14 ms·

Buried the lede: > At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but y

Buried the lede: > At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine.

phendrenad2 5y ago
Remained how "strong"?
rossdavidh 5y ago
Isn't this exactly what we would expect? It's more or less similar to what probably happened with the flu in 1920. New flu variants were still popping up, but they weren't like the 1918-1919 type, and the mortality rate was much lower. Plus, I recall being told before the vaccines showed up that they would be better at reducing mortality than at eliminating getting sick at all. Now, if you thought you were going to just stay in hiding and neither get vaccinated nor get sick, and just wait it out, well that's not going to work (and was never a good strategy). Covid-19 is the new flu, it will always be in circulation, but just get vaccinated and get on with life.
- Justsignedup 5y ago
  Ironically in NZ they have nether vaccine nor any remaining covid. Because they solved it as a community. Instead we created a global persistent pandemic. Cool.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    Unlike New Zealand, most countries don’t think indefinite draconian restrictions on travel and ever-present risk of being locked down with little notice are an acceptable price to pay for a small increase in life expectancy. I share that viewpoint, and am very happy not to live in New Zealand.
    - datameta 5y ago
      Except there would be no need for an ever present risk of lockdown if every single country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks a year and a half ago. But no, muh freedomᵀᴹ and the economy!! are far more important considerations that certainly didn't turn out to actually be incredibly short-sighted. I'm lucky to live in a place with >70% vaccination rate. So this no longer comes from a place of grievance toward personal inconvenience. I'm shaking my damn head at the collective lack of wisdom that was exhibited in countries' responses, including my own. ̶E̶d̶i̶t̶:̶ ̶P̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶v̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶.̶
      - umanwizard 5y ago
        > if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. > But no, muh freedom, and but the economy! Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?
        jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        >This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. China and the countries of Oceania did just this and have largely suppressed COVID without MRNA vaccines. China has a massive, porous land border. They've protected themselves from inbound infection by quarantining all visitors on arrival.
        umanwizard 5y ago
        > every single country
        jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        The pandemic is estimated to have cost the world >$16 trillion already. Now politicians are telling us we will have to live with it forever. For that price, we literally could have paid every human on earth $2,000 to shelter in place for 4 weeks.
  - Renaud 5y ago
    They solved it as long as they can live without contact with anyone else. As much as it shows what could be done with drastic measures, NZ is an island with small population, in the middle of nowhere so it can easily lock its borders compared to say, pretty much any European country. They certainly handled it better, but I'm not sure that they will actually be ready to live in a COVID world any time toon without a strong and thorough vaccination rollout like everybody else. Wanting to keep zero case as all cost is going to be increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain: how long will the population accept that they can't travel? Can an economy partially dependent on tourism afford not to be open? Wouldn't NZ be penalized at some point if business people/athletes/students/engineers/scientists can't fly to or from it? Even if all western countries had been exemplary -ignoring that it would probably be impossible anyway- as long as we don't ensure that even poorer countries are able to stamp out the virus, there will always remain sources of variants that will continue to spread across the world. Look at Australia. Small population, big country, huge barriers to entrance (even for residents), extreme quarantine measures, and yet, you only need a single infected person to start spreading again.[1] As long as the population won't reach the minimum vaccination level required, they will continue to be barred from travelling and get lockdowns. Looks like the only hope we have is to accept it's there and ensure that the impact remains manageable through vaccination and targetted health control measures. [1]:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/sydney-lockdown-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/sydney-lockdown-cov...
    - aunty_helen 5y ago
      Just to be clear, Australians are barred from leaving the country whilst NZers are free to come and go, provided when they return they do a 14 day quarantine at their own expense. Getting a spot in the quarantine hotels is difficult but possible on a 3 month time frame. As for the tourism thing, I’ve heard that it’s actually a net positive for the country(~1.5%). Whilst we have no foreign tourists, we’re also not heading overseas spending money.
      - Arnt 5y ago
        Are children free to play team sports? The lack of that really hurt here.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Well NZ can enjoy their isolation and constant threat of outbreak while the rest of the world goes back to normal.
  - TheGigaChad 5y ago
