9 ms·

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems t

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0] So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and death, this isn't going away, at least not anytime soon. I personally find this beyond depressing. [0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3963606 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3963606

detaro 5y ago
> all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and death It's a balance. E.g. Germanys current trouble is a direct consequence of official policy that had a core of "we only care about hospitalizations now", but ignored "... and based on case numbers and other statistics, what will future hospitalizations look like if we don't change anything about our approach" - not helped by election campaigns and politicians publicly admitting they haven't understood this whole "exponential" malarky yet. You really need to consider more than just one number.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  The superseded government (by way of Jens Spahn) admitted that it held back on acting w.r.t. COVID in 2021 to avoid negative impact on their campaign. General inaction or adverse action in other areas (e.g. ICU staffing, leerdenker) did not help, either.
- hef19898 5y ago
  As someone who has quite some experience in running operations based on data, numbers and metrics the German approach to COVID on that front alone really puzzled me from the beginning. First the incidence of 50 that they pulled out of their ass for contact tracing, which was ignored basically the next day. Then the fact that resources weren't really increased to improve contract traceability. Then the decision to use a backward looking KPI, ICU occupation, to tackle a highly dynamic situation. Which also meant to ignore the incidence, the only real predictive metric we have. And it is good at predicting ICU occupation and severe cases when combined with vaccination levels. That's simply amateurish, and means all measures, not all of which are bad, are usually a couple of weeks late. Even better, the 7-day average incidence is based on the daily numbers. Those numbers are, what a surprise, limited to the testing capacities of laboratories, so the incidence is reported based on the day the test was analyzed, not when the sample was taken. This flattens the 7-day average curve. Well, until the new numbers are reported once labs git through their backlog. Thing is, the 7-day average is not changed once published. Again just amateurish.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Yes, it's been really frustrating to see RKI predict this for weeks and just ... nothing happening. And then you still get headlines of "incidence fell slightly!" - from 392,4 to 392,2 (or sth like that), when testing labs are hitting capacity. We somehow lucked into a relatively good first wave and ever since then... so much unnecessary mess.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      The drop in incidence is the same BS when reporting in DAX or S&P moving by 0.2 % day-to-day. That's noice, no signal. EDIT: That's also noise for HF traders, because day-to-day numbers are pointless when you worry about milliseconds.
  - iSnow 5y ago
    German government staff is as un-digital as you can get. They have no idea how a small modeling group would have helped. Maybe the incoming government will do better, but I am not holding my breath.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Access to modeling isn't even the issue, given RKI, Charité, ... Asking those resources the right questions and turning their results into policy and communicating it is the problem, which is even more fundamental "that's what a government is for" skills...
    - funcDropShadow 5y ago
      Being digital doesn't necessarily improve decision make. All the necessary data was there. RKI the German equivalent to the CDC in the US predicted the current wave rather accurately in summer, but politicians ignored it, because they wanted to win the election.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      It's not modelling, just having a basic understanding of your metrics and the ability to choose the right ones. German officials showed none of that. Well, I'm not holding my breath on that neither.
mentat 5y ago
"Remain obsessed" with transmission of a highly contagious virus that has shown significant ability to mutate at scale? That sure seems worth being obsessed about. When it mutates to spread past all current defenses then consistently kill because we failed to stop current spread it will indeed be "depressing".
- nahqz 5y ago
  There is absolutely no way to stop the spread forever. Just suggesting it is crazy. It is an option you have to forget about. Stalling the spread is useless as well - we have already had two major mutations in less than two years.
  - Spare_account 5y ago
    >we have already had two major mutations in less than two years. How frequently do equivalent Flu mutations occur?
    - nahqz 5y ago
      More or less at the same rate which is why stalling the virus is useless.
    - hcurtiss 5y ago
