5 ms·

Between the vaccinated and the previously infected, how is the virus still finding hosts?

senectus1 5y ago
no one ever said vaccines and surviving previous infections meant you'll never get it and or spread it again. vaccination is going to limit the rate of growth, and the impact when infected. It may also mutate around the vaccination and previous infection protections. We're going to be living with it possibly forever.
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  Oh boy… time to shut down the whole world for 3 weeks. Edit: Arr! This post is a sinking ship! But really, most countries are locking down and getting rid of the virus. Just not at the same time… that’s a shame, because it just moves all around the world in waves. In Australia we eliminated COVID several times, just to catch it from India and the US… over and over. Yes, we have a few vaccines here. But not available to anyone except medical professionals. Vaccination rate is very low, perhaps the lowest in the world. Yet in between lockdowns and catching COVID from other countries, we live normally. Isolation of 2-3 weeks easily defeats COVID, even if delta strain and hundreds of cases, without vaccination. Global coordinated isolation seems like the safest and fastest way to end the pandemic. It works in Australia.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    Unfortunately, many of the world's major countries, including the USA and most countries of Europe, lack the political will for anything more than halfassed quasi-lockdowns that just drag things out.
    - abystander 5y ago
      > lack the political will In other words, countries outside the USA and many in Europe lack a culture of freedom.
- TranquilMarmot 5y ago
  We _are_ going to be living with it forever... most likely it will become endemic after a a while and circulate among the population like the common cold or the flu. But that is many years off. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6522 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6522
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    There's no reason it would have to be that way. We could eradicate any given influenza strain or individual cold virus if we really wanted to.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      The problem with that is that various bird species act as an influenza reservoir. Unless you want to perform extinction-level mass culling of birds, you're not going to be able to wipe it out for any significant amount of time.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Assuming universal vaccination, that specific strain is actually pretty much going to be wiped out. You're going to see other strains replace it, yes, but if we had in theory a 90% effective vaccine against every single strain of influenza we would be able to completely stop human transmission of influenza for a very long time.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Good news: none of us will have to live with this forever!
belltaco 5y ago
There is a good overlap between those two groups, looks like. Plus the delta strain seems to be causing more symptomatic cases(but still very few hospitalizations and deaths) in vaccinated folks than the previous strains. So that's causing more spread.
dehrmann 5y ago
Remember that vaccination status isn't uniformly distributed, so communities with 35% of people fully vaccinated, even with 20% of that having had it, will still see it spread with ease, especially as restrictions are dropped. That said, herd immunity thresholds vary massively. They're much lower in, say, Wyoming, than NYC.
runako 5y ago
- CDC estimates that ~114 million Americans have been infected - Approximately 158 million Americans have been vaccinated If you generously assume no overlap between these populations, that leaves ~56 million pristine hosts. Vax resistance is clustered geographically, so those 56 million are more likely to be near other unvaccinated people. 56 million is a lot of people. If you assume any meaningful number of people have been vaccinated after being infected, there could quite easily be 100 million or more latent hosts in the US. (Also vax effectiveness is not 100% so we expect some number of folks to contract the disease after being fully vaccinated.)
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  If you got coronavirus, you can be reinfected, too - especially with the P.1 variant [1]. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909850/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909850/
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    For the downvoters, this is Araraquara city study. A 2nd city adding to the case study first found in Manaus city. Even if you think that Manaus city's study was poorly done, the fact that this is a 2nd study in a 2nd city with similar results adds on to the evidence. The author list does not seem to match the Manaus city, aside from Ester C Sabino (who was 1st author in the Manaus study, but seems to be a much later author in this newer study). I'm assuming they got Sabino to discuss the other study in the context of this one.
Animats 5y ago
US vaccination rate is 43.7% (both doses for vaccines which require that). US coronavirus antibody seroprevelance rate was 22.0% as of late April 2021.[1] The data runs about 2 months behind. (Don't add those directly; there's overlap.) The 22% figure comes from a CDC national epidemic surveillance program. They take random samples from commercial blood labs, using samples taken for other medical purposes, and test them for antibodies. The test used now can distinguish between people who have had the disease and those vaccinated. So this is a low cost way to track the epidemic. There's state by state data for both vaccinations and seroprevelance, and it varies a lot by state. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab
tstrimple 5y ago
Because Republican (Trump) propaganda has convinced millions of conservatives not to get vaccinated. Fewer than 50% of Republicans have been vaccinated and of those, 75% say they will never get it. This is compared to over 85% of Democrats who have received at least the first vaccination shot.
loceng 5y ago
Vaccine is only 64% effective against Delta variant.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Importantly, it's still 93% effective in preventing hospitalizations [1]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/06/health/israel-pfizer-efficacy-delta-variant-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/06/health/israel-pfizer-efficacy...
  - asah 5y ago
    Hmmm, 7% requiring hospitalization = not odds I want to take.
    - usaar333 5y ago
      It's not 7% requiring hospitalization - it's that only 7% who would have been hospitalized had they developed an infection are hospitalized if they catch covid (relative, not absolute odds) For the record, ~2% of flu symptomatic illnesses result in hospitalization (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html), so unless you are terrified every winter, this probably shouldn't be considered that high of a risk.
      - asah 5y ago
        Yes obviously, I'm not an idiot. The point is that people round up anything above 90 as being 100, when actually low 90s is pretty bad. Arguably you did this too: 2% vs 7% don't round down to the same thing: one is 3.5 times higher.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - chroma 5y ago
      It’s not a 7% chance of hospitalization. It’s the normal hospitalization rate times 0.07. If you’re 40 years old, that means your chance of hospitalization is around 0.05%, or 50 in 100,000.[1] The risk is even lower if you’re healthy (no obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc). 1. I calculated this by taking the cumulative hospitalization rate (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hospital-rate-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hosp...) and assuming that 20% of Americans have gotten covid, then taking 7% of that. It’s not perfect but it’s within a factor of 2 of the real risk.

