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I will get downvoted... but really, 60% of the hospitalizations come from vaccinated population, does that really count as "incredibly effective"? Is that reall

I will get downvoted... but really, 60% of the hospitalizations come from vaccinated population, does that really count as "incredibly effective"? Is that really what people were hoping for when Pfizer & Moderna announced 94%+ effectiveness?

singhrac 5y ago
In addition to the clear example of Simpson’s paradox presented here: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... , I offer you the following intuition: if only 4 people in Israel were unvaccinated and 2 were in the hospital with 2 vaccinated patients, would you consider the vaccine effective? It’s important to look at the right numbers.
- charbonneau 5y ago
  The Simpson's paradox seems to refer to something else: https://twitter.com/_MiguelHernan/status/1428014414666420230 https://twitter.com/_MiguelHernan/status/1428014414666420230
- tracyhenry 5y ago
  I didn't say that the vaccine isn't effective. I'm saying this is nowhere near "incredibly effective". The post you cited is helpful. However, it is confusing the definition of efficacy. There were debates on what the efficacy meant when Pfizer and Moderna reported their high numbers. But there was *NO* definition saying that 94% efficacy means 94% of vaccinated people won't get SERIOUSLY sick. Most commonly, it meant either (1) 94% people will have lower chance of getting COVID (i.e. getting tested positive)[1], or (2) 94% people will have a lower chance of getting sick [2]. Now the post you cited essentially says 94% people won't get SERIOUSLY sick. This just proves that neither (1) or (2) above is true. [1] https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-explained.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-explai... [2] https://time.com/5945177/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness/ https://time.com/5945177/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness/
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Both [1] and [2] predate Delta so I don't know what you're on about. Not to mention recently discovered waning immunity. So [1] and [2] could definitely have been true at the time.
    - tracyhenry 5y ago
      Did the root comment say this is "INCREDIBLY" effective before Delta? Why is it so hard to understand what I'm trying to convey here? It's not "INCREDIBLY" effective now. Now waning immunity - did Pfizer or Moderna warn the world about it? Did they warn us about potential variants? Absolutely no, right? They posted the high numbers to pump their stock price. Vaccines are effective to some extent. But those two companies are not credible.
      - q1w2 5y ago
        The other important piece of information is that vaccinations were not given out homogeneously. The older and more vulnerable were vaccinated FIRST and at a higher rate, so seeing more of them hospitalized now 6 months later with a variant is not unexpected. What it really means, is that those same patients would probably be in the morgue, not the hospital if it wasn't for the vaccine.
  - ikerdanzel 5y ago
    Pro-vaxxer will not answer your original question. The fact is it is not incredibly effective now as Pfizer and Moderna effectiveness have drop to 70%+ and 40%+ respectively from their earlier 95%. 60% are hospitalize that means it is severe that warrant hospitalization. If it is incredibly effective, "hospitalization" for vaccinated should be under a few percentage point. Take a look at historical smallpox and polio vaccination. Now that is incredible effective. Vast majority of pro-vaxxer aren't aware of old stats, while predominantly getting over excited by media outlet or their less informed doctors acquintances. To be fair, those vaccines originally targeting earlier variant of Covid. Now you have Delta, likely Delta+ and Lambda or some more deadlier version of variants, the vaccine can only go down in effectiveness in coming 6mths. In fact, you should be hearing people getting those vaccines died due to immunity waning in coming 6mths. Expect booster shots and annual jabs just like flu shots.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 5y ago
You're getting down voted because you're falling into a statistical fallacy. For example, If 100% of the population was vaccinated, by definition 100% of those in the hospital would be vaccinated. That gives you no information on the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.
- higherup 5y ago
  So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam
  - pmkiwi 5y ago
    My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job. The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here. Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relatively speaking - quite a while ago so protection migh be indeed waning and the overall % is not that high (pretty surprised tbh).
    - higherup 5y ago