    Idiot soyboy cuckdowncel detected.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    NZ's strategy only makes sense with eventual vaccines. There is no chance that this disease would ever not become endemic. The world is too large, and too many countries don't have the advantages NZ does (comparitavely wealthy, isolated, low population density). They deserve props for keeping their population healthy until this point, but the idea that it can continue indefinitely, or that it was ever feasible for a large proportion of the world to replicate it is pure fantasy.
    - sjwalter 5y ago
      NZ's strategy (and all lockdown strategies) never made any sense and it was obvious from the get-go. Very early into the pandemic, we learned three crucial facts: 1) Covid is non-transmissible outside. 2) Vitamin D is a potent inhibitor of respiratory illness in general and covid in particular. 3) Obesity is the greatest risk-factor associated with covid. With these taken into account (and all are very well-supported by many of those peer-reviewed studies everyone seems to need in order to take any action), the best course of action is to encourage everyone to go outside, hang out with friends, don't wear masks outside (because this discourages going outside), exercise, and soak up lots of sun. The next "big wave" of covid in the northern hemisphere is going to come in the winter, just as all "seasonal illnesses" do. In fact, there's at least one study out lately that indicate that there's nothing seasonal about illnesses, but that vitamin D deficiency, brought on by staying inside during the cold months lowers group immunity and causes increased illness.
      - mmastrac 5y ago
        1) might not be true with Delta. There are cases of "passing" transmission of <30s contact. Too soon to tell, but what we learned early in the pandemic pre-delta may not apply now. 2) is still up in the air with studies going both ways (but get your vitamin D still, it has multiple benefits outside of this) 3) is somewhat true, but there are other big comorbidities as well (Diabetes, Downs Syndrome, etc), it's just that it's one that's highly visible in Western society and hypertension is very common in obese people.
        5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gregwebs 5y ago
  yep, it may be that these new variants are not attempting any kind of immune escape against vaccines. They might just replicate faster or may be more transmissive and we are seeing the inevitable outcome of a non-sterilizing vaccine: you still get an infection, it just usually isn't a bad one.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Yes, escape from circulating neutralizing antibodies (so the virus is able to infect you and replicate) is one thing. Escape from CD4+ T-cells is another thing (the dreaded "reset to 2019" fear). And the 1918 H1N1 influenza circulated as the only form of seasonal influenza until 1957 (when it was displaced by H2N2 which later became H2N3). From 1957 to 2009 H1N1 mutated in swine. After 50 years of mutating in probably billions of pigs the H1 envelope protein jumped back to humans in 2009. Since old people had pretty universally been exposed to pre-1957 H1N1 they had cross reactive partial immunity from T-cells that still recognized the H1 envelope protein and that pandemic fizzled. If you can't escape CD4+ T-cells after 50 years of mutating in pigs, I don't think that this coronavirus is going to be able to escape them in a year or two. Also at some point to achieve escape from neutralizing antibodies this virus is likely going to have to start making "choices" which make it less virulent. A decline in vaccine efficacy against delta could also indicate that the enhanced transmissibility of delta comes through partial vaccine/immune escape and not through ratcheting up R0/Rt (which would be more consistent with reports that it isn't more lethal / doesn't have higher viral loads, since those switches are all likely to move together).
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Would that mean there's an increased likelihood I'll be out and about while contagious if I get the vaccine? It would be hilarious if the same finger-waggers who want everyone vaccinated or quarantined would eventually want to reserve the vaccine for a privileged few.
- andybak 5y ago
  > the same finger-waggers who want everyone vaccinated or quarantined Ignoring the name-calling for a moment, what is it that you want for everyone?
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    To have autonomy over their own medical decisions.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Education and intelligence are necessary for achieving autonomy. In general, it's hard to take claims for "autonomy" seriously when so many people's decisions seem to be arrived at by uncritically following social media.
      - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        That cuts both ways. I remember the finger-waggers - for weeks - mocking people who chose to wear a mask in the early days of the pandemic, with the same tone of smug superiority they today reserve for people who choose not to. I'm a lot more worried about those types of people than the type who arrive at what look to me like sillier conclusions but don't seek to impose them on everyone.
        mindslight 5y ago
        I agree on the priority, but the latter types are ultimately still imposing the consequences of their decisions onto others - their extended families when they want to visit, their friendships where they can't help but pushing the nonsense into every conversation, public spaces if they're not actually continuing to wear a mask and social distance, institutions that are going back to business as usual (eg schools), etc. I'm all for making one's own decisions and going against the grain (eg wearing a mask at the start of the respiratory pandemic). I'm just saying that the dissent seems to consist of very few well-reasoned viewpoints, and a whole lot of herd following and outright nonsense.
cm2187 5y ago
