15 ms·

Covid-19 breakthrough data

64 points by nojito 5y ago

pelasaco 5y ago
I'm full vaccinated and boosted. This week my antigen test is positive. I had some flu symptoms (fever, pain in my body, coughing) but nothing really hard. I'm still not 100%, but I'm fine. I'm 40 years old, on my weight and do regular sports (5x week). I dont smoke neither drink. Got it probably in the fitness studio. I will stay at home until my test is negative. I have 0 incentive to go to the hospital do a PCR test and be officially forced in a 2 weeks isolation.
- sschueller 5y ago
  I don't know where you are located but here in Switzerland I would definitely want the positive PCR test as proof. Although it may no longer be needed as it looks like this will be over soon the confirmation of an infection is treated here almost like a vaccination. So you will get a certificate extension etc. The isolation time here has been reduced to 5 days with minimum 2 days symptom free.
  - tylersmith 5y ago
    Here in the US there is no upside to having proof of infection. It doesn't relieve you of needing vaccination or false tests in any situation. Edit: not false tests; true negative tests.
    - sschueller 5y ago
      That doesn't make much sense when looking at hospital data. The previously infected have the lowest hospital administrations vs even the vaccinated. If you are double vaxed and get infected it make zero sense to also get a booster unless you have an immune system issue.
      - taeric 5y ago
        It makes sense to not make getting it an incentive. They do well, if they survive. But they also have much larger risk of bad outcomes.
      - kleiba 5y ago
        That view is not supported by all vaccination researchers. The argument against that line of thought is that your immune response to, say, omicron is very specific toward that variant. Consequently, if you catch omicron, that does not mean you're automatically protected against other variants.
        peteradio 5y ago
        How likely is that to pan out, viruses of the common cold gives cross reactive immunity to sars-cov-2?
      - pelasaco 5y ago
        I just got the booster, because it makes the life easier. For example: To go to fitness studio or restaurants. Either you are double vaxed + 24 hours test or you are double vaxed + boosted, then you don't need a test. So I boosted. 3 shots biontech/pfizer. Now I'm positive. If I wanted, I could still go to fitness studio and restaurant, even being positive, which really doesn't make sense to me.
        CountGeek 5y ago
        Firstly you have succumbed to coercion by getting vaccinated to resuming your normal previous life activities. After 6 months you'll need another booster to continue having a valid pass. It's a never-ending cycle now. Secondly you have realised first hand that vaccines passes give a false of sense of security.
        bsder 5y ago
        I got vaccinated because I don't want to play Russian roulette again. I got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines. I got "lucky"--high fever for a little over 2 weeks, swelling in places that I never knew could swell, and my stamina shot to shit. It's taken me a year to put myself back together. I went and got both vaccines and a booster, thanks. I have a relative by marriage who is an anti-vaxxer and is about the same age and about the same healthiness as I was. He got Covid. He played Russian Roulette and lost. He's currently on ECMO and would be DEAD if he hadn't lucked into getting the last ECMO bed for 400 miles. And, when all is said and done, it's going to take probably years of therapy for him to be even a shadow of his former self. And now we're starting to see that Covid increases the chances of Type-2 diabetes in children. So, the whole "Vaccines have more side-effects in children than Covid" (which was never actually true anyway) now has enough cases opposing it that we have medically valid data. You can persist in anti-vax as a shibboleth for whatever social group you're in. However, nothing factual was ever on your side, and the evidence continues to mount against you. The only "good" thing about Omicron is that it is so contagious that it will solve the anti-vax problem by itself. In 60 days, there will be no point in restrictions, anymore.
    - pridkett 5y ago
      It makes it easier for most cases of international travel. In a lot of contexts if you're vaccinated + boosted + recovered in the last 90 days, you can just travel and not worry about the result of the COVID test you need to return to the United States as long as you have a letter stating recovery.
      - wintermutestwin 5y ago
        Not in my experience. Despite being fully vaxxed, I had to get tested every time I entered a country including coming back to the US. A recent two leg EU trip required a total of 6 tests - each of them with complex timing requirements and the total cost was ~$500.
      - pelasaco 5y ago
        In Europe if you are double vaccinated + boosted, you don't need a test to travel by plane.
        herbst 5y ago
        It depends on the country. Maybe you mean EU?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - pelasaco 5y ago
    Germany, but what is the upside to do the PCR test? You get officially in Isolation and can get a visit from the regulatory office to check if you are at home. AFAICS there is no upside. You won't get any treatment protocol, any help. You just get more pressure over you. I won't have the proof of recovery, but actually I don't need it since I have all certificates (2 shots + booster). That's make me think if this whole thing makes sense: As it is now, I can go everywhere (even with an antigen positive), because I have the booster certificate and therefore I don't have to test myself. The only real meaningful approach would be test everyone, everywhere regardless of the vaccination.
    - ErikCorry 5y ago
