6 ms·

Since the vaccinations are stopping the spread?

unethical_ban 5y ago
They very likely are stopping the death, yes.
tzs 5y ago
They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more. COVID is almost certainly never going away. It will become endemic, joining the other endemic viruses such as the couple hundred cold viruses (including 4 other coronavirus that were once deadly pandemics) and the various flu viruses we reluctantly live with. Something we all get several times over our lifetime, that most of the time just make most of us pretty miserable for up to a week or so. How many people die during the transition from pandemic to endemic depends greatly on how risky it is to acquire your first immunity, and how strong that first immunity is when it comes to preventing hospitalization and death. The lowest risk way to acquire that first immunity is by vaccination. It's also the way that provides the highest chances of strong immunity--when you acquire it by an actual infection it depends on how severe the first infection was. So yes, mass vaccination gives us the best chances of returning to normal sooner with less death along the way.
- hammock 5y ago
  >They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more Want to point out this was your response to the question, "Since the vaccinations are stopping the spread?" in case you wanted to re-read your answer.
  - vmception 5y ago
    That was the answer. People vocally cynical about the vaccines have always been using a strawman argument, in case you need a refresher a strawman argument requires two things: 1) creating a standard that was never used by the proponents 2) criticizing the made up standard to discredit the proponents on a medical level, it is clear this wasn't to stop the spread, it was to slow the spread as vaccinated infected have smaller viral load for shorter time period compared to unvaccinated infected, as well as reduce severity and deaths of those that contained a viral load. On who we call the "proponents" for this topic, I will concede that I've heard many local influencers, radio hosts and others reduce this to "stop the spread" in reference to any viral mitigation measure, such as masks, distancing, quarantine, and vaccination all part of an amorphous overarching program. But its clear that the people that latch on to "stop the spread" as a reference to the vaccine as a technical term advancement would never have looked at the technical supporting data due to either trust issues with the institution or plain ignorance of how it works. The researchers and their research has always been clear about what performance to expect from the vaccines (except duration of effectiveness which is unknown for both the vaccines and natural immunity, compounded by the variants)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - incrudible 5y ago
      Fauci himself did claim the vaccinated are "dead ends" to the virus[1]. He dangled the carrot of "herd immunity through vaccination" around but then moved the threshold further and further, even admitting to being dishonest in the process[2]. Of course, we now all know herd immunity with vaccines is impossible and that they do next to nothing to inhibit spread. Perhaps some experts accurately predicted this, but that's not how it was communicated to the public. To suggest otherwise would be gaslighting. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-vaccinated-people-become-dead-ends-for-the-coronavirus https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-... [2] https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445
      - vmception 5y ago
        We should make fun of them, instead look at Pzifer, Moderna and the publications around them and other specific vaccines. They are very consistent about their proposed efficacy before they came out, their actual efficacy as they were rolled out, and now their actual decreasing efficacy over time including in the face of other seasonal variants, since we don't have seasonal vaccines.
        incrudible 5y ago