To catch it or to get sick from it? Either way it would be fine. It basically reduces it to the level of a common cold, ie we can stop worrying about this virus.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  The unvaccinated can't (or shouldn't) stop worrying about it. This means they are less likely to be protected by other people being vaccinated.
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    Those who've already had covid and recovered never have to worry about it either. Also those under age 40 that aren't fat don't have to worry about it either.
0-_-0 5y ago
The next sentence is: From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalization was 98.2%, compared with 93% from June 6 to July 3 That's a 4x higher chance of hospitalisation.
- hellomyguys 5y ago
  It could be worse. It could have gone from a 99.9% to 99.1% in preventing hospitalization. That would be an 9x higher chance of hospitalization!
  - krona 5y ago
    That's the difference between extended lockdown periods and normality in many countries.
    - kurthr 5y ago
      I think you're confusing population wide death rates with post infection hospitalization rates. There's about 10x between death and hospitalization and there is about a 3-10x difference between population vs infection (for many countries 10-33% is a reasonable range of infection... except for China/Taiwan/Korea which are in the <1% range).
  - davidf18 5y ago
    Infection rate protection of 64% is the key number because of Long Covid. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/health/covid-19-patients.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/health/covid-19-patients.... A study of 2 million people with Covid. 1/4 had symptoms 1 month and later after the initial infection. 1/5 of those were asymptomatic -- they did not know that they had Covid until they complained of health issues consistent with others who had Covid and then were tested. Areas of the US that are not well vaccinated will be having real problems, but even those that are vaccinated will have to be very, very careful.
- vletal 5y ago
  Yeah, but it's still an astonishing result. Most of the non mRNA vaccines have efficacies below 90%, not taking into account the delta variant.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shoto_io 5y ago
It’s confirming data published by UK health authorities coming to the same conclusion. If you’re 2x vaccinated, hospitalization is highly unlikely for Alpha and Delta variants. See this report, page 44 bottom: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/994997/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_16.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- mizzack 5y ago
  What's going on on page 12? 35,251 unvax cases, 34 deaths 4,087 full vax cases, 26 deaths (!?) I'm guessing the vax population still skews older?
  - admiral33 5y ago
    Interesting. 57% fully vaccinated with phizer in Israel and 55% of new cases are vaccinated. Looks pretty even unlike what this report from the UK shows, hopefully the mortality rate is lower with phizer...
    - mizzack 5y ago
      > Looks like a pretty even split unlike what this report from the UK shows Israel's overall vax rate is higher than UK, so that would be expected to a degree.
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    Good catch. I assume the first number includes mostly children since Delta is mostly spreading through schools and children won't get any vaccine.
  - stavros 5y ago
    There's also page 14 here, where more vaccinated than unvaccinated patients died: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/997418/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_17.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Very odd, especially given the much higher numbers of unvaccinated hospitalizations.
sonicggg 5y ago
Lol, turn out fine. Health condition is not binary. There are way more nuances between healthy, hospitalised and dead. We are only now getting a better picture of the aftermath.
throw0101a 5y ago
> I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine. Except for possible brain damage: > In a June paper[5], he and his team analysed clinical details for 125 people in the United Kingdom with COVID-19 who had neurological or psychiatric effects. Of these, 62% had experienced damage to the brain’s blood supply, such as strokes and haemorrhages, and 31% had altered mental states, such as confusion or prolonged unconsciousness — sometimes accompanied by encephalitis, the swelling of brain tissue. Ten people who had altered mental states developed psychosis. > Not all people with neurological symptoms have been seriously ill in intensive-care units, either. “We’ve seen this group of younger people without conventional risk factors who are having strokes, and patients having acute changes in mental status that are not otherwise explained,” says Michael. * https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5 * https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/small-study-reveals-details-of-brain-damage-in-covid-19-patients/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/small-study-r... * https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-hidden-long-term-cognitive-effects-of-covid-2020100821133 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-hidden-long-term-cog... Even if you're (fully) vaccinated, it may be prudent to wear a mask.
- incrudible 5y ago
  As someone who was a hypochondriac before it went mainstream: I would not worry about it.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Note that the vaccines can also cause strokes via blood clotting, disability and death. It is not a huge surprise because the mechanism of action for the mRNA vaccines is quite similar to that of the virus itself. The primary difference is in the controlled dosage, as the mRNA does not self-replicate (at least not yet - some researchers are working on "self amplifying mRNA vaccines").
jasonlaramburu 5y ago
>but you’ll still turn out fine. Unless you get long covid.

