4 ms·

does that mean the vaccine is not really effective?

silvester23 5y ago
I think a critical piece of information is missing here, namely how many of the 470 cases last week actually were vaccinated. It says 99,7% of the adult population is vaccinated, maybe there was a huge outbreak at a school or something.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
giarc 5y ago
It would be more important to look at the counties hospitalization rate and death rate. We know the vaccine doesn't stop breakthrough infections, but it does reduce morbidity and mortality.
- jboggan 5y ago
  The UK is releasing good stats on vaccinated/non-vaccinated outcomes that are thankfully broken down by age groups [0], since comparing an un-vaccinated 20 year old to a vaccinated 90 year old is extremely different. Overall it seems that the vaccinated cohort are contracting COVID at a higher rate per capita, while having lower hospitalization and morbidity rates than the unvaccinated once they are sick. The higher illness rate is surprising though and one reason the stats have raised some eyebrows in the UK government. [1] Some people will have issues with the commentary on this blog. I'm posting it in reference to these UK statistics because it's the only place I've seen the tabular data visualized, if you want to examine the raw UK government data yourself it's linked through from the blog. 0 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-watch-2ba https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-... 1 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-watch https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-...
  - giarc 5y ago
    Normally I would think that perhaps the behaviours of the vaccinated group differ from the unvaccinated and therefore affecting their risk profiles (ex. vax going out more, seeing other people), however, I don't think that is the case. Those that are unvaccinated are in that state by choice, and therefore they are unlikely to be unvaccinated and abstaining from risky behaviours. I wonder if the willingness to get tested might have something to do with it. If you are unvaccinated and sick, do you go get tested knowing that you'll have to face the onslaught of "told you so"... "this wouldn't have happened if you got vaccinated". So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data?
    - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
      > Those that are unvaccinated are in that state by choice, and therefore they are unlikely to be unvaccinated and abstaining from risky behaviours Your model of unvaccinated people seems a little too simplistic. There is a cohort of folks who have recovered from covid, seen the published evidence around natural immunity, and consider getting the vaccine to be an unknown risk with a known small benefit. That kind of risk/reward calculation is the kind of thing that might have them avoiding (for example) packed indoor spaces. > So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data? Anecdotal, but I think most of the people in my circles are vaccinated and I never hear of them getting tested, even when they have symptoms. Everyone has their own pet hypothesis in these situations, but who knows if any of them are even close. The simple model of "no covid vaccine" = "antivaxxer" = "dumb/irresponsible/shameful/etc" may feel satisfying and may be heavily pushed by the talking heads, but I don't think it's actually useful.
      - giarc 5y ago
        >There is a cohort of folks who have recovered from covid, seen the published evidence around natural immunity, and consider getting the vaccine to be an unknown risk with a known small benefit. I guess this depends on your jurisdiction. Where I live (Alberta) we have a vaccine passport system in place so you need to be vaccinated to get into many places. Therefore my assumption was based upon people not taking their past COVID history into account, and rather get the vaccine based upon their desire to go to a restaurant for example. My theory on who is getting tested or not is admittedly skewed toward the vocal minority of anti-vax protestors that take up more airtime then they truly occupy. I suspect that small group would be hesitant to get tested in hopes of avoiding the "told you so's". My anecdotal experience currently is that all my friends are vaccinated and get tested when sick. I know this because it derails plans every weekend..."Have to cancel Saturday plans, family is sick and booked a test for tomorrow". It happens almost every weekend in my life!
swayvil 5y ago
Yes, that would logically follow.
rei_ayanami 5y ago
Yeah, its only supposed to reduce the adverse symptoms of covid. You can still get covid (break through cases, rare) and not feel a thing.
- majou 5y ago
  Breakthrough infections are not exactly rare. A study of almost 800k US veterans showed efficacy drops from ~90% to ~50% after 6 months, depending on vaccine; all the way down to 13% for J&J. They're still effective for preventing death, but that looks to wane too. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20211105/covid-vaccine-protection-drops-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021110...
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  About that "rare" part... I'm gonna go ahead and say that 5% of the population in a week is no longer "rare", nor can we use the phrase "breakthrough infections" with a straight face anymore. We should just be done with that. The larger point about being effective against severe illness and death still stands, and seems to be so robust that it's not going to change now, so the vaccine is still very much worth it.
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    The 5% of the population figure is an error. The article also gives a much more realistic two-week incidence rate of 404 per 100,000 population, which is about 0.2% of the population per week.