      If you get a long covid symptom and want to be treated for that it might be smart to keep your medical records up to date. Hard to know what the future brings on long covid and treatments for it. Or conceivably in a year they have two vaccines, one is more suitable for those that are recovered, the other more suitable for those who never had it. Which one will they give you?
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
        I know this isn’t as much the case these days, but as of late 2020 several of the long COVID clinics in my area were only accepting patients if they could demonstrate a positive test. Presumably that requirement has laxed lately though.
      - pelasaco 5y ago
        I think thats FUD. I will be able to tell if I had it or not. Maybe I had it while not in here? Maybe I had it and didn't realize? It is for sure not an incentive to do the bureaucratic necessary dance.
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      You should be isolating either way. Just because you can go everywhere doesn't mean you should. People going out and about while unknowingly positive is why this thing won't end. Testing positive and deliberately not isolating is even worse. You're right though: If you look at it only through the lens of individual incentives, the official test has no upside. One of the huge problems with governments' responses to this pandemic is they are not closing these loopholes. People will take the most convenient option, not necessarily the one benefiting public health. To align individual and societal incentives, governments need to make not-isolating when infectious more inconvenient/costly than isolating.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
encryptluks2 5y ago
Everyone I know that is getting COVID-19 lately is vaccinated. Everyone I know that didn't get vaccinated hasn't even been sick.
- pizza234 5y ago
  The article starts with a statistic (as opposed to anecdote): > These findings demonstrate that such cases and hospitalizations have occurred in New York State, but at levels substantially lower than among unvaccinated people Of course, one could argue that New York State doesn't make a large scale statistic, but it's still far from being anecdata.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Which studies?
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyearlyanalysisofcharacteristicsassociatedwiththeomicronvariantamongcovid19infectionsuk20december2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/coronavirus... "those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated"
        mhh__ 5y ago
        And when was it censored? I note that it says "It is too early to draw conclusions from our data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant." also. Does it mean more likely to get infected (given the same exposure) or more likely to be infected? The difference is quite important.
awb 5y ago
Interesting that while the odds of the vaccine protecting against infection are near all-time lows (mid 70s), vaccine protection against hospitalization is near all-time highs (mid-90s). Also interesting that this data treats 14-days+ after last shot as fully vaccinated, so presumably two-shot and three-shot people are both treated as “fully vaccinated”. > Fully-vaccinated people may have received additional or booster doses, which are not specifically accounted for in this analysis.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  That's probably essentially what you'd expect with omicron, which is more effective at immune escape but appears less effective at causing serious illness (at least in vaccinated and previously infected people).
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Short of a vaccine that prevents infection isn’t this the best case scenario?
    - awb 5y ago
      If it provides immunity to the other more deadly variants and competes with them, then yes, but I haven’t seen that data yet. Otherwise, it’s just a supplemental virus.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- throwawaybutno 5y ago
  Published effectiveness against Omicron infection is under 10%. This data is simply wrong.
  - awb 5y ago
    Source?
  - 5y ago
drewg123 5y ago
I wonder how under-reported mild breakthrough cases are, due to self testing? I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, and I had what I suspect is Omicron about 10 days ago. I had a mild fever (approaching, but not reaching 101), a sore throat, sneezing and nasal congestion for 3-4 days, and I tested positive with an over the counter rapid test. Overall, it was like a very minor cold. My girlfriend also tested positive, and she had no symptoms at all. I never got any "official" test (I didn't want to put additional strain on the health care system), so my case was not counted in any official stats. If I hadn't tested positive, my girlfriend would not have even tested, and her case would have been totally unknown.
- roamerz 5y ago
  Probably a statistic that they don’t want have in their possession anyhow.
  - pstoll 5y ago
    He didn’t go the hospital. That doesn’t change the overwhelmingly positive benefits of “hospitalization rates”.
    - twofornone 5y ago
      The vast majority of cases don't end up in the hospital, vaccinated or otherwise. People seem to forget this fact.
      - pstoll 5y ago
        The “only 1% will die” argument, sure I remember that one from early days. But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people. My advice is don’t break your arm or get in a car accident or have a heart attack right now - it could be lethal because health care resources are at a breaking point (in the US).
        Lammy 5y ago
wand3r 5y ago
Does anyone have data on boosted death rate? It is really hard to find stats. “Vaccinated” is such a difficult term because it can encompass J&J from nearly a year ago for example. I see some breakdowns by vax supplier vs hospitalizations. Really would like to know how many people who have taken the booster have died from covid ideally with age data.