Buried the lede: > At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Remained how "strong"?

rossdavidh 5y ago

Isn't this exactly what we would expect? It's more or less similar to what probably happened with the flu in 1920. New flu variants were still popping up, but they weren't like the 1918-1919 type, and the mortality rate was much lower. Plus, I recall being told before the vaccines showed up that they would be better at reducing mortality than at eliminating getting sick at all. Now, if you thought you were going to just stay in hiding and neither get vaccinated nor get sick, and just wait it out, well that's not going to work (and was never a good strategy). Covid-19 is the new flu, it will always be in circulation, but just get vaccinated and get on with life.

Justsignedup 5y ago
Ironically in NZ they have nether vaccine nor any remaining covid. Because they solved it as a community. Instead we created a global persistent pandemic. Cool.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Unlike New Zealand, most countries don’t think indefinite draconian restrictions on travel and ever-present risk of being locked down with little notice are an acceptable price to pay for a small increase in life expectancy. I share that viewpoint, and am very happy not to live in New Zealand.
  - datameta 5y ago
    Except there would be no need for an ever present risk of lockdown if every single country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks a year and a half ago. But no, muh freedomᵀᴹ and the economy!! are far more important considerations that certainly didn't turn out to actually be incredibly short-sighted. I'm lucky to live in a place with >70% vaccination rate. So this no longer comes from a place of grievance toward personal inconvenience. I'm shaking my damn head at the collective lack of wisdom that was exhibited in countries' responses, including my own. ̶E̶d̶i̶t̶:̶ ̶P̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶v̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶.̶
    - umanwizard 5y ago
      > if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. > But no, muh freedom, and but the economy! Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?
      - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        >This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. China and the countries of Oceania did just this and have largely suppressed COVID without MRNA vaccines. China has a massive, porous land border. They've protected themselves from inbound infection by quarantining all visitors on arrival.
        umanwizard 5y ago
        > every single country
        jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        The pandemic is estimated to have cost the world >$16 trillion already. Now politicians are telling us we will have to live with it forever. For that price, we literally could have paid every human on earth $2,000 to shelter in place for 4 weeks.
- Renaud 5y ago
  They solved it as long as they can live without contact with anyone else. As much as it shows what could be done with drastic measures, NZ is an island with small population, in the middle of nowhere so it can easily lock its borders compared to say, pretty much any European country. They certainly handled it better, but I'm not sure that they will actually be ready to live in a COVID world any time toon without a strong and thorough vaccination rollout like everybody else. Wanting to keep zero case as all cost is going to be increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain: how long will the population accept that they can't travel? Can an economy partially dependent on tourism afford not to be open? Wouldn't NZ be penalized at some point if business people/athletes/students/engineers/scientists can't fly to or from it? Even if all western countries had been exemplary -ignoring that it would probably be impossible anyway- as long as we don't ensure that even poorer countries are able to stamp out the virus, there will always remain sources of variants that will continue to spread across the world. Look at Australia. Small population, big country, huge barriers to entrance (even for residents), extreme quarantine measures, and yet, you only need a single infected person to start spreading again.[1] As long as the population won't reach the minimum vaccination level required, they will continue to be barred from travelling and get lockdowns. Looks like the only hope we have is to accept it's there and ensure that the impact remains manageable through vaccination and targetted health control measures. [1]:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/sydney-lockdown-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/sydney-lockdown-cov...
  - aunty_helen 5y ago
    Just to be clear, Australians are barred from leaving the country whilst NZers are free to come and go, provided when they return they do a 14 day quarantine at their own expense. Getting a spot in the quarantine hotels is difficult but possible on a 3 month time frame. As for the tourism thing, I’ve heard that it’s actually a net positive for the country(~1.5%). Whilst we have no foreign tourists, we’re also not heading overseas spending money.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      Are children free to play team sports? The lack of that really hurt here.
- refurb 5y ago
  Well NZ can enjoy their isolation and constant threat of outbreak while the rest of the world goes back to normal.
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
  Idiot soyboy cuckdowncel detected.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  NZ's strategy only makes sense with eventual vaccines. There is no chance that this disease would ever not become endemic. The world is too large, and too many countries don't have the advantages NZ does (comparitavely wealthy, isolated, low population density). They deserve props for keeping their population healthy until this point, but the idea that it can continue indefinitely, or that it was ever feasible for a large proportion of the world to replicate it is pure fantasy.
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    NZ's strategy (and all lockdown strategies) never made any sense and it was obvious from the get-go. Very early into the pandemic, we learned three crucial facts: 1) Covid is non-transmissible outside. 2) Vitamin D is a potent inhibitor of respiratory illness in general and covid in particular. 3) Obesity is the greatest risk-factor associated with covid. With these taken into account (and all are very well-supported by many of those peer-reviewed studies everyone seems to need in order to take any action), the best course of action is to encourage everyone to go outside, hang out with friends, don't wear masks outside (because this discourages going outside), exercise, and soak up lots of sun. The next "big wave" of covid in the northern hemisphere is going to come in the winter, just as all "seasonal illnesses" do. In fact, there's at least one study out lately that indicate that there's nothing seasonal about illnesses, but that vitamin D deficiency, brought on by staying inside during the cold months lowers group immunity and causes increased illness.
    - mmastrac 5y ago
      1) might not be true with Delta. There are cases of "passing" transmission of <30s contact. Too soon to tell, but what we learned early in the pandemic pre-delta may not apply now. 2) is still up in the air with studies going both ways (but get your vitamin D still, it has multiple benefits outside of this) 3) is somewhat true, but there are other big comorbidities as well (Diabetes, Downs Syndrome, etc), it's just that it's one that's highly visible in Western society and hypertension is very common in obese people.
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gregwebs 5y ago
yep, it may be that these new variants are not attempting any kind of immune escape against vaccines. They might just replicate faster or may be more transmissive and we are seeing the inevitable outcome of a non-sterilizing vaccine: you still get an infection, it just usually isn't a bad one.
lamontcg 5y ago
Yes, escape from circulating neutralizing antibodies (so the virus is able to infect you and replicate) is one thing. Escape from CD4+ T-cells is another thing (the dreaded "reset to 2019" fear). And the 1918 H1N1 influenza circulated as the only form of seasonal influenza until 1957 (when it was displaced by H2N2 which later became H2N3). From 1957 to 2009 H1N1 mutated in swine. After 50 years of mutating in probably billions of pigs the H1 envelope protein jumped back to humans in 2009. Since old people had pretty universally been exposed to pre-1957 H1N1 they had cross reactive partial immunity from T-cells that still recognized the H1 envelope protein and that pandemic fizzled. If you can't escape CD4+ T-cells after 50 years of mutating in pigs, I don't think that this coronavirus is going to be able to escape them in a year or two. Also at some point to achieve escape from neutralizing antibodies this virus is likely going to have to start making "choices" which make it less virulent. A decline in vaccine efficacy against delta could also indicate that the enhanced transmissibility of delta comes through partial vaccine/immune escape and not through ratcheting up R0/Rt (which would be more consistent with reports that it isn't more lethal / doesn't have higher viral loads, since those switches are all likely to move together).