no one ever said vaccines and surviving previous infections meant you'll never get it and or spread it again. vaccination is going to limit the rate of growth, and the impact when infected. It may also mutate around the vaccination and previous infection protections. We're going to be living with it possibly forever.

aetherspawn 5y ago
Oh boy… time to shut down the whole world for 3 weeks. Edit: Arr! This post is a sinking ship! But really, most countries are locking down and getting rid of the virus. Just not at the same time… that’s a shame, because it just moves all around the world in waves. In Australia we eliminated COVID several times, just to catch it from India and the US… over and over. Yes, we have a few vaccines here. But not available to anyone except medical professionals. Vaccination rate is very low, perhaps the lowest in the world. Yet in between lockdowns and catching COVID from other countries, we live normally. Isolation of 2-3 weeks easily defeats COVID, even if delta strain and hundreds of cases, without vaccination. Global coordinated isolation seems like the safest and fastest way to end the pandemic. It works in Australia.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  Unfortunately, many of the world's major countries, including the USA and most countries of Europe, lack the political will for anything more than halfassed quasi-lockdowns that just drag things out.
  - abystander 5y ago
    > lack the political will In other words, countries outside the USA and many in Europe lack a culture of freedom.
TranquilMarmot 5y ago
We _are_ going to be living with it forever... most likely it will become endemic after a a while and circulate among the population like the common cold or the flu. But that is many years off. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6522 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6522
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  There's no reason it would have to be that way. We could eradicate any given influenza strain or individual cold virus if we really wanted to.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    The problem with that is that various bird species act as an influenza reservoir. Unless you want to perform extinction-level mass culling of birds, you're not going to be able to wipe it out for any significant amount of time.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Assuming universal vaccination, that specific strain is actually pretty much going to be wiped out. You're going to see other strains replace it, yes, but if we had in theory a 90% effective vaccine against every single strain of influenza we would be able to completely stop human transmission of influenza for a very long time.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Good news: none of us will have to live with this forever!

