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How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated

128 points by Jugurtha 5y ago

dougmwne 5y ago
Dear HN, should I, a man under 40 get a booster shot? How many months after my second dose should I get it? What are the best resources to answer this question? This information is scary hard to get for someone who wants science, not politics.
- s5300 5y ago
  >> What are the best resources to answer this question? ….seriously? Your doctor Good lord we are in for some bad times
  - thugthrasher 5y ago
    And if you don't trust your doctor to give you good information, then find another doctor. And never go back to the doctor you can't trust again.
    - belter 5y ago
      You do not live in the Netherlands... https://www.gezondheidsplein.nl/nieuws/wisselen-van-huisarts-vaak-onmogelijk/item68907 https://www.gezondheidsplein.nl/nieuws/wisselen-van-huisarts...
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      It's not so much about trusting your doctor. For me, it's more about utter absurdity of the image of every single patient of a GP calling said doctor to ask this question, and thinking that the answer given is going to be any more specific for most of those patients than, say, guidance from the CDC. Yes, if you have existing medical conditions that your doctor is aware of, they may be in a better position to point out any potential interactions between those conditions, any treatment you already receive, and a booster. But I'm guessing that this isn't a description of most of the population. I'm also not sure that most doctor's offices really want every single patient calling in to ask "Should I get the booster?", and might simply be unable to deal with such a flood of questions. There's also the little detail of millions of Americans not actually having "a doctor" in the traditional sense.
  - distances 5y ago
    For what it's worth, it would never cross my mind to get a doctor's appointment to just ask if I should get a booster. The health care system does not have enough slack for everyone to do that. I'd read official recommendations.
    - s5300 5y ago
      For what it’s worth, every recommendation I can remember hearing or reading advised to consult with your doctor to “see if the vaccine is right for you” Upon receiving any sort of medical injection, you’re also typically recommended to follow up with your doctor.
      - distances 5y ago
        For Covid in Europe at least you get the consultation when getting the jab. So I would (and do) check recommendations, reserve a vaccination slot, and talk with the doctor administering the vaccine if I have any questions.
- gardncl 5y ago
  >What are the best resources to answer this question? Your physician. Not hacker news.
  - belter 5y ago
    Your physician if he reads hacker news
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      Cute response folks. My physician is also my MIL. She is also not sure if boosters are a good idea. Doctors are not all equipped to keep up on the latest research on a rapidly changing topic. If I ask a doctor outside my family I am not likely to get linked to the latest research and an explanation of its quality. I am absolutely able to read a study and interpret its results. I read the phase 3 trial results for Moderna and was satisfied that it was excellent evidence for getting the vaccine. I’m not yet aware of any booster studies outside of antibody counts post booster. It would be nice to have an idea of how much my risk of Covid drops and for how long, but I’m not sure if we have evidence collected on that yet.
  - concinds 5y ago
    Your average family physician reads exactly zero published papers per year, and would rely on Googling and reading health authority summary pages or media sources. If the goal is convincing skeptical family members with hard facts, searching the scientific literature oneself is likely much more effective.
- xigoi 5y ago
  I'm not a medical expert, but my country (Czechia) recommends getting the third dose 6 months after the second.
- sjg007 5y ago
  In the US: 6 months after the 2nd mRNA dose or 2 months after J&J.
- undersuit 5y ago
  I biked over to the employee health center yesterday and got my Moderna booster. Early April and May were when I went for the initial vaccinations. 34 Male, 31.2 BMI I'm going to Las Vegas after Christmas, don't want anything disrupting the fun.
- satysin 5y ago
  Your countries health care service most likely has public guidelines on this which you should consult. If you have some kind of medical condition and a booster concerns you I advise you make an appointment with your doctor to discuss your specific concerns and get professional advice. Hacker News is not the place to ask such a question nor give any response other than "check with your local health care service or doctor" imho.
- notatoad 5y ago
  as a person asking this question on the internet, i'm going to assume that you are not a scientist, and probably unqualified to make a scientific decision. you might be able to read some scientific-sounding information, but unless you're a professional in the field your odds of coming to a correct conclusion based on information you read is no better than random, and will almost certainly be biased by your politics. i'll be getting a booster when my local health authorities say i'm eligible for one, because i know i have no relevant expertise that enables me to make a scientific conclusion on this subject. and neither does HN.
- nradov 5y ago
  If you previously received an mRNA vaccine then you might want to consider waiting to get a booster until the Novavax vaccine is approved. It uses different technology and we expect that the combination of two different vaccine types will likely produce a wider spectrum of immunity. But there's little hard data on that so far and you shouldn't take this as medical advice. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  It becomes politics when becoming un-boosted means losing your access to society.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  Bob Wachter who is the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF says get a booster 6 months after either Pfizer or Moderna. If you got the J&J get a booster after 4 months. https://profiles.ucsf.edu/robert.wachter https://profiles.ucsf.edu/robert.wachter
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > a man under 40 get a booster shot? Yes; there is minimal disadvantage to doing so, it appears probable that booster shots reduce the chances if getting covid (which, even if not fatal is often quite _unpleasant_), and thus transmitting it, and, while it is very rare for vaccinated under 40s to die of covid, well, no-one wants to be a statistic. > How many months after my second dose should I get it? Recommendation normally seems to be 5 or 6 months; some authorities are recommending after 3 months for J&J. > What are the best resources to answer this question? Your GP and local health authority.
amai 5y ago
See also https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccinations-vs-covid-death-rate https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccinations-vs-cov... .
Jugurtha 5y ago
I edited the title because of the title length limit on Hacker News.
curiousgal 5y ago
I mean can we just get over this already? I feel like the more effort that we spend trying to prove that vaccines work, the more merit the anti-vax movement gains. Can we just ignore those people or simply just laugh at them and move on?
- zwieback 5y ago
  Agreed, convincing people who think the entire thing is orchestrated by dark forces is pointless. At this point, what I'd like to see: a) accept natural immunity alongside vaccination status, probably need some kind of antibody count test for that to work b) "incentives" for vaccinated population, e.g. 90% discount on COVID treatments while unvaccinated pay full price
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    There are several studies saying that vaccines are beneficial even for people who have natural immunity from an infection. Also, if we have learned anything the last two years it's that at a population level people flatly cannot handle nuance. Anything other than a flat "you must have proof of vaccination" isn't going to work.
