12 ms·

I was told this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

arbuge 5y ago
What that means is that the unvaccinated are much more likely to become seriously ill if infected: https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90ba-b123-45d4-868b-14ca22b9f214.html https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90... It does not mean that the vaccinated cannot spread disease, however.
- gfodor 5y ago
  There is presently to my understanding a lot of claims of severity reduction, but I would like to see evidence and an explanation for it. My working model is that a consistent alternative explanation is the vaccine reduces infection risk dramatically but once infected severity can be the same.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Lower hospitalization rates amongst the vaccinated seem to suggest less people are getting seriously ill.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Which is an important point. While the vaccinated are still getting COVID, and even sometimes ending up in the ICU, they very often aren't ending up hospitalized or in the ICU. The vast majority of ICU patients are unvaccinated [1]. [1] https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-icu-patients-hit-record-highs-pandemic-new-report-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-more-15-times https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-...
      - TheBlight 5y ago
        It's tempting to look at vaccinated/unvaccinated as a perfect RCT and the unvaccinated are a control group. This clearly isn't the case. There are surely many confounders at play. Looking at this release's underlying report they mention: "The age-adjusted mortality rate among unvaccinated individuals was 5.00 cases per 100,000 unvaccinated population and the age-adjusted mortality rate among vaccinated individuals was 0.33 per 100,000 vaccinated individuals for the four-week period ending August 28, 2021." So the difference in mortality rate is roughly ~5 in 100,000 of the population. This is a very low number. Does it obviously override any possible confounders to indicate a strong signal? Also remember this is age-adjusted. I would imagine this difference is substantially smaller for cohorts omitting the elderly. Is there a material benefit to younger reasonably healthy people? It seems the question is muddier than is typically made out.
        tzs 5y ago
        Generally when judging how some intervention does compared to not intervening, I believe you would divide the rates not subtract the rates.
        TheBlight 5y ago
        I guess you're unable to respond to the substance of what I'm saying. Nominal risk reduction of already insanely low risk is not compelling especially when confounders are present and cannot be accounted for.
      - charbonneau 5y ago
        > https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-icu-patients-hit-record-highs-pandemic-new-report-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-more-15-times https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-... It's frankly irresponsible to say this. We are talking about what's essentially an exploratory study that needs a LOT of followup before taking action and pushing it in a way that's going to cause people to run scared.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      No it suggests P(severe|vaccinated) is much lower than P(severe|unvaccinated) which isn't the same thing as saying the vaccines reduce P(severe|infected). It's funny I've been downvoted tho because it shows how tribalist people are about vaccines that they can't even understand an argument that has no influence on ex-ante vaccine risk assessment.
  - nkohari 5y ago
    That isn't how the immune system works. It's not a binary gate that's either open or closed. It's more like a war between two armies, and it depends on which side musters the larger army and how creatively the armies fight. If the vaccine reduces chance of infection, it will also reduce severity, because both operate via the same mechanism: antibodies killing the virus.
  - qzw 5y ago
    There’s also population skew since the vaccination rate is much higher among older Americans, and older people are more at risk of severe illness in general.
  - timy2shoes 5y ago
    The evidence definitely points the other way, see [0]. The vaccines dramatically reduce the rate of severe infection and hospitalization. The vaccines do not prevent infection, they prime your immune system to fight the infection. That is why the endpoint for the clinical trials is not infection, which would have to be determined by testing, but rather symptomatic infection. [0] 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-...
  - bredren 5y ago
    I have seen this "alternative explanation" or variation on it used as an equivocation to justify the choice to go without being vaccinated. I recently saw a social media post of a person in an ICU with Covid expressing regret about not getting vaccinated, and urging others to get vaccinated. One of their "friends" commented in response to the post with parent's "alternative explanation." Would someone please share a link to source data showing that infection severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated is not similar?
    - gfodor 5y ago
      The alternative explanation does not change P(severe infection|vaccinated), so doesn't change the nature of the choice to get vaccinated. But it would imply, if proven, that the claim that vaccines reduce severity is false. If the alternative explanation is proven, it implies that people who are vaccinated and develop an infection should react to that news the same as an unvaccinated person. In other words, even if the alternative explanation doesn't influence the choice to get vaccinated, if it is true and we are saying it's false it would mean vaccinated people are more likely to die once infected because they've been led to believe it is not as serious a concern to be infected and will be less likely to, for example, notify their doctor as promptly or go to the ER given they have been informed their risk of severe infection is low.