      > they are doing the job. As per https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-israeli-hospital-fully-vaccinated-what-does-this-mean-for-australia/ https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-isra... >Dr Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, stated that the majority of coronavirus patients in an Israeli hospital are fully vaccinated, including those with severe disease. >Dr Haviv further specified that: “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated,” adding “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people” and the hospital is “opening more and more COVID wards.” This has led him to conclude that “the effectiveness of the vaccine is fading out.” Note that I am not point out the fact that 95% is vaccinated. But that they are still overwhelming the hospitals, so it seems that your point no longer hold. Also from the same article > In other words, the TGA never saw or requested the patient data from Pfizer and simply accepted their reporting of their study as true.This means that when the head of the TGA John Skerritt said that “the safety evidence is pretty thorough” on February 6, his words would ring hollow to most Australians who have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the TGA had actually looked at the patient data before granting any such approval. As noted by Doctors for Covid Ethics on its website, it is currently not known whether any of the major government agencies around the globe (FDA, MHRA or EMA) has independently verified, or attempted to verify, Pfizer’s data, before proceeding with provisional/emergency authorisation of Pfizer’s mRNA therapy vaccine.
mthoms 5y ago
>the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people over age 60 (178.7 per 100,000) was nine times more than the rate among fully vaccinated people of the same age category, and the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people in the under-60 crowd (3.2 per 100,000) was a little more than double the rate among vaccinated people in that age bracket. From the article. Emphasis is mine.
- charbonneau 5y ago
  The question is: What's the difference between un-/vaccinated people >60? Why aren't they vaccinated? Different opinions? Health-related reasons? Without this information, it's tough to draw conclusions.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Why would their opinions matter? As for health, I think you might be alluding to pre-existing conditions? Can you elaborate on how you would see this affecting the result?
    - charbonneau 5y ago
      Extreme example: Person A with perfect health gets vaccinated. Person B undergoes palliative care and chooses not to get vaccinated. Person B's routine SARS-CoV-2 PCR test is positive and they're therefore classified as a hospitalized/severe case. It's a miracle that Israel even offers age-stratified hospitalizations data. But it's still not enough.
      - mthoms 5y ago
        Do you really think scenarios like this could account for skewing the data by a multiple of 9? Come on. >Without this information, it's tough to draw conclusions. Oh please. This data overwhelmingly shows that vaccinated people (>60) have better outcomes than non-vaccinated people(>60). The only debate is by how much.
foxhill 5y ago
in principle you shouldn’t be downvoted if you’re adding to the conversation, and whilst i don’t agree with your overall thesis, i think you have a valid concern. the OP’s statistics line up with the assertion that vaccines are certainly effective. if they weren’t, we’d expect to see similar proportions of vaccinated peoples hospitalised with covid. certainly, the vaccines have lost some of their efficacy. it can probably be attributed to “slow” rollout, and - probably more significantly - vaccine hesitancy/denial. israel’s high rollout percentage is relatively meaningless in the global context, unfortunately. the virus has more chances to interact with vaccinated individuals. in a similar fashion to not finishing antibiotics, it was inevitable that the virus would mutate to overcome the existing vaccines at some level. at this point, our only hope is that vaccines will at least make the virus less lethal. it’s not the ideal outcome, but given everything that’s happened thus far, i think it’s the best we can hope for.
- peter422 5y ago
  There is not a single known variant that provably escapes vaccine protection. It is not inevitable and it has not happened yet. Waning immunity has nothing to do with the virus mutating, it is just how the immune system works.
linuxhansl 5y ago
If 100% of all people are vaccinated that 100% of all hospitalization would be from vaccinated people. That says nothing about effectiveness of the vaccines. 78.8% of the population we're talking about here are vaccinated.
- gnabgib 5y ago
  58% from TFA, or [62.84% currently](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)
compsciphd 5y ago
I got vaccinated over 6 months ago. I'm getting my booster later today. It seems that those who were vaccinated more recently are more likely to be protected against delta as well.
- t0ughcritic 5y ago
  Booster? Where do you live?
ashildr 5y ago
> I will get downvoted... but really, Can we pelase just automatically downvote all posts starting like this?