    - moistly 5y ago
      One of those studies on the infected-then-vaccinated set (or, at least, an author of the study, being interviewed) claims “superhuman immunity” — effective against a spectrum of SARS viruses. Presumably the reverse (vaccinated-then-infected) is not true. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677208/new-studies-find-evidence-of-superhuman-immunity-to-covid-19-in-some-individuals https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677... I will say that I do not particularly trust NPR any more; they have misreported events in direct contradiction of clear video and audio feeds of the events.
      - Godel_unicode 5y ago
        This post is very confusing to me. Why would the reverse not be true? Why did you post a source that you don't trust? Why just throw out an accusation like that, but with no specifics for people to follow up on and decide for themselves?
fag3y5 5y ago
Why would I take a vaccine that is suggested by the same guy, Fauci, that created the virus? We know it is a fact that the Wuhan Lab produced the virus and was funded directly by taxpayer money for gain of function research. They now have concentration camps in Australia - 38 people were rounded up and arrested two nights ago and taken there for the crime of testing positive. FUCK YOU if you support ANY fascist policies around covid. Take your vax and vax pass mandates and shove it up your fascist fucking asses!
fag3y5 5y ago
Now show the charts for the hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered by taking the vaccine. Do it you fucking liberal fuck.
xupybd 5y ago
Wow how come the US death rate amongst the unvaccinated is so much higher? It's peaking at 18%. Is that where we would be if there was no vaccine? It would also help to see some data on vaccine effectiveness against long covid. Edit: I need to learn to read more carefully. As others have pointed out it 18/100000. My panic is over.
- keltex 5y ago
  Not 18%. 18 out of 100,000.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Thank you. I read that horribly wrong. That is a relief.
- Valgrim 5y ago
  It's 18/100000, not 18/100
- abeppu 5y ago
  But still, it is worth noting that the peak US vaccinated death rates on those charts (e.g. ~1.47 / 100k for Pfizer) are higher than the current _unvaccinated_ death rate in Chile. Vaccination contribute an order of magnitude decrease in the death rate, but surges can contribute an order of magnitude difference as well, within a country over time or between countries. Vaccines matter a lot, but all the other public health tools to prevent/combat surges also still matter.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    The numbers are small and the risk concentrated in the elderly ailing population such that an outbreak in nursing homes can skew the overall numbers one way or another, depending on lack of PCR tests or over-sensitive PCR tests. These numbers are mostly useful for detecting general trends, e.g. are the cases going up or down, what is the O(death risk)?. Strictly comparing different locales is not going to be very informative
encryptluks2 5y ago
If you change the age group to the youngest possible, there are times where those dying that are vaccinated actually surpasses those that are unvaccinated. The difference is so low though that I don't understand how it would make sense to vaccinate those under 12. I remember at the onset of COVID-19 that they tried so hard to make everyone scared to death (literally) that they would push videos of people dying in the streets saying it was COVID-19 causing it.
- deanc 5y ago
  Because they spread to the rest of the population. I don’t understand how, two years into the pandemic people are still evaluating whether we should vaccinate people based only off the risk to themselves.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Vaccinated people spread to the rest of the population as well. Don't know why you think vaccination prevents people from spreading COVID-19.
    - listless 5y ago
      Exactly this. I am double vaxxed Moderna and got it. I was bad sick, but not as bad as my unvaxxed friends who got it. But I’m sure I spread that sucker all over the place. And by the way, the mask made no difference In my case. I’m convinced it’s a fresh N95 everyday or you’re wasting your time.
      - roywiggins 5y ago
        The vaccine is still good at preventing you from catching it at all. If you don't catch it you don't spread it. It's more like 50% effective than 99%, but it's still going to reduce the chance you give it to anyone substantially.
        verdverm 5y ago
yrttq123 5y ago
I'd be genuinely interested if they would provide the death rate for recovered individuals too, as that is something that gets discussed often.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  I need this data, too. My 71-year-old father had a mild case last year and is refusing the vaccine.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
Why is the death rate in the US plummeting among the unvaccinated? Is it just less spread all around?
- skywal_l 5y ago
  Maybe because, even if you are not vaccinated, you have less chance of catching covid if everyone around you is.
  - rozap 5y ago
    OP is asking about survivorship rate of people who get it, not how likely you are to die of covid. Herd immunity shouldn't come into play here.
    - skywal_l 5y ago
      You are right, it's not what he was asking. Yet, herd immunity absolutely come into play. The peak of death rates were during hospital overrun.
      - nradov 5y ago
        The Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect those who lack immunity. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu... There has never been enough hospital overrun to significantly impact death rates. In other words, the number of people who died who would have survived if more hospital care was available is extremely small relative to the total death toll.
- op00to 5y ago
  We have thereputics and understand how to treat it. Also younger people are getting sicker.
  - 5y ago
zwieback 5y ago
The average person (vax or anti-vax) will read this to the end, maybe even understand the numbers but then think "well, but half of COVID deaths are among the vaccinated". 90% of people know that Stats is the hardest math there is and the other 15% don't get it.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  These days you can't rely even on scientists to interpret results correctly. I see interpretation problems almost every other paper I read that has any non trivial research that involves statistics. Vast majority of people are functional illiterates when it comes to statistics. How you present statistics is more important than what the data actually says.
  - admax88qqq 5y ago
    Fun fact, you probably never could rely on scientists to interpret results correctly.
    - scythe 5y ago
      This is absolutely correct; look up Feynman's parable about the oil drop experiment, for example.
- GDC7 5y ago
  Not knowing statistics is a form of protection against depression, sadness and anxiety. Gotta thank god that the majority of people believe bad stuff doesn't apply to them. It's a burden for few. If you want to see society collapse just improve the literacy in statistics
  - Der_Einzige 5y ago
    Correct. The famous saying that "ignorance is bliss" is what comes to mind here.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
steviedotboston 5y ago
It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.
- erehweb 5y ago
  Death is not the only bad outcome from COVID, though, so some behavior modification could be justifiable based on risk tolerance.
  - steviedotboston 5y ago
    The vast majority of cases for someone who is fully vaccinated are asymptomatic or mild. The risk of having a severe enough case to require any sort of medical attention is quite low, and for those people who do need it the new antivirals seem to be working very well.