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

Would that mean there's an increased likelihood I'll be out and about while contagious if I get the vaccine? It would be hilarious if the same finger-waggers who want everyone vaccinated or quarantined would eventually want to reserve the vaccine for a privileged few.

andybak 5y ago
> the same finger-waggers who want everyone vaccinated or quarantined Ignoring the name-calling for a moment, what is it that you want for everyone?
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  To have autonomy over their own medical decisions.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Education and intelligence are necessary for achieving autonomy. In general, it's hard to take claims for "autonomy" seriously when so many people's decisions seem to be arrived at by uncritically following social media.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      That cuts both ways. I remember the finger-waggers - for weeks - mocking people who chose to wear a mask in the early days of the pandemic, with the same tone of smug superiority they today reserve for people who choose not to. I'm a lot more worried about those types of people than the type who arrive at what look to me like sillier conclusions but don't seek to impose them on everyone.
      - mindslight 5y ago
        I agree on the priority, but the latter types are ultimately still imposing the consequences of their decisions onto others - their extended families when they want to visit, their friendships where they can't help but pushing the nonsense into every conversation, public spaces if they're not actually continuing to wear a mask and social distance, institutions that are going back to business as usual (eg schools), etc. I'm all for making one's own decisions and going against the grain (eg wearing a mask at the start of the respiratory pandemic). I'm just saying that the dissent seems to consist of very few well-reasoned viewpoints, and a whole lot of herd following and outright nonsense.

cm2187 5y ago

To catch it or to get sick from it? Either way it would be fine. It basically reduces it to the level of a common cold, ie we can stop worrying about this virus.

thinkcontext 5y ago
The unvaccinated can't (or shouldn't) stop worrying about it. This means they are less likely to be protected by other people being vaccinated.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  Those who've already had covid and recovered never have to worry about it either. Also those under age 40 that aren't fat don't have to worry about it either.