        Well that's great, but the same authorities that just lied to me are also responsible to ensure safety of these vaccines. They're the same ones who tell me it's "safe and effective". Why would anybody trust them now?
        vmception 5y ago
        They have a lot of work to do, I would say look outside of the US and also technologies used by different vaccines worldwide. A lot of the consternations fall apart, to me, when the aggregate response reaches the same conclusion, something impossible to be done by any guiding hand due to geopolitics.
  - tzs 5y ago
    That question was in response to the statement "Right now it seems like mass vaccination is our only way out of this pandemic and back to normal". My response is explaining to the questioner why that statement was correct.
- oxymoran 5y ago
  “ They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more” So does an omicron infection compared to delta, even to the unvaccinated. I am not an anti vaxxer, I have two doses of Pfizer in me. The vaccines are simply going to be obsolete in a matter of weeks/months because everyone is going to have gotten and recovered from omnicron at that point. It’s that contagious, it’s futile to try to avoid it. Get vaccinated if you are scared and move on with your life.
  - tzs 5y ago
    The increased contagiousness of omicron makes it more important for people to get vaccinated. The chances of hospitalization if you have omicron are lower than they were if you had another variant, and same with the chances of death, but the factor by which they are lower with omicron is quite a bit lower than the factor by which omicron is more contagious. The net result is that omicron is greatly increasing the number of hospitalizations way past what they saw with delta, which is overloading hospitals in way too many places in the US. I'm vaccinated and boosted, but that doesn't help much if I get in a car accident or have a heart attack and I can't get treatment because the hospitals are full of COVID patients.
bradly 5y ago
95% of people in New Zealand that are eligible for a vaccine are vaccinated. A population of five million are getting ~30 new cases a day when excluding cases at the border on entry (50 including the border cases). People are causing the spread, not the vaccine.
- colecut 5y ago
  Why are all of our vaccinated getting omicron, then? What is the differentiator?
  - bradly 5y ago
    Not enough people getting vaxxed.
___q 5y ago
Yes, when we compare the rates of transmission between vaccinated and unvaccinated communities, vaccinations are stopping the spread. More questions?
tradesurplus 5y ago
The intramuscular vaccinations currently available were never going to stop the spread and anyone familiar with animal studies of similar approaches to CoV vaccination knew that. Stating bold claims unsupported by balance of evidence and knowledge of mechanisms was a deliberate choice of messaging in hope of increasing campaign uptake. They're helpful for preventing severe disease and death, for now -- this effect seems to be significantly offset by reduction in risk avoidance behaviours and government support for said behaviours. The first gen vaccines do appear help somewhat with reducing infectivity period somewhat.. but once again this benefit is diluted when people are told to burn their source control (masks) and get back to the office. We need better vaccines deliverable to mucosal membranes for infectious aerosol entry point protection and released under open source licensing. We also need better early treatments with sound scientific basis, and better post-acute-'recovery' sequelae treatments developed with the basis of a growing understanding of endothelial and immune pathology downstream of SARS2 infection. Second from last but not least, we need efficacious airborne transmission interrupting non-pharmaceutical interventions that don't rely solely on individual behaviour. Finally, it would be nice to have fewer grifters and influencers blocking sound action while spreading nonsense.