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      I believe gp is talking about long COVID, I'm not aware of any studies into how well the vaccines protect against those effects. Edit: this study in the lancet says 50% reduction in long COVID according to the summary. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
  - sorenn111 5y ago
    This point 100x times. I am more paranoid about COVID than most people are because I have an autoimmune disease (which is mild and seems to not really affect outcomes). While my autoimmune caveat can be written off, I see most people seeing death as the only bad outcome and framing their risk tolerance and mitigation based on that. What has given me extra concern from the start is the damage done by COVID for patients who survive and even have a mild case. The rates of Long COVID (potentially overdiagnosed because of similarities with pandemic restriction related depression) are sufficiently high that it more concern than is given.
concinds 5y ago
I don't believe this statistical analysis is proper, because it doesn't take into account the statistical problems highlighted here: https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-ef...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- charbonneau2 5y ago
  Here's a 25 minute presentation from the same author analyzing COVID-vaccine efficiency and safety statistics in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc
- benchaney 5y ago
  This article doesn’t identify any statistical problems. It just points out that it would be possible to get a misleading result if you handle your data incorrectly. It provides no actual evidence that such a mishandling is actually occurring.
  - concinds 5y ago
    The problem isn't only mishandling of data by statistical analysts, it is merely sufficient that government data be improperly recorded (as was famous last year, when people saw Covid statistics miraculously jump down on weekends and back up on Mondays in several countries) or that vaccinated/unvaccinated populations were misclassified (for example, by only defining people as vaccinated 2 weeks after they had their second dose, i.e. 3 months after the first dose, a rather long time). The article shows that artefacts you'd expect to see if data was improperly recorded, is actually visible in the real government figures. Whether due to the issues discussed, or due to other causes would require deeper analysis. But the onus then goes on people doing statistical analyses to understand, and correct for any mistakes in the originally compiled government data, and not blindly put numbers in Excel without deeply understanding the data they're feeding into it. Any good undergrad statistics prof would cringe at that.
chmod600 5y ago
The rate of death over what period? The site does not make that clear. Is it annualized? Should we compare it to the murder rate of 5 or 6 per 100k?
- gmm1990 5y ago
  There are charts on that webpage that have the data per week if you scroll down a little.
mint2 5y ago
This is fine but still overlooks sample bias. I.e older and more susceptible to illness people like 70 year olds are more likely to be vaxxed than 25 year olds. Had the vaccination rate been constant across ages, the unvaccinated death rate would be far higher and the vaccinated death rate far lower. It’s bad stats to not account for the population differences like that one.
- autarch 5y ago
  You can dig down and view stats by age group as well.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The charts offer an age breakdown. Click the "Change age group" button.
- microtonal 5y ago
  Another factor is that if the vaccination rate is very high, this also results in fewer deaths in the unvaccinated group, since it reduces the R factor.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    This is actually debatable given that "fully" vaccinated people who get infected - a so-called 'breakthrough infection' - seem to transmit SARS2 at close to the same rate as those unvaccinated [1,2]: fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts Whether the R-factor is reduced markedly depends on the number of breakthrough infections. In this study the infection rate in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals, i.e. the vaccinated run ⅔ of the risk of getting infected compared to the unvaccinated. Given that the vaccinated were of a younger age than the unvaccinated the actual risk reduction is likely to be even smaller than stated. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/fully-vaccinated-people/123378/ https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/fully-vaccinated-people...
rllearneratwork 5y ago
Isn't their data also showing that Moderna is the most effective vaccine at preventing deaths?
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Moderna seems to be slightly more effective but with slightly worse side effects. Dose is the most likely explanation (30µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100µg for Moderna).
  - less_less 5y ago
    An additional reason is that Pfizer/Biontech was available first, so old or otherwise vulnerable people are more likely to have been vaccinated with that. That is, Moderna is probably more effective, but people vaccinated with it have an even lower death rate because they're less likely to have been in a vulnerable group. This is also a major factor that can be missed when going over the vaxxed vs unvaxxed death rates. If (eg) 75% of the population is vaxxed, 5% chose not to take it and 20% are too young (and thus very unlikely to die of Covid), then the difference in death rate will be much smaller than you'd expect based on vaccine effectiveness.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  I believe that's been the growing consensus for a while now.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    Yes, and we are also pretty certain that the mechanism of action is the number of mRNA particles contained: 30 µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100 µg for Moderna. As a result, Germany e.g. uses half-doses for Moderna and vaccinates under 30s exclusively with Biontech.
    - pfg 5y ago
      Just to clarify: half-doses are only used for booster shots (following EMA recommendation). First and second shots still use full dosage.
HMH 5y ago
Maximum death rate for all age groups with Moderna, which at least according to these plots provides the lowest death rate, is at 0.8/100_000 in August 2021 for all age groups. Maximum death rate for the unvaccinated of age 12-17 is at 0.17/100_000, for age 18-29 it is 0.76/100_000, also in August 2021. So even unvaccinated younger people (age < 30) are better off than the average vaccinated Joe. The thing is, so far I have pretty much never heard of this in my countries media, at least to me it sounds like "vaccinate absolutely everyone or we are all doomed", which according to this data is not the case.
- k8sToGo 5y ago
  Except that you are also more easily spreading the virus if you are not vaccinated.
- elif 5y ago
  That perspective is only accurate egocentrically. If you look at population-level epidemiology you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    NL is at ~85% vaccinated 12 yrs up. Infections are through the roof.
  - johndevor 5y ago
    > you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread Is this true? Countries like Singapore and Israel are seeing huge spikes in cases despite having some of the highest vax rates. My suspicion is that vaccines have the downside of suppressing symptoms, thus making the vaxxed more likely to spread covid without knowing it.
    - scythe 5y ago
      See e.g.: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-reduce-transmission https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-... Country-level anecdata is basically useless without a multi-factor analysis due to huge differences in restrictions and self-directed prevention by the public.
hirundo 5y ago
If a lion is killing the weakest members of your herd it is natural to want to kill the lion. But that victory can be a defeat for the health of herd. I wonder if a scientist in a lab somewhere decided that a disease that takes the old and infirm while sparing the young was a wonderful species of lion, a gift to the herd to be released into the wild.
frickinLasers 5y ago
