of a population - look at plummeting levels of bat populations (white nose syndrome) - it's not an uncommon arc in historic animal populations well before humans - and we've cured several diseases of that caliber using vaccines instead. Vaccines are outright amazing.
We're going to be curing more diseases, and figuring out how to feed people and maintain our population as we go. Because it's the basis on which we can tell any other story as humans.
It's the story that wishes to throw away all those lives to starvation and disease that makes no sense.
If we are to find a balance with 'nature' - it's going to be with science and increased standards of living. We're already slowing our growth rate to nearly standstill numbers in stable societies. Very few things in the end require disaster and horrific levels of traumatic death to 'fix'.
Try to avoid being on side that demands such, if you can help it.
Ryan Fenton
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Also each of them is also vilified essentially for being various flavors of unnatural.
But the thing is - these are the things nature is pretty bad at doing on the scale of a human lifetime.
Are human beings not part of nature? In my opinion cars, sky scrapers and, of course, vaccines are every bit as natural as bee hives and termite mounds. I've never understood the nature vs human dichotomy. Are humans supposedly supernatural?
We need to stop listening to pundents! (Score:2)
The goal from the Medical Community, and Scientists was never expecting to kill the virus, we had only killed Small Pox, we still have the other viruses floating around. But to get the infection rate at a manageable level, in general at a level at or below what the average annual flu infection rate is.
Herd Immunity idea was just from political talking heads, who are just trying to push some agenda.
But still get Vaccinated! Also get Vaccinated for the Flu virus too!
So getting vaccinated will still lower the
partisan bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
"Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19. "
This is true for any vaccine and any illness. The immune system cannot act on pathogens that are not in the body. Once they are in the body, the body is infected.
""The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated."
Just like every pathogen that causes an illness for which there is a vaccine.
"And that does mean that anyone who's still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus"
No it does not. A virus that doesn't exist will never be met and no argument is being made that this particular virus cannot be eradicated.
"... and we don't have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission."
Not shown to be true by any of his fear-mongering, inflammatory claims. Vaccines do not prevent exposure or initial infection, they train the immune system to respond rapidly to an infection. It has not been shown that the COVID vaccines, when administered sufficiently broadly, remain unable to prevent transmission at a sufficiently high rate to provide herd immunity.
Most recent information only says that vaccinated people with initial infections have significant viral loads in some parts of their bodies, the conclusion that they are equally contagious is mere speculation. Even if these people are initially contagious, the time period for this is almost certainly reduced, therefore there is EVERY reason to believe that vaccinations DO reduce the rate of transmission and herd immunity is when that reduction is sufficient to largely or completely eliminate the disease.
Sorry, but this is bullshit suitable to ignore. It is nothing more than opportunistic promotion of lies to promote social failure for political gain.
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If you think there's been no focus on other preventative measures (because, of course, the vaccine is itself a preventative measure) over the past 18 months then welcome back to Earth. I've seen news stories about research into therapeutics too.
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Oh, I've seen "news" stories too, largely attacking therapeutics which nevertheless show efficacy in controlling the virus and improving outcomes.
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What therapeutic shows greater than statistical anomaly effectiveness?
Aside from early intervention with monoclonal antibodies, there are just some weak antivirals that don't do much.
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Here you go, start here: https://c19early.com/ [c19early.com]
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Why is that site taking studies that themselves admit that the outcomes are not statistically significant and showed no benefit of treatment and highlighting them as examples of effectiveness of treatment?
Example: The April 14th entry on Vitamin C of that site links to this article [immunopathol.com] as a source. The article's conclusion states very clearly, "The combination of oral vitamins C (1000 mg daily) and E (400 IU daily) has no beneficial effect in COVID-19 patients." And yet, there is a big 46.3% down arrow next
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Not only that, but they registered a different domain name for each subpage of the site. Click on a medication, you're on a new domain. Something fishy about the ownership of the site and their goals. This is not something you do when trying to provide information as a public service. They seem to be linked to the FLCCC group but have no formal statement saying as much and their Twitter account has been suspended.