They very likely are stopping the death, yes.

tzs 5y ago

They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more. COVID is almost certainly never going away. It will become endemic, joining the other endemic viruses such as the couple hundred cold viruses (including 4 other coronavirus that were once deadly pandemics) and the various flu viruses we reluctantly live with. Something we all get several times over our lifetime, that most of the time just make most of us pretty miserable for up to a week or so. How many people die during the transition from pandemic to endemic depends greatly on how risky it is to acquire your first immunity, and how strong that first immunity is when it comes to preventing hospitalization and death. The lowest risk way to acquire that first immunity is by vaccination. It's also the way that provides the highest chances of strong immunity--when you acquire it by an actual infection it depends on how severe the first infection was. So yes, mass vaccination gives us the best chances of returning to normal sooner with less death along the way.

hammock 5y ago
>They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more Want to point out this was your response to the question, "Since the vaccinations are stopping the spread?" in case you wanted to re-read your answer.
- vmception 5y ago
  That was the answer. People vocally cynical about the vaccines have always been using a strawman argument, in case you need a refresher a strawman argument requires two things: 1) creating a standard that was never used by the proponents 2) criticizing the made up standard to discredit the proponents on a medical level, it is clear this wasn't to stop the spread, it was to slow the spread as vaccinated infected have smaller viral load for shorter time period compared to unvaccinated infected, as well as reduce severity and deaths of those that contained a viral load. On who we call the "proponents" for this topic, I will concede that I've heard many local influencers, radio hosts and others reduce this to "stop the spread" in reference to any viral mitigation measure, such as masks, distancing, quarantine, and vaccination all part of an amorphous overarching program. But its clear that the people that latch on to "stop the spread" as a reference to the vaccine as a technical term advancement would never have looked at the technical supporting data due to either trust issues with the institution or plain ignorance of how it works. The researchers and their research has always been clear about what performance to expect from the vaccines (except duration of effectiveness which is unknown for both the vaccines and natural immunity, compounded by the variants)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - incrudible 5y ago
    Fauci himself did claim the vaccinated are "dead ends" to the virus[1]. He dangled the carrot of "herd immunity through vaccination" around but then moved the threshold further and further, even admitting to being dishonest in the process[2]. Of course, we now all know herd immunity with vaccines is impossible and that they do next to nothing to inhibit spread. Perhaps some experts accurately predicted this, but that's not how it was communicated to the public. To suggest otherwise would be gaslighting. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-vaccinated-people-become-dead-ends-for-the-coronavirus https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-... [2] https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445
    - vmception 5y ago
      We should make fun of them, instead look at Pzifer, Moderna and the publications around them and other specific vaccines. They are very consistent about their proposed efficacy before they came out, their actual efficacy as they were rolled out, and now their actual decreasing efficacy over time including in the face of other seasonal variants, since we don't have seasonal vaccines.
      - incrudible 5y ago
        Well that's great, but the same authorities that just lied to me are also responsible to ensure safety of these vaccines. They're the same ones who tell me it's "safe and effective". Why would anybody trust them now?
        vmception 5y ago
        They have a lot of work to do, I would say look outside of the US and also technologies used by different vaccines worldwide. A lot of the consternations fall apart, to me, when the aggregate response reaches the same conclusion, something impossible to be done by any guiding hand due to geopolitics.
- tzs 5y ago
  That question was in response to the statement "Right now it seems like mass vaccination is our only way out of this pandemic and back to normal". My response is explaining to the questioner why that statement was correct.
oxymoran 5y ago
“ They reduce chances of hospitalization by at least an order of magnitude, and the chances of death by even more” So does an omicron infection compared to delta, even to the unvaccinated. I am not an anti vaxxer, I have two doses of Pfizer in me. The vaccines are simply going to be obsolete in a matter of weeks/months because everyone is going to have gotten and recovered from omnicron at that point. It’s that contagious, it’s futile to try to avoid it. Get vaccinated if you are scared and move on with your life.
- tzs 5y ago
  The increased contagiousness of omicron makes it more important for people to get vaccinated. The chances of hospitalization if you have omicron are lower than they were if you had another variant, and same with the chances of death, but the factor by which they are lower with omicron is quite a bit lower than the factor by which omicron is more contagious. The net result is that omicron is greatly increasing the number of hospitalizations way past what they saw with delta, which is overloading hospitals in way too many places in the US. I'm vaccinated and boosted, but that doesn't help much if I get in a car accident or have a heart attack and I can't get treatment because the hospitals are full of COVID patients.

bradly 5y ago

95% of people in New Zealand that are eligible for a vaccine are vaccinated. A population of five million are getting ~30 new cases a day when excluding cases at the border on entry (50 including the border cases). People are causing the spread, not the vaccine.

colecut 5y ago
Why are all of our vaccinated getting omicron, then? What is the differentiator?
- bradly 5y ago
  Not enough people getting vaxxed.

___q 5y ago

Yes, when we compare the rates of transmission between vaccinated and unvaccinated communities, vaccinations are stopping the spread. More questions?

tradesurplus 5y ago

The intramuscular vaccinations currently available were never going to stop the spread and anyone familiar with animal studies of similar approaches to CoV vaccination knew that. Stating bold claims unsupported by balance of evidence and knowledge of mechanisms was a deliberate choice of messaging in hope of increasing campaign uptake. They're helpful for preventing severe disease and death, for now -- this effect seems to be significantly offset by reduction in risk avoidance behaviours and government support for said behaviours. The first gen vaccines do appear help somewhat with reducing infectivity period somewhat.. but once again this benefit is diluted when people are told to burn their source control (masks) and get back to the office. We need better vaccines deliverable to mucosal membranes for infectious aerosol entry point protection and released under open source licensing. We also need better early treatments with sound scientific basis, and better post-acute-'recovery' sequelae treatments developed with the basis of a growing understanding of endothelial and immune pathology downstream of SARS2 infection. Second from last but not least, we need efficacious airborne transmission interrupting non-pharmaceutical interventions that don't rely solely on individual behaviour. Finally, it would be nice to have fewer grifters and influencers blocking sound action while spreading nonsense.