      Every. Single. Year.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > There is absolutely no way to stop the spread forever. Well, there is, we just don't want to pay for it: vaccinating poor countries, where effectively the mutations are being created by high infection rates.
    - nahqz 5y ago
      The vaccine hasn't stopped spread in rich countries, why would it do so in poor countries? Also there haven't been enough variants as to determine that most variants are coming from poor countries. Speaking of delta, India has more population than the entirety of Europe. Mathematically it makes sense than a variant could come from there regardless of whether the vaccine does anything.
soared 5y ago
That’s a weird way to phrase your second paragraph, considering hospitals have been close to full very recently in parts of the us. https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization
- invalidusernam3 5y ago
  Sure, but I'm willing to bet most of the hospitalised are not vaccinated, or at least a disproportionate amount of them aren't vaccinated
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    How much are you willing to bet? Keep in mind that if the population is 90% vaccinated, you expect something approaching 90% of ICU beds to be vaccinated (well, with an effective and sterilizing vaccine you wouldn’t expect this, but that’s not where we are). In England last month, 79% of Covid deaths were vaccinated. Currently about 36% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated. The raw data is here, good luck parsing anything useful out of it: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1037987/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-48.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    - christkv 5y ago
      A majority of deaths in the winter months will be elderly people with underlying health conditions that might have died from a flue or cold virus if covid was not circulating. It's more interesting to see excess deaths for this winter. I have a hunch excess death rates will be similar to 2019.
      - ptaipale 5y ago
        I don't think so, but we can quite well follow it up here, for most developed and semi-developed countries. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28count%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=FIN~SWE~USA~GBR~RUS~ROU~SGP~PER https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... (As OWID relies on official data sources, they may be skewed or manipulated for undeveloped or autocratic countries)
cblconfederate 5y ago
This is neither about transmission nor severe disease. The study itself is a lab test to see how the new virus holds up against the vaccines, their suggestions about protection are still conjecture
- detaro 5y ago
  Yes, as far as I understand it's somewhat of an indicator for infection risk, but can't capture overall consequences, and I think right now any strong statement for "it's going to be this bad/not bad" should be taken with a large grain of salt - we just don't know yet and are watching datapoints coming in day by day.
freemint 5y ago
The reason why people are obsessed with case numbers and not deaths is that case numbers control the case numbers in the insufficiently immunized which predicts death toll 3 weeks ahead of time. Why would you want to control a system with 2-3 weeks of additional lag in your input data when case numbers (a thing that is somewhat easy to measure) correlates so well future deaths? Ideally politician would have some family of models the equivalent of the CDC runs 3 weeks into the future which accounts for seasonality, social events so we could model predictive control on the death numbers but my impression is that is not done (transparently), due to mistrust in experts.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  That’s not necessarily true. If you suddenly start testing low risk people you weren’t testing before, then you can get an increase in cases without necessarily an increase in death. For example, if you implement a travel rule that every traveler needs to get tested a day before they leave and a day after they arrive, then you’re going to see an increase in cases (both real and false positives).
  - arrrg 5y ago
    Yeah, but in practice that hasn’t been relevant. It’s important to be cautious, but it’s also important to not be a know-it-all who just because they can think of a limitation of a data collection / statistical method they can suddenly cast doubt on the whole thing, even though people who know much more about it already probably did exactly the same thing. Finden a limitation of some data is extremely easy. Extremely easy. It will literally always be possible whenever people are working with data about people because this shit is hard. That doesn’t mean you get to name that limitation, cast doubt on something and piss off. That’s unproductive and irresponsible. These are the facts: incidence is a great leading indicator if some care is taken with it and it’s regularly put into the larger context (i.e. given more vaccinations a higher incidence is possible until things turn to shit). And you can shout data limitations at that central fact until you are blue in the face but it’s still gonna be there and true.
    - 5y ago
hef19898 5y ago
Maybe, maybe not. It is clear, even to someone with zero background in vaccines, that the COVID vaccines are no resulting in sterilizing immunity. Everyone said as much since the first trials. What does this mean? IMHO it means that once we reached sufficient levels of vaccinations (no idea what that would be, definitely above 70%) COVID will be nothing more than a severe flue / cold for most of the population, if they get it at all. It would also, I would assume, push mutations down the more infections and less severe route in order to overcome the limited spread among the vaccinated (they are still overall less infectious then unvaccinted people) and the vaccines themselves. Both are good news. And that drives me so crazy with the anti-vaxxers (among a lot of things with them). They don't want the shots because a) COVID is just a flew (and simultaniously a deadly bio weapon the Chinese spread in order to win a global economic war...) and b) vaccinated people are also infectious and can get it. Well, they kind of have it backwards there, don't they? it actually will be like a cold because people are vaccinated, not before. At which point the fact that vaccinated people can also transmit COVID is not really important anymore.
- twofornone 5y ago
  It was already on the scale of a cold approximately for some 90%+ of people. This virus is mild or asymptomatic in the vast majority of cases and that has been apparent for a long time. The only possible justification for vaccines at this point is to minimize overloading of hospitals because of the contagious nature of the virus, the overall complication rate is still very low. >anti-vaxxers (among a lot of things with them). They don't want the shots because a) COVID is just a flew (and simultaniously a deadly bio weapon the Chinese spread in order to win a global economic war...) Maybe the problem is that people who are against covid vaccines are being a) slandered as anti-vaxxers and b) lumped in with all sorts of other conspiracists.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    I am not aware of a common cold that resulted in hospitals being overloaded to the point planned surgery needed to be postponed. Severe cases maybe a rather small percentage, yet in absolute numbers they are big enough to be real problem. Well, if I were an anti-vaxxer, why would being called one be a slander? Either I am one or not. And yes, they are conspiracy theorists, even worse they are of becoming even more radical every day. But thanks for showing again the main problem I have with them: pure egoism. Covid wont be an issue for me (singing in the dark, lalala), so screw everyone else.
flyingfences 5y ago
> the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated But if the vaccinated represent a much larger share of the population, the same absolute number represents a much smaller proportion who become infected.
outime 5y ago
In many countries where vaccination rates are very high (think of Spain, Portugal...) the infection cases have been increasing yet people in the hospital or deaths caused by/with the virus have been rather low. Attribute it to vaccines, natural immunity, a potentially weaker variant - or everything at the same time but my point is: I agree with you, at least when it comes to these highly-vaccinated countries. I wish we would just stop looking at infection rates as it's never going to change as long as the virus exists (and continues to mutate) and/or a sterilizing vaccine of sorts shows up and people take it.
tdrdt 5y ago
Focus on case numbers by means of PCR tests is problematic because a PCR test only measures virus RNA, not the cause of sickness or contagiousness. If a thousand healthy people come in contact with the virus it is possible they all will have a positive PCR test while not being contagious at the same time.
sAbakumoff 5y ago
The Netherlands assess the "risk level" based on hospital admissions and ICU admissions: https://coronadashboard.government.nl/over-risiconiveaus https://coronadashboard.government.nl/over-risiconiveaus
micromacrofoot 5y ago
We need to be able to predict the hospitalization rate to be prepared for surges, so tracking transmission is absolutely necessary. Perhaps after a long period of low hospitalizations (6 months, a year?) the general public can stop paying attention... but we're definitely not there yet. It's looking like high double and triple vaccination rates can do it (like 80%+), but that's starting to look impossible in some countries.
- verdverm 5y ago
  Covid is endemic and will be with us forever. The terror threat indicator on news networks lasted many years and I suspect the attention to covid will follow a similar attention cycle unless something else major happens and dominates the news cycle. You'll need biannual boosters until then
gaoshan 5y ago
This is a good point. Hospitalization and death are really all that matter. People will be getting sick (to lesser degrees, likely, but it will still happen) from this for generations to come. What really matters is whether or not you are sick in bed at home and missing a few days of work vs sick in the hospital, occupying emergency health resources and facing potential death.
- hef19898 5y ago
  And case numbers are the best metric we have to predict deaths and hospitalization. Together with vaccination rates, age and so on. But overall, if cases go up, hospitalization will go up a couple of weeks later. Why would we not use that to enable to us act instead of reacting once it's too late?
  - brandon272 5y ago
    Exactly. Case numbers are not meaningless. They are a leading indicator. People unexpectedly showing up to hospitals is a lagging indicator of disease prevalence.
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      They are not a meaningful indicator in less virulent strains. At some point you will HAVE to accept risk. COVID is not disappearing. The next step is allowing law enforcement to force vaccinate people. Is that what you want? Do you want to continue masking, vaccine boosting, locking down indefinitely? COVID will not be eradicated so what threshold do we need to meet for this response to stop and let everyone return to normality?
  - _ea1k 5y ago
    Because as new variants with lower virulence emerge, and we see more breakthrough and reinfection cases, that direct link will become less direct. We don't lock down for the flu because the virulence of the flu is lower than covid and we consider it acceptable. At some point, we'll pass those acceptability thresholds for COVID as well. For some people, and regions, they already have passed those thresholds, as both severity and people's acceptance of different outcomes vary.
eloff 5y ago
I agree with you about the focus on cases instead of hospitalizations. However, even in places with high levels of vaccination, so far cases does translate into stressing hospitals to the edge, followed by lockdown and other restrictions. See Alberta, Canada in September, or Austria two weeks ago and Germany now. This doesn't end until nearly everyone is vaccinated, recovered, or dead. To paraphrase the German health minister.
- swader999 5y ago
  Alberta delayed a few surgeries, nobody was triaged out of ICU care. Bringing on enough staff to up ICU by 50 more beds is the right goal for them.
  - eloff 5y ago
    They had to backtrack and place severe restrictions on what activities were allowed and also restrict activities of the unvaccinated. There were hospitals transfering patients out of province, as well as surgeries cancelled - which is a big harm. The hospitals likely would have reached breaking point had no action been taken.
beervirus 5y ago
I find it encouraging. A virus that’s endemic and doesn’t kill people who are vaccinated is not a big deal. Like yeah it would be great if we eradicated it, but this is really fine.
wsc981 5y ago
If you want to hear some shocking data regarding the Pfizer vaccine, you should listen to this recent US FDA discussion at 4h20m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M&t=15607s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M&t=15607s Seems the Pfizer vaccine actually kills more people than it saves, due to the side effects of the vaccine. It's also mentioned a few minutes later that the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has very low vaccination rates, almost has no (severe) COVID cases.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
I watch This Week in Virology occasionally. A discussion among virology professors. Vincent Racaniello who kind of seems to run TWiV has been skeptical about boosters. His argument is that they're not needed (unless you got the J&J) because your first 2 vaccinations will protect you from serious illness. You might something akin to a nasty cold but you'll be protected from hospitalization or worse. His argument is also that we need to get the rest of the world fully vaccinated before we start looking at boosters here in the US. Also, Pfizer is only looking at antibody responses here, not T-Cell & memory B cell responses and other parts of the immune system that were primed by vaccination.
mataug 5y ago
Governments and public policy makers are being excessively cautious and slow to react to changes. Governments are beholden to public opinion*, and public opinion is slow to change. I'm not trying to justify the actions of govts, I'm merely stating that slow reaction times are considered by many to be a feature not a bug.
bigodbiel 5y ago
As for breakthroughs a common problem with analyzing vaccinated with unvaccinated is that among the unvaccinated there will be disproportionally higher percentage of naturally immune (recovered), who are if not equal, better protected from reinfection than naive vaccinees.
spurgu 5y ago
Yeah I stopped looking at case numbers a long time ago. They're completely irrelevant, with the amount of hysteria going around. Hospitalization is the only thing that matters at this point (and in fact has been since the beginning).
tim333 5y ago
Omicron is so infectious it may infect everyone available and die off quite rapidly.

detaro 5y ago

> all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and death It's a balance. E.g. Germanys current trouble is a direct consequence of official policy that had a core of "we only care about hospitalizations now", but ignored "... and based on case numbers and other statistics, what will future hospitalizations look like if we don't change anything about our approach" - not helped by election campaigns and politicians publicly admitting they haven't understood this whole "exponential" malarky yet. You really need to consider more than just one number.

formerly_proven 5y ago
The superseded government (by way of Jens Spahn) admitted that it held back on acting w.r.t. COVID in 2021 to avoid negative impact on their campaign. General inaction or adverse action in other areas (e.g. ICU staffing, leerdenker) did not help, either.
hef19898 5y ago
As someone who has quite some experience in running operations based on data, numbers and metrics the German approach to COVID on that front alone really puzzled me from the beginning. First the incidence of 50 that they pulled out of their ass for contact tracing, which was ignored basically the next day. Then the fact that resources weren't really increased to improve contract traceability. Then the decision to use a backward looking KPI, ICU occupation, to tackle a highly dynamic situation. Which also meant to ignore the incidence, the only real predictive metric we have. And it is good at predicting ICU occupation and severe cases when combined with vaccination levels. That's simply amateurish, and means all measures, not all of which are bad, are usually a couple of weeks late. Even better, the 7-day average incidence is based on the daily numbers. Those numbers are, what a surprise, limited to the testing capacities of laboratories, so the incidence is reported based on the day the test was analyzed, not when the sample was taken. This flattens the 7-day average curve. Well, until the new numbers are reported once labs git through their backlog. Thing is, the 7-day average is not changed once published. Again just amateurish.
- detaro 5y ago
  Yes, it's been really frustrating to see RKI predict this for weeks and just ... nothing happening. And then you still get headlines of "incidence fell slightly!" - from 392,4 to 392,2 (or sth like that), when testing labs are hitting capacity. We somehow lucked into a relatively good first wave and ever since then... so much unnecessary mess.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    The drop in incidence is the same BS when reporting in DAX or S&P moving by 0.2 % day-to-day. That's noice, no signal. EDIT: That's also noise for HF traders, because day-to-day numbers are pointless when you worry about milliseconds.
- iSnow 5y ago
  German government staff is as un-digital as you can get. They have no idea how a small modeling group would have helped. Maybe the incoming government will do better, but I am not holding my breath.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Access to modeling isn't even the issue, given RKI, Charité, ... Asking those resources the right questions and turning their results into policy and communicating it is the problem, which is even more fundamental "that's what a government is for" skills...
  - funcDropShadow 5y ago
    Being digital doesn't necessarily improve decision make. All the necessary data was there. RKI the German equivalent to the CDC in the US predicted the current wave rather accurately in summer, but politicians ignored it, because they wanted to win the election.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    It's not modelling, just having a basic understanding of your metrics and the ability to choose the right ones. German officials showed none of that. Well, I'm not holding my breath on that neither.

mentat 5y ago

"Remain obsessed" with transmission of a highly contagious virus that has shown significant ability to mutate at scale? That sure seems worth being obsessed about. When it mutates to spread past all current defenses then consistently kill because we failed to stop current spread it will indeed be "depressing".

nahqz 5y ago
There is absolutely no way to stop the spread forever. Just suggesting it is crazy. It is an option you have to forget about. Stalling the spread is useless as well - we have already had two major mutations in less than two years.
- Spare_account 5y ago
  >we have already had two major mutations in less than two years. How frequently do equivalent Flu mutations occur?
  - nahqz 5y ago
    More or less at the same rate which is why stalling the virus is useless.
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    Every. Single. Year.
- toyg 5y ago
  > There is absolutely no way to stop the spread forever. Well, there is, we just don't want to pay for it: vaccinating poor countries, where effectively the mutations are being created by high infection rates.
  - nahqz 5y ago
    The vaccine hasn't stopped spread in rich countries, why would it do so in poor countries? Also there haven't been enough variants as to determine that most variants are coming from poor countries. Speaking of delta, India has more population than the entirety of Europe. Mathematically it makes sense than a variant could come from there regardless of whether the vaccine does anything.

soared 5y ago

That’s a weird way to phrase your second paragraph, considering hospitals have been close to full very recently in parts of the us. https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization

invalidusernam3 5y ago
Sure, but I'm willing to bet most of the hospitalised are not vaccinated, or at least a disproportionate amount of them aren't vaccinated
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  How much are you willing to bet? Keep in mind that if the population is 90% vaccinated, you expect something approaching 90% of ICU beds to be vaccinated (well, with an effective and sterilizing vaccine you wouldn’t expect this, but that’s not where we are). In England last month, 79% of Covid deaths were vaccinated. Currently about 36% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated. The raw data is here, good luck parsing anything useful out of it: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1037987/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-48.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  - christkv 5y ago
    A majority of deaths in the winter months will be elderly people with underlying health conditions that might have died from a flue or cold virus if covid was not circulating. It's more interesting to see excess deaths for this winter. I have a hunch excess death rates will be similar to 2019.
    - ptaipale 5y ago
      I don't think so, but we can quite well follow it up here, for most developed and semi-developed countries. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28count%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=FIN~SWE~USA~GBR~RUS~ROU~SGP~PER https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... (As OWID relies on official data sources, they may be skewed or manipulated for undeveloped or autocratic countries)

cblconfederate 5y ago

This is neither about transmission nor severe disease. The study itself is a lab test to see how the new virus holds up against the vaccines, their suggestions about protection are still conjecture

detaro 5y ago
Yes, as far as I understand it's somewhat of an indicator for infection risk, but can't capture overall consequences, and I think right now any strong statement for "it's going to be this bad/not bad" should be taken with a large grain of salt - we just don't know yet and are watching datapoints coming in day by day.

freemint 5y ago

The reason why people are obsessed with case numbers and not deaths is that case numbers control the case numbers in the insufficiently immunized which predicts death toll 3 weeks ahead of time. Why would you want to control a system with 2-3 weeks of additional lag in your input data when case numbers (a thing that is somewhat easy to measure) correlates so well future deaths? Ideally politician would have some family of models the equivalent of the CDC runs 3 weeks into the future which accounts for seasonality, social events so we could model predictive control on the death numbers but my impression is that is not done (transparently), due to mistrust in experts.

TechBro8615 5y ago
That’s not necessarily true. If you suddenly start testing low risk people you weren’t testing before, then you can get an increase in cases without necessarily an increase in death. For example, if you implement a travel rule that every traveler needs to get tested a day before they leave and a day after they arrive, then you’re going to see an increase in cases (both real and false positives).
- arrrg 5y ago
  Yeah, but in practice that hasn’t been relevant. It’s important to be cautious, but it’s also important to not be a know-it-all who just because they can think of a limitation of a data collection / statistical method they can suddenly cast doubt on the whole thing, even though people who know much more about it already probably did exactly the same thing. Finden a limitation of some data is extremely easy. Extremely easy. It will literally always be possible whenever people are working with data about people because this shit is hard. That doesn’t mean you get to name that limitation, cast doubt on something and piss off. That’s unproductive and irresponsible. These are the facts: incidence is a great leading indicator if some care is taken with it and it’s regularly put into the larger context (i.e. given more vaccinations a higher incidence is possible until things turn to shit). And you can shout data limitations at that central fact until you are blue in the face but it’s still gonna be there and true.
  - 5y ago

hef19898 5y ago

Maybe, maybe not. It is clear, even to someone with zero background in vaccines, that the COVID vaccines are no resulting in sterilizing immunity. Everyone said as much since the first trials. What does this mean? IMHO it means that once we reached sufficient levels of vaccinations (no idea what that would be, definitely above 70%) COVID will be nothing more than a severe flue / cold for most of the population, if they get it at all. It would also, I would assume, push mutations down the more infections and less severe route in order to overcome the limited spread among the vaccinated (they are still overall less infectious then unvaccinted people) and the vaccines themselves. Both are good news. And that drives me so crazy with the anti-vaxxers (among a lot of things with them). They don't want the shots because a) COVID is just a flew (and simultaniously a deadly bio weapon the Chinese spread in order to win a global economic war...) and b) vaccinated people are also infectious and can get it. Well, they kind of have it backwards there, don't they? it actually will be like a cold because people are vaccinated, not before. At which point the fact that vaccinated people can also transmit COVID is not really important anymore.

twofornone 5y ago
It was already on the scale of a cold approximately for some 90%+ of people. This virus is mild or asymptomatic in the vast majority of cases and that has been apparent for a long time. The only possible justification for vaccines at this point is to minimize overloading of hospitals because of the contagious nature of the virus, the overall complication rate is still very low. >anti-vaxxers (among a lot of things with them). They don't want the shots because a) COVID is just a flew (and simultaniously a deadly bio weapon the Chinese spread in order to win a global economic war...) Maybe the problem is that people who are against covid vaccines are being a) slandered as anti-vaxxers and b) lumped in with all sorts of other conspiracists.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I am not aware of a common cold that resulted in hospitals being overloaded to the point planned surgery needed to be postponed. Severe cases maybe a rather small percentage, yet in absolute numbers they are big enough to be real problem. Well, if I were an anti-vaxxer, why would being called one be a slander? Either I am one or not. And yes, they are conspiracy theorists, even worse they are of becoming even more radical every day. But thanks for showing again the main problem I have with them: pure egoism. Covid wont be an issue for me (singing in the dark, lalala), so screw everyone else.

flyingfences 5y ago

> the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated But if the vaccinated represent a much larger share of the population, the same absolute number represents a much smaller proportion who become infected.

outime 5y ago

In many countries where vaccination rates are very high (think of Spain, Portugal...) the infection cases have been increasing yet people in the hospital or deaths caused by/with the virus have been rather low. Attribute it to vaccines, natural immunity, a potentially weaker variant - or everything at the same time but my point is: I agree with you, at least when it comes to these highly-vaccinated countries. I wish we would just stop looking at infection rates as it's never going to change as long as the virus exists (and continues to mutate) and/or a sterilizing vaccine of sorts shows up and people take it.

tdrdt 5y ago

Focus on case numbers by means of PCR tests is problematic because a PCR test only measures virus RNA, not the cause of sickness or contagiousness. If a thousand healthy people come in contact with the virus it is possible they all will have a positive PCR test while not being contagious at the same time.

sAbakumoff 5y ago

The Netherlands assess the "risk level" based on hospital admissions and ICU admissions: https://coronadashboard.government.nl/over-risiconiveaus https://coronadashboard.government.nl/over-risiconiveaus

micromacrofoot 5y ago

We need to be able to predict the hospitalization rate to be prepared for surges, so tracking transmission is absolutely necessary. Perhaps after a long period of low hospitalizations (6 months, a year?) the general public can stop paying attention... but we're definitely not there yet. It's looking like high double and triple vaccination rates can do it (like 80%+), but that's starting to look impossible in some countries.

verdverm 5y ago
Covid is endemic and will be with us forever. The terror threat indicator on news networks lasted many years and I suspect the attention to covid will follow a similar attention cycle unless something else major happens and dominates the news cycle. You'll need biannual boosters until then

gaoshan 5y ago

This is a good point. Hospitalization and death are really all that matter. People will be getting sick (to lesser degrees, likely, but it will still happen) from this for generations to come. What really matters is whether or not you are sick in bed at home and missing a few days of work vs sick in the hospital, occupying emergency health resources and facing potential death.

hef19898 5y ago
And case numbers are the best metric we have to predict deaths and hospitalization. Together with vaccination rates, age and so on. But overall, if cases go up, hospitalization will go up a couple of weeks later. Why would we not use that to enable to us act instead of reacting once it's too late?
- brandon272 5y ago
  Exactly. Case numbers are not meaningless. They are a leading indicator. People unexpectedly showing up to hospitals is a lagging indicator of disease prevalence.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    They are not a meaningful indicator in less virulent strains. At some point you will HAVE to accept risk. COVID is not disappearing. The next step is allowing law enforcement to force vaccinate people. Is that what you want? Do you want to continue masking, vaccine boosting, locking down indefinitely? COVID will not be eradicated so what threshold do we need to meet for this response to stop and let everyone return to normality?
- _ea1k 5y ago
  Because as new variants with lower virulence emerge, and we see more breakthrough and reinfection cases, that direct link will become less direct. We don't lock down for the flu because the virulence of the flu is lower than covid and we consider it acceptable. At some point, we'll pass those acceptability thresholds for COVID as well. For some people, and regions, they already have passed those thresholds, as both severity and people's acceptance of different outcomes vary.

eloff 5y ago

I agree with you about the focus on cases instead of hospitalizations. However, even in places with high levels of vaccination, so far cases does translate into stressing hospitals to the edge, followed by lockdown and other restrictions. See Alberta, Canada in September, or Austria two weeks ago and Germany now. This doesn't end until nearly everyone is vaccinated, recovered, or dead. To paraphrase the German health minister.

swader999 5y ago
Alberta delayed a few surgeries, nobody was triaged out of ICU care. Bringing on enough staff to up ICU by 50 more beds is the right goal for them.
- eloff 5y ago
  They had to backtrack and place severe restrictions on what activities were allowed and also restrict activities of the unvaccinated. There were hospitals transfering patients out of province, as well as surgeries cancelled - which is a big harm. The hospitals likely would have reached breaking point had no action been taken.

beervirus 5y ago

I find it encouraging. A virus that’s endemic and doesn’t kill people who are vaccinated is not a big deal. Like yeah it would be great if we eradicated it, but this is really fine.

wsc981 5y ago

If you want to hear some shocking data regarding the Pfizer vaccine, you should listen to this recent US FDA discussion at 4h20m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M&t=15607s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M&t=15607s Seems the Pfizer vaccine actually kills more people than it saves, due to the side effects of the vaccine. It's also mentioned a few minutes later that the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has very low vaccination rates, almost has no (severe) COVID cases.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

I watch This Week in Virology occasionally. A discussion among virology professors. Vincent Racaniello who kind of seems to run TWiV has been skeptical about boosters. His argument is that they're not needed (unless you got the J&J) because your first 2 vaccinations will protect you from serious illness. You might something akin to a nasty cold but you'll be protected from hospitalization or worse. His argument is also that we need to get the rest of the world fully vaccinated before we start looking at boosters here in the US. Also, Pfizer is only looking at antibody responses here, not T-Cell & memory B cell responses and other parts of the immune system that were primed by vaccination.

mataug 5y ago

Governments and public policy makers are being excessively cautious and slow to react to changes. Governments are beholden to public opinion*, and public opinion is slow to change. I'm not trying to justify the actions of govts, I'm merely stating that slow reaction times are considered by many to be a feature not a bug.

bigodbiel 5y ago

As for breakthroughs a common problem with analyzing vaccinated with unvaccinated is that among the unvaccinated there will be disproportionally higher percentage of naturally immune (recovered), who are if not equal, better protected from reinfection than naive vaccinees.

spurgu 5y ago

Yeah I stopped looking at case numbers a long time ago. They're completely irrelevant, with the amount of hysteria going around. Hospitalization is the only thing that matters at this point (and in fact has been since the beginning).

tim333 5y ago

Omicron is so infectious it may infect everyone available and die off quite rapidly.