- mariojv 5y ago
  9x lower after 2 doses, 48x lower after booster according to Swiss statistics https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1482991873190936576?s=21 https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1482991873190936576?s=21
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Closest I've seen - https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1482501951065661440?s=20 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1482501951065661440?s=20 Source - https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... The answer seems to be extremely few boosted deaths, especially under 80. You are at more risk unvaccinated in your 40s than boosted in your 80s.
  - wand3r 5y ago
    Thanks! At least provides a bit of a window into what is going on
  - Proven 5y ago
    > You are at more risk unvaccinated in your 40s than boosted in your 80s. At more risk from Covid19 during first eight weeks after the booster, yes. But you're at more risk from other shit. And maybe even from Covid19 after eight weeks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > A total of 843,208 participants met the eligibility criteria, of whom 758,118 (90%) received the booster during the 54-day study period. Death due to Covid-19 occurred in 65 participants in the booster group (0.16 per 100,000 persons per day) and in 137 participants in the nonbooster group (2.98 per 100,000 persons per day). The adjusted hazard ratio for death due to Covid-19 in the booster group, as compared with the nonbooster group, was 0.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.07 to 0.14; P<0.001). * https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624 0.16 versus 2.98 per 100,000. 90% reduction.
webscalist 5y ago
- Population is considered fixed (or growing very slowly) - More people get vaccinated: A - Less people remain unvaccinated: A' (=1-A) - More people get infected: B B/A' will of course grow more rapidly than B/A
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Statistics professors everywhere just giving a long, sad sigh.
- responsivity 5y ago
  Isn't there a corresponding B' involved here? Or am I just dumb.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  B/A' and B/A are nonsensical statistics that nobody tracks. The figures people report are infected vaccinated individuals over A and infected unvaccinated individuals over A'.
Scene_Cast2 5y ago
One thing to note is that the effectiveness metric also includes the behavioral and populational differences. I'd personally really like to know what the metric would be if (hypothetically, just for analysis) the vaccine was a placebo. For example, if the people who get the vaccine are generally more able to work from home, then the metric would still be significantly above zero. Just for clarity, I believe that the vaccine is effective, but I question the measurement methodology.
- awb 5y ago
  We’ll have to think of a different methodology because it’s not ethical to issue placebo vaccines during a pandemic.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Well, antivaxxers would take the placebo. But they wouldn't take the vaccine. So you can't randomise the trial.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      I was serious with that comment. You can do longitudinal studies now, and people do, comparing infection/hospitalisation/death rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But those have very serious confounders, namely that those who are still unvaccinated might behave rather different from everyone else. To overcome this, you'd need an RCT. But you're unlikely to find either a) unvaccinated people that want to be vaccinated, yet would be ok to get a placebo instead, or b) unvaccinated people that don't want to be vaccinated yet would be ok to get a vaccination instead.
      - awb 5y ago
        Agreed, not sure why you were downvoted.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Well, one important confounder is age (older people tend to be more vaccinated), but they control for that. Many other confounders cannot easily be controlled for, but is there any reason to assume that they're correlated with the outcome? It could be that vaccinated people are more careful in terms of meeting other people. At any rate, we had big RCTs at the beginning that demonstrated efficacy against the then prevailing variant (alpha, I assume). It'll be tricky to repeat an RCT at this stage.
throwawaybutno 5y ago
This data is really quite poor. It’s adjusted based on a 2000 census. It’s also showing a 2 dose effectiveness of over 70% against Omicron which we know to be under 10%. If you’re using this as an argument to get vaccinated, it’s a bad one.
- ttfkam 5y ago
  > which we know to be under 10% Source?
  - resource0x 5y ago
    https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data#casesByVaccinationStatus https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data#casesByVaccinationStatus Search for "hospital but not the ICU". Look above it for ICU stats. For "Not in ICU", it can be argued that even 10% is an overstatement. The author of the article, meanwhile, doesn't provide any sources whatsoever. Another interesting piece of data was recently removed from Got-t of Alberta website, but you can see it here: https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-government-of-alberta-says-you/comments https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-government-of-albert...
    - curt15 5y ago
      The Ontario dashboard for "Not in ICU" currently shows 739 unvaccinated and 2050 vaccinated. But since effectiveness compares rates, not absolute numbers, one needs to normalize those numbers by the size of each subpopulation. Since roughly 80 percent of Ontarios are vaxxed, the relative risk for being unvaccinated is approximately (739/0.2) / (2050/0.8) = 1.4