singhrac 5y ago

In addition to the clear example of Simpson’s paradox presented here: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... , I offer you the following intuition: if only 4 people in Israel were unvaccinated and 2 were in the hospital with 2 vaccinated patients, would you consider the vaccine effective? It’s important to look at the right numbers.

charbonneau 5y ago
The Simpson's paradox seems to refer to something else: https://twitter.com/_MiguelHernan/status/1428014414666420230 https://twitter.com/_MiguelHernan/status/1428014414666420230
tracyhenry 5y ago
I didn't say that the vaccine isn't effective. I'm saying this is nowhere near "incredibly effective". The post you cited is helpful. However, it is confusing the definition of efficacy. There were debates on what the efficacy meant when Pfizer and Moderna reported their high numbers. But there was *NO* definition saying that 94% efficacy means 94% of vaccinated people won't get SERIOUSLY sick. Most commonly, it meant either (1) 94% people will have lower chance of getting COVID (i.e. getting tested positive)[1], or (2) 94% people will have a lower chance of getting sick [2]. Now the post you cited essentially says 94% people won't get SERIOUSLY sick. This just proves that neither (1) or (2) above is true. [1] https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-explained.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-explai... [2] https://time.com/5945177/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness/ https://time.com/5945177/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness/
- belltaco 5y ago
  Both [1] and [2] predate Delta so I don't know what you're on about. Not to mention recently discovered waning immunity. So [1] and [2] could definitely have been true at the time.
  - tracyhenry 5y ago
    Did the root comment say this is "INCREDIBLY" effective before Delta? Why is it so hard to understand what I'm trying to convey here? It's not "INCREDIBLY" effective now. Now waning immunity - did Pfizer or Moderna warn the world about it? Did they warn us about potential variants? Absolutely no, right? They posted the high numbers to pump their stock price. Vaccines are effective to some extent. But those two companies are not credible.
    - q1w2 5y ago
      The other important piece of information is that vaccinations were not given out homogeneously. The older and more vulnerable were vaccinated FIRST and at a higher rate, so seeing more of them hospitalized now 6 months later with a variant is not unexpected. What it really means, is that those same patients would probably be in the morgue, not the hospital if it wasn't for the vaccine.
- ikerdanzel 5y ago
  Pro-vaxxer will not answer your original question. The fact is it is not incredibly effective now as Pfizer and Moderna effectiveness have drop to 70%+ and 40%+ respectively from their earlier 95%. 60% are hospitalize that means it is severe that warrant hospitalization. If it is incredibly effective, "hospitalization" for vaccinated should be under a few percentage point. Take a look at historical smallpox and polio vaccination. Now that is incredible effective. Vast majority of pro-vaxxer aren't aware of old stats, while predominantly getting over excited by media outlet or their less informed doctors acquintances. To be fair, those vaccines originally targeting earlier variant of Covid. Now you have Delta, likely Delta+ and Lambda or some more deadlier version of variants, the vaccine can only go down in effectiveness in coming 6mths. In fact, you should be hearing people getting those vaccines died due to immunity waning in coming 6mths. Expect booster shots and annual jabs just like flu shots.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jayd16 5y ago

You're getting down voted because you're falling into a statistical fallacy. For example, If 100% of the population was vaccinated, by definition 100% of those in the hospital would be vaccinated. That gives you no information on the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.

