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The Google COVID-19 statistics for Israel show that cases and deaths are declining, but not at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world. Reported deaths lag be

by jansan 6y ago

The Google COVID-19 statistics for Israel show that cases and deaths are declining, but not at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world. Reported deaths lag behind sometimes for weeks and new deaths were caused by infections weeks ago, so vaccination may not have much effect on deaths, yet. But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably with 50% of the population vaccinated. Are all these aymptomatic cases or do the is this due to part of the population not keeping any rules? Does anybody have information why the numbers are sill that high?

ekvilibrist 6y ago
This is amongst a study of 600k Israelis, which is about 6% of the population. I believe their deal was that the entire population would be supplied the vaccine in exchange for their medical data, which is why Israel far ahead of most of the world in vaccination rate. But its still only 70% done if my googled source isn't way off. So still too early to see large scale effects.
- tpm 6y ago
  it's not 70% done, it's about 70 vaccines per 100 people, at 2 vaccines per person it should be 140 vaccines per 100 people to get to 70% of the population vaccinated.
throwaway4good 6y ago
Exactly. I don't understand why it is so unpopular to ask this obvious question? The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Given how much further Israel is, one would have expected it to stick much more out in the statistics. But it does not?
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  It's not that hard to think of reasons why, even as effective vaccinations go up, deaths/cases may not decline in perfect symmetry. For example, certain groups may start caring less once the most vulnerable have been vaccinated, restrictions may be eased as more people are vaccinated, certain groups may be less likely to want vaccinations so a local epidemic occurs... etc.
- amitport 6y ago
  I live in Israel. There a three big points to make: 1 - There is a delay. While now we have more and more vaccinated people, much of the current cases in the hospital got infected before that. 2 - It changes from community to community but in general we have many people that are really not "disciplined". Either they believe coronovirus does not exist or it won't get them or that god will save them or the herd immunity is high enough (when it isn't)... excuses all over 3 - The vaccinations are not evenly distributed in the population (for lack of demand, supply is there). While in some places you have 70% in other communities you have 2%. (and those with 2% act like there's no coronavirus, see point 2)
  - helge9210 6y ago
    > Either they believe coronovirus does not exist or it won't get them or that god will save them You can take case of yeshivas (religious schools): some have 80% of infected and recovered students. So when authorities come to the head of the school with a story about deadly virus, they don't understand each other. And examples of 90 years old elders dying from COVID-19 are meet with question "What you expected them to do instead at this age?"
  - aphextron 6y ago
    > While in some places you have 70% in other communities you have 2%. (and those with 2% act like there's no coronavirus, see point 2) I've come to notice this over the last year. We now effectively live in two completely diverged realities. In one, coronavirus is a serious danger that affects our behavior and dominates every aspect of life, where we follow the news of new vaccines and declining case numbers with gratitude and relief, hoping to god that life can return to normal some day. In the other reality, COVID is just a flu. Maybe you might get it but it's not a big deal. Life goes on as normal and you are happily taking advantage of deals on travel, low crowds, and you get annoyed at being reminded to wear your mask. Meeting with friends, going to church, eating at restaurants. All of this is fine because you've convinced yourself it's no big deal. It's bizarre, and it has torn many of my personal relationships apart. I'm not sure how we ever fix this.
    - deleted 6y ago
- thu2111 6y ago
  The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Probably the latter. Mortality doesn't seem to be affected by (covid specific) policy: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27719/w27719.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27719/w277... https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/20-06.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/20-06.html https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... (there are lots of studies like these, I just picked three more or less at random)
  - oblio 6y ago
    Interesting. In Luxembourg at least you can see the clear seasonal variation and also the enforcement of stricter lockdowns pretty much 1:1 in death rates and infection rates, accounting for the ~2-3 week delay in infection intervals.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Same in Greece: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/greece/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/greece/ Lockdown started in November, and relaxed on Jan 15 or so.