      - curt15 5y ago
        Any reason for the downwote? If anything, this underestimates the risk since it assumes no difference in infection rates. If one normalizes instead by the actual number of unvaccinated cases and vaccinated cases as reported further down on that page, one gets (739/1456) / (2050/8079) = 2
pstoll 5y ago
Figure it’s relevant to this thread - Eric Topol (very credentialed medical researcher) does a pretty good overview & summary on how the vaccines are doing. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/were-very-lucky https://erictopol.substack.com/p/were-very-lucky
- b112 5y ago
  If there were enough vaccines for everyone around the world to get the protection equivalent of 3-shots, and people took them, the pandemic would be over now This is a very bizarre assertion. Given that, the vaccinated spread covid, even with no symptoms, vaccination status does not limit spread. No amount of vaccinated people, will end the pandemic. Note that, to spread covid, it must be replicating in the body. Therefore, as it is replicating in the vaccinated, it will continue to mutate and evolve. There will never, ever be an end to the pandemic, due to existing vaccines. Ever.
  - elmotri 5y ago
    Maybe the author means covid becoming endemic instead of pandemic. See for example [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59970281 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59970281
  - responsivity 5y ago
    Maybe if everyone got it all at once (and before omicron perhaps)? Idk tho these are all hypotheticals
    - lolc 5y ago
      Given that Omicron is assumed to have replicated in an animal population (mice) for a year, we should expect there to be other variants in animals. Even if we managed to vaccinate all humans at the same time, we'd likely see a new breakout a year or so down the line when immunity wanes in the human population. Covd19 has been endemic for two years now. And it will be endemic until we find better vaccines. At that point, we'll probably be ready to wipe out the flu as well.
  - 5y ago
twofornone 5y ago
>Current estimates of cases and hospitalizations by vaccine status, and vaccine effectiveness Estimate is the key word here. It's really difficult for me to trust official figures given that omicron appears to be spreading virtually unabated across the world regardless of vaccination rates. There's far too much political (state and corporate) pressure to paint a "safe and effective" picture. As others have pointed out, people in the US are simply not reporting breakthrough cases. There is no incentive. The majority of my fully vaccinated remote workers at have recently tested positive, presumably for omicron. Yet our small startup has still chosen to announce mandates for all, including remote workers. This all feels a lot more like blind faith than science at this point.
argvargc 5y ago
To enjoy an interesting and arguably also somewhat more accurate experience reading articles such as these, try mentally replacing the term "vaccine breakthrough" with "vaccine failure". Going to hospital is not protection.
- responsivity 5y ago
  How have you found the article to be more interesting when doing this substitution? Did you find it more accurate as well, and if so how?
  - argvargc 5y ago
    It creates a more neutral impression of the vaccines efficacy. The use of the term "breakthrough case" seems entirely geared toward downplaying ineffectiveness. Why not simply call it failure when the vaccine fails?
- tremon 5y ago
  Why would that be more accurate? A total vaccine failure would imply that a fully vaccinated person died from Covid, no?
  - argvargc 5y ago
    So if someone was permanently disabled it's a success? What about in hospital 8 weeks but eventually recovered? It's hard to understand why this needs to be debated. Why is it so bad to simply admit it failed to protect? Even if we set the bar at death I guarantee someone would step up and say: "Yes, but they would've died even sooner without the vaccine! Oh come ye let us praise it". The religious fervour is bizarre. Let's face it - the vaccines are a bit shit.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  The vaccine does two things; it reduces the chance of getting covid (not terribly effectively, for Omicron), and it reduces the average severity of cases (very effectively). "Breakthrough" is where it fails on the first point; failure would imply failing in _both_ cases. So you could possibly call the hospitalised cases failure (though even then, hospitalised vaccinated cases are on average less severe and less likely to die than hospitalised unvaccinated, so it's a stretch), but it would be very misleading to call the first case failure.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
benpiper 5y ago
This report provides only age-adjusted numbers for vaccine effectiveness, but doesn't provide the model used to arrive at those numbers. If you look at the raw numbers, a different picture emerges: Chances of not being hospitalized with Covid: Unvaccinated: 99.9% Vaccinated: 99.99% Instead of providing a useful picture, the report compares two tiny numbers from each group and makes it a point to amplify the differences.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  That's a pretty big risk reduction in either case.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    *relative risk reduction We don't always care about relative risk reduction when the absolute risk is considered negligible. That is how we narrow focus and decide on what to spend our limited resources.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Sure, but given that vaccines are readily available and reduce risk, seems like a relative no-brainer to deploy them. And also, the absolute risk is very dependent on age.
iseehn 5y ago