  - TheBlight 5y ago
    I've been trying to find accurate signals of this and haven't found much. I've only really spent time looking into the <50 yo cohort. I think the confounders for older folks are too significant to glean much truth from the type of data we have. Data: Graph from the CDC: https://i.imgur.com/Ql25IjB.png https://i.imgur.com/Ql25IjB.png Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm Spreadsheet based on weekly UK data: https://i.imgur.com/yySYFyd.png https://i.imgur.com/yySYFyd.png Source (PDF warning): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1014926/Technical_Briefing_22_21_09_02.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... And a Twitter thread on Israel for good measure: https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1434237628258344961 https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1434237628258344961 All of this data says the same thing to me. Basically if you're younger there is no significant evidence these vaccines reduce your risk. In the CDC case: They show 1-2 unvaccinated hospitalized cases out of 100k and <1 for vaccinated (<50 cohort). It's important to remember in all of this data the unvaccinated do not represent a strict control group which is analogous to one found in an RCT. In the UK case: ~0.5% less incidence of hospitalization for <50 cohort and effectively none wrt mortality. In the Israeli thread: Author comes to the opposite conclusion and decides to call risk reduction 90% even though they're comparing 2 extremely tiny numbers. Both less than 1 severe case out of 100,000. If the improvement over severe outcomes is so stark, as many claim, then where should I look to see this data such that I can come to agreement?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
cartoonworld 5y ago
Unfortunately, every time Sars-CoV-2 spreads and increases its infection tally, mutation can occur which has a chance to beneficially influence selection in the next infection cycle. Unlike how bacterial infections could gain or incrementally increase some of its antibiotic immunity or other attributes thanks to the conditions in a single host, for example incomplete or unnecessary antibiotic regimens, viral infections need to be infecting new cells in order to experience meaningful mutations. This is where immune function influences viral mutation. Less immunity will result in more cell infection which directly creates opportunities for mutations as the virus replicates. If a vaccine improves host immunity enough that they replicate less virus, they will cause much less mutation. The relationship is non-linear because of the multiplicative nature of viral spread (r0?) My opinion is that isn't anybody's "fault" that a pandemic virus is causing such unbelievable mayhem, but vaccinations and immunology is the truest course to achieving excellent results going forward. Edit: Virus does not require fresh host to mutate
- isoprophlex 5y ago
  > viral infections need to be infecting new hosts in order to experience meaningful mutations. Interesting! What causes this, is there some keyword i can search for in order to learn more?
  - achenatx 5y ago
    The assertion is not correct, viruses do not need to spread to new hosts to experience meaningful mutation.
    - cartoonworld 5y ago
      Yes, it is much more precise to state that they must be replicating in order to mutate. I've edited my comment to reflect this, Thanks :) If RNA is damaged and changed and the virus particle is destroyed or for some reason never replicates, I don't count that as mutating, but then again what do I know.
      - 5y ago
geofft 5y ago
By whom? It's a pandemic, it affects everyone. It's right there in the name. I'm fully vaccinated, and I spent half an hour at a bank yesterday (wearing an N95) and I'm voluntarily quarantining for two weeks. It's a deadly disease. It doesn't care about your PR slogans or your political alignment. It does care about transmission, which is why avoiding unnecessary trips, wearing real ventilators (not cloth masks, Fauci is lying to you when he says they work, all scientific evidence is that they don't), and getting vaccinated all reduce the likelihood that either you will get it or you will transmit it to someone else. Nothing gets the likelihood to 0%.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- _Microft 5y ago
  It is not the wearer that cloth masks offer protection to but to their environment. That's mostly achieved by slowing and diffusing the exhaled air and making it less likely that the infectious droplets reach others in the first place. I wouldn't want to have to wear one now that it's almost exclusively the Delta variant making the rounds but they were an acceptable measure against the wild variety/Alpha. Look for a study from Jena, a town in Germany, that issued a mask mandate weeks before other regions if you are curious.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Whether cloth masks “work” depends on your definition of work. They appear to be better than no mask at all, but not as good as surgical masks or N95 masks.
- poetaster 5y ago
  I have a professional cloth kn95 mask. It is MORE effective then the cheaper models, according to the technical u. In Berlin. The number of layers, 5 in this case, and anti viral agents contribute.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  It's extremely unlikely you're going to get COVID from your bank trip. Many, many healthcare workers treated COVID patients every day for nine months unvaccinated and didn't get COVID. You are vaccinated, it's only half an hour, and it's unlikely that anyone in the bank has COVID. IMO wearing better masks is a great thing, and so is minimizing indoor time with strangers, but it's also possible to overdo COVID protection. Most of the spread of COVID is among unvaccinated people doing things indoors and unmasked. Unfortunately, you being even more careful will not affect their behavior.
everdrive 5y ago
Reflexive and thoughtless media critiques really aren't very useful. "The media" is not a singular entity, this sort of critique suggests a false hypocrisy: - Multiple entities are amalgamated into one single entity. (ie, "the media.") - Two conflicting statements are put side by side and meant to suggest a hypocrisy. In reality, it's not a hypocrisy when two unrelated entities make statements which are at odds. - Often, a straw-man version of the argument is used to help foster the hypocrisy claim. In this case, "this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated." This is not a good faith argument because vaccinated individuals are much less likely to spread the virus, and to become seriously ill. It is an equivocation of meaning: "can the vaccinated be involved whatsoever" vs. "is this primarily affecting the unvaccinated?"
alex_c 5y ago
OK, I'll bite. Ontario had 554 new reported cases of COVID yesterday. Of these cases: - 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated) - 56 were partially vaccinated - 136 were fully vaccinated - 44 unknown In other words, roughly 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 40% of reported cases. OK, but reported cases are blah blah, who cares, right? Individual cases will vary in severity and everyone can make their own decisions about risk tolerance, etc etc. But the strain on our health care system is the biggest cost we all share in the pandemic regardless of personal choices, so let's look at ICU numbers instead: - 113 unvaccinated - 7 partially vaccinated - 8 fully vaccinated You can draw your own conclusions. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/pkbgrz/ontario_sep_8th_update_554_cases_11_new_5_old/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/pkbgrz/ontario_sep...
- nanis 5y ago
  > Ontario had 554 new reported cases of COVID yesterday. > - 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated) > 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 50% of reported cases. Your overall point would remain valid even without exaggerating by 28%.
  - alex_c 5y ago
    You mean the 50%? You're right, my math was lazy. Edited to 40%.
- TheBlight 5y ago
  Where I live teachers/in-classroom workers who are unvaccinated are tested 4x per month and vaccinated are tested 1x. You can draw your own conclusions.
  - alex_c 5y ago
    That unvaccinated people are higher risk of getting and spreading Covid? I agree, although I'm not sure what is the significance of the 4:1 ratio. Ontario's numbers suggest a risk ratio closer to 7:1 or 8:1 right now.
niklasbuschmann 5y ago
Why is there always some smug comment about vaccine effectiveness? Comments about COVID in general have left me disappointed with this community.
jfrankamp 5y ago
You were told correctly? Brad Little of Idaho says greater than 98% of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are unvaccinated (link below). Cases are probably the most unstable of those stats, but the point is unvaccinated folks are bearing the majority of the pain. https://twitter.com/GovernorLittle/status/1425930020086636544 https://twitter.com/GovernorLittle/status/142593002008663654...
- nanis 5y ago
  If you look at the press release[1]: > 98.9-percent of new COVID-19 cases since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated > 98.6-percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated > 98.7-percent of COVID-19 deaths since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated These kinds of numbers games naturally lead one to suspect an agenda. On January 12, 2021, a grand total of 0.24 percent of the Idaho population was fully vaccinated. > Since May 15, there have been 10-times as many COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people > Since May 15, there have been 13-times as many COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people > Since May 15, there have been 8-times as many COVID-19 deaths among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people. As of May 15, 31% of Idhoans were fully vaccinated[2]. > Over 197 million Americans have received the vaccine safely. According to the CDC[3], C> As of August 30, 2021, more than 173 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Why does the governor feel the need to overstate the number of fully vaccinated people by almost 14% in a press release dated Thursday August 12, 2021? [1]: https://gov.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idahoans-urged-to-receive-covid-19-vaccine-now-as-students-head-back-to-school/ https://gov.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idahoans-urged-to-receive... [2]: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/f6217a7ccbd2fbcfda8c73211a3a8469daa0cae8/public/data/vaccinations/us_state_vaccinations.csv https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/f6217a7ccbd2fbcfd... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
  - rspeele 5y ago
    If somebody has only had 1 shot, it is fair to say that they "have received the vaccine safely", but they are not yet "fully vaccinated". Hence the discrepancy between the 197m and 173m.