belltaco 5y ago

There is a good overlap between those two groups, looks like. Plus the delta strain seems to be causing more symptomatic cases(but still very few hospitalizations and deaths) in vaccinated folks than the previous strains. So that's causing more spread.

dehrmann 5y ago

Remember that vaccination status isn't uniformly distributed, so communities with 35% of people fully vaccinated, even with 20% of that having had it, will still see it spread with ease, especially as restrictions are dropped. That said, herd immunity thresholds vary massively. They're much lower in, say, Wyoming, than NYC.

runako 5y ago

- CDC estimates that ~114 million Americans have been infected - Approximately 158 million Americans have been vaccinated If you generously assume no overlap between these populations, that leaves ~56 million pristine hosts. Vax resistance is clustered geographically, so those 56 million are more likely to be near other unvaccinated people. 56 million is a lot of people. If you assume any meaningful number of people have been vaccinated after being infected, there could quite easily be 100 million or more latent hosts in the US. (Also vax effectiveness is not 100% so we expect some number of folks to contract the disease after being fully vaccinated.)

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
If you got coronavirus, you can be reinfected, too - especially with the P.1 variant [1]. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909850/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909850/
- dragontamer 5y ago
  For the downvoters, this is Araraquara city study. A 2nd city adding to the case study first found in Manaus city. Even if you think that Manaus city's study was poorly done, the fact that this is a 2nd study in a 2nd city with similar results adds on to the evidence. The author list does not seem to match the Manaus city, aside from Ester C Sabino (who was 1st author in the Manaus study, but seems to be a much later author in this newer study). I'm assuming they got Sabino to discuss the other study in the context of this one.

Animats 5y ago

US vaccination rate is 43.7% (both doses for vaccines which require that). US coronavirus antibody seroprevelance rate was 22.0% as of late April 2021.[1] The data runs about 2 months behind. (Don't add those directly; there's overlap.) The 22% figure comes from a CDC national epidemic surveillance program. They take random samples from commercial blood labs, using samples taken for other medical purposes, and test them for antibodies. The test used now can distinguish between people who have had the disease and those vaccinated. So this is a low cost way to track the epidemic. There's state by state data for both vaccinations and seroprevelance, and it varies a lot by state. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab

tstrimple 5y ago

Because Republican (Trump) propaganda has convinced millions of conservatives not to get vaccinated. Fewer than 50% of Republicans have been vaccinated and of those, 75% say they will never get it. This is compared to over 85% of Democrats who have received at least the first vaccination shot.

loceng 5y ago

Vaccine is only 64% effective against Delta variant.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Importantly, it's still 93% effective in preventing hospitalizations [1]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/06/health/israel-pfizer-efficacy-delta-variant-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/06/health/israel-pfizer-efficacy...
- asah 5y ago
  Hmmm, 7% requiring hospitalization = not odds I want to take.
  - usaar333 5y ago
    It's not 7% requiring hospitalization - it's that only 7% who would have been hospitalized had they developed an infection are hospitalized if they catch covid (relative, not absolute odds) For the record, ~2% of flu symptomatic illnesses result in hospitalization (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html), so unless you are terrified every winter, this probably shouldn't be considered that high of a risk.
    - asah 5y ago
      Yes obviously, I'm not an idiot. The point is that people round up anything above 90 as being 100, when actually low 90s is pretty bad. Arguably you did this too: 2% vs 7% don't round down to the same thing: one is 3.5 times higher.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chroma 5y ago
    It’s not a 7% chance of hospitalization. It’s the normal hospitalization rate times 0.07. If you’re 40 years old, that means your chance of hospitalization is around 0.05%, or 50 in 100,000.[1] The risk is even lower if you’re healthy (no obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc). 1. I calculated this by taking the cumulative hospitalization rate (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hospital-rate-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hosp...) and assuming that 20% of Americans have gotten covid, then taking 7% of that. It’s not perfect but it’s within a factor of 2 of the real risk.