64 points by nojito 5y ago

I'm full vaccinated and boosted. This week my antigen test is positive. I had some flu symptoms (fever, pain in my body, coughing) but nothing really hard. I'm still not 100%, but I'm fine. I'm 40 years old, on my weight and do regular sports (5x week). I dont smoke neither drink. Got it probably in the fitness studio. I will stay at home until my test is negative. I have 0 incentive to go to the hospital do a PCR test and be officially forced in a 2 weeks isolation.

sschueller 5y ago
I don't know where you are located but here in Switzerland I would definitely want the positive PCR test as proof. Although it may no longer be needed as it looks like this will be over soon the confirmation of an infection is treated here almost like a vaccination. So you will get a certificate extension etc. The isolation time here has been reduced to 5 days with minimum 2 days symptom free.
- tylersmith 5y ago
  Here in the US there is no upside to having proof of infection. It doesn't relieve you of needing vaccination or false tests in any situation. Edit: not false tests; true negative tests.
  - sschueller 5y ago
    That doesn't make much sense when looking at hospital data. The previously infected have the lowest hospital administrations vs even the vaccinated. If you are double vaxed and get infected it make zero sense to also get a booster unless you have an immune system issue.
    - taeric 5y ago
      It makes sense to not make getting it an incentive. They do well, if they survive. But they also have much larger risk of bad outcomes.
    - kleiba 5y ago
      That view is not supported by all vaccination researchers. The argument against that line of thought is that your immune response to, say, omicron is very specific toward that variant. Consequently, if you catch omicron, that does not mean you're automatically protected against other variants.
      - peteradio 5y ago
        How likely is that to pan out, viruses of the common cold gives cross reactive immunity to sars-cov-2?
    - pelasaco 5y ago
      I just got the booster, because it makes the life easier. For example: To go to fitness studio or restaurants. Either you are double vaxed + 24 hours test or you are double vaxed + boosted, then you don't need a test. So I boosted. 3 shots biontech/pfizer. Now I'm positive. If I wanted, I could still go to fitness studio and restaurant, even being positive, which really doesn't make sense to me.
      - CountGeek 5y ago
        Firstly you have succumbed to coercion by getting vaccinated to resuming your normal previous life activities. After 6 months you'll need another booster to continue having a valid pass. It's a never-ending cycle now. Secondly you have realised first hand that vaccines passes give a false of sense of security.
        bsder 5y ago
        I got vaccinated because I don't want to play Russian roulette again. I got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines. I got "lucky"--high fever for a little over 2 weeks, swelling in places that I never knew could swell, and my stamina shot to shit. It's taken me a year to put myself back together. I went and got both vaccines and a booster, thanks. I have a relative by marriage who is an anti-vaxxer and is about the same age and about the same healthiness as I was. He got Covid. He played Russian Roulette and lost. He's currently on ECMO and would be DEAD if he hadn't lucked into getting the last ECMO bed for 400 miles. And, when all is said and done, it's going to take probably years of therapy for him to be even a shadow of his former self. And now we're starting to see that Covid increases the chances of Type-2 diabetes in children. So, the whole "Vaccines have more side-effects in children than Covid" (which was never actually true anyway) now has enough cases opposing it that we have medically valid data. You can persist in anti-vax as a shibboleth for whatever social group you're in. However, nothing factual was ever on your side, and the evidence continues to mount against you. The only "good" thing about Omicron is that it is so contagious that it will solve the anti-vax problem by itself. In 60 days, there will be no point in restrictions, anymore.
  - pridkett 5y ago
    It makes it easier for most cases of international travel. In a lot of contexts if you're vaccinated + boosted + recovered in the last 90 days, you can just travel and not worry about the result of the COVID test you need to return to the United States as long as you have a letter stating recovery.
    - wintermutestwin 5y ago
      Not in my experience. Despite being fully vaxxed, I had to get tested every time I entered a country including coming back to the US. A recent two leg EU trip required a total of 6 tests - each of them with complex timing requirements and the total cost was ~$500.
    - pelasaco 5y ago
      In Europe if you are double vaccinated + boosted, you don't need a test to travel by plane.
      - herbst 5y ago
        It depends on the country. Maybe you mean EU?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- pelasaco 5y ago
  Germany, but what is the upside to do the PCR test? You get officially in Isolation and can get a visit from the regulatory office to check if you are at home. AFAICS there is no upside. You won't get any treatment protocol, any help. You just get more pressure over you. I won't have the proof of recovery, but actually I don't need it since I have all certificates (2 shots + booster). That's make me think if this whole thing makes sense: As it is now, I can go everywhere (even with an antigen positive), because I have the booster certificate and therefore I don't have to test myself. The only real meaningful approach would be test everyone, everywhere regardless of the vaccination.
  - ErikCorry 5y ago
    If you get a long covid symptom and want to be treated for that it might be smart to keep your medical records up to date. Hard to know what the future brings on long covid and treatments for it. Or conceivably in a year they have two vaccines, one is more suitable for those that are recovered, the other more suitable for those who never had it. Which one will they give you?
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
      I know this isn’t as much the case these days, but as of late 2020 several of the long COVID clinics in my area were only accepting patients if they could demonstrate a positive test. Presumably that requirement has laxed lately though.
    - pelasaco 5y ago
      I think thats FUD. I will be able to tell if I had it or not. Maybe I had it while not in here? Maybe I had it and didn't realize? It is for sure not an incentive to do the bureaucratic necessary dance.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    You should be isolating either way. Just because you can go everywhere doesn't mean you should. People going out and about while unknowingly positive is why this thing won't end. Testing positive and deliberately not isolating is even worse. You're right though: If you look at it only through the lens of individual incentives, the official test has no upside. One of the huge problems with governments' responses to this pandemic is they are not closing these loopholes. People will take the most convenient option, not necessarily the one benefiting public health. To align individual and societal incentives, governments need to make not-isolating when infectious more inconvenient/costly than isolating.
deleted 5y ago
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encryptluks2 5y ago

