6 ms·

Well, then like with any other trade-off, we need to quantify and refine: * How much does the vaccination status reduce the chance of death/hospitalization? *

Well, then like with any other trade-off, we need to quantify and refine: * How much does the vaccination status reduce the chance of death/hospitalization? * How does it differ among age groups? * How does it change over time (not 2 doses vs. booster, but by time since the last dose)? * How does it affect the transmission rates? Given how many people are critical to masks/vaccines, you can easily find volunteers to do transmissibility tests in 2 buildings of comparable layout. * What about comorbidities? How does the benefit of losing extra weight compare to an extra vaccine dose? * What about suicides and the mental health in general? * How often are new variants expected to appear and what is the estimated vaccine efficiency against them? * What about the treatments? Can they be scaled up to be more affordable? Considering and openly discussing these factors could help our society find a reasonable compromise, but we are not doing that. We are pushing a single solution that benefits a small economic group at the expense of everyone else, and are recruiting the general population to wage a holy war against the dissenters. I don't like this at all.

JimTheMan 5y ago
You can already see the stats you mentioned. The unvaccinated get admitted to the ICU at staggering rates compared to the vaccinated. And given the spread of omicron, odds are that almost everyone will get exposed. I've had two near misses this week alone... Even at the anecdotal level everyone I know is vaccinated and no one is long term ill from it. I suspect the incessant querying from bad faith actors is more of an ideology than a true wish to seek an actual answer.
- exodust 5y ago
  > The unvaccinated get admitted to the ICU at staggering rates compared to the vaccinated. Without breaking that down by age group, we are no better informed. Emotive words like "staggering" without mentioning the data, is unhelpful. It's common knowledge that elderly and unhealthy/vulnerable represent most ICU beds. I think it was Italy or Greece who have mandated the jab for over 60's. This sounds like an expert has formulated a policy that matches the challenge: that the 60+ age group are filling the hospital beds. If only more countries could formulate measured, level-headed responses to match the reality of the pandemic. It's not commonly known whether younger unvaccinated people who end up in ICU, are there because they're unvaccinated vs existing health condition. That comes down to individual hospitals and doctors reporting efforts. What we hear in media reports is a broad mashing of data, reduced down to an oversimplified message that unvaccinated people are filling the hospitals. When in fact, it's more likely that unvaccinated people from a specific age and health status group, are filling hospital beds.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Found this doc which attempts to do that with unknown veracity - https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/421-010-CasesInNotFullyVaccinated.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/... Age group impacts illness and hospitalization but not tremendously so. Deaths under 65 weren't tracked b/c signal to noise ratio didn't meet their criteria.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  What exactly are the staggering rates? What if you exclude 60+ year-olds, overweight, smokers and immunocompromised? From what I can hear in Canada, unvaccinated make about 10% of population and about 50% hospitalizations, that makes the vaccine reduce your chances by about 5x. But they are already vanishingly low for young healthy people. So what if we vaccinated the older folks, promoted healthy BMI, and created 20% more hospital beds? Or how does a vaccine 1 year ago compare to natural immunity from 1 year go? Or how much exactly of the taxpayer money is going to the Big Pharma as opposed to building new hospitals and training new staff?
  - the12354 5y ago
    Just a heads up: << From what I can hear in Canada, unvaccinated make about 10% of population and about 50% hospitalizations, that makes the vaccine reduce your chances by about 5x When 50 % of the total hospitalizations are 10 % of the entire population(unvaccinated pop.), the vaccinated 90 % need to be reduced to an equal 10 % too(1/9 * 90 % = 10 %), which means it reduces your chance by 9x not 5x
    - john_moscow 5y ago
      You are right. On the other hand, we are not trying to increase the vaccination rate from 0% to 100%, it's more about convincing the remaining 10% to go, so the effect on the actual hospital utilization would be much lower. Plus, we don't know the hospital bed number per age (how many actual 30-year-olds are the problem?) and whether Omicron has a different picture. So, in my mind, the amount of guesswork that's currently on the table warrants a tax-paid advertising campaign, but all censorship and forced vaccination measures do much more harm than good.
  - mft_ 5y ago
    > …and created 20% more hospital beds? > Or how much exactly of the taxpayer money is going to the Big Pharma as opposed to building new hospitals and training new staff? I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your overall premise, but the idea that politicians in countries round the world can/will just snap their fingers and magic new hospitals, staff, and infrastructure into existence seems idealistic in the extreme. We’re living in a world where the opposite is true: for a variety of reasons (depending on the country you examine) hospitals are run close to capacity during normal times - which is why they struggle so much when there’s a new wave of COVID infection. This seems to be the economic reality of healthcare, whether you’re talking about successful ‘socialised’ models, successful privatised models, or failing examples of any kind. Many staff are exhausted, demoralised, and underpaid, and there’s a trend to people leaving the profession - and there’s a 3 to ~7-10 year lead time to deliver a new meaningfully-trained healthcare professional. Choosing to change this trend around the world, versus a few bucks spent per person on a vaccine every year or so…?
- herbst 5y ago
  At anectotal level. Everyone I know that isn't vaccinated (no hard liners, just skeptics) did never attract COVID. While many vaccinated I know already had their second infection. I think we need numbers, no anectotes :)
  - nradov 5y ago
    Based on CDC numbers it's likely that some of the unvaccinated people you know were infected but didn't experience significant symptoms or get tested. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
csee 5y ago
We are having these conversations. > * How much does the vaccination status reduce the chance of death/hospitalization? > * How does it differ among age groups? > * How does it change over time (not 2 doses vs. booster, but by time since the last dose)? > * What about comorbidities? > * What about the treatments? Can they be scaled up to be more affordable? Addressed extensively in the scientific literature. I don't know how you can seriously claim otherwise unless you've been out of the loop for over a year. > * How does it affect the transmission rates? How would you go about testing it though? The difficulty is that the viral load is lower (which should reduce transmission probability) but the probability that the person will quarantine also is lower (which should have the opposite effect), and how these things balance in the real world is like guessing. > * How often are new variants expected to appear Nobody knows but yes there is open discussion about how new variants come about. > * What about suicides and the mental health in general? Don't know what this is getting at regarding vaccines.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  I would appreciate some links. All I could find from brief googling looks more like a sales pitch than an unbiased study. Looking at absolute hospitalization prevention numbers without controls, making no distinction between incidental COVID vs. hospitalized for respiratory symptoms, and other tricks that belong to a used car salesman's arsenal, rather than a scientific context. And the disclaimers how "no, no, no, I'm not against the vaccines" remind me of the mandatory praises to Allah you would find in the papers originating from certain Middle Eastern countries.
  - csee 5y ago
    Shouldn't introducing controls make vaccines look even better, because the old are more likely to be vaccinated? Suppose 100% of old people and 0% of young people are vaccinated. Even if the vaccines are moderately effective, most of the deaths would be in old people, giving the false impression that they don't work. > I would appreciate some links. UK Surveillance Report. Most of the bigger countries have published data.
    - 5y ago

JimTheMan 5y ago

You can already see the stats you mentioned. The unvaccinated get admitted to the ICU at staggering rates compared to the vaccinated. And given the spread of omicron, odds are that almost everyone will get exposed. I've had two near misses this week alone... Even at the anecdotal level everyone I know is vaccinated and no one is long term ill from it. I suspect the incessant querying from bad faith actors is more of an ideology than a true wish to seek an actual answer.

exodust 5y ago
> The unvaccinated get admitted to the ICU at staggering rates compared to the vaccinated. Without breaking that down by age group, we are no better informed. Emotive words like "staggering" without mentioning the data, is unhelpful. It's common knowledge that elderly and unhealthy/vulnerable represent most ICU beds. I think it was Italy or Greece who have mandated the jab for over 60's. This sounds like an expert has formulated a policy that matches the challenge: that the 60+ age group are filling the hospital beds. If only more countries could formulate measured, level-headed responses to match the reality of the pandemic. It's not commonly known whether younger unvaccinated people who end up in ICU, are there because they're unvaccinated vs existing health condition. That comes down to individual hospitals and doctors reporting efforts. What we hear in media reports is a broad mashing of data, reduced down to an oversimplified message that unvaccinated people are filling the hospitals. When in fact, it's more likely that unvaccinated people from a specific age and health status group, are filling hospital beds.
- jcims 5y ago
  Found this doc which attempts to do that with unknown veracity - https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/421-010-CasesInNotFullyVaccinated.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/... Age group impacts illness and hospitalization but not tremendously so. Deaths under 65 weren't tracked b/c signal to noise ratio didn't meet their criteria.
john_moscow 5y ago
What exactly are the staggering rates? What if you exclude 60+ year-olds, overweight, smokers and immunocompromised? From what I can hear in Canada, unvaccinated make about 10% of population and about 50% hospitalizations, that makes the vaccine reduce your chances by about 5x. But they are already vanishingly low for young healthy people. So what if we vaccinated the older folks, promoted healthy BMI, and created 20% more hospital beds? Or how does a vaccine 1 year ago compare to natural immunity from 1 year go? Or how much exactly of the taxpayer money is going to the Big Pharma as opposed to building new hospitals and training new staff?
- the12354 5y ago
  Just a heads up: << From what I can hear in Canada, unvaccinated make about 10% of population and about 50% hospitalizations, that makes the vaccine reduce your chances by about 5x When 50 % of the total hospitalizations are 10 % of the entire population(unvaccinated pop.), the vaccinated 90 % need to be reduced to an equal 10 % too(1/9 * 90 % = 10 %), which means it reduces your chance by 9x not 5x
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    You are right. On the other hand, we are not trying to increase the vaccination rate from 0% to 100%, it's more about convincing the remaining 10% to go, so the effect on the actual hospital utilization would be much lower. Plus, we don't know the hospital bed number per age (how many actual 30-year-olds are the problem?) and whether Omicron has a different picture. So, in my mind, the amount of guesswork that's currently on the table warrants a tax-paid advertising campaign, but all censorship and forced vaccination measures do much more harm than good.
- mft_ 5y ago
  > …and created 20% more hospital beds? > Or how much exactly of the taxpayer money is going to the Big Pharma as opposed to building new hospitals and training new staff? I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your overall premise, but the idea that politicians in countries round the world can/will just snap their fingers and magic new hospitals, staff, and infrastructure into existence seems idealistic in the extreme. We’re living in a world where the opposite is true: for a variety of reasons (depending on the country you examine) hospitals are run close to capacity during normal times - which is why they struggle so much when there’s a new wave of COVID infection. This seems to be the economic reality of healthcare, whether you’re talking about successful ‘socialised’ models, successful privatised models, or failing examples of any kind. Many staff are exhausted, demoralised, and underpaid, and there’s a trend to people leaving the profession - and there’s a 3 to ~7-10 year lead time to deliver a new meaningfully-trained healthcare professional. Choosing to change this trend around the world, versus a few bucks spent per person on a vaccine every year or so…?
herbst 5y ago
At anectotal level. Everyone I know that isn't vaccinated (no hard liners, just skeptics) did never attract COVID. While many vaccinated I know already had their second infection. I think we need numbers, no anectotes :)
- nradov 5y ago
  Based on CDC numbers it's likely that some of the unvaccinated people you know were infected but didn't experience significant symptoms or get tested. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

csee 5y ago

We are having these conversations. > * How much does the vaccination status reduce the chance of death/hospitalization? > * How does it differ among age groups? > * How does it change over time (not 2 doses vs. booster, but by time since the last dose)? > * What about comorbidities? > * What about the treatments? Can they be scaled up to be more affordable? Addressed extensively in the scientific literature. I don't know how you can seriously claim otherwise unless you've been out of the loop for over a year. > * How does it affect the transmission rates? How would you go about testing it though? The difficulty is that the viral load is lower (which should reduce transmission probability) but the probability that the person will quarantine also is lower (which should have the opposite effect), and how these things balance in the real world is like guessing. > * How often are new variants expected to appear Nobody knows but yes there is open discussion about how new variants come about. > * What about suicides and the mental health in general? Don't know what this is getting at regarding vaccines.

john_moscow 5y ago
I would appreciate some links. All I could find from brief googling looks more like a sales pitch than an unbiased study. Looking at absolute hospitalization prevention numbers without controls, making no distinction between incidental COVID vs. hospitalized for respiratory symptoms, and other tricks that belong to a used car salesman's arsenal, rather than a scientific context. And the disclaimers how "no, no, no, I'm not against the vaccines" remind me of the mandatory praises to Allah you would find in the papers originating from certain Middle Eastern countries.
- csee 5y ago
  Shouldn't introducing controls make vaccines look even better, because the old are more likely to be vaccinated? Suppose 100% of old people and 0% of young people are vaccinated. Even if the vaccines are moderately effective, most of the deaths would be in old people, giving the false impression that they don't work. > I would appreciate some links. UK Surveillance Report. Most of the bigger countries have published data.
  - 5y ago