What that means is that the unvaccinated are much more likely to become seriously ill if infected: https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90ba-b123-45d4-868b-14ca22b9f214.html https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90... It does not mean that the vaccinated cannot spread disease, however.

gfodor 5y ago
There is presently to my understanding a lot of claims of severity reduction, but I would like to see evidence and an explanation for it. My working model is that a consistent alternative explanation is the vaccine reduces infection risk dramatically but once infected severity can be the same.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Lower hospitalization rates amongst the vaccinated seem to suggest less people are getting seriously ill.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Which is an important point. While the vaccinated are still getting COVID, and even sometimes ending up in the ICU, they very often aren't ending up hospitalized or in the ICU. The vast majority of ICU patients are unvaccinated [1]. [1] https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-icu-patients-hit-record-highs-pandemic-new-report-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-more-15-times https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-...
    - TheBlight 5y ago
      It's tempting to look at vaccinated/unvaccinated as a perfect RCT and the unvaccinated are a control group. This clearly isn't the case. There are surely many confounders at play. Looking at this release's underlying report they mention: "The age-adjusted mortality rate among unvaccinated individuals was 5.00 cases per 100,000 unvaccinated population and the age-adjusted mortality rate among vaccinated individuals was 0.33 per 100,000 vaccinated individuals for the four-week period ending August 28, 2021." So the difference in mortality rate is roughly ~5 in 100,000 of the population. This is a very low number. Does it obviously override any possible confounders to indicate a strong signal? Also remember this is age-adjusted. I would imagine this difference is substantially smaller for cohorts omitting the elderly. Is there a material benefit to younger reasonably healthy people? It seems the question is muddier than is typically made out.
      - tzs 5y ago
        Generally when judging how some intervention does compared to not intervening, I believe you would divide the rates not subtract the rates.
        TheBlight 5y ago
        I guess you're unable to respond to the substance of what I'm saying. Nominal risk reduction of already insanely low risk is not compelling especially when confounders are present and cannot be accounted for.
    - charbonneau 5y ago
      > https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-icu-patients-hit-record-highs-pandemic-new-report-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-more-15-times https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-... It's frankly irresponsible to say this. We are talking about what's essentially an exploratory study that needs a LOT of followup before taking action and pushing it in a way that's going to cause people to run scared.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    No it suggests P(severe|vaccinated) is much lower than P(severe|unvaccinated) which isn't the same thing as saying the vaccines reduce P(severe|infected). It's funny I've been downvoted tho because it shows how tribalist people are about vaccines that they can't even understand an argument that has no influence on ex-ante vaccine risk assessment.
- nkohari 5y ago
  That isn't how the immune system works. It's not a binary gate that's either open or closed. It's more like a war between two armies, and it depends on which side musters the larger army and how creatively the armies fight. If the vaccine reduces chance of infection, it will also reduce severity, because both operate via the same mechanism: antibodies killing the virus.
- qzw 5y ago
  There’s also population skew since the vaccination rate is much higher among older Americans, and older people are more at risk of severe illness in general.
- timy2shoes 5y ago
  The evidence definitely points the other way, see [0]. The vaccines dramatically reduce the rate of severe infection and hospitalization. The vaccines do not prevent infection, they prime your immune system to fight the infection. That is why the endpoint for the clinical trials is not infection, which would have to be determined by testing, but rather symptomatic infection. [0] 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-...
- bredren 5y ago
  I have seen this "alternative explanation" or variation on it used as an equivocation to justify the choice to go without being vaccinated. I recently saw a social media post of a person in an ICU with Covid expressing regret about not getting vaccinated, and urging others to get vaccinated. One of their "friends" commented in response to the post with parent's "alternative explanation." Would someone please share a link to source data showing that infection severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated is not similar?
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The alternative explanation does not change P(severe infection|vaccinated), so doesn't change the nature of the choice to get vaccinated. But it would imply, if proven, that the claim that vaccines reduce severity is false. If the alternative explanation is proven, it implies that people who are vaccinated and develop an infection should react to that news the same as an unvaccinated person. In other words, even if the alternative explanation doesn't influence the choice to get vaccinated, if it is true and we are saying it's false it would mean vaccinated people are more likely to die once infected because they've been led to believe it is not as serious a concern to be infected and will be less likely to, for example, notify their doctor as promptly or go to the ER given they have been informed their risk of severe infection is low.
- TheBlight 5y ago
  I've been trying to find accurate signals of this and haven't found much. I've only really spent time looking into the <50 yo cohort. I think the confounders for older folks are too significant to glean much truth from the type of data we have. Data: Graph from the CDC: https://i.imgur.com/Ql25IjB.png https://i.imgur.com/Ql25IjB.png Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm Spreadsheet based on weekly UK data: https://i.imgur.com/yySYFyd.png https://i.imgur.com/yySYFyd.png Source (PDF warning): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1014926/Technical_Briefing_22_21_09_02.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... And a Twitter thread on Israel for good measure: https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1434237628258344961 https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1434237628258344961 All of this data says the same thing to me. Basically if you're younger there is no significant evidence these vaccines reduce your risk. In the CDC case: They show 1-2 unvaccinated hospitalized cases out of 100k and <1 for vaccinated (<50 cohort). It's important to remember in all of this data the unvaccinated do not represent a strict control group which is analogous to one found in an RCT. In the UK case: ~0.5% less incidence of hospitalization for <50 cohort and effectively none wrt mortality. In the Israeli thread: Author comes to the opposite conclusion and decides to call risk reduction 90% even though they're comparing 2 extremely tiny numbers. Both less than 1 severe case out of 100,000. If the improvement over severe outcomes is so stark, as many claim, then where should I look to see this data such that I can come to agreement?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