  - ptha 5y ago
    The vaccine was never touted as being 100% effective. For Pfizer the (Lancet study) efficacy numbers ranged from 88-93%, the first month after full vaccination. After 4 months the effectiveness waned to 47-67% (depending on the variant). So now the focus on boosters. My point is that 100% vaccination should never have led to the expectation of 0 cases of covid. But the main thing was reducing ICU numbers/severe infections. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02183-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
bognition 5y ago
Depends on how you measure efficacy. If its preventing infections then the efficacy isn't great. If its preventing hospitalization and death then its extremely effective.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  if the measure is "preventing insurance liability in hospitalization of elderly" -- off the charts! "get vaccinated, get sick anyway"
  - lvh 5y ago
    Are you referring to the PREP Act COVID-19 liability immunity?
OneTimePetes 5y ago
The vaccine relies on the human immune response to fight the disease it learned. If there is a health-pandemic, that suppresses the imune-system (like unrecognized diabetes/ vitamin-d deficiency / rheumatic suppression medication) the disease will wage its attack against a weakened imune-system. Which creates ideal conditions for a full disease break-through. So Covid only highlights all sorts of failing health systems.
avs733 5y ago
no - it is a statistical artifact that reinforces everything we have heard about the limitations of any vaccine. Vaccines aren't binary
scottLobster 5y ago
Some napkin math: According to Wikipedia, the population of Waterford County is 116,176. With an infection rate of 405.7 per 100,000, that means ~471.3 total infections at present. At 99.7% vaccinated, that leaves 348.528 unvaccinated. So that could mean all of the unvaccinated got infected + 122.772 breakthrough infections, which would mean the vaccine is approximately 99.895% effective at preventing infection based on these numbers.
- majou 5y ago
  That's uh, pretty optimistic math you got there.
  - scottLobster 5y ago
    My point, which I thought obvious given the question I was responding to, is that the numbers from the article are not good evidence of vaccine ineffectiveness at preventing transmission, and shouldn't be taken as such. Let's assume the worst case scenario from the numbers given, that all the cases are breakthrough cases and none of the unvaccinated are infected (unlikely to say the least). At that point based on these numbers the vaccine can be considered 99.6% effective at preventing transmission. So if you're going to challenge vaccine effectiveness, do it with better data. I should add that the OP I was responding to was literally questioning vaccine effectiveness, with a vagueness that suggests some sort of anti-vax dog-whistling. And I am sick and tired of the vaccines being questioned by people who refuse to engage even childhood math skills to analyze the crappy data they bring to the table, but yet speak with triumphant, quippy rhetoric like imitating their favorite TV characters somehow lends credence to their argument. Am I projecting too much onto the OP? Maybe, but I've been in enough of these conversations to know what they're likely to sound like.
    - majou 5y ago
      Your conclusions make no sense in both cases. You need the number of unvaccinated and vaccinated cases to make any comparison. We do have data on vaccine effectiveness; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253672
srmarm 5y ago
My 90 year old grandma had an outbreak in her care home in Ireland a couple of weeks back. All survived and with relatively minor symptoms - not pleasant but a stark contrast to the reports of care home outbreaks last year. It's maybe not as perfect as we might have hoped but I'd say it's certainly having a hugely positive effect.
ac2u 5y ago
Someone more local to Waterford than me might be able to shed some light, but I believe Ireland used significant numbers of J&J single dose vaccines to speed up initial rollout. My understanding it that it had reduced efficacy against infection initially, which could be even more pronounced since Delta became dominant.
- Macha 5y ago
  J&J was the initial vaccine planned, as its weaker effectiveness against spread of Delta was discovered, they moved to favouring Pfizer and Moderna. While there was a decent rollout of J&J prior to that, the biggest group of J&J vaccinations was after they made that decision, they gave young people the option of going to a chemist to get a J&J vaccination ahead of schedule to deplete their stock while the regularly scheduled rollout continued with Pfizer and Moderna. I think people who originally got J&J did get the option to get Pfizer later.
  - ac2u 5y ago
    Thanks for filling in the details. The article would be more interesting if it was able to include a breakdown of the types of vaccines in the population for the period of time it's referencing.
derriz 5y ago
The previous time they measured this, as stated in the article, the county with the lowest vaccination rate had the highest incident rate. All you can say is that the _rank_ of a county by incident rate seems uncorrelated with its vaccination rate _given_ just these two points of evidence. There are 26 counties and vaccination stats and incident rate stats going back nearly a year which suggests this sample size (2) is too small to draw any kind of useful conclusions about the overall relationship. In any case it makes little sense to look correlations with the _rank_ (within the counties of Ireland) of the infection rate. The rank will have much higher variance than the underlying rate if the numbers are low for example which could be responsible for more outliers and it's outliers that attract media reports which can create a misleading impression.