    - infinitysky 6y ago
      Well, as I saw in Luxembourg you surely can’t experience any of the vaccination effects yet. Is there a government there or what is going on?
      - oblio 6y ago
        For vaccinations? Nope, too few people have been vaccinated. But the claim above was for <<lockdowns>>, for which we do have data.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      When do you consider Luxembourg's lockdowns to have started and ended? Looking here: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=~LUX&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_cases&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... ... the curves look pretty similar to that of many other countries. There was apparently (according to Wikipedia) one between Nov 23rd and Dec 15th but that appears to have made no real difference, in fact, numbers per million were stable during those dates when they had previously been falling.
- strulovich 6y ago
  There an extra consideration to add here perhaps: the US experienced a post Christmas and New Year spike. That would be less pronounced in Israel where the vast majority does not celebrate Christmas and takes the New Year less seriously. (Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday of the similar time was earlier this year. And although some Arabs celebrate Christmas, many others are Muslim and do not)
  - ars 6y ago
    Also Hanukkah is not a major holiday in Judaism. It gets inflated importance in the US because of proximity to major Christian holidays. The major holidays in Judaism were 5 months ago, just when the lockdowns started.
CyberRage 6y ago
In short, yes. There was a massive drop in elderly people developing COVID-19 symptoms but an increase in younger people. The vaccination rate at younger individuals is far lower than elder ones, also the vaccine created a false sense of safety for everyone.
voiper1 6y ago
I saw an article that the ICU no longer has elderly folks - they were prioritized for the vaccine. It's now younger people in the ICU: the vaccine started going out as the more contagious (and harmful) British variant started spreading in Israel. From this article: >Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who have been tabulating national data, said on Sunday that a sharp decline in hospitalisation and serious illness identified earlier among the first age group to be vaccinated - aged 60 or older - was seen for the first time in those aged 55 and older. >Hospitalisations and serious illness were still rising in younger groups who began vaccinations weeks later.
jsharf 6y ago
Israel has many different population groups. The Haredi population is acting like covid doesn’t exist and has insanely high numbers of cases. I suspect that despite the vaccine working well on your everyday science-trusting Israeli, the Haredi population is throwing off the average significantly. Source: I have family there. Recently the police tried to enforce the lockdown Bnei Brak (a city with a lot of Haredis). The Haredi rioted against this, yelled “Nazis” at the police, and burned down a bus. https://youtu.be/hG8ly4_zOt0 https://youtu.be/hG8ly4_zOt0
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  downtote. This is anti semitic. A fringe minority rioted. It's far too simplistic to say that covid is simply being ignored.
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    why am i getting downvotes? The hareidim ignore lockdown because their way of life is more important to them even then some deaths. Difficult for an outsider to understand. As for being anti vax, the vaccine is practically being forced down their throats. There will be a pushback (not that i agree). (and yes there could be more compliance, this is not the forum).
    - hef19898 6y ago
      IMHO the downvotes have two reasons: Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic. Complaining or commenting about downvotes is not regarded well on HN.
      - throwawayy1112 6y ago
        > Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic. I wonder if all the people who upvote this would take offense to the same statement applied to black people or whatever identity you want to swap in.
lucd 6y ago
The 94% effectiveness isonly reached one week after the second shot. Only 27% got the two shots. Also Israël recently got the UK strain which is far more transmissible.
Garlef 6y ago
> But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably > "Israeli study finds 94% drop in -> SYMPTOMATIC <- COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine" Asymptomatic cases still spread the virus.
- mattzito 6y ago
  They’re not saying there’s no decrease in asymptomatic cases, they’re saying they didn’t check for that. AstraZeneca’s study in the UK did surveillance testing of their study participants and found a significant drop in asymptomatic cases as well. Reasonable to assume the same is true with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
  - legolas2412 6y ago
    I find it inexcusable that moderna and pfizer decided to not test for asymptomatic at all, instead focusing on the subjective criterion of being symptomatic
- thu2111 6y ago
  Asymptomatic infection doesn't seem to exist. The current status of this belief amongst even the most panicked researchers is that "more data is needed": https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 But a large scale study in Wuhan found no cases of asymptomatic transmission, and the same findings have been found elsewhere. NB: there is a difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic. The latter sometimes can transmit.
  - xbmcuser 6y ago
    I think when people here say Asymptomatic they are probably talking about people that had a very mild symptoms maybe a bit of sniffles or a blocked nose not the scientific Asymptomatic of no symptoms at all
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Ah. Well if that's how people are using the term, what I said wouldn't apply to that. The term asymptomatic is clearly defined as "no symptoms at all and never develops any". Presymptomatic means "no symptoms at all but eventually develops some". I don't think there's a technical term for bit of sniffles/light cough beyond mild symptoms.
benja123 6y ago
Israel is dealing with a more aggressive strain right now (the UK mutation). What they have found, according to our news sites at least, is that it is causing a lot more of the under 65 group to become severely ill. Some groups are more affected than others (for instance they are seeing that a relatively large amount of women who are in their late term of pregnancy are hit hard by this variant) Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. In Hebrew, but interesting to look at if you want to follow the vaccination campaign https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general
- oblio 6y ago
  > Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. This should be a criminal offense. It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment in a more roundabout way.
  - benja123 6y ago
    It is, but I am not sure how you enforce it as it is extremely hard to prove. I think they should be going after the people who have been making posts encouraging this type of behavior. Unfortunately the anti-vaxxers in Israel are extremely aggressive and they use a lot of fear tactics and deceptive “marketing”. An approximate translation of the largest anti-vaccine group in Israel’s Facebook page title is “Vaccines, an educated choice”. I do think that more recently the tide has turned against them as Facebook has become much more aggressive in hiding their propaganda.
    - the_grue 6y ago
      I don't think you can reasonably conclude either that a) anti-vaxxer propaganda is effective insofar it attracts statistically significant number of new people under its bannder, or b) that FB blocking their pages effectively reverses the effect of (a). Personally, I hold the opinion that anti-vaxxers are more of a natural product of their environments than anything else. You can clearly see the distinction along the religious and educational boundaries, for example. Limiting the freedom of speech in attempt to silence them is not going to work, like it's not working in stopping any other kind of speech you don't like. Censorship is dangerous: it alienates people and prevents communication, effectively radicalizing those affected.
dm319 6y ago
The data for age group specific data is available freely in the UK. I did a quick analysis in R, and even though all over 75 and most over 70 have been vaccinated, I didn't see any increase in the rate of descent compared to other age groups. So not quite having a public health impact in overall numbers just yet (it's the lockdown that is doing that), but I have no doubt it will eventually. I wonder if part of it is that people are more willing to abide by the rules, now that we have possible way out of it.
- fenk85 6y ago
  Thats because UK only gave second dozes to 1% of people, as they made a decision to spread out second doze, also i believe they are using a different vaccine to Pfizer one
- dazc 6y ago
  My Dad, in the second-tier group of vulnerability [UK], only got his first jab last week and has to wait 11 weeks for his second. We still have a fair way to go before all vulnerable groups have had two jabs.
  - dm319 6y ago
    Yes, some areas are at different stages of the vaccine rollout. One jab provides excellent protection. 10 days after the pfizer jab gives you around 90-95% protection. Most of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable on vaccine science feel that a 12 week gap will provide better overall immunity - most vaccines are given months apart for boosters. The 3 week gap of the trial was likely a design constraint of rushed trials.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > So not quite having a public health impact in overall numbers just yet (it's the lockdown that is doing that), but I have no doubt it will eventually. I guess to the extent that people are actually following the lockdown rules, that substitutes pretty well for a vaccinated population. The advantage of vaccination (at least in theory) is that you can maintain those rates without being locked down.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Israel had a pretty large population that doesn’t want to be vaccinated so to get this number they compared people that were vaccinated against people that weren’t. It turns out that almost all people that get sick are the people that were not vaccinated.

by jansan 6y ago

ekvilibrist 6y ago

This is amongst a study of 600k Israelis, which is about 6% of the population. I believe their deal was that the entire population would be supplied the vaccine in exchange for their medical data, which is why Israel far ahead of most of the world in vaccination rate. But its still only 70% done if my googled source isn't way off. So still too early to see large scale effects.

tpm 6y ago
it's not 70% done, it's about 70 vaccines per 100 people, at 2 vaccines per person it should be 140 vaccines per 100 people to get to 70% of the population vaccinated.

throwaway4good 6y ago

Exactly. I don't understand why it is so unpopular to ask this obvious question? The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Given how much further Israel is, one would have expected it to stick much more out in the statistics. But it does not?

giantDinosaur 6y ago
It's not that hard to think of reasons why, even as effective vaccinations go up, deaths/cases may not decline in perfect symmetry. For example, certain groups may start caring less once the most vulnerable have been vaccinated, restrictions may be eased as more people are vaccinated, certain groups may be less likely to want vaccinations so a local epidemic occurs... etc.
amitport 6y ago
I live in Israel. There a three big points to make: 1 - There is a delay. While now we have more and more vaccinated people, much of the current cases in the hospital got infected before that. 2 - It changes from community to community but in general we have many people that are really not "disciplined". Either they believe coronovirus does not exist or it won't get them or that god will save them or the herd immunity is high enough (when it isn't)... excuses all over 3 - The vaccinations are not evenly distributed in the population (for lack of demand, supply is there). While in some places you have 70% in other communities you have 2%. (and those with 2% act like there's no coronavirus, see point 2)
- helge9210 6y ago
  > Either they believe coronovirus does not exist or it won't get them or that god will save them You can take case of yeshivas (religious schools): some have 80% of infected and recovered students. So when authorities come to the head of the school with a story about deadly virus, they don't understand each other. And examples of 90 years old elders dying from COVID-19 are meet with question "What you expected them to do instead at this age?"
- aphextron 6y ago
  > While in some places you have 70% in other communities you have 2%. (and those with 2% act like there's no coronavirus, see point 2) I've come to notice this over the last year. We now effectively live in two completely diverged realities. In one, coronavirus is a serious danger that affects our behavior and dominates every aspect of life, where we follow the news of new vaccines and declining case numbers with gratitude and relief, hoping to god that life can return to normal some day. In the other reality, COVID is just a flu. Maybe you might get it but it's not a big deal. Life goes on as normal and you are happily taking advantage of deals on travel, low crowds, and you get annoyed at being reminded to wear your mask. Meeting with friends, going to church, eating at restaurants. All of this is fine because you've convinced yourself it's no big deal. It's bizarre, and it has torn many of my personal relationships apart. I'm not sure how we ever fix this.
  - deleted 6y ago
thu2111 6y ago
The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage. Probably the latter. Mortality doesn't seem to be affected by (covid specific) policy: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27719/w27719.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27719/w277... https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/20-06.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/20-06.html https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... (there are lots of studies like these, I just picked three more or less at random)
- oblio 6y ago
  Interesting. In Luxembourg at least you can see the clear seasonal variation and also the enforcement of stricter lockdowns pretty much 1:1 in death rates and infection rates, accounting for the ~2-3 week delay in infection intervals.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Same in Greece: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/greece/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/greece/ Lockdown started in November, and relaxed on Jan 15 or so.
  - infinitysky 6y ago
    Well, as I saw in Luxembourg you surely can’t experience any of the vaccination effects yet. Is there a government there or what is going on?
    - oblio 6y ago
      For vaccinations? Nope, too few people have been vaccinated. But the claim above was for <<lockdowns>>, for which we do have data.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    When do you consider Luxembourg's lockdowns to have started and ended? Looking here: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=~LUX&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_cases&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... ... the curves look pretty similar to that of many other countries. There was apparently (according to Wikipedia) one between Nov 23rd and Dec 15th but that appears to have made no real difference, in fact, numbers per million were stable during those dates when they had previously been falling.
strulovich 6y ago
There an extra consideration to add here perhaps: the US experienced a post Christmas and New Year spike. That would be less pronounced in Israel where the vast majority does not celebrate Christmas and takes the New Year less seriously. (Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday of the similar time was earlier this year. And although some Arabs celebrate Christmas, many others are Muslim and do not)
- ars 6y ago
  Also Hanukkah is not a major holiday in Judaism. It gets inflated importance in the US because of proximity to major Christian holidays. The major holidays in Judaism were 5 months ago, just when the lockdowns started.

CyberRage 6y ago

In short, yes. There was a massive drop in elderly people developing COVID-19 symptoms but an increase in younger people. The vaccination rate at younger individuals is far lower than elder ones, also the vaccine created a false sense of safety for everyone.

voiper1 6y ago

I saw an article that the ICU no longer has elderly folks - they were prioritized for the vaccine. It's now younger people in the ICU: the vaccine started going out as the more contagious (and harmful) British variant started spreading in Israel. From this article: >Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who have been tabulating national data, said on Sunday that a sharp decline in hospitalisation and serious illness identified earlier among the first age group to be vaccinated - aged 60 or older - was seen for the first time in those aged 55 and older. >Hospitalisations and serious illness were still rising in younger groups who began vaccinations weeks later.

jsharf 6y ago

Israel has many different population groups. The Haredi population is acting like covid doesn’t exist and has insanely high numbers of cases. I suspect that despite the vaccine working well on your everyday science-trusting Israeli, the Haredi population is throwing off the average significantly. Source: I have family there. Recently the police tried to enforce the lockdown Bnei Brak (a city with a lot of Haredis). The Haredi rioted against this, yelled “Nazis” at the police, and burned down a bus. https://youtu.be/hG8ly4_zOt0 https://youtu.be/hG8ly4_zOt0

marshmallow_12 6y ago
downtote. This is anti semitic. A fringe minority rioted. It's far too simplistic to say that covid is simply being ignored.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  why am i getting downvotes? The hareidim ignore lockdown because their way of life is more important to them even then some deaths. Difficult for an outsider to understand. As for being anti vax, the vaccine is practically being forced down their throats. There will be a pushback (not that i agree). (and yes there could be more compliance, this is not the forum).
  - hef19898 6y ago
    IMHO the downvotes have two reasons: Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic. Complaining or commenting about downvotes is not regarded well on HN.
    - throwawayy1112 6y ago
      > Calling the Haredim out on their behaviour is not anti-semitic. I wonder if all the people who upvote this would take offense to the same statement applied to black people or whatever identity you want to swap in.

lucd 6y ago

The 94% effectiveness isonly reached one week after the second shot. Only 27% got the two shots. Also Israël recently got the UK strain which is far more transmissible.

Garlef 6y ago

> But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably > "Israeli study finds 94% drop in -> SYMPTOMATIC <- COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine" Asymptomatic cases still spread the virus.

mattzito 6y ago
They’re not saying there’s no decrease in asymptomatic cases, they’re saying they didn’t check for that. AstraZeneca’s study in the UK did surveillance testing of their study participants and found a significant drop in asymptomatic cases as well. Reasonable to assume the same is true with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
- legolas2412 6y ago
  I find it inexcusable that moderna and pfizer decided to not test for asymptomatic at all, instead focusing on the subjective criterion of being symptomatic
thu2111 6y ago
Asymptomatic infection doesn't seem to exist. The current status of this belief amongst even the most panicked researchers is that "more data is needed": https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 But a large scale study in Wuhan found no cases of asymptomatic transmission, and the same findings have been found elsewhere. NB: there is a difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic. The latter sometimes can transmit.
- xbmcuser 6y ago
  I think when people here say Asymptomatic they are probably talking about people that had a very mild symptoms maybe a bit of sniffles or a blocked nose not the scientific Asymptomatic of no symptoms at all
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Ah. Well if that's how people are using the term, what I said wouldn't apply to that. The term asymptomatic is clearly defined as "no symptoms at all and never develops any". Presymptomatic means "no symptoms at all but eventually develops some". I don't think there's a technical term for bit of sniffles/light cough beyond mild symptoms.

benja123 6y ago

Israel is dealing with a more aggressive strain right now (the UK mutation). What they have found, according to our news sites at least, is that it is causing a lot more of the under 65 group to become severely ill. Some groups are more affected than others (for instance they are seeing that a relatively large amount of women who are in their late term of pregnancy are hit hard by this variant) Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. In Hebrew, but interesting to look at if you want to follow the vaccination campaign https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general

oblio 6y ago
> Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. This should be a criminal offense. It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment in a more roundabout way.
- benja123 6y ago
  It is, but I am not sure how you enforce it as it is extremely hard to prove. I think they should be going after the people who have been making posts encouraging this type of behavior. Unfortunately the anti-vaxxers in Israel are extremely aggressive and they use a lot of fear tactics and deceptive “marketing”. An approximate translation of the largest anti-vaccine group in Israel’s Facebook page title is “Vaccines, an educated choice”. I do think that more recently the tide has turned against them as Facebook has become much more aggressive in hiding their propaganda.
  - the_grue 6y ago
    I don't think you can reasonably conclude either that a) anti-vaxxer propaganda is effective insofar it attracts statistically significant number of new people under its bannder, or b) that FB blocking their pages effectively reverses the effect of (a). Personally, I hold the opinion that anti-vaxxers are more of a natural product of their environments than anything else. You can clearly see the distinction along the religious and educational boundaries, for example. Limiting the freedom of speech in attempt to silence them is not going to work, like it's not working in stopping any other kind of speech you don't like. Censorship is dangerous: it alienates people and prevents communication, effectively radicalizing those affected.

dm319 6y ago

The data for age group specific data is available freely in the UK. I did a quick analysis in R, and even though all over 75 and most over 70 have been vaccinated, I didn't see any increase in the rate of descent compared to other age groups. So not quite having a public health impact in overall numbers just yet (it's the lockdown that is doing that), but I have no doubt it will eventually. I wonder if part of it is that people are more willing to abide by the rules, now that we have possible way out of it.

fenk85 6y ago
Thats because UK only gave second dozes to 1% of people, as they made a decision to spread out second doze, also i believe they are using a different vaccine to Pfizer one
dazc 6y ago
My Dad, in the second-tier group of vulnerability [UK], only got his first jab last week and has to wait 11 weeks for his second. We still have a fair way to go before all vulnerable groups have had two jabs.
- dm319 6y ago
  Yes, some areas are at different stages of the vaccine rollout. One jab provides excellent protection. 10 days after the pfizer jab gives you around 90-95% protection. Most of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable on vaccine science feel that a 12 week gap will provide better overall immunity - most vaccines are given months apart for boosters. The 3 week gap of the trial was likely a design constraint of rushed trials.
nicoburns 6y ago
> So not quite having a public health impact in overall numbers just yet (it's the lockdown that is doing that), but I have no doubt it will eventually. I guess to the extent that people are actually following the lockdown rules, that substitutes pretty well for a vaccinated population. The advantage of vaccination (at least in theory) is that you can maintain those rates without being locked down.

tinus_hn 6y ago

Israel had a pretty large population that doesn’t want to be vaccinated so to get this number they compared people that were vaccinated against people that weren’t. It turns out that almost all people that get sick are the people that were not vaccinated.