cartoonworld 5y ago

Unfortunately, every time Sars-CoV-2 spreads and increases its infection tally, mutation can occur which has a chance to beneficially influence selection in the next infection cycle. Unlike how bacterial infections could gain or incrementally increase some of its antibiotic immunity or other attributes thanks to the conditions in a single host, for example incomplete or unnecessary antibiotic regimens, viral infections need to be infecting new cells in order to experience meaningful mutations. This is where immune function influences viral mutation. Less immunity will result in more cell infection which directly creates opportunities for mutations as the virus replicates. If a vaccine improves host immunity enough that they replicate less virus, they will cause much less mutation. The relationship is non-linear because of the multiplicative nature of viral spread (r0?) My opinion is that isn't anybody's "fault" that a pandemic virus is causing such unbelievable mayhem, but vaccinations and immunology is the truest course to achieving excellent results going forward. Edit: Virus does not require fresh host to mutate

isoprophlex 5y ago
> viral infections need to be infecting new hosts in order to experience meaningful mutations. Interesting! What causes this, is there some keyword i can search for in order to learn more?
- achenatx 5y ago
  The assertion is not correct, viruses do not need to spread to new hosts to experience meaningful mutation.
  - cartoonworld 5y ago
    Yes, it is much more precise to state that they must be replicating in order to mutate. I've edited my comment to reflect this, Thanks :) If RNA is damaged and changed and the virus particle is destroyed or for some reason never replicates, I don't count that as mutating, but then again what do I know.
    - 5y ago

geofft 5y ago

By whom? It's a pandemic, it affects everyone. It's right there in the name. I'm fully vaccinated, and I spent half an hour at a bank yesterday (wearing an N95) and I'm voluntarily quarantining for two weeks. It's a deadly disease. It doesn't care about your PR slogans or your political alignment. It does care about transmission, which is why avoiding unnecessary trips, wearing real ventilators (not cloth masks, Fauci is lying to you when he says they work, all scientific evidence is that they don't), and getting vaccinated all reduce the likelihood that either you will get it or you will transmit it to someone else. Nothing gets the likelihood to 0%.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_Microft 5y ago
It is not the wearer that cloth masks offer protection to but to their environment. That's mostly achieved by slowing and diffusing the exhaled air and making it less likely that the infectious droplets reach others in the first place. I wouldn't want to have to wear one now that it's almost exclusively the Delta variant making the rounds but they were an acceptable measure against the wild variety/Alpha. Look for a study from Jena, a town in Germany, that issued a mask mandate weeks before other regions if you are curious.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Whether cloth masks “work” depends on your definition of work. They appear to be better than no mask at all, but not as good as surgical masks or N95 masks.
poetaster 5y ago
I have a professional cloth kn95 mask. It is MORE effective then the cheaper models, according to the technical u. In Berlin. The number of layers, 5 in this case, and anti viral agents contribute.
cameldrv 5y ago
It's extremely unlikely you're going to get COVID from your bank trip. Many, many healthcare workers treated COVID patients every day for nine months unvaccinated and didn't get COVID. You are vaccinated, it's only half an hour, and it's unlikely that anyone in the bank has COVID. IMO wearing better masks is a great thing, and so is minimizing indoor time with strangers, but it's also possible to overdo COVID protection. Most of the spread of COVID is among unvaccinated people doing things indoors and unmasked. Unfortunately, you being even more careful will not affect their behavior.

