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>Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). I

by Imnimo 5y ago

>Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). Israel reported about 2K total positives yesterday. Are you trying to tell me that they were all vaccinated?

breck 5y ago
I thought it was 2.6K, not 2K. In which cause I'd adjust my numbers to ~1.5K vaccinated tested positive yesterday. I left myself plenty of margin of safety for the conclusion however. That's based on ~70% of hospitalized cases are vaccinated (https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general). I don't read Hebrew and can't tell if they are reporting immunization status of cases as well as hospitalizations and I'm missing that, which is why I'm estimating. You'd expect the % of hospitalized patients to be less vaccinated (assuming vaccines lower serious cases), but also more vaccinated (since the elderly have higher vax rates). For the ~700 I'm using the ~.1% x ~850K total infections.
- Imnimo 5y ago
  This is not a good way to go about making a comparison. First, hospitalized patients are a very different demographic than the population at large - you can't just hand-wave that away by saying that vaccination probably balances that out. A week ago, around 50% of infections were among vaccinated people, although this number has dropped significantly in the past week as the outbreak has reached communities with lower vaccination rates (ultra-orthodox, arab, etc.) Second, you can't extrapolate reinfection rates studied pre-delta to today. We have seen in other places that delta presents a greater reinfection risk. In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered. That number is not directly comparable to Israel's 0.1%, because it's measuring a different thing, but it does not suggest a 99.9% protection given the UK's total number of cases (about a tenth of their population over the course of the entire pandemic). I'm not saying that being previously infected doesn't offer strong protection. It clearly does. But you seem insistent on vastly overestimating the protection it offers while simultaneously underestimating the protection offered by vaccines. I think they're a lot closer than you're making them out to be.
  - breck 5y ago
    > In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered This is very interesting. I hadn't seen that. Can you share a link?
    - Imnimo 5y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20210727002758/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/delta-variant-reinfects-chances-getting-covid-small/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210727002758/https://www.teleg... (archive.org link to avoid paywall). >Comparatively, some 1.2 per cent of the 83,197 delta cases analysed were in people who previously had the virus – one in 83.
      - breck 5y ago
        Still in the ballpark of 99%, but trending the wrong way. Something to keep an eye on. Thanks!
        Imnimo 5y ago
        But as I said, these are not comparable quantities. 99.9% is the percentage of previously-infected people in Israel who were re-infected. This 99% is the percentage of infections which are reinfections. It's a totally different number. If we were to naively calculate an "effectiveness" from this data point (which I absolutely do not think we should do), it'd go like this: First, about 10% of the UK population has been infected. If there were no protection for re-infected people, we'd, of course, expect 10% of cases to be re-infections. Instead it's more like 1%, which suggests that being previously infected makes you 10x less likely to be infected. This gives a 90% back-of-the-envelope "effectiveness" against reinfection. Now, I don't think it's actually 90% - I think that analysis leaves out a lot of other information we'd need to know. And besides, we'd have to perform a similar conversion for the Israeli 99.9% number to have something to compare to. But we shouldn't make the mistake of saying "99.9% and 99% are in the same ballpark".

by Imnimo 5y ago

breck 5y ago

I thought it was 2.6K, not 2K. In which cause I'd adjust my numbers to ~1.5K vaccinated tested positive yesterday. I left myself plenty of margin of safety for the conclusion however. That's based on ~70% of hospitalized cases are vaccinated (https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general). I don't read Hebrew and can't tell if they are reporting immunization status of cases as well as hospitalizations and I'm missing that, which is why I'm estimating. You'd expect the % of hospitalized patients to be less vaccinated (assuming vaccines lower serious cases), but also more vaccinated (since the elderly have higher vax rates). For the ~700 I'm using the ~.1% x ~850K total infections.

Imnimo 5y ago
This is not a good way to go about making a comparison. First, hospitalized patients are a very different demographic than the population at large - you can't just hand-wave that away by saying that vaccination probably balances that out. A week ago, around 50% of infections were among vaccinated people, although this number has dropped significantly in the past week as the outbreak has reached communities with lower vaccination rates (ultra-orthodox, arab, etc.) Second, you can't extrapolate reinfection rates studied pre-delta to today. We have seen in other places that delta presents a greater reinfection risk. In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered. That number is not directly comparable to Israel's 0.1%, because it's measuring a different thing, but it does not suggest a 99.9% protection given the UK's total number of cases (about a tenth of their population over the course of the entire pandemic). I'm not saying that being previously infected doesn't offer strong protection. It clearly does. But you seem insistent on vastly overestimating the protection it offers while simultaneously underestimating the protection offered by vaccines. I think they're a lot closer than you're making them out to be.
- breck 5y ago
  > In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered This is very interesting. I hadn't seen that. Can you share a link?
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210727002758/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/delta-variant-reinfects-chances-getting-covid-small/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210727002758/https://www.teleg... (archive.org link to avoid paywall). >Comparatively, some 1.2 per cent of the 83,197 delta cases analysed were in people who previously had the virus – one in 83.
    - breck 5y ago
      Still in the ballpark of 99%, but trending the wrong way. Something to keep an eye on. Thanks!
      - Imnimo 5y ago
        But as I said, these are not comparable quantities. 99.9% is the percentage of previously-infected people in Israel who were re-infected. This 99% is the percentage of infections which are reinfections. It's a totally different number. If we were to naively calculate an "effectiveness" from this data point (which I absolutely do not think we should do), it'd go like this: First, about 10% of the UK population has been infected. If there were no protection for re-infected people, we'd, of course, expect 10% of cases to be re-infections. Instead it's more like 1%, which suggests that being previously infected makes you 10x less likely to be infected. This gives a 90% back-of-the-envelope "effectiveness" against reinfection. Now, I don't think it's actually 90% - I think that analysis leaves out a lot of other information we'd need to know. And besides, we'd have to perform a similar conversion for the Israeli 99.9% number to have something to compare to. But we shouldn't make the mistake of saying "99.9% and 99% are in the same ballpark".