That's without mentioning that the JavaScript is the worst example of inline cut and paste
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This was 3/4 conspiracy theorizing about NPR and Wikipedia and various government agencies and then he just makes huge correlation fallacies left and right about Ivermectin sprinkled with some anecdotes.
I am not going to say Ivermectin doesn't work but this article posits no actual evidence that it does, it's just using a jump to conclusions mat. And NPR is hardly the only outlet reporting on the lack of good information coming from India, especially from the Uttar Pradesh region and there are several repo
Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's almost as if we should shift focus to preventative and therapeutics instead of hanging it all on a vaccine.
No it's not.
The vaccine is working because it reduces the rate of infection, and more importantly reduces the serious of infection. In this respect the vaccine is preventative, it prevents serious illness and death by quite some margin.
The UK now has almost 90% of the population single vaccinated and 75% fully vaccinated and has opened up pretty much entirely and has been for about a month. Covid infections are in decline, and deaths are below 5 year averages.
All the original story is saying is that even if vaccinated it'll still spread to and kill the anti-vaxx idiots, so if they're relying on everyone else getting vaccinated to save themselves, then they're in for a bitter disappointment, they'll just die, or get long covid or similar instead which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact the rest of us will no doubt have to bail them out for their own stupidity.
> Wait, that sounds familiar. Who said that? Oh, right, that was me last year
And that point of this sentence is what? You want us to laugh at you even harder not just for being wildly wrong, but for being wildly wrong for over a year and despite a wealth of evidence proving you wrong, still persevering with it?
Okay well, here you go, LOL, you're a fucking idiot.
Happy now?
Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not true.
The CDC says a breakthrough infected person is just as able to transmit infection to other people.
BUT!
A vaccinated person is much less likely to be get a delta variant infection in the first place. Most study data I've looked at point to a 50% or greater reduction in delta variant infection among vaccinated people. That means a fully vaccinated populace will transmit MUCH more slowly and perhaps even at a rate below r0 = 1, meaning it will fall to the level of occasional cases and not a pandemic.
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Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people like you lie about stuff that is so easily verifiable? Here is what the CDC actually says: https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Some quotes from the above:
"The greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract, and therefore transmit the virus."
"Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to be infectious for a shorter period"
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Errr learn to read. The claim was that the CDC said the vaccines don't impact transmissabiliy. This is a flat out lie, as the CDC said no such thing. Whether the CDC is right or not is immaterial, they did not say what he claims they said.
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Appeal to authority! *SLAP* [existentialcomics.com]
It is not reasonable to expect everyone to site a paper for every claim they make. Even if they did, some Anonymous Coward will say "oh, that paper is wrong." And inevitably the Coward will not site either an authority or a paper. They will just act as though their opinion is sufficient to override all the evidence the other person provided. Best-case: we will get a link to a Facebook post.
Appeal to authority is a valid form of debate. If you disagree with that authority, fee
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The same can be said of people who, for some reason, want to believe that vaccines are useless and/or dangerous.
The difference is that what the CDC, WHO and health agencies all over the world use actual data and statistics. Most of these can be easily found online so you can do your own study. Generally, they point to the same conclusion.
Do you think the CDC is happy that vaccines are only 50% effective at preventing transmissible infections when we were promised 90%? Do you think that *anyone* is happy abo
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Are you fucking drunk?
The findings also indicated that fully vaccinated people were about half as likely to test positive after coming into contact with someone who had Covid (3.84%, down from 7.23%).
do you think people who don't contract the virus magically transmit at the same rate as those that do?
ignore because it goes against your beliefs
pot, kettle, etc
Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. Here is what the CDC actually says:
"Although breakthrough infections happen much less often than infections in unvaccinated people, individuals infected with the Delta variant, including fully vaccinated people with symptomatic breakthrough infections, can transmit it to others. CDC is continuing to assess data on whether fully vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections can transmit. However, the greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract, and therefore transmit the virus."
and
"Delta variant seems to produce the same high amount of virus in both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people. However, like other variants, the amount of virus produced by Delta breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people also goes down faster than infections in unvaccinated people. This means fully vaccinated people are likely infectious for less time than unvaccinated people."