For the irrationally angry throwaway, here you go: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... VAERS (an early warning system that allows unverified reports and requires physicians to report all seemingly related deaths) shows 0.0022% (9,810) of vaccinated individuals in the US died after receiving the vaccine. Generously assuming all those reports can be directly linked to the vaccination (they can't), that figure is already three orders of magnitude lower than the 1.6% (772,000) of people who caught COVID that died. Looking at the linked charts, if we'd had the vaccine at the beginning, we could surmise that roughly 77,000 (87,000 if you want to add the unconfirmed vaccine deaths) of COVID deaths would have been vaccinated, and almost 700,000 would have been unvaccinated. Add in the potential effect of herd immunity, which we never achieved--who knows how well off we'd be if people hadn't wasted so much energy railing against the public good (for an idea, maybe look at how the polio vaccine went over with the public, and how many people in the US now have polio). Every death is a tragedy. A little bit of elementary school knowledge of how vaccines work, combined with actually using your brain, indicates the degree of tragedy could be reduced at least 10-fold if all the irrationally angry people would just get vaccinated.
- lpolovets 5y ago
  > that figure is already three orders of magnitude lower than the 1.6% (772,000) I think the interesting ethical/moral/etc debate is what to do for people who are at lower or negligible risk of dying from COVID in the first place. For example, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... suggests that <20k people under 40 have died from covid over 2 years. There might be age groups or demographics where the risk of death from the vaccine is higher than from covid. (This is a statistics observation, not a political statement.) For those groups, what should be expected in terms of vaccination? E.g. what if for your demographic, the risk of death from the vaccine in 1 in 50k but the risk of death from covid is 1 in 200k?
  - notatoad 5y ago
    what demographic has a 1 in 50k chance of dying from the vaccine but a 1 in 200k risk of dying from covid?
scotty79 5y ago
Example at the beginning shows clear algorithm how to turn ratio between vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths, percentage of vaccinated and population size into actual death rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated. I wonder why they didn't apply it to real world data later on in the article.
- repta 5y ago
  That is literally all they did.
lgbfjb 5y ago
Fuck vaxxers. I hope you all fucking die.
silent_cal 5y ago
Why are vaccinated people under 60 are dying at a higher rate than unvaccinated in England? https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60 https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adult...
- petmon 5y ago
  Probably Simpson's Paradox. A 59 year old is both more likely to be vaccinated and to die from any cause, compared to a 10 year old.
  - silent_cal 5y ago
    Then why did this trend only emerge in April? The population of young people being vaccinated has increased since then.
- titaniczero 5y ago
  Probably because those rates are from 10 to 60 years, which is quite a broad range. People in their fifties/sixties die like A LOT more than young people and these ages happen to be the most vaccinated compared to the youngest ones. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/ Also, when we are seeing far fewer vaccinated people in hospital in most countries (in my country 70% of the admissions in the hospital are from unvaccinated people), it is not only that the number of vaccinated people in hospital is much lower, you have to keep in mind that the number of vaccinated people is much higher (in my country +80%, almost 90%, are vaccinated) so the effect of the vaccine in death rate is even much higher (before measuring the effect of vaccines we even thought that vaccinated people would be the most prevalent in hospital because the number is vastly superior)
  - silent_cal 5y ago
    Then why did this trend only emerge in April? The population of young people being vaccinated has increased since then.
throwaway332211 5y ago
Theres 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics CDC data is skewed from the beginning to bolster their agenda. E.g. They consider a person "unvaccinated" until 14 days after their 2nd shot so it lumps all deaths in-between as "unvaccinated covid deaths". Not to mention the revolving door between the CDC and big pharma. Also, the major argument against the vaccine is that there's potentially major side effects including death (which looks something like a heart attack probably caused by blood clotting.). This data conveniently only uses "Covid deaths", so it excludes all the extra post-vaccine deaths no one wants to admit. And if a vaccine-related death happens within 14 days, that death gets lumped into the "unvaccinated" death total. Whenever there's meaningful data, they do everything in their power to cover it up. I.e. the FDA refusing to release the vaccine paperwork they used to grant FDA approval because "they don't have the resources to process it all". But they had the resources required to read it to grant approval.
guilhas 5y ago
The Public Health England weekly report, already adjusted for percentage of vaccinated, for the last few weeks clearly shows more deaths of the vaccinated from covid and other causes The USA having more deaths this year than last, with the Delta that spreads faster but is less deadly Personally not vaccinated, had covid recently, and have no plans of getting vaccinated. Caught from my Pfizer vaccinated wife, and we both had the same symptoms
- pfg 5y ago
  Are you referring to the same ONS data mentioned in [1]? That figure is highly misleading. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323441
  - guilhas 5y ago
    Can't find the data mention, or was edited out Was this one? Mine is similar but released by PHE weekly, with more breakdowns https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween2januaryand24september2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... But even looking at this one you can see the trend shifting from end of September, where vaccinated are now dying more than unvaccinated Do you think is misleading? Why? It is being used for months
- latchkey 5y ago
  Who's effects were worse?
bob_neumann 5y ago
I noticed that they're only evaluating the covid-19 death rate. Not the overall death rate. Based on the latest data from England's ONS, in the 10 to 59 year old category, the vaccinated overall death rate is almost twice as high as the unvaccinated death rate
- bob_neumann 5y ago
  Https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/dataset/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland
  - MaurizioPz 5y ago
    thanks, but the link doesn't work
    - MaurizioPz 5y ago
      I found this the data going here https://www.ons.gov.uk/redir/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpbmRleCI6MSwicGFnZVNpemUiOjEwLCJ0ZXJtIjoidmFjIiwicGFnZSI6MSwidXJpIjoiL3Blb3BsZXBvcHVsYXRpb25hbmRjb21tdW5pdHkvYmlydGhzZGVhdGhzYW5kbWFycmlhZ2VzL2RlYXRocy9kYXRhc2V0cy9kZWF0aHNieXZhY2NpbmF0aW9uc3RhdHVzZW5nbGFuZCIsImxpc3RUeXBlIjoiZGF0YWxpc3QifQ.t5114mR30PxrY2zUD-HVQKTJZ1B6OxGC_SRN6S77bU0 https://www.ons.gov.uk/redir/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpbmRleC... but it goes up to the end of september and the rate of the unvaccinated is higher than that of the vaccinated
  - pfg 5y ago
    I'm assuming this should be https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde.... Can you be more specific with your claim? The age-standardised mortality rate appears to be significantly higher for the unvaccinated population according to your source. // edit: Sorry, I missed the part where you were talking about a specific age group. This can be explained by [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323980
- 5y ago
mk81 5y ago
ITT: people trying to convince themselves the COVID mRNA therapeutic is net beneficial for the general population to take.
- godDLL 5y ago
  Your statement is too general to be a joke.