higherup 5y ago
So even if 100% vaccination does not stop surges in covid hospitalisations, vaccines won't be considered ineffective, right? Jeez, what was these vaccines meant for originally? Just wanted to expose a flaw in this logic that seem to be repeated Ad nauseam
- pmkiwi 5y ago
  My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job. The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here. Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relatively speaking - quite a while ago so protection migh be indeed waning and the overall % is not that high (pretty surprised tbh).
  - higherup 5y ago
    > they are doing the job. As per https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-israeli-hospital-fully-vaccinated-what-does-this-mean-for-australia/ https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/most-covid-patients-at-isra... >Dr Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, stated that the majority of coronavirus patients in an Israeli hospital are fully vaccinated, including those with severe disease. >Dr Haviv further specified that: “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated,” adding “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people” and the hospital is “opening more and more COVID wards.” This has led him to conclude that “the effectiveness of the vaccine is fading out.” Note that I am not point out the fact that 95% is vaccinated. But that they are still overwhelming the hospitals, so it seems that your point no longer hold. Also from the same article > In other words, the TGA never saw or requested the patient data from Pfizer and simply accepted their reporting of their study as true.This means that when the head of the TGA John Skerritt said that “the safety evidence is pretty thorough” on February 6, his words would ring hollow to most Australians who have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the TGA had actually looked at the patient data before granting any such approval. As noted by Doctors for Covid Ethics on its website, it is currently not known whether any of the major government agencies around the globe (FDA, MHRA or EMA) has independently verified, or attempted to verify, Pfizer’s data, before proceeding with provisional/emergency authorisation of Pfizer’s mRNA therapy vaccine.

mthoms 5y ago

>the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people over age 60 (178.7 per 100,000) was nine times more than the rate among fully vaccinated people of the same age category, and the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people in the under-60 crowd (3.2 per 100,000) was a little more than double the rate among vaccinated people in that age bracket. From the article. Emphasis is mine.

charbonneau 5y ago
The question is: What's the difference between un-/vaccinated people >60? Why aren't they vaccinated? Different opinions? Health-related reasons? Without this information, it's tough to draw conclusions.
- mthoms 5y ago
  Why would their opinions matter? As for health, I think you might be alluding to pre-existing conditions? Can you elaborate on how you would see this affecting the result?
  - charbonneau 5y ago
    Extreme example: Person A with perfect health gets vaccinated. Person B undergoes palliative care and chooses not to get vaccinated. Person B's routine SARS-CoV-2 PCR test is positive and they're therefore classified as a hospitalized/severe case. It's a miracle that Israel even offers age-stratified hospitalizations data. But it's still not enough.
    - mthoms 5y ago
      Do you really think scenarios like this could account for skewing the data by a multiple of 9? Come on. >Without this information, it's tough to draw conclusions. Oh please. This data overwhelmingly shows that vaccinated people (>60) have better outcomes than non-vaccinated people(>60). The only debate is by how much.

foxhill 5y ago

in principle you shouldn’t be downvoted if you’re adding to the conversation, and whilst i don’t agree with your overall thesis, i think you have a valid concern. the OP’s statistics line up with the assertion that vaccines are certainly effective. if they weren’t, we’d expect to see similar proportions of vaccinated peoples hospitalised with covid. certainly, the vaccines have lost some of their efficacy. it can probably be attributed to “slow” rollout, and - probably more significantly - vaccine hesitancy/denial. israel’s high rollout percentage is relatively meaningless in the global context, unfortunately. the virus has more chances to interact with vaccinated individuals. in a similar fashion to not finishing antibiotics, it was inevitable that the virus would mutate to overcome the existing vaccines at some level. at this point, our only hope is that vaccines will at least make the virus less lethal. it’s not the ideal outcome, but given everything that’s happened thus far, i think it’s the best we can hope for.

peter422 5y ago
There is not a single known variant that provably escapes vaccine protection. It is not inevitable and it has not happened yet. Waning immunity has nothing to do with the virus mutating, it is just how the immune system works.

linuxhansl 5y ago

If 100% of all people are vaccinated that 100% of all hospitalization would be from vaccinated people. That says nothing about effectiveness of the vaccines. 78.8% of the population we're talking about here are vaccinated.

gnabgib 5y ago
58% from TFA, or [62.84% currently](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)

compsciphd 5y ago

I got vaccinated over 6 months ago. I'm getting my booster later today. It seems that those who were vaccinated more recently are more likely to be protected against delta as well.

t0ughcritic 5y ago
Booster? Where do you live?

ashildr 5y ago

> I will get downvoted... but really, Can we pelase just automatically downvote all posts starting like this?