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With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccina

With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? Yeah, 90-95% of your customers won't have symptoms if they get infected. But they'll still have the ability to pass on that infection to someone who wasn't vaccinated, or falls into the 5-10% of people who the vaccine isn't effective for. Obviously the vaccines have benefits, especially for high risk populations. But I see very little benefit to these corporations requiring their customers to have it, since their customers can still be infected and spread the virus.

totony 6y ago
>With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? This is such a weird take imo. There is no need to vaccine non-risk people afaik. I thought the whole deal with covid is how mild it is for the general population but deadly for a subset of it.
- estebank 6y ago
  We don't know a priori who will have very adverse reactions. Comorbities and old age increase your chances, but those are categorically not the only variables at play.
  - totony 6y ago
    I'll admit I'm not super well informed on covid, so my opinion on this is weakly held, but isnt that an insanely small percentage of people? I was under the impression that vaccine + immunity will just lead to herd immunity and the disease to go away on its own.
    - estebank 6y ago
      US population: ~330 million people Confirmed cases: 13.4 million people Confirmed deaths: 267 thousand people deaths / confirmed: ~2% 2% of the US dead (assumes homogeneous 2% death rate, which is incorrect but an upper bound): 6.6 million people Distribution of deaths by age bracket, including population distribution: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm About half the population is over ~45 years old. Anything we do now to reduce the R0 of this disease will disproportionally enable people to live long enough for herd immunity to be attained, courtesy of the exponential growth curve. The amount of people that has to get sick to overwhelm hospitals is smaller than you might think. When hospitals get overwhelmed people die of other preventable cases due to reduced resources, tired physicians, lack of time to see patients at all and people being scared of even going to the hospital in the first place. Old people are not "disposable" and for younger people that happen to have the genetic (or other) predisposition to bad or fatal cases it will be hard to tell them "sucks to be you" when the preventive steps are well understood by now: interact with people as little as possible and when you do, do so outside while wearing masks. Also, the death rate among poorer people is a multiple of that of the general population, among other reasons because they are working essential jobs to not starve. Those of us that can isolate and don't are saying that these people's lives (essential workers, including health care workers) have no value, they are just meat for the meat grinder.
      - nradov 6y ago
        You appear to have confused case fatality rate with infection fatality rate. There have been far more infections than confirmed cases because most never get tested or formally diagnosed. The actual IFR is under 1%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
      - totony 6y ago
        That comment was meant to answer two people at once, my bad. I was referring to the proportion of population that was not at risk. That population has an insanely small chance of having long term side effects from data I've seen. Which was the reason I'm not sure why we would force them to get these vaccines. EDIT: To be more precise; Of course we want a vaccine and vulnerable people to get it. You'd rather risk getting whatever potential side effects of that vaccine than get covid. I'm more torn about why healthy young people should get it.
        DanBC 6y ago
        > I'm more torn about why healthy young people should get it. So they don't infect and kill their older relatives.
        totony 6y ago
        But those would get the vaccine first, no?
        DanBC 6y ago
        Maybe. Not everyone can get the vaccine. We don't know yet if the vaccine is 100% effective (although it does look very good).
        totony 6y ago
        >Not everyone can get the vaccine. But the proportion of people who are both at risk and can't get the vaccine (and alternatives) must be small (from intuitive maths, I actually haven't looked into this). Why would this vaccine be mandatory while plenty of other aren't? E.g. I've never got flu-tested before a concert/the flu shot, even though it could pass to other people/kill people. I'm wondering where's the line between freedom to one own's body and other people's well being. IMO it's not as clear-cut as people make it out to be.