128 points by Jugurtha 5y ago

Dear HN, should I, a man under 40 get a booster shot? How many months after my second dose should I get it? What are the best resources to answer this question? This information is scary hard to get for someone who wants science, not politics.

s5300 5y ago
>> What are the best resources to answer this question? ….seriously? Your doctor Good lord we are in for some bad times
- thugthrasher 5y ago
  And if you don't trust your doctor to give you good information, then find another doctor. And never go back to the doctor you can't trust again.
  - belter 5y ago
    You do not live in the Netherlands... https://www.gezondheidsplein.nl/nieuws/wisselen-van-huisarts-vaak-onmogelijk/item68907 https://www.gezondheidsplein.nl/nieuws/wisselen-van-huisarts...
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    It's not so much about trusting your doctor. For me, it's more about utter absurdity of the image of every single patient of a GP calling said doctor to ask this question, and thinking that the answer given is going to be any more specific for most of those patients than, say, guidance from the CDC. Yes, if you have existing medical conditions that your doctor is aware of, they may be in a better position to point out any potential interactions between those conditions, any treatment you already receive, and a booster. But I'm guessing that this isn't a description of most of the population. I'm also not sure that most doctor's offices really want every single patient calling in to ask "Should I get the booster?", and might simply be unable to deal with such a flood of questions. There's also the little detail of millions of Americans not actually having "a doctor" in the traditional sense.
- distances 5y ago
  For what it's worth, it would never cross my mind to get a doctor's appointment to just ask if I should get a booster. The health care system does not have enough slack for everyone to do that. I'd read official recommendations.
  - s5300 5y ago
    For what it’s worth, every recommendation I can remember hearing or reading advised to consult with your doctor to “see if the vaccine is right for you” Upon receiving any sort of medical injection, you’re also typically recommended to follow up with your doctor.
    - distances 5y ago
      For Covid in Europe at least you get the consultation when getting the jab. So I would (and do) check recommendations, reserve a vaccination slot, and talk with the doctor administering the vaccine if I have any questions.
gardncl 5y ago
>What are the best resources to answer this question? Your physician. Not hacker news.
- belter 5y ago
  Your physician if he reads hacker news
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    Cute response folks. My physician is also my MIL. She is also not sure if boosters are a good idea. Doctors are not all equipped to keep up on the latest research on a rapidly changing topic. If I ask a doctor outside my family I am not likely to get linked to the latest research and an explanation of its quality. I am absolutely able to read a study and interpret its results. I read the phase 3 trial results for Moderna and was satisfied that it was excellent evidence for getting the vaccine. I’m not yet aware of any booster studies outside of antibody counts post booster. It would be nice to have an idea of how much my risk of Covid drops and for how long, but I’m not sure if we have evidence collected on that yet.
- concinds 5y ago
  Your average family physician reads exactly zero published papers per year, and would rely on Googling and reading health authority summary pages or media sources. If the goal is convincing skeptical family members with hard facts, searching the scientific literature oneself is likely much more effective.
xigoi 5y ago
I'm not a medical expert, but my country (Czechia) recommends getting the third dose 6 months after the second.
sjg007 5y ago
In the US: 6 months after the 2nd mRNA dose or 2 months after J&J.
undersuit 5y ago
I biked over to the employee health center yesterday and got my Moderna booster. Early April and May were when I went for the initial vaccinations. 34 Male, 31.2 BMI I'm going to Las Vegas after Christmas, don't want anything disrupting the fun.
satysin 5y ago
Your countries health care service most likely has public guidelines on this which you should consult. If you have some kind of medical condition and a booster concerns you I advise you make an appointment with your doctor to discuss your specific concerns and get professional advice. Hacker News is not the place to ask such a question nor give any response other than "check with your local health care service or doctor" imho.
notatoad 5y ago
as a person asking this question on the internet, i'm going to assume that you are not a scientist, and probably unqualified to make a scientific decision. you might be able to read some scientific-sounding information, but unless you're a professional in the field your odds of coming to a correct conclusion based on information you read is no better than random, and will almost certainly be biased by your politics. i'll be getting a booster when my local health authorities say i'm eligible for one, because i know i have no relevant expertise that enables me to make a scientific conclusion on this subject. and neither does HN.
nradov 5y ago
If you previously received an mRNA vaccine then you might want to consider waiting to get a booster until the Novavax vaccine is approved. It uses different technology and we expect that the combination of two different vaccine types will likely produce a wider spectrum of immunity. But there's little hard data on that so far and you shouldn't take this as medical advice. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659
bigodbiel 5y ago
It becomes politics when becoming un-boosted means losing your access to society.
Gibbon1 5y ago
Bob Wachter who is the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF says get a booster 6 months after either Pfizer or Moderna. If you got the J&J get a booster after 4 months. https://profiles.ucsf.edu/robert.wachter https://profiles.ucsf.edu/robert.wachter
rsynnott 5y ago
> a man under 40 get a booster shot? Yes; there is minimal disadvantage to doing so, it appears probable that booster shots reduce the chances if getting covid (which, even if not fatal is often quite _unpleasant_), and thus transmitting it, and, while it is very rare for vaccinated under 40s to die of covid, well, no-one wants to be a statistic. > How many months after my second dose should I get it? Recommendation normally seems to be 5 or 6 months; some authorities are recommending after 3 months for J&J. > What are the best resources to answer this question? Your GP and local health authority.

amai 5y ago

See also https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccinations-vs-covid-death-rate https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccinations-vs-cov... .

Jugurtha 5y ago

I edited the title because of the title length limit on Hacker News.

curiousgal 5y ago

I mean can we just get over this already? I feel like the more effort that we spend trying to prove that vaccines work, the more merit the anti-vax movement gains. Can we just ignore those people or simply just laugh at them and move on?

zwieback 5y ago
Agreed, convincing people who think the entire thing is orchestrated by dark forces is pointless. At this point, what I'd like to see: a) accept natural immunity alongside vaccination status, probably need some kind of antibody count test for that to work b) "incentives" for vaccinated population, e.g. 90% discount on COVID treatments while unvaccinated pay full price
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  There are several studies saying that vaccines are beneficial even for people who have natural immunity from an infection. Also, if we have learned anything the last two years it's that at a population level people flatly cannot handle nuance. Anything other than a flat "you must have proof of vaccination" isn't going to work.
  - moistly 5y ago
    One of those studies on the infected-then-vaccinated set (or, at least, an author of the study, being interviewed) claims “superhuman immunity” — effective against a spectrum of SARS viruses. Presumably the reverse (vaccinated-then-infected) is not true. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677208/new-studies-find-evidence-of-superhuman-immunity-to-covid-19-in-some-individuals https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677... I will say that I do not particularly trust NPR any more; they have misreported events in direct contradiction of clear video and audio feeds of the events.
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      This post is very confusing to me. Why would the reverse not be true? Why did you post a source that you don't trust? Why just throw out an accusation like that, but with no specifics for people to follow up on and decide for themselves?

fag3y5 5y ago

Why would I take a vaccine that is suggested by the same guy, Fauci, that created the virus? We know it is a fact that the Wuhan Lab produced the virus and was funded directly by taxpayer money for gain of function research. They now have concentration camps in Australia - 38 people were rounded up and arrested two nights ago and taken there for the crime of testing positive. FUCK YOU if you support ANY fascist policies around covid. Take your vax and vax pass mandates and shove it up your fascist fucking asses!

fag3y5 5y ago

Now show the charts for the hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered by taking the vaccine. Do it you fucking liberal fuck.

xupybd 5y ago

Wow how come the US death rate amongst the unvaccinated is so much higher? It's peaking at 18%. Is that where we would be if there was no vaccine? It would also help to see some data on vaccine effectiveness against long covid. Edit: I need to learn to read more carefully. As others have pointed out it 18/100000. My panic is over.

keltex 5y ago
Not 18%. 18 out of 100,000.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Thank you. I read that horribly wrong. That is a relief.
Valgrim 5y ago
It's 18/100000, not 18/100
abeppu 5y ago
But still, it is worth noting that the peak US vaccinated death rates on those charts (e.g. ~1.47 / 100k for Pfizer) are higher than the current _unvaccinated_ death rate in Chile. Vaccination contribute an order of magnitude decrease in the death rate, but surges can contribute an order of magnitude difference as well, within a country over time or between countries. Vaccines matter a lot, but all the other public health tools to prevent/combat surges also still matter.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The numbers are small and the risk concentrated in the elderly ailing population such that an outbreak in nursing homes can skew the overall numbers one way or another, depending on lack of PCR tests or over-sensitive PCR tests. These numbers are mostly useful for detecting general trends, e.g. are the cases going up or down, what is the O(death risk)?. Strictly comparing different locales is not going to be very informative

encryptluks2 5y ago

If you change the age group to the youngest possible, there are times where those dying that are vaccinated actually surpasses those that are unvaccinated. The difference is so low though that I don't understand how it would make sense to vaccinate those under 12. I remember at the onset of COVID-19 that they tried so hard to make everyone scared to death (literally) that they would push videos of people dying in the streets saying it was COVID-19 causing it.

deanc 5y ago
Because they spread to the rest of the population. I don’t understand how, two years into the pandemic people are still evaluating whether we should vaccinate people based only off the risk to themselves.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Vaccinated people spread to the rest of the population as well. Don't know why you think vaccination prevents people from spreading COVID-19.
  - listless 5y ago
    Exactly this. I am double vaxxed Moderna and got it. I was bad sick, but not as bad as my unvaxxed friends who got it. But I’m sure I spread that sucker all over the place. And by the way, the mask made no difference In my case. I’m convinced it’s a fresh N95 everyday or you’re wasting your time.
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      The vaccine is still good at preventing you from catching it at all. If you don't catch it you don't spread it. It's more like 50% effective than 99%, but it's still going to reduce the chance you give it to anyone substantially.
      - verdverm 5y ago

yrttq123 5y ago

I'd be genuinely interested if they would provide the death rate for recovered individuals too, as that is something that gets discussed often.

mleonhard 5y ago
I need this data, too. My 71-year-old father had a mild case last year and is refusing the vaccine.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

Why is the death rate in the US plummeting among the unvaccinated? Is it just less spread all around?

skywal_l 5y ago
Maybe because, even if you are not vaccinated, you have less chance of catching covid if everyone around you is.
- rozap 5y ago
  OP is asking about survivorship rate of people who get it, not how likely you are to die of covid. Herd immunity shouldn't come into play here.
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    You are right, it's not what he was asking. Yet, herd immunity absolutely come into play. The peak of death rates were during hospital overrun.
    - nradov 5y ago
      The Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect those who lack immunity. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu... There has never been enough hospital overrun to significantly impact death rates. In other words, the number of people who died who would have survived if more hospital care was available is extremely small relative to the total death toll.
op00to 5y ago
We have thereputics and understand how to treat it. Also younger people are getting sicker.
- 5y ago

zwieback 5y ago

The average person (vax or anti-vax) will read this to the end, maybe even understand the numbers but then think "well, but half of COVID deaths are among the vaccinated". 90% of people know that Stats is the hardest math there is and the other 15% don't get it.

lmilcin 5y ago
These days you can't rely even on scientists to interpret results correctly. I see interpretation problems almost every other paper I read that has any non trivial research that involves statistics. Vast majority of people are functional illiterates when it comes to statistics. How you present statistics is more important than what the data actually says.
- admax88qqq 5y ago
  Fun fact, you probably never could rely on scientists to interpret results correctly.
  - scythe 5y ago
    This is absolutely correct; look up Feynman's parable about the oil drop experiment, for example.
GDC7 5y ago
Not knowing statistics is a form of protection against depression, sadness and anxiety. Gotta thank god that the majority of people believe bad stuff doesn't apply to them. It's a burden for few. If you want to see society collapse just improve the literacy in statistics
- Der_Einzige 5y ago
  Correct. The famous saying that "ignorance is bliss" is what comes to mind here.
- rsynnott 5y ago

steviedotboston 5y ago

It really seems like it's safe to say that a fully vaccinated person's risk of dying from covid is low enough where based on the pre-2020 accepted societal standards for risk there should be next to no behavior modification expected.

erehweb 5y ago
Death is not the only bad outcome from COVID, though, so some behavior modification could be justifiable based on risk tolerance.
- steviedotboston 5y ago
  The vast majority of cases for someone who is fully vaccinated are asymptomatic or mild. The risk of having a severe enough case to require any sort of medical attention is quite low, and for those people who do need it the new antivirals seem to be working very well.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    I believe gp is talking about long COVID, I'm not aware of any studies into how well the vaccines protect against those effects. Edit: this study in the lancet says 50% reduction in long COVID according to the summary. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
- sorenn111 5y ago
  This point 100x times. I am more paranoid about COVID than most people are because I have an autoimmune disease (which is mild and seems to not really affect outcomes). While my autoimmune caveat can be written off, I see most people seeing death as the only bad outcome and framing their risk tolerance and mitigation based on that. What has given me extra concern from the start is the damage done by COVID for patients who survive and even have a mild case. The rates of Long COVID (potentially overdiagnosed because of similarities with pandemic restriction related depression) are sufficiently high that it more concern than is given.