0-_-0 5y ago

The next sentence is: From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalization was 98.2%, compared with 93% from June 6 to July 3 That's a 4x higher chance of hospitalisation.

hellomyguys 5y ago
It could be worse. It could have gone from a 99.9% to 99.1% in preventing hospitalization. That would be an 9x higher chance of hospitalization!
- krona 5y ago
  That's the difference between extended lockdown periods and normality in many countries.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    I think you're confusing population wide death rates with post infection hospitalization rates. There's about 10x between death and hospitalization and there is about a 3-10x difference between population vs infection (for many countries 10-33% is a reasonable range of infection... except for China/Taiwan/Korea which are in the <1% range).
- davidf18 5y ago
  Infection rate protection of 64% is the key number because of Long Covid. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/health/covid-19-patients.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/health/covid-19-patients.... A study of 2 million people with Covid. 1/4 had symptoms 1 month and later after the initial infection. 1/5 of those were asymptomatic -- they did not know that they had Covid until they complained of health issues consistent with others who had Covid and then were tested. Areas of the US that are not well vaccinated will be having real problems, but even those that are vaccinated will have to be very, very careful.
vletal 5y ago
Yeah, but it's still an astonishing result. Most of the non mRNA vaccines have efficacies below 90%, not taking into account the delta variant.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shoto_io 5y ago

It’s confirming data published by UK health authorities coming to the same conclusion. If you’re 2x vaccinated, hospitalization is highly unlikely for Alpha and Delta variants. See this report, page 44 bottom: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/994997/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_16.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

mizzack 5y ago
What's going on on page 12? 35,251 unvax cases, 34 deaths 4,087 full vax cases, 26 deaths (!?) I'm guessing the vax population still skews older?
- admiral33 5y ago
  Interesting. 57% fully vaccinated with phizer in Israel and 55% of new cases are vaccinated. Looks pretty even unlike what this report from the UK shows, hopefully the mortality rate is lower with phizer...
  - mizzack 5y ago
    > Looks like a pretty even split unlike what this report from the UK shows Israel's overall vax rate is higher than UK, so that would be expected to a degree.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  Good catch. I assume the first number includes mostly children since Delta is mostly spreading through schools and children won't get any vaccine.
- stavros 5y ago
  There's also page 14 here, where more vaccinated than unvaccinated patients died: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/997418/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_17.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Very odd, especially given the much higher numbers of unvaccinated hospitalizations.

sonicggg 5y ago

Lol, turn out fine. Health condition is not binary. There are way more nuances between healthy, hospitalised and dead. We are only now getting a better picture of the aftermath.

throw0101a 5y ago

> I.e., Delta is more likely to get you sick, but you’ll still turn out fine. Except for possible brain damage: > In a June paper[5], he and his team analysed clinical details for 125 people in the United Kingdom with COVID-19 who had neurological or psychiatric effects. Of these, 62% had experienced damage to the brain’s blood supply, such as strokes and haemorrhages, and 31% had altered mental states, such as confusion or prolonged unconsciousness — sometimes accompanied by encephalitis, the swelling of brain tissue. Ten people who had altered mental states developed psychosis. > Not all people with neurological symptoms have been seriously ill in intensive-care units, either. “We’ve seen this group of younger people without conventional risk factors who are having strokes, and patients having acute changes in mental status that are not otherwise explained,” says Michael. * https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5 * https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/small-study-reveals-details-of-brain-damage-in-covid-19-patients/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/small-study-r... * https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-hidden-long-term-cognitive-effects-of-covid-2020100821133 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-hidden-long-term-cog... Even if you're (fully) vaccinated, it may be prudent to wear a mask.

incrudible 5y ago
As someone who was a hypochondriac before it went mainstream: I would not worry about it.
native_samples 5y ago
Note that the vaccines can also cause strokes via blood clotting, disability and death. It is not a huge surprise because the mechanism of action for the mRNA vaccines is quite similar to that of the virus itself. The primary difference is in the controlled dosage, as the mRNA does not self-replicate (at least not yet - some researchers are working on "self amplifying mRNA vaccines").

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

>but you’ll still turn out fine. Unless you get long covid.