Everyone I know that is getting COVID-19 lately is vaccinated. Everyone I know that didn't get vaccinated hasn't even been sick.

pizza234 5y ago
The article starts with a statistic (as opposed to anecdote): > These findings demonstrate that such cases and hospitalizations have occurred in New York State, but at levels substantially lower than among unvaccinated people Of course, one could argue that New York State doesn't make a large scale statistic, but it's still far from being anecdata.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Which studies?
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyearlyanalysisofcharacteristicsassociatedwiththeomicronvariantamongcovid19infectionsuk20december2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/coronavirus... "those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated"
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        And when was it censored? I note that it says "It is too early to draw conclusions from our data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant." also. Does it mean more likely to get infected (given the same exposure) or more likely to be infected? The difference is quite important.

awb 5y ago

Interesting that while the odds of the vaccine protecting against infection are near all-time lows (mid 70s), vaccine protection against hospitalization is near all-time highs (mid-90s). Also interesting that this data treats 14-days+ after last shot as fully vaccinated, so presumably two-shot and three-shot people are both treated as “fully vaccinated”. > Fully-vaccinated people may have received additional or booster doses, which are not specifically accounted for in this analysis.

rsynnott 5y ago
That's probably essentially what you'd expect with omicron, which is more effective at immune escape but appears less effective at causing serious illness (at least in vaccinated and previously infected people).
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Short of a vaccine that prevents infection isn’t this the best case scenario?
  - awb 5y ago
    If it provides immunity to the other more deadly variants and competes with them, then yes, but I haven’t seen that data yet. Otherwise, it’s just a supplemental virus.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
throwawaybutno 5y ago
Published effectiveness against Omicron infection is under 10%. This data is simply wrong.
- awb 5y ago
  Source?
- 5y ago

drewg123 5y ago

I wonder how under-reported mild breakthrough cases are, due to self testing? I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, and I had what I suspect is Omicron about 10 days ago. I had a mild fever (approaching, but not reaching 101), a sore throat, sneezing and nasal congestion for 3-4 days, and I tested positive with an over the counter rapid test. Overall, it was like a very minor cold. My girlfriend also tested positive, and she had no symptoms at all. I never got any "official" test (I didn't want to put additional strain on the health care system), so my case was not counted in any official stats. If I hadn't tested positive, my girlfriend would not have even tested, and her case would have been totally unknown.

roamerz 5y ago
Probably a statistic that they don’t want have in their possession anyhow.
- pstoll 5y ago
  He didn’t go the hospital. That doesn’t change the overwhelmingly positive benefits of “hospitalization rates”.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    The vast majority of cases don't end up in the hospital, vaccinated or otherwise. People seem to forget this fact.
    - pstoll 5y ago
      The “only 1% will die” argument, sure I remember that one from early days. But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people. My advice is don’t break your arm or get in a car accident or have a heart attack right now - it could be lethal because health care resources are at a breaking point (in the US).
      - Lammy 5y ago

wand3r 5y ago

Does anyone have data on boosted death rate? It is really hard to find stats. “Vaccinated” is such a difficult term because it can encompass J&J from nearly a year ago for example. I see some breakdowns by vax supplier vs hospitalizations. Really would like to know how many people who have taken the booster have died from covid ideally with age data.