everdrive 5y ago

Reflexive and thoughtless media critiques really aren't very useful. "The media" is not a singular entity, this sort of critique suggests a false hypocrisy: - Multiple entities are amalgamated into one single entity. (ie, "the media.") - Two conflicting statements are put side by side and meant to suggest a hypocrisy. In reality, it's not a hypocrisy when two unrelated entities make statements which are at odds. - Often, a straw-man version of the argument is used to help foster the hypocrisy claim. In this case, "this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated." This is not a good faith argument because vaccinated individuals are much less likely to spread the virus, and to become seriously ill. It is an equivocation of meaning: "can the vaccinated be involved whatsoever" vs. "is this primarily affecting the unvaccinated?"

alex_c 5y ago

OK, I'll bite. Ontario had 554 new reported cases of COVID yesterday. Of these cases: - 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated) - 56 were partially vaccinated - 136 were fully vaccinated - 44 unknown In other words, roughly 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 40% of reported cases. OK, but reported cases are blah blah, who cares, right? Individual cases will vary in severity and everyone can make their own decisions about risk tolerance, etc etc. But the strain on our health care system is the biggest cost we all share in the pandemic regardless of personal choices, so let's look at ICU numbers instead: - 113 unvaccinated - 7 partially vaccinated - 8 fully vaccinated You can draw your own conclusions. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/pkbgrz/ontario_sep_8th_update_554_cases_11_new_5_old/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/pkbgrz/ontario_sep...

nanis 5y ago
> Ontario had 554 new reported cases of COVID yesterday. > - 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated) > 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 50% of reported cases. Your overall point would remain valid even without exaggerating by 28%.
- alex_c 5y ago
  You mean the 50%? You're right, my math was lazy. Edited to 40%.
TheBlight 5y ago
Where I live teachers/in-classroom workers who are unvaccinated are tested 4x per month and vaccinated are tested 1x. You can draw your own conclusions.
- alex_c 5y ago
  That unvaccinated people are higher risk of getting and spreading Covid? I agree, although I'm not sure what is the significance of the 4:1 ratio. Ontario's numbers suggest a risk ratio closer to 7:1 or 8:1 right now.

niklasbuschmann 5y ago

Why is there always some smug comment about vaccine effectiveness? Comments about COVID in general have left me disappointed with this community.

jfrankamp 5y ago

You were told correctly? Brad Little of Idaho says greater than 98% of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are unvaccinated (link below). Cases are probably the most unstable of those stats, but the point is unvaccinated folks are bearing the majority of the pain. https://twitter.com/GovernorLittle/status/1425930020086636544 https://twitter.com/GovernorLittle/status/142593002008663654...

nanis 5y ago
If you look at the press release[1]: > 98.9-percent of new COVID-19 cases since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated > 98.6-percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated > 98.7-percent of COVID-19 deaths since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated These kinds of numbers games naturally lead one to suspect an agenda. On January 12, 2021, a grand total of 0.24 percent of the Idaho population was fully vaccinated. > Since May 15, there have been 10-times as many COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people > Since May 15, there have been 13-times as many COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people > Since May 15, there have been 8-times as many COVID-19 deaths among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people. As of May 15, 31% of Idhoans were fully vaccinated[2]. > Over 197 million Americans have received the vaccine safely. According to the CDC[3], C> As of August 30, 2021, more than 173 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Why does the governor feel the need to overstate the number of fully vaccinated people by almost 14% in a press release dated Thursday August 12, 2021? [1]: https://gov.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idahoans-urged-to-receive-covid-19-vaccine-now-as-students-head-back-to-school/ https://gov.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idahoans-urged-to-receive... [2]: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/f6217a7ccbd2fbcfda8c73211a3a8469daa0cae8/public/data/vaccinations/us_state_vaccinations.csv https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/f6217a7ccbd2fbcfd... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
- rspeele 5y ago
  If somebody has only had 1 shot, it is fair to say that they "have received the vaccine safely", but they are not yet "fully vaccinated". Hence the discrepancy between the 197m and 173m.