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The “problem” is that vaccinated people with the virus but experiencing no symptoms is that they still spread it to both unvaccinated and vaccinated alike. Wh

The “problem” is that vaccinated people with the virus but experiencing no symptoms is that they still spread it to both unvaccinated and vaccinated alike. While many might not feel sympathy for the unvaccinated, a small % can’t get the vaccination, and there will still be that % of vaccinated people that do have a bad health outcome.

nradov 5y ago
At this point the Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated individuals. They're going to get exposed and infected eventually no matter what we do. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mlyle 5y ago
  Maybe. I quibble with "no significant herd immunity." I'm in an area with a very high vaccination rate (>87% of those over age 12 having had at least one dose, >80% fully vaccinated). Our case counts are a fraction of the rest of the country. The country's rates would be expected to be 3x lower if we could simply extrapolate my locale's rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people to those fractions of the population in the rest of the country. This seems to hold up in other high-vaccination regions, though obviously there are confounds. The phase delay and greatly decreased count even makes me speculate that my locale (which is still using some mitigations) may be operating in a regime of Rt < 1.0 right now, and all case chains (slowly) geometrically decay from outside introductions from travel, etc. And we expect immunity to improve further, from kids being vaccinated and from more unvaccinated people getting infected. Maybe this isn't true. But we seem, at the least, to be experiencing some benefit beyond the direct benefits for vaccinated individuals.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Case counts are meaningless as they largely reflect the level of testing. In most places there's not enough random population testing going on to get accurate infection counts. In the US the CDC estimates that infections are about 4× officially counted "cases".
    - mlyle 5y ago
      My locale also has the highest reported rates of testing that you'll find. Indeed, if you discount case counts and choose objective measures of increases in hospitalization (small to moderate) or increases in deaths (not detectable yet), the picture is even more tilted in the direction I describe. That is, it seems we undercount less here, so the difference in true rates is even greater than I claim above. Unfortunately, hospitalization and death rates are not broken out by vaccination status, and are low enough that they'd be mostly noise even if they were. This precludes doing the same kinds of analysis with death or hospitalization data. And, of course, the fact that my locale takes things more seriously on the whole is its own confound. That is, vaccination rates are not an independent variable.
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  My point is limited to problems with vaccinated people willfully exposing themselves to the virus on the basis their negative health outcome is low, and it might minimize bad health outcomes in the future. Even assuming that is true in most cases, they still carry and spread the virus. Point is vaccinated persons probably should not be willfully exposing themselves to the virus on the basis they are protected and will gain additional protections.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Any intentional infection should be accompanied by thorough testing and isolation.

nradov 5y ago

At this point the Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated individuals. They're going to get exposed and infected eventually no matter what we do. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mlyle 5y ago
Maybe. I quibble with "no significant herd immunity." I'm in an area with a very high vaccination rate (>87% of those over age 12 having had at least one dose, >80% fully vaccinated). Our case counts are a fraction of the rest of the country. The country's rates would be expected to be 3x lower if we could simply extrapolate my locale's rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people to those fractions of the population in the rest of the country. This seems to hold up in other high-vaccination regions, though obviously there are confounds. The phase delay and greatly decreased count even makes me speculate that my locale (which is still using some mitigations) may be operating in a regime of Rt < 1.0 right now, and all case chains (slowly) geometrically decay from outside introductions from travel, etc. And we expect immunity to improve further, from kids being vaccinated and from more unvaccinated people getting infected. Maybe this isn't true. But we seem, at the least, to be experiencing some benefit beyond the direct benefits for vaccinated individuals.
- nradov 5y ago
  Case counts are meaningless as they largely reflect the level of testing. In most places there's not enough random population testing going on to get accurate infection counts. In the US the CDC estimates that infections are about 4× officially counted "cases".
  - mlyle 5y ago
    My locale also has the highest reported rates of testing that you'll find. Indeed, if you discount case counts and choose objective measures of increases in hospitalization (small to moderate) or increases in deaths (not detectable yet), the picture is even more tilted in the direction I describe. That is, it seems we undercount less here, so the difference in true rates is even greater than I claim above. Unfortunately, hospitalization and death rates are not broken out by vaccination status, and are low enough that they'd be mostly noise even if they were. This precludes doing the same kinds of analysis with death or hospitalization data. And, of course, the fact that my locale takes things more seriously on the whole is its own confound. That is, vaccination rates are not an independent variable.
throwawaycities 5y ago
My point is limited to problems with vaccinated people willfully exposing themselves to the virus on the basis their negative health outcome is low, and it might minimize bad health outcomes in the future. Even assuming that is true in most cases, they still carry and spread the virus. Point is vaccinated persons probably should not be willfully exposing themselves to the virus on the basis they are protected and will gain additional protections.
- lupire 5y ago
  Any intentional infection should be accompanied by thorough testing and isolation.