mariojv 5y ago
9x lower after 2 doses, 48x lower after booster according to Swiss statistics https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1482991873190936576?s=21 https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1482991873190936576?s=21
steveBK123 5y ago
Closest I've seen - https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1482501951065661440?s=20 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1482501951065661440?s=20 Source - https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... The answer seems to be extremely few boosted deaths, especially under 80. You are at more risk unvaccinated in your 40s than boosted in your 80s.
- wand3r 5y ago
  Thanks! At least provides a bit of a window into what is going on
- Proven 5y ago
  > You are at more risk unvaccinated in your 40s than boosted in your 80s. At more risk from Covid19 during first eight weeks after the booster, yes. But you're at more risk from other shit. And maybe even from Covid19 after eight weeks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throw0101a 5y ago
> A total of 843,208 participants met the eligibility criteria, of whom 758,118 (90%) received the booster during the 54-day study period. Death due to Covid-19 occurred in 65 participants in the booster group (0.16 per 100,000 persons per day) and in 137 participants in the nonbooster group (2.98 per 100,000 persons per day). The adjusted hazard ratio for death due to Covid-19 in the booster group, as compared with the nonbooster group, was 0.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.07 to 0.14; P<0.001). * https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624 0.16 versus 2.98 per 100,000. 90% reduction.

webscalist 5y ago

- Population is considered fixed (or growing very slowly) - More people get vaccinated: A - Less people remain unvaccinated: A' (=1-A) - More people get infected: B B/A' will of course grow more rapidly than B/A

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Statistics professors everywhere just giving a long, sad sigh.
responsivity 5y ago
Isn't there a corresponding B' involved here? Or am I just dumb.
lern_too_spel 5y ago
B/A' and B/A are nonsensical statistics that nobody tracks. The figures people report are infected vaccinated individuals over A and infected unvaccinated individuals over A'.

Scene_Cast2 5y ago

One thing to note is that the effectiveness metric also includes the behavioral and populational differences. I'd personally really like to know what the metric would be if (hypothetically, just for analysis) the vaccine was a placebo. For example, if the people who get the vaccine are generally more able to work from home, then the metric would still be significantly above zero. Just for clarity, I believe that the vaccine is effective, but I question the measurement methodology.

awb 5y ago
We’ll have to think of a different methodology because it’s not ethical to issue placebo vaccines during a pandemic.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Well, antivaxxers would take the placebo. But they wouldn't take the vaccine. So you can't randomise the trial.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    I was serious with that comment. You can do longitudinal studies now, and people do, comparing infection/hospitalisation/death rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But those have very serious confounders, namely that those who are still unvaccinated might behave rather different from everyone else. To overcome this, you'd need an RCT. But you're unlikely to find either a) unvaccinated people that want to be vaccinated, yet would be ok to get a placebo instead, or b) unvaccinated people that don't want to be vaccinated yet would be ok to get a vaccination instead.
    - awb 5y ago
      Agreed, not sure why you were downvoted.
FabHK 5y ago
Well, one important confounder is age (older people tend to be more vaccinated), but they control for that. Many other confounders cannot easily be controlled for, but is there any reason to assume that they're correlated with the outcome? It could be that vaccinated people are more careful in terms of meeting other people. At any rate, we had big RCTs at the beginning that demonstrated efficacy against the then prevailing variant (alpha, I assume). It'll be tricky to repeat an RCT at this stage.

throwawaybutno 5y ago

This data is really quite poor. It’s adjusted based on a 2000 census. It’s also showing a 2 dose effectiveness of over 70% against Omicron which we know to be under 10%. If you’re using this as an argument to get vaccinated, it’s a bad one.

ttfkam 5y ago
> which we know to be under 10% Source?
- resource0x 5y ago
  https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data#casesByVaccinationStatus https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data#casesByVaccinationStatus Search for "hospital but not the ICU". Look above it for ICU stats. For "Not in ICU", it can be argued that even 10% is an overstatement. The author of the article, meanwhile, doesn't provide any sources whatsoever. Another interesting piece of data was recently removed from Got-t of Alberta website, but you can see it here: https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-government-of-alberta-says-you/comments https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-government-of-albert...
  - curt15 5y ago
    The Ontario dashboard for "Not in ICU" currently shows 739 unvaccinated and 2050 vaccinated. But since effectiveness compares rates, not absolute numbers, one needs to normalize those numbers by the size of each subpopulation. Since roughly 80 percent of Ontarios are vaxxed, the relative risk for being unvaccinated is approximately (739/0.2) / (2050/0.8) = 1.4
    - curt15 5y ago
      Any reason for the downwote? If anything, this underestimates the risk since it assumes no difference in infection rates. If one normalizes instead by the actual number of unvaccinated cases and vaccinated cases as reported further down on that page, one gets (739/1456) / (2050/8079) = 2