- sterlind 6y ago
  you can't completely predict who it's going to be mild for. 14-year olds with no known underlying issues have died, 25-year olds have lost their sense of smell and taste permanently or suffer from long covid months later.
  - totony 6y ago
    I replied to your comment on a slibling if you want to enlighten me on the subject
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone (we should, at least adults. not sure if this vaccine will be approved for kids, which usually requires more stringent approvals), but your argument isn't a good one. Covid has killed 42 people from age 5-14 in the US according to the CDC, for example. That alone is really not something we should be making huge policy decisions around. It's sad, of course, but it's extremely isolated. All it does is distract us from making good policy decisions. If I was making policy decisions I'd order vaccine rollout as follows: Essential workers => 80+ years old => 70+ => 60+ => etc. as we produce and distribute the vaccines. At some point we might look at the data and say "that's good enough, we can resume normal activities while we work to vaccinate the rest of the population".
    - totony 6y ago
      >Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone. I'm not sure if this is a concession for argument's sake, but imo it does take away from it. Why do you think it doesn't?
      - thelean12 6y ago
        It doesn't take away from it because it's never been a good argument. x - 0 still equals x. There are plenty of valid arguments to vaccinate everyone we can.
        6y ago
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  There are also some people who cannot be vaccinated. So getting enough of the population vaccinated to reach herd immunity protects those people too.
CyanLite2 6y ago
For that final batch of 5-10% of people, today's headlines from the Moderna data dump shows that its vaccine is 100% effective (so far) in preventing serious disease to those that have been vaccinated. And 100% effective in preventing death (there were deaths in the placebo group).
sandworm101 6y ago
It is all about rates, not binary can/cannot statements. An non-symptomatic person can indeed spread the virus, but someone with a fever who is coughing constantly (ie a symptomatic case) will spread exponentially more virus. So a vaccine that prevents such symptoms can in practice reduce infection probabilities. Bring those probabilities low enough and spread stops.
usrusr 6y ago
For certain meanings of making sense, it's perfectly sufficient if either a number of airline managers or a number of airline customers simply don't understand that possible limitation of a vaccine's effect. And both are very likely. And it can make sense even beyond that, because a vaccine that doesn't completely rule out infectivity can still be reasonably expected to weaken and/or shorten infectivity.
Exmoor 6y ago
The issue here is that there's just not data on how contagious the small percentage of vaccinated people who contract COVID may be. Realistically, all the indications we have so far are that there is some correlation between how much you experience symptoms and how likely you are to infect others. It appears that people who never get symptoms (true asymptomatic carriers) are fairly rare and also really not very likely to infect others. Most of the asymptomatic "super-spreaders" which have been reported were actually pre-symptomatic. It's theoretically possible that people who are vaccinated and become infected (which looks like only a fairly small percentage) will still be able to spread the virus, but in all likelihood that ability will be greatly diminished.
bluGill 6y ago
Companies want customers, as a business decision is makes sense to require vaccinations because if they check that means governments will let them open. Ticketmaster wants to get whatever the big name acts are on stage with a full house. If they check vaccination status they can sell out a large auditoriums in February to nurses and a few lucky others. If they wait until governments allow large venues to open up they might be waiting until next fall. That is a large amount of money they are leaving on the table. Likewise, Quantas flys international to places that lockdown as eliminated covid - if they check vaccine status they can fly anyone in without worry about restrictions. So it makes business sense.