concinds 5y ago

I don't believe this statistical analysis is proper, because it doesn't take into account the statistical problems highlighted here: https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-ef...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
charbonneau2 5y ago
Here's a 25 minute presentation from the same author analyzing COVID-vaccine efficiency and safety statistics in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc
benchaney 5y ago
This article doesn’t identify any statistical problems. It just points out that it would be possible to get a misleading result if you handle your data incorrectly. It provides no actual evidence that such a mishandling is actually occurring.
- concinds 5y ago
  The problem isn't only mishandling of data by statistical analysts, it is merely sufficient that government data be improperly recorded (as was famous last year, when people saw Covid statistics miraculously jump down on weekends and back up on Mondays in several countries) or that vaccinated/unvaccinated populations were misclassified (for example, by only defining people as vaccinated 2 weeks after they had their second dose, i.e. 3 months after the first dose, a rather long time). The article shows that artefacts you'd expect to see if data was improperly recorded, is actually visible in the real government figures. Whether due to the issues discussed, or due to other causes would require deeper analysis. But the onus then goes on people doing statistical analyses to understand, and correct for any mistakes in the originally compiled government data, and not blindly put numbers in Excel without deeply understanding the data they're feeding into it. Any good undergrad statistics prof would cringe at that.

chmod600 5y ago

The rate of death over what period? The site does not make that clear. Is it annualized? Should we compare it to the murder rate of 5 or 6 per 100k?

gmm1990 5y ago
There are charts on that webpage that have the data per week if you scroll down a little.

mint2 5y ago

This is fine but still overlooks sample bias. I.e older and more susceptible to illness people like 70 year olds are more likely to be vaxxed than 25 year olds. Had the vaccination rate been constant across ages, the unvaccinated death rate would be far higher and the vaccinated death rate far lower. It’s bad stats to not account for the population differences like that one.

autarch 5y ago
You can dig down and view stats by age group as well.
angelzen 5y ago
The charts offer an age breakdown. Click the "Change age group" button.
microtonal 5y ago
Another factor is that if the vaccination rate is very high, this also results in fewer deaths in the unvaccinated group, since it reduces the R factor.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  This is actually debatable given that "fully" vaccinated people who get infected - a so-called 'breakthrough infection' - seem to transmit SARS2 at close to the same rate as those unvaccinated [1,2]: fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts Whether the R-factor is reduced markedly depends on the number of breakthrough infections. In this study the infection rate in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals, i.e. the vaccinated run ⅔ of the risk of getting infected compared to the unvaccinated. Given that the vaccinated were of a younger age than the unvaccinated the actual risk reduction is likely to be even smaller than stated. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/fully-vaccinated-people/123378/ https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/fully-vaccinated-people...

rllearneratwork 5y ago

Isn't their data also showing that Moderna is the most effective vaccine at preventing deaths?

GuB-42 5y ago
Moderna seems to be slightly more effective but with slightly worse side effects. Dose is the most likely explanation (30µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100µg for Moderna).
- less_less 5y ago
  An additional reason is that Pfizer/Biontech was available first, so old or otherwise vulnerable people are more likely to have been vaccinated with that. That is, Moderna is probably more effective, but people vaccinated with it have an even lower death rate because they're less likely to have been in a vulnerable group. This is also a major factor that can be missed when going over the vaxxed vs unvaxxed death rates. If (eg) 75% of the population is vaxxed, 5% chose not to take it and 20% are too young (and thus very unlikely to die of Covid), then the difference in death rate will be much smaller than you'd expect based on vaccine effectiveness.
anonporridge 5y ago
I believe that's been the growing consensus for a while now.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  Yes, and we are also pretty certain that the mechanism of action is the number of mRNA particles contained: 30 µg for Pfizer/Biontech vs 100 µg for Moderna. As a result, Germany e.g. uses half-doses for Moderna and vaccinates under 30s exclusively with Biontech.
  - pfg 5y ago
    Just to clarify: half-doses are only used for booster shots (following EMA recommendation). First and second shots still use full dosage.

HMH 5y ago

Maximum death rate for all age groups with Moderna, which at least according to these plots provides the lowest death rate, is at 0.8/100_000 in August 2021 for all age groups. Maximum death rate for the unvaccinated of age 12-17 is at 0.17/100_000, for age 18-29 it is 0.76/100_000, also in August 2021. So even unvaccinated younger people (age < 30) are better off than the average vaccinated Joe. The thing is, so far I have pretty much never heard of this in my countries media, at least to me it sounds like "vaccinate absolutely everyone or we are all doomed", which according to this data is not the case.

k8sToGo 5y ago
Except that you are also more easily spreading the virus if you are not vaccinated.
elif 5y ago
That perspective is only accurate egocentrically. If you look at population-level epidemiology you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread.
- the-dude 5y ago
  NL is at ~85% vaccinated 12 yrs up. Infections are through the roof.
- johndevor 5y ago
  > you will find vaccines inhibit viral spread Is this true? Countries like Singapore and Israel are seeing huge spikes in cases despite having some of the highest vax rates. My suspicion is that vaccines have the downside of suppressing symptoms, thus making the vaxxed more likely to spread covid without knowing it.
  - scythe 5y ago
    See e.g.: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-reduce-transmission https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-... Country-level anecdata is basically useless without a multi-factor analysis due to huge differences in restrictions and self-directed prevention by the public.

hirundo 5y ago

If a lion is killing the weakest members of your herd it is natural to want to kill the lion. But that victory can be a defeat for the health of herd. I wonder if a scientist in a lab somewhere decided that a disease that takes the old and infirm while sparing the young was a wonderful species of lion, a gift to the herd to be released into the wild.

frickinLasers 5y ago

For the irrationally angry throwaway, here you go: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... VAERS (an early warning system that allows unverified reports and requires physicians to report all seemingly related deaths) shows 0.0022% (9,810) of vaccinated individuals in the US died after receiving the vaccine. Generously assuming all those reports can be directly linked to the vaccination (they can't), that figure is already three orders of magnitude lower than the 1.6% (772,000) of people who caught COVID that died. Looking at the linked charts, if we'd had the vaccine at the beginning, we could surmise that roughly 77,000 (87,000 if you want to add the unconfirmed vaccine deaths) of COVID deaths would have been vaccinated, and almost 700,000 would have been unvaccinated. Add in the potential effect of herd immunity, which we never achieved--who knows how well off we'd be if people hadn't wasted so much energy railing against the public good (for an idea, maybe look at how the polio vaccine went over with the public, and how many people in the US now have polio). Every death is a tragedy. A little bit of elementary school knowledge of how vaccines work, combined with actually using your brain, indicates the degree of tragedy could be reduced at least 10-fold if all the irrationally angry people would just get vaccinated.

lpolovets 5y ago
> that figure is already three orders of magnitude lower than the 1.6% (772,000) I think the interesting ethical/moral/etc debate is what to do for people who are at lower or negligible risk of dying from COVID in the first place. For example, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... suggests that <20k people under 40 have died from covid over 2 years. There might be age groups or demographics where the risk of death from the vaccine is higher than from covid. (This is a statistics observation, not a political statement.) For those groups, what should be expected in terms of vaccination? E.g. what if for your demographic, the risk of death from the vaccine in 1 in 50k but the risk of death from covid is 1 in 200k?
- notatoad 5y ago
  what demographic has a 1 in 50k chance of dying from the vaccine but a 1 in 200k risk of dying from covid?

scotty79 5y ago

Example at the beginning shows clear algorithm how to turn ratio between vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths, percentage of vaccinated and population size into actual death rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated. I wonder why they didn't apply it to real world data later on in the article.

repta 5y ago
That is literally all they did.

lgbfjb 5y ago

Fuck vaxxers. I hope you all fucking die.

silent_cal 5y ago

Why are vaccinated people under 60 are dying at a higher rate than unvaccinated in England? https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60 https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adult...

petmon 5y ago
Probably Simpson's Paradox. A 59 year old is both more likely to be vaccinated and to die from any cause, compared to a 10 year old.
- silent_cal 5y ago
  Then why did this trend only emerge in April? The population of young people being vaccinated has increased since then.
titaniczero 5y ago
Probably because those rates are from 10 to 60 years, which is quite a broad range. People in their fifties/sixties die like A LOT more than young people and these ages happen to be the most vaccinated compared to the youngest ones. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/ Also, when we are seeing far fewer vaccinated people in hospital in most countries (in my country 70% of the admissions in the hospital are from unvaccinated people), it is not only that the number of vaccinated people in hospital is much lower, you have to keep in mind that the number of vaccinated people is much higher (in my country +80%, almost 90%, are vaccinated) so the effect of the vaccine in death rate is even much higher (before measuring the effect of vaccines we even thought that vaccinated people would be the most prevalent in hospital because the number is vastly superior)
- silent_cal 5y ago
  Then why did this trend only emerge in April? The population of young people being vaccinated has increased since then.

throwaway332211 5y ago

Theres 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics CDC data is skewed from the beginning to bolster their agenda. E.g. They consider a person "unvaccinated" until 14 days after their 2nd shot so it lumps all deaths in-between as "unvaccinated covid deaths". Not to mention the revolving door between the CDC and big pharma. Also, the major argument against the vaccine is that there's potentially major side effects including death (which looks something like a heart attack probably caused by blood clotting.). This data conveniently only uses "Covid deaths", so it excludes all the extra post-vaccine deaths no one wants to admit. And if a vaccine-related death happens within 14 days, that death gets lumped into the "unvaccinated" death total. Whenever there's meaningful data, they do everything in their power to cover it up. I.e. the FDA refusing to release the vaccine paperwork they used to grant FDA approval because "they don't have the resources to process it all". But they had the resources required to read it to grant approval.

guilhas 5y ago

The Public Health England weekly report, already adjusted for percentage of vaccinated, for the last few weeks clearly shows more deaths of the vaccinated from covid and other causes The USA having more deaths this year than last, with the Delta that spreads faster but is less deadly Personally not vaccinated, had covid recently, and have no plans of getting vaccinated. Caught from my Pfizer vaccinated wife, and we both had the same symptoms

pfg 5y ago
Are you referring to the same ONS data mentioned in [1]? That figure is highly misleading. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323441
- guilhas 5y ago
  Can't find the data mention, or was edited out Was this one? Mine is similar but released by PHE weekly, with more breakdowns https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween2januaryand24september2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... But even looking at this one you can see the trend shifting from end of September, where vaccinated are now dying more than unvaccinated Do you think is misleading? Why? It is being used for months
latchkey 5y ago
Who's effects were worse?

bob_neumann 5y ago

I noticed that they're only evaluating the covid-19 death rate. Not the overall death rate. Based on the latest data from England's ONS, in the 10 to 59 year old category, the vaccinated overall death rate is almost twice as high as the unvaccinated death rate

bob_neumann 5y ago
Https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/dataset/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland
- MaurizioPz 5y ago
  thanks, but the link doesn't work
  - MaurizioPz 5y ago
    I found this the data going here https://www.ons.gov.uk/redir/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpbmRleCI6MSwicGFnZVNpemUiOjEwLCJ0ZXJtIjoidmFjIiwicGFnZSI6MSwidXJpIjoiL3Blb3BsZXBvcHVsYXRpb25hbmRjb21tdW5pdHkvYmlydGhzZGVhdGhzYW5kbWFycmlhZ2VzL2RlYXRocy9kYXRhc2V0cy9kZWF0aHNieXZhY2NpbmF0aW9uc3RhdHVzZW5nbGFuZCIsImxpc3RUeXBlIjoiZGF0YWxpc3QifQ.t5114mR30PxrY2zUD-HVQKTJZ1B6OxGC_SRN6S77bU0 https://www.ons.gov.uk/redir/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpbmRleC... but it goes up to the end of september and the rate of the unvaccinated is higher than that of the vaccinated
- pfg 5y ago
  I'm assuming this should be https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde.... Can you be more specific with your claim? The age-standardised mortality rate appears to be significantly higher for the unvaccinated population according to your source. // edit: Sorry, I missed the part where you were talking about a specific age group. This can be explained by [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323980
5y ago

mk81 5y ago

ITT: people trying to convince themselves the COVID mRNA therapeutic is net beneficial for the general population to take.

godDLL 5y ago
Your statement is too general to be a joke.