4 ms·

Vaccination makes you much less likely to get sick in the first place and probably reduces how long you are infectious if you do get sick. Neither of those thin

Vaccination makes you much less likely to get sick in the first place and probably reduces how long you are infectious if you do get sick. Neither of those things fit with 'does not reduce'.

srcreigh 5y ago
Yep, county by county in the USA, as of Sept 2021, higher %age vax populations is correlated with lower case numbers. Strangely, you can find this information in Fig 2 of this short anti-vax paper claiming the vaccine doesn't correlate with case numbers at all. I don't blame people for being confused. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10654-021-008...
starik36 5y ago
> Vaccination makes you much less likely to get sick in the first place Do you have a reference for this claim? Nearly everyone I know that has caught it and has gotten sick in the past 2 weeks has been vaccinated, sometimes boostered as well. I don't think this claim is true with Omicron. Vaccination makes you less likely to end up on a ventilator.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I have seen much discussion of vaccines being less effective at preventing infection with omicron but no indication of them being 0% effective. Of course, it will probably be at least a few more weeks before we have good overall data on this (e.g. December/January case rates among vaccinated vs unvaccinated). And in a big storm, even everyone being 25% less likely to get infected impacts rate of transmission, which is the big one for resource constraints and such.
  - starik36 5y ago
    > no indication of them being 0% effective But there is no data to indicate that it's >0% effective either. So until we have data to back things up one way or the other, talking about it just creates more science disinformation.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      That's quite the statement. Early studies suggested that vaccine antibodies were much weaker but boosted individuals still had antibodies that had some effect on omicron, and gave no reason to believe that non-antibody parts of the immune system would have 0% effect. So based on that, and high level of protection against previous strains, my default assumption would be "some, but much lower, protection." Then, as of Dec 26, being vaccinated in CA still resulted in a much lower case rate per 100K: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status That likely isn't 100% omicron data, but the ratio looks the same as what it was before, so still not reason to drop my belief to 0%. It is quite the leap to say "new strain, I should restart my assumption at 0% effectiveness."
      - starik36 5y ago
        Not saying restart all assumptions. I am saying that whatever you say should come with the "based on the previous..., it may or may not apply to current..." proviso.
cm2187 5y ago
The problem is that it doesn't show in the stats in practice. In the UK, the % of positive covid tests that are vaxed pretty much follows the % of people vaxed in the population (by age). If vaxed people were less infectious, you would expect the virus to circulate much more in the unvaccinated population. Particularly given that vaccine hesitancy isn't homogenously distributed in the population.
- majormajor 5y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "% of positive covid tests that are vaxed"? In the US, with the delta wave, case-rate-per-100k-people very much showed that the vaccinated were less likely to catch Covid. For instance: "From December 20, 2021 to December 26, 2021, unvaccinated people were 3.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people." (with a chart showing the trend similarly for months). https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status I expect the omicron wave to be less dramatically tilted, but that there will still be some difference.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    The UK is considerably more vaxxed and boosted, enough that the dynamics could be different.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    For instance 79% of the people >18yo who tested positive in December were vaccinated. And that's pretty much the % of people over 18 that are vaccinated in the UK. You get pretty much the same result for each age tranche: Positive of which % pos test % population Age Tests vaxed vaccinated vaccinated <18 395,335 57,284 14% 35% 18-29 257,526 181,705 71% 60% 30-39 254,435 193,623 76% 65% 40-49 230,670 195,908 85% 77% 50-59 147,033 129,440 88% 85% 60-69 58,233 51,037 88% 90% 70-79 18,858 16,263 86% 95% >80 9,067 7,658 84% 95% Total > 18 975,822 775,634 79% p36: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1043608/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_51.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... You had the same outcome in November, i.e. pre-Omicron.

Vaccination makes you much less likely to get sick in the first place and probably reduces how long you are infectious if you do get sick. Neither of those things fit with 'does not reduce'.

srcreigh 5y ago

Yep, county by county in the USA, as of Sept 2021, higher %age vax populations is correlated with lower case numbers. Strangely, you can find this information in Fig 2 of this short anti-vax paper claiming the vaccine doesn't correlate with case numbers at all. I don't blame people for being confused. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10654-021-008...

starik36 5y ago

> Vaccination makes you much less likely to get sick in the first place Do you have a reference for this claim? Nearly everyone I know that has caught it and has gotten sick in the past 2 weeks has been vaccinated, sometimes boostered as well. I don't think this claim is true with Omicron. Vaccination makes you less likely to end up on a ventilator.

majormajor 5y ago
I have seen much discussion of vaccines being less effective at preventing infection with omicron but no indication of them being 0% effective. Of course, it will probably be at least a few more weeks before we have good overall data on this (e.g. December/January case rates among vaccinated vs unvaccinated). And in a big storm, even everyone being 25% less likely to get infected impacts rate of transmission, which is the big one for resource constraints and such.
- starik36 5y ago
  > no indication of them being 0% effective But there is no data to indicate that it's >0% effective either. So until we have data to back things up one way or the other, talking about it just creates more science disinformation.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    That's quite the statement. Early studies suggested that vaccine antibodies were much weaker but boosted individuals still had antibodies that had some effect on omicron, and gave no reason to believe that non-antibody parts of the immune system would have 0% effect. So based on that, and high level of protection against previous strains, my default assumption would be "some, but much lower, protection." Then, as of Dec 26, being vaccinated in CA still resulted in a much lower case rate per 100K: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status That likely isn't 100% omicron data, but the ratio looks the same as what it was before, so still not reason to drop my belief to 0%. It is quite the leap to say "new strain, I should restart my assumption at 0% effectiveness."
    - starik36 5y ago
      Not saying restart all assumptions. I am saying that whatever you say should come with the "based on the previous..., it may or may not apply to current..." proviso.

cm2187 5y ago

The problem is that it doesn't show in the stats in practice. In the UK, the % of positive covid tests that are vaxed pretty much follows the % of people vaxed in the population (by age). If vaxed people were less infectious, you would expect the virus to circulate much more in the unvaccinated population. Particularly given that vaccine hesitancy isn't homogenously distributed in the population.

majormajor 5y ago
What exactly do you mean by "% of positive covid tests that are vaxed"? In the US, with the delta wave, case-rate-per-100k-people very much showed that the vaccinated were less likely to catch Covid. For instance: "From December 20, 2021 to December 26, 2021, unvaccinated people were 3.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people." (with a chart showing the trend similarly for months). https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status I expect the omicron wave to be less dramatically tilted, but that there will still be some difference.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The UK is considerably more vaxxed and boosted, enough that the dynamics could be different.
- cm2187 5y ago
  For instance 79% of the people >18yo who tested positive in December were vaccinated. And that's pretty much the % of people over 18 that are vaccinated in the UK. You get pretty much the same result for each age tranche: Positive of which % pos test % population Age Tests vaxed vaccinated vaccinated <18 395,335 57,284 14% 35% 18-29 257,526 181,705 71% 60% 30-39 254,435 193,623 76% 65% 40-49 230,670 195,908 85% 77% 50-59 147,033 129,440 88% 85% 60-69 58,233 51,037 88% 90% 70-79 18,858 16,263 86% 95% >80 9,067 7,658 84% 95% Total > 18 975,822 775,634 79% p36: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1043608/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_51.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... You had the same outcome in November, i.e. pre-Omicron.