3 ms·

Can you elaborate more on that? Legitimate question, I came across this a couple days ago on some other thread here on HN.

YZF 5y ago
Can you think of some issues with this study? legitimate question. Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20! So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?
- nradov 5y ago
  "Experts: Vaccine Immunity Waning, Signs Israel Facing Fifth COVID Wave" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
  - YZF 5y ago
    Right (also "in part because the vaccination of children takes time to come into effect"). They are hovering around R=1 with very minimal restrictions and still a significant amount of people that won't take the vaccine ("citing the fact that a third of the population remains unprotected. This refers to 670,000 unvaccinated Israelis, more than a million people who haven’t received the booster, and children under 12"). They're making up for the vaccine coverage to some extent by: 1. Lots of people got sick. Israel has a young population and a very strong healthcare system so they were able to manage a very high daily case rate per capita. 2. Booster shots. 3. And now, vaccinating children. I don't think anyone knows yet exactly what sort of waning effect you have after the third booster. It's also hard to say what portion of the change is behavioral changes vs. the vaccine's wane. Now the new variant completely changes the calculus yet again.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  I can think of many actually, but this is not my field of expertise so I don't want to jump on erroneous conclusions and I want to pay close attention to what I say, other than get feedback from others that for sure know a lot more than me. Just to get things straight, I am in no way saying that vaccines are not effective, there is strong evidence that indicates the contrary. I was responding to a user who claimed that the more covid goes around, the more it mutates, and as far as I understand it's what viruses do and therefore is a correct statement. I then linked this study and cautiously pointed out that it is "disputed", which may still be the wrong term in that case or I was erroneously giving too much credit to the paper itself. You then point out that the study highlights the Delta variant peak when dealing with the Israel data, and I could agree on that. What the study is trying to highlight, as far as I can tell, is not to undervalue *vaccination which has strong evidence ww to greatly lower hospitalisation and death risk from covid infection*, but it instead tries to tell that even in vastly vaccinated communities there are a lot of cases and they can't be distinguished from those in communities with lower vaccination rate. So my argument was: if cases are rising in largely vaccinated communities, the virus will inevitably mutate in those communities too and it is not a pattern only related to third world countries with low vaccination rates.
  - YZF 5y ago
    I don't think the study shows that either. Generally the bulk of the cases and especially hospitalizations and deaths have been amongst unvaccinated. When you have 40% of a country unvaccinated and when those 40% tend to form social groups and closer connections you can't really look at the country as a whole. At any rate, the methodology of the paper is just way off. If you truly wanted to understand the correlation between vaccination and infection rates you need to try to control for other factors. That is just experiment design 101. If you control for nothing while there are other significant factors then you get nothing. If the paper is saying "there can be high covid rates with 60%-70% vaccine coverage and the delta variants" then sure, but also duh.
meej 5y ago
Lots of criticism collated at the article's PubPeer page: https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D905E https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D9... The PubPeer browser extension is worthwhile: https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions
jacquesm 5y ago
And that's how this stuff keeps spreading. People who don't really understand what they are passing on passing it on as though it means something to them. If you didn't really understand it, why did you pass it on?

YZF 5y ago

Can you think of some issues with this study? legitimate question. Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20! So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?

nradov 5y ago
"Experts: Vaccine Immunity Waning, Signs Israel Facing Fifth COVID Wave" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
- YZF 5y ago
  Right (also "in part because the vaccination of children takes time to come into effect"). They are hovering around R=1 with very minimal restrictions and still a significant amount of people that won't take the vaccine ("citing the fact that a third of the population remains unprotected. This refers to 670,000 unvaccinated Israelis, more than a million people who haven’t received the booster, and children under 12"). They're making up for the vaccine coverage to some extent by: 1. Lots of people got sick. Israel has a young population and a very strong healthcare system so they were able to manage a very high daily case rate per capita. 2. Booster shots. 3. And now, vaccinating children. I don't think anyone knows yet exactly what sort of waning effect you have after the third booster. It's also hard to say what portion of the change is behavioral changes vs. the vaccine's wane. Now the new variant completely changes the calculus yet again.
mattrighetti 5y ago
I can think of many actually, but this is not my field of expertise so I don't want to jump on erroneous conclusions and I want to pay close attention to what I say, other than get feedback from others that for sure know a lot more than me. Just to get things straight, I am in no way saying that vaccines are not effective, there is strong evidence that indicates the contrary. I was responding to a user who claimed that the more covid goes around, the more it mutates, and as far as I understand it's what viruses do and therefore is a correct statement. I then linked this study and cautiously pointed out that it is "disputed", which may still be the wrong term in that case or I was erroneously giving too much credit to the paper itself. You then point out that the study highlights the Delta variant peak when dealing with the Israel data, and I could agree on that. What the study is trying to highlight, as far as I can tell, is not to undervalue *vaccination which has strong evidence ww to greatly lower hospitalisation and death risk from covid infection*, but it instead tries to tell that even in vastly vaccinated communities there are a lot of cases and they can't be distinguished from those in communities with lower vaccination rate. So my argument was: if cases are rising in largely vaccinated communities, the virus will inevitably mutate in those communities too and it is not a pattern only related to third world countries with low vaccination rates.
- YZF 5y ago
  I don't think the study shows that either. Generally the bulk of the cases and especially hospitalizations and deaths have been amongst unvaccinated. When you have 40% of a country unvaccinated and when those 40% tend to form social groups and closer connections you can't really look at the country as a whole. At any rate, the methodology of the paper is just way off. If you truly wanted to understand the correlation between vaccination and infection rates you need to try to control for other factors. That is just experiment design 101. If you control for nothing while there are other significant factors then you get nothing. If the paper is saying "there can be high covid rates with 60%-70% vaccine coverage and the delta variants" then sure, but also duh.

meej 5y ago

Lots of criticism collated at the article's PubPeer page: https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D905E https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D9... The PubPeer browser extension is worthwhile: https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions

jacquesm 5y ago

And that's how this stuff keeps spreading. People who don't really understand what they are passing on passing it on as though it means something to them. If you didn't really understand it, why did you pass it on?