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We are having these conversations. > * How much does the vaccination status reduce the chance of death/hospitalization? > * How does it differ among age group

by 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.
  - beagle3 5y ago
    The only ever double blind RCT of the Pfizer vaccine (that done by Pfizer themselves) found 24% increase in all cause mortality (21 in vaccine arm vs 17 in placebo arm, each group 22,000 of reasonably health mostly 20-50 year olds)
    - csee 5y ago
      How many of them had COVID when they died? Probably not many or none, right?
      - peteradio 5y ago
        Death by Covid is somehow more important than other causes of death?
        csee 5y ago
        Death with Covid is the baseline requirement (although, ideally, we look at death by Covid, even though that's methodologically difficult) for the above data to have any meaning for the question of whether vaccines work. Suppose there's 0 Covid cases over the study period. Then this is exactly the result we expect to see. Approximately half the deaths being among the vaccinated, and half the deaths being among the unvaccinated. Because there's going to be heart attacks and so on in the two cohorts over the study window.
        peteradio 5y ago
        Sorry, I think I'm confused, it sounds like all-cause mortality is not the important number to be looking at in your opinion? The person you responded to reports more deaths in the vaccinated group. But you were querying about Covid deaths. Why would you ignore the larger all cause death and concern yourself only with Covid deaths? Suppose someone offered you a pill. They say with certainty that you can trust that it will prevent you from dying of Covid but increase your likelihood of dying of something else by so much that your overall likelihood of dying actually increases. Is that some pill you'd want to take? edit: I just finally got your point about a period with zero covid cases. Kind of makes sense, but how could you ever use that to make a claim about a vaccines effectiveness if there is known zero challenge?

by csee 5y ago

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.
- beagle3 5y ago
  The only ever double blind RCT of the Pfizer vaccine (that done by Pfