6 ms·

As someone in a population that is 99%+ vaccinated and covid is spreading like wildfire, the vaccines are doing nothing to stop spread now. We are seeing the mo

by Jtype 5y ago

As someone in a population that is 99%+ vaccinated and covid is spreading like wildfire, the vaccines are doing nothing to stop spread now. We are seeing the most dramatic rise in cases since Covid began. This is in a youthful population who are almost all vaccinated. We have so far avoided severe illness, so I would recommend the vaccines to any individuals, but I see nothing now to convince me that vaccinating children will stop or even reduce spread.

arcbyte 5y ago
It's definitely not doing "nothing". The vaccines are reliably reducing the severity of infection as you pointed out, and also reducing the duration where someone infected will infect others, thus reducing R value, thus applying significant friction to the spread. It's not the panacea we might have expected, but I think we all misunderstood vaccines from the get-go.
- bleuchase 5y ago
  You didn’t get the memo that this was a lifetime subscription service?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    You mean like a flu shot? And Tdap? Oh no. Anyways. This assessment is nether particularly interesting nor at all unprecedented. If it ends up being with us indefinitely, then a COVID booster will simply be incorporated into the annual flu shot.
- stathibus 5y ago
  We didn't "misunderstand", we were sold optimism based on incomplete data. Don't confuse bad information for a literacy problem.
sjg007 5y ago
Ok so where? And is everyone boosted? And how do you infer that vaxxing kids is worthless?
- VLM 5y ago
  The total death count in my state for kids (under 20) is 4, which is simultaneously 4 too many, yet also any effort applied to vax kids is kind of a waste as long as old/sick/fat people are dropping like flies and filling the hospitals. Like the effort to save one of the four kids in my state by vax or whatever could, in theory, have saved about 2000 elderly people. If you have a dual monitor system, its instructive to bring up a site like covid19.healthdata.org and put a state like Massachusetts on one monitor and perhaps Ohio on the other monitor. In MA the vax rate is a 88% for one dose, and ICU beds needed has gone from 146 a month ago to 257 today a monthly growth rate of a a staggering 76%. If the number of ICU beds required in MA continues to double every month (very unlikely) then the entire population of MA will be in a ICU bed in merely 14 months. In OH the vax rate is 61% for one dose, and ICU beds needed has gone from 716 a month ago to 891 today a monthly growth rate of 24%. About a third of people in MA wear a mask as opposed to a quarter in OH, so we're told the growth rate is artificially smaller in MA than OH because they wear masks, so the situation is actually much worse. As a simple linear regression, (76 - 24) / (88 - 66) shows a predictive model that for every one percent increase in vaccinations, there will be about 2.3 % GROWTH rate in ICU use. Not decline, but growth. So as a predictive model, if 5% of the population of Ohio were convinced to get the vax, then the model predicts the ICU beds required in Ohio would be (2.3 * 5) which is an increase in the increase of ICU requirements of 11.5%.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > ... yet also any effort applied to vax kids is kind of a waste as long as old/sick/fat people are dropping like flies and filling the hospitals. Not if the kids are spreading it to the old, like their parents and grandparents.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Your model is wrong. The vaccines are not putting people in the ICU. It is in fact the opposite.
arcticbull 5y ago
> As someone in a population that is 99%+ vaccinated and covid is spreading like wildfire, the vaccines are doing nothing to stop spread now. The fact it continues to spread is not evidence that it is doing "nothing" to stop the spread.
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  Your earlier comment: "Part of the benefit of vaccination is that it prevents spread..." This comment: "The fact it continues to spread..." You can't have both. Which is it?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    You 100% can. It is continuing to spread, but more slowly, and less effectively thanks to vaccination. It's not binary. Vaccinations are 70-95% effective, which means that somewhere between 5 and 30 people in any group of 100 may still catch the disease. Those that do will be less sick. We've had vaccines since 1798, this isn't rocket surgery.
- VLM 5y ago
  No significant practical difference in the slope of the curve in areas with (supposedly?) 99% vax vs areas with 50% vax does have certain unavoidable mathematical implications. Either 99% isn't enough to be effective, in which case its practically useless as 99% is ridiculous high, or 50% is "high enough" that its doing all the good it can possibly do even at that low level, so no need for social pressure to push it. But you can't sell ads without sizzle content, and nothing sizzles quite like one group trying to forcible medical experiment on an unwilling other group, so we get infinite vax coverage in the media. There's a similar trend in masking data seen on covid19.healthdata.org. The authoritarian authorities say masks work great with no real world evidence behind that aggressively enforced statement. The actual graphs of data show no correlation between mask wearing and rate of infection in the general public when comparing state experiences. Personally I believe that's similar to the old iphone antenna problem where it provably worked great in the lab, but the general public insisted on holding it wrong such that the antenna did not work in practice for the vast majority of the general public. I find no conflict in abstract theoretical scenario lab tests showing a piece of cloth works, while at the same time the general public completely fouls up the real world implementation such that there's no discernable change in infection rates. What I can't explain is why people have been spending thousands of dollars for decades on asbestos removal gear, exotic aircraft paint respirators, virology research lab glove boxes, and all along all we've needed to prevent a fatal pandemic is a mere single strip of cloth; someone should inform OSHA. If you follow the money, interesting things are seen that explain a lot.

by Jtype 5y ago

arcbyte 5y ago

It's definitely not doing "nothing". The vaccines are reliably reducing the severity of infection as you pointed out, and also reducing the duration where someone infected will infect others, thus reducing R value, thus applying significant friction to the spread. It's not the panacea we might have expected, but I think we all misunderstood vaccines from the get-go.

bleuchase 5y ago
You didn’t get the memo that this was a lifetime subscription service?
- arcticbull 5y ago
  You mean like a flu shot? And Tdap? Oh no. Anyways. This assessment is nether particularly interesting nor at all unprecedented. If it ends up being with us indefinitely, then a COVID booster will simply be incorporated into the annual flu shot.
stathibus 5y ago
We didn't "misunderstand", we were sold optimism based on incomplete data. Don't confuse bad information for a literacy problem.

sjg007 5y ago

Ok so where? And is everyone boosted? And how do you infer that vaxxing kids is worthless?

VLM 5y ago
The total death count in my state for kids (under 20) is 4, which is simultaneously 4 too many, yet also any effort applied to vax kids is kind of a waste as long as old/sick/fat people are dropping like flies and filling the hospitals. Like the effort to save one of the four kids in my state by vax or whatever could, in theory, have saved about 2000 elderly people. If you have a dual monitor system, its instructive to bring up a site like covid19.healthdata.org and put a state like Massachusetts on one monitor and perhaps Ohio on the other monitor. In MA the vax rate is a 88% for one dose, and ICU beds needed has gone from 146 a month ago to 257 today a monthly growth rate of a a staggering 76%. If the number of ICU beds required in MA continues to double every month (very unlikely) then the entire population of MA will be in a ICU bed in merely 14 months. In OH the vax rate is 61% for one dose, and ICU beds needed has gone from 716 a month ago to 891 today a monthly growth rate of 24%. About a third of people in MA wear a mask as opposed to a quarter in OH, so we're told the growth rate is artificially smaller in MA than OH because they wear masks, so the situation is actually much worse. As a simple linear regression, (76 - 24) / (88 - 66) shows a predictive model that for every one percent increase in vaccinations, there will be about 2.3 % GROWTH rate in ICU use. Not decline, but growth. So as a predictive model, if 5% of the population of Ohio were convinced to get the vax, then the model predicts the ICU beds required in Ohio would be (2.3 * 5) which is an increase in the increase of ICU requirements of 11.5%.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > ... yet also any effort applied to vax kids is kind of a waste as long as old/sick/fat people are dropping like flies and filling the hospitals. Not if the kids are spreading it to the old, like their parents and grandparents.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Your model is wrong. The vaccines are not putting people in the ICU. It is in fact the opposite.

arcticbull 5y ago

> As someone in a population that is 99%+ vaccinated and covid is spreading like wildfire, the vaccines are doing nothing to stop spread now. The fact it continues to spread is not evidence that it is doing "nothing" to stop the spread.

joshuahughes 5y ago
Your earlier comment: "Part of the benefit of vaccination is that it prevents spread..." This comment: "The fact it continues to spread..." You can't have both. Which is it?
- arcticbull 5y ago
  You 100% can. It is continuing to spread, but more slowly, and less effectively thanks to vaccination. It's not binary. Vaccinations are 70-95% effective, which means that somewhere between 5 and 30 people in any group of 100 may still catch the disease. Those that do will be less sick. We've had vaccines since 1798, this isn't rocket surgery.
VLM 5y ago
No significant practical difference in the slope of the curve in areas with (supposedly?) 99% vax vs areas with 50% vax does have certain unavoidable mathematical implications. Either 99% isn't enough to be effective, in which case its practically useless as 99% is ridiculous high, or 50% is "high enough" that its doing all the good it can possibly do even at that low level, so no need for social pressure to push it. But you can't sell ads without sizzle content, and nothing sizzles quite like one group trying to forcible medical experiment on an unwilling other group, so we get infinite vax coverage in the media. There's a similar trend in masking data seen on covid19.healthdata.org. The authoritarian authorities say masks work great with no real world evidence behind that aggressively enforced statement. The actual graphs of data show no correlation between mask wearing and rate of infection in the general public when comparing state experiences. Personally I believe that's similar to the old iphone antenna problem where it provably worked great in the lab, but the general public insisted on holding it wrong such that the antenna did not work in practice for the vast majority of the general public. I find no conflict in abstract theoretical scenario lab tests showing a piece of cloth works, while at the same time the general public completely fouls up the real world implementation such that there's no discernable change in infection rates. What I can't explain is why people have been spending thousands of dollars for decades on asbestos removal gear, exotic aircraft paint respirators, virology research lab glove boxes, and all along all we've needed to prevent a fatal pandemic is a mere single strip of cloth; someone should inform OSHA. If you follow the money, interesting things are seen that explain a lot.