totony 6y ago

>With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? This is such a weird take imo. There is no need to vaccine non-risk people afaik. I thought the whole deal with covid is how mild it is for the general population but deadly for a subset of it.

estebank 6y ago
We don't know a priori who will have very adverse reactions. Comorbities and old age increase your chances, but those are categorically not the only variables at play.
- totony 6y ago
  I'll admit I'm not super well informed on covid, so my opinion on this is weakly held, but isnt that an insanely small percentage of people? I was under the impression that vaccine + immunity will just lead to herd immunity and the disease to go away on its own.
  - estebank 6y ago
    US population: ~330 million people Confirmed cases: 13.4 million people Confirmed deaths: 267 thousand people deaths / confirmed: ~2% 2% of the US dead (assumes homogeneous 2% death rate, which is incorrect but an upper bound): 6.6 million people Distribution of deaths by age bracket, including population distribution: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm About half the population is over ~45 years old. Anything we do now to reduce the R0 of this disease will disproportionally enable people to live long enough for herd immunity to be attained, courtesy of the exponential growth curve. The amount of people that has to get sick to overwhelm hospitals is smaller than you might think. When hospitals get overwhelmed people die of other preventable cases due to reduced resources, tired physicians, lack of time to see patients at all and people being scared of even going to the hospital in the first place. Old people are not "disposable" and for younger people that happen to have the genetic (or other) predisposition to bad or fatal cases it will be hard to tell them "sucks to be you" when the preventive steps are well understood by now: interact with people as little as possible and when you do, do so outside while wearing masks. Also, the death rate among poorer people is a multiple of that of the general population, among other reasons because they are working essential jobs to not starve. Those of us that can isolate and don't are saying that these people's lives (essential workers, including health care workers) have no value, they are just meat for the meat grinder.
    - nradov 6y ago
      You appear to have confused case fatality rate with infection fatality rate. There have been far more infections than confirmed cases because most never get tested or formally diagnosed. The actual IFR is under 1%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
    - totony 6y ago
      That comment was meant to answer two people at once, my bad. I was referring to the proportion of population that was not at risk. That population has an insanely small chance of having long term side effects from data I've seen. Which was the reason I'm not sure why we would force them to get these vaccines. EDIT: To be more precise; Of course we want a vaccine and vulnerable people to get it. You'd rather risk getting whatever potential side effects of that vaccine than get covid. I'm more torn about why healthy young people should get it.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        > I'm more torn about why healthy young people should get it. So they don't infect and kill their older relatives.
        totony 6y ago
        But those would get the vaccine first, no?
        DanBC 6y ago
        Maybe. Not everyone can get the vaccine. We don't know yet if the vaccine is 100% effective (although it does look very good).
        totony 6y ago
        >Not everyone can get the vaccine. But the proportion of people who are both at risk and can't get the vaccine (and alternatives) must be small (from intuitive maths, I actually haven't looked into this). Why would this vaccine be mandatory while plenty of other aren't? E.g. I've never got flu-tested before a concert/the flu shot, even though it could pass to other people/kill people. I'm wondering where's the line between freedom to one own's body and other people's well being. IMO it's not as clear-cut as people make it out to be.
sterlind 6y ago
you can't completely predict who it's going to be mild for. 14-year olds with no known underlying issues have died, 25-year olds have lost their sense of smell and taste permanently or suffer from long covid months later.
- totony 6y ago
  I replied to your comment on a slibling if you want to enlighten me on the subject
- thelean12 6y ago
  Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone (we should, at least adults. not sure if this vaccine will be approved for kids, which usually requires more stringent approvals), but your argument isn't a good one. Covid has killed 42 people from age 5-14 in the US according to the CDC, for example. That alone is really not something we should be making huge policy decisions around. It's sad, of course, but it's extremely isolated. All it does is distract us from making good policy decisions. If I was making policy decisions I'd order vaccine rollout as follows: Essential workers => 80+ years old => 70+ => 60+ => etc. as we produce and distribute the vaccines. At some point we might look at the data and say "that's good enough, we can resume normal activities while we work to vaccinate the rest of the population".
  - totony 6y ago
    >Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone. I'm not sure if this is a concession for argument's sake, but imo it does take away from it. Why do you think it doesn't?
    - thelean12 6y ago
      It doesn't take away from it because it's never been a good argument. x - 0 still equals x. There are plenty of valid arguments to vaccinate everyone we can.
      - 6y ago
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
There are also some people who cannot be vaccinated. So getting enough of the population vaccinated to reach herd immunity protects those people too.

CyanLite2 6y ago

For that final batch of 5-10% of people, today's headlines from the Moderna data dump shows that its vaccine is 100% effective (so far) in preventing serious disease to those that have been vaccinated. And 100% effective in preventing death (there were deaths in the placebo group).

sandworm101 6y ago

It is all about rates, not binary can/cannot statements. An non-symptomatic person can indeed spread the virus, but someone with a fever who is coughing constantly (ie a symptomatic case) will spread exponentially more virus. So a vaccine that prevents such symptoms can in practice reduce infection probabilities. Bring those probabilities low enough and spread stops.

usrusr 6y ago

For certain meanings of making sense, it's perfectly sufficient if either a number of airline managers or a number of airline customers simply don't understand that possible limitation of a vaccine's effect. And both are very likely. And it can make sense even beyond that, because a vaccine that doesn't completely rule out infectivity can still be reasonably expected to weaken and/or shorten infectivity.

Exmoor 6y ago

The issue here is that there's just not data on how contagious the small percentage of vaccinated people who contract COVID may be. Realistically, all the indications we have so far are that there is some correlation between how much you experience symptoms and how likely you are to infect others. It appears that people who never get symptoms (true asymptomatic carriers) are fairly rare and also really not very likely to infect others. Most of the asymptomatic "super-spreaders" which have been reported were actually pre-symptomatic. It's theoretically possible that people who are vaccinated and become infected (which looks like only a fairly small percentage) will still be able to spread the virus, but in all likelihood that ability will be greatly diminished.

bluGill 6y ago

Companies want customers, as a business decision is makes sense to require vaccinations because if they check that means governments will let them open. Ticketmaster wants to get whatever the big name acts are on stage with a full house. If they check vaccination status they can sell out a large auditoriums in February to nurses and a few lucky others. If they wait until governments allow large venues to open up they might be waiting until next fall. That is a large amount of money they are leaving on the table. Likewise, Quantas flys international to places that lockdown as eliminated covid - if they check vaccine status they can fly anyone in without worry about restrictions. So it makes business sense.