pstoll 5y ago

Figure it’s relevant to this thread - Eric Topol (very credentialed medical researcher) does a pretty good overview & summary on how the vaccines are doing. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/were-very-lucky https://erictopol.substack.com/p/were-very-lucky

b112 5y ago
If there were enough vaccines for everyone around the world to get the protection equivalent of 3-shots, and people took them, the pandemic would be over now This is a very bizarre assertion. Given that, the vaccinated spread covid, even with no symptoms, vaccination status does not limit spread. No amount of vaccinated people, will end the pandemic. Note that, to spread covid, it must be replicating in the body. Therefore, as it is replicating in the vaccinated, it will continue to mutate and evolve. There will never, ever be an end to the pandemic, due to existing vaccines. Ever.
- elmotri 5y ago
  Maybe the author means covid becoming endemic instead of pandemic. See for example [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59970281 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59970281
- responsivity 5y ago
  Maybe if everyone got it all at once (and before omicron perhaps)? Idk tho these are all hypotheticals
  - lolc 5y ago
    Given that Omicron is assumed to have replicated in an animal population (mice) for a year, we should expect there to be other variants in animals. Even if we managed to vaccinate all humans at the same time, we'd likely see a new breakout a year or so down the line when immunity wanes in the human population. Covd19 has been endemic for two years now. And it will be endemic until we find better vaccines. At that point, we'll probably be ready to wipe out the flu as well.
- 5y ago

twofornone 5y ago

>Current estimates of cases and hospitalizations by vaccine status, and vaccine effectiveness Estimate is the key word here. It's really difficult for me to trust official figures given that omicron appears to be spreading virtually unabated across the world regardless of vaccination rates. There's far too much political (state and corporate) pressure to paint a "safe and effective" picture. As others have pointed out, people in the US are simply not reporting breakthrough cases. There is no incentive. The majority of my fully vaccinated remote workers at have recently tested positive, presumably for omicron. Yet our small startup has still chosen to announce mandates for all, including remote workers. This all feels a lot more like blind faith than science at this point.

argvargc 5y ago

To enjoy an interesting and arguably also somewhat more accurate experience reading articles such as these, try mentally replacing the term "vaccine breakthrough" with "vaccine failure". Going to hospital is not protection.

responsivity 5y ago
How have you found the article to be more interesting when doing this substitution? Did you find it more accurate as well, and if so how?
- argvargc 5y ago
  It creates a more neutral impression of the vaccines efficacy. The use of the term "breakthrough case" seems entirely geared toward downplaying ineffectiveness. Why not simply call it failure when the vaccine fails?
tremon 5y ago
Why would that be more accurate? A total vaccine failure would imply that a fully vaccinated person died from Covid, no?
- argvargc 5y ago
  So if someone was permanently disabled it's a success? What about in hospital 8 weeks but eventually recovered? It's hard to understand why this needs to be debated. Why is it so bad to simply admit it failed to protect? Even if we set the bar at death I guarantee someone would step up and say: "Yes, but they would've died even sooner without the vaccine! Oh come ye let us praise it". The religious fervour is bizarre. Let's face it - the vaccines are a bit shit.
rsynnott 5y ago
The vaccine does two things; it reduces the chance of getting covid (not terribly effectively, for Omicron), and it reduces the average severity of cases (very effectively). "Breakthrough" is where it fails on the first point; failure would imply failing in _both_ cases. So you could possibly call the hospitalised cases failure (though even then, hospitalised vaccinated cases are on average less severe and less likely to die than hospitalised unvaccinated, so it's a stretch), but it would be very misleading to call the first case failure.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

benpiper 5y ago

This report provides only age-adjusted numbers for vaccine effectiveness, but doesn't provide the model used to arrive at those numbers. If you look at the raw numbers, a different picture emerges: Chances of not being hospitalized with Covid: Unvaccinated: 99.9% Vaccinated: 99.99% Instead of providing a useful picture, the report compares two tiny numbers from each group and makes it a point to amplify the differences.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
That's a pretty big risk reduction in either case.
- peteradio 5y ago
  *relative risk reduction We don't always care about relative risk reduction when the absolute risk is considered negligible. That is how we narrow focus and decide on what to spend our limited resources.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Sure, but given that vaccines are readily available and reduce risk, seems like a relative no-brainer to deploy them. And also, the absolute risk is very dependent on age.

iseehn 5y ago