I think a critical piece of information is missing here, namely how many of the 470 cases last week actually were vaccinated. It says 99,7% of the adult population is vaccinated, maybe there was a huge outbreak at a school or something.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

giarc 5y ago

It would be more important to look at the counties hospitalization rate and death rate. We know the vaccine doesn't stop breakthrough infections, but it does reduce morbidity and mortality.

jboggan 5y ago
The UK is releasing good stats on vaccinated/non-vaccinated outcomes that are thankfully broken down by age groups [0], since comparing an un-vaccinated 20 year old to a vaccinated 90 year old is extremely different. Overall it seems that the vaccinated cohort are contracting COVID at a higher rate per capita, while having lower hospitalization and morbidity rates than the unvaccinated once they are sick. The higher illness rate is surprising though and one reason the stats have raised some eyebrows in the UK government. [1] Some people will have issues with the commentary on this blog. I'm posting it in reference to these UK statistics because it's the only place I've seen the tabular data visualized, if you want to examine the raw UK government data yourself it's linked through from the blog. 0 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-watch-2ba https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-... 1 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-watch https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-...
- giarc 5y ago
  Normally I would think that perhaps the behaviours of the vaccinated group differ from the unvaccinated and therefore affecting their risk profiles (ex. vax going out more, seeing other people), however, I don't think that is the case. Those that are unvaccinated are in that state by choice, and therefore they are unlikely to be unvaccinated and abstaining from risky behaviours. I wonder if the willingness to get tested might have something to do with it. If you are unvaccinated and sick, do you go get tested knowing that you'll have to face the onslaught of "told you so"... "this wouldn't have happened if you got vaccinated". So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data?
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
    > Those that are unvaccinated are in that state by choice, and therefore they are unlikely to be unvaccinated and abstaining from risky behaviours Your model of unvaccinated people seems a little too simplistic. There is a cohort of folks who have recovered from covid, seen the published evidence around natural immunity, and consider getting the vaccine to be an unknown risk with a known small benefit. That kind of risk/reward calculation is the kind of thing that might have them avoiding (for example) packed indoor spaces. > So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data? Anecdotal, but I think most of the people in my circles are vaccinated and I never hear of them getting tested, even when they have symptoms. Everyone has their own pet hypothesis in these situations, but who knows if any of them are even close. The simple model of "no covid vaccine" = "antivaxxer" = "dumb/irresponsible/shameful/etc" may feel satisfying and may be heavily pushed by the talking heads, but I don't think it's actually useful.
    - giarc 5y ago
      >There is a cohort of folks who have recovered from covid, seen the published evidence around natural immunity, and consider getting the vaccine to be an unknown risk with a known small benefit. I guess this depends on your jurisdiction. Where I live (Alberta) we have a vaccine passport system in place so you need to be vaccinated to get into many places. Therefore my assumption was based upon people not taking their past COVID history into account, and rather get the vaccine based upon their desire to go to a restaurant for example. My theory on who is getting tested or not is admittedly skewed toward the vocal minority of anti-vax protestors that take up more airtime then they truly occupy. I suspect that small group would be hesitant to get tested in hopes of avoiding the "told you so's". My anecdotal experience currently is that all my friends are vaccinated and get tested when sick. I know this because it derails plans every weekend..."Have to cancel Saturday plans, family is sick and booked a test for tomorrow". It happens almost every weekend in my life!

swayvil 5y ago

Yes, that would logically follow.

rei_ayanami 5y ago

Yeah, its only supposed to reduce the adverse symptoms of covid. You can still get covid (break through cases, rare) and not feel a thing.

majou 5y ago
Breakthrough infections are not exactly rare. A study of almost 800k US veterans showed efficacy drops from ~90% to ~50% after 6 months, depending on vaccine; all the way down to 13% for J&J. They're still effective for preventing death, but that looks to wane too. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20211105/covid-vaccine-protection-drops-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021110...
kspacewalk2 5y ago
About that "rare" part... I'm gonna go ahead and say that 5% of the population in a week is no longer "rare", nor can we use the phrase "breakthrough infections" with a straight face anymore. We should just be done with that. The larger point about being effective against severe illness and death still stands, and seems to be so robust that it's not going to change now, so the vaccine is still very much worth it.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  The 5% of the population figure is an error. The article also gives a much more realistic two-week incidence rate of 404 per 100,000 population, which is about 0.2% of the population per week.
- ptha 5y ago
  The vaccine was never touted as being 100% effective. For Pfizer the (Lancet study) efficacy numbers ranged from 88-93%, the first month after full vaccination. After 4 months the effectiveness waned to 47-67% (depending on the variant). So now the focus on boosters. My point is that 100% vaccination should never have led to the expectation of 0 cases of covid. But the main thing was reducing ICU numbers/severe infections. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02183-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

bognition 5y ago

Depends on how you measure efficacy. If its preventing infections then the efficacy isn't great. If its preventing hospitalization and death then its extremely effective.

mistrial9 5y ago
if the measure is "preventing insurance liability in hospitalization of elderly" -- off the charts! "get vaccinated, get sick anyway"
- lvh 5y ago
  Are you referring to the PREP Act COVID-19 liability immunity?