None of that agrees with your idiotic statement that 'they become infected nearly just as easy' or that asymptomatic vaccinated people are transmitting the disease. And even if they are, it is for a shorter period of time than the unvaccinated.
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Still, vaccine remains primary bet for populations. Changing behavior to avoid being with others in closed spaces, is long touted another. Improvements in ventilation - next one. Wearing mask to stimulate more private breathing setup - another. And so on.
All in all, there was no lack of information on important aspects, vaccine not being single feature.
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Maybe now we can work on admitting that c19 will be with us forever and we can get back to living our lives ( and tell our idiot politicians where they can shove their totalitarian horseshit, but that might be a bit of a stretch for a lot of you ).
They're just waiting for the next strongman [vogue.com] to come along.
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We are focused "to preventative and therapeutics". We generally call them masks and they are quite effective if you are not Republican. The theraputics continue to be worked upon but so far they aren't all that effective. You are free to stock up on hydroxychloroquine though, I hear we have bumper supply of that stuff.
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Just exactly how long do you expect people to keep wearing these fscking masks?
People are tired of it...it doesn't depend on political party.
It just isn't natural, it is uncomfortable, inconvenient....and unnatural.
I think you're getting just about to the point to where you're just not going to get people to comply much longer.
And at this point, I'm not sure I see th
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And so far, it seems the numbers show that the very young are not catching covid and dying in large numbers.
Only if you stopped looking at the numbers before delta. The very young are now the fastest-growing users of ICU beds in the US.
Also, you can't conflate serious illness and death like you're trying to do here. MIS-C and similar "long term to permanent damage but not death" appears to be happening at a much higher rate than in adults.
Long term to permanent damage in adults is running about 5x the death rate (~3M vs 600k deaths in the US). In kids, we don't have a ton of data yet, but a couple studies are
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We are focused "to preventative and therapeutics". We generally call them masks and they are quite effective
If they're so effective then why was the UK's biggest spike in infections in it's second wave after mask wearing was made mandatory?
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Because you are tard?
Mask wdaring became mandatory because infections were on the rise?
Just an idea ...
Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:5, Informative)
There isn't a single real world graph that I've seen where masks have shown to have any impact. Not a single one.
Here's one [vumc.org].
Here's a page with several graphs [vox.com].
An appeal to ignorance [wikipedia.org] is not a valid argument. If you haven't seen the data, it is only because you haven't bothered to look.
Re:Wow, it's almost (Score:4, Informative)
To see how effective masks are you need to compare a place with strict mask rules with one without.
No idea what your other gibberig about maskes is supposed to mean.
HCQ does show efficacy
No it does not. Got debunmed over a year ago. A dose that might have an effect would kill you in a day or two. Your choice.
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HCQ does show efficacy
No it does not. Got debunmed over a year ago. A dose that might have an effect would kill you in a day or two. Your choice.
Well, being perfectly pedantic, that's a form of "efficacy," right?
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"There is so much politics, misinformation and money floating around right now that the possibility of a rational discussion flew out the window."
Wrong. Stop listening to the right wingnut echo chamber and you can then get a rational take on the situation.
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Yep, nothing like the Great White Wall to keep the stupidity in.
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"Blacks are below 20% vaxxed."
Complete bullshit. From here: https://www.kff.org/coronaviru... [kff.org]
"The CDC reports demographic characteristics, including race/ethnicity, of people receiving COVID-19 vaccinations at the national level. As of August 2, 2021, CDC reported that race/ethnicity was known for 58% of people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Among this group, nearly two thirds were White (59%), 10% were Black, 16% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian, 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native, a
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Not enough to change the conclusion. Studies with Pfizer and Moderna have results that are within a few percent of AZ.