OneTimePetes 5y ago

The vaccine relies on the human immune response to fight the disease it learned. If there is a health-pandemic, that suppresses the imune-system (like unrecognized diabetes/ vitamin-d deficiency / rheumatic suppression medication) the disease will wage its attack against a weakened imune-system. Which creates ideal conditions for a full disease break-through. So Covid only highlights all sorts of failing health systems.

avs733 5y ago

no - it is a statistical artifact that reinforces everything we have heard about the limitations of any vaccine. Vaccines aren't binary

scottLobster 5y ago

Some napkin math: According to Wikipedia, the population of Waterford County is 116,176. With an infection rate of 405.7 per 100,000, that means ~471.3 total infections at present. At 99.7% vaccinated, that leaves 348.528 unvaccinated. So that could mean all of the unvaccinated got infected + 122.772 breakthrough infections, which would mean the vaccine is approximately 99.895% effective at preventing infection based on these numbers.

majou 5y ago
That's uh, pretty optimistic math you got there.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  My point, which I thought obvious given the question I was responding to, is that the numbers from the article are not good evidence of vaccine ineffectiveness at preventing transmission, and shouldn't be taken as such. Let's assume the worst case scenario from the numbers given, that all the cases are breakthrough cases and none of the unvaccinated are infected (unlikely to say the least). At that point based on these numbers the vaccine can be considered 99.6% effective at preventing transmission. So if you're going to challenge vaccine effectiveness, do it with better data. I should add that the OP I was responding to was literally questioning vaccine effectiveness, with a vagueness that suggests some sort of anti-vax dog-whistling. And I am sick and tired of the vaccines being questioned by people who refuse to engage even childhood math skills to analyze the crappy data they bring to the table, but yet speak with triumphant, quippy rhetoric like imitating their favorite TV characters somehow lends credence to their argument. Am I projecting too much onto the OP? Maybe, but I've been in enough of these conversations to know what they're likely to sound like.
  - majou 5y ago
    Your conclusions make no sense in both cases. You need the number of unvaccinated and vaccinated cases to make any comparison. We do have data on vaccine effectiveness; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253672

srmarm 5y ago

My 90 year old grandma had an outbreak in her care home in Ireland a couple of weeks back. All survived and with relatively minor symptoms - not pleasant but a stark contrast to the reports of care home outbreaks last year. It's maybe not as perfect as we might have hoped but I'd say it's certainly having a hugely positive effect.

ac2u 5y ago

Someone more local to Waterford than me might be able to shed some light, but I believe Ireland used significant numbers of J&J single dose vaccines to speed up initial rollout. My understanding it that it had reduced efficacy against infection initially, which could be even more pronounced since Delta became dominant.

Macha 5y ago
J&J was the initial vaccine planned, as its weaker effectiveness against spread of Delta was discovered, they moved to favouring Pfizer and Moderna. While there was a decent rollout of J&J prior to that, the biggest group of J&J vaccinations was after they made that decision, they gave young people the option of going to a chemist to get a J&J vaccination ahead of schedule to deplete their stock while the regularly scheduled rollout continued with Pfizer and Moderna. I think people who originally got J&J did get the option to get Pfizer later.
- ac2u 5y ago
  Thanks for filling in the details. The article would be more interesting if it was able to include a breakdown of the types of vaccines in the population for the period of time it's referencing.

derriz 5y ago

The previous time they measured this, as stated in the article, the county with the lowest vaccination rate had the highest incident rate. All you can say is that the _rank_ of a county by incident rate seems uncorrelated with its vaccination rate _given_ just these two points of evidence. There are 26 counties and vaccination stats and incident rate stats going back nearly a year which suggests this sample size (2) is too small to draw any kind of useful conclusions about the overall relationship. In any case it makes little sense to look correlations with the _rank_ (within the counties of Ireland) of the infection rate. The rank will have much higher variance than the underlying rate if the numbers are low for example which could be responsible for more outliers and it's outliers that attract media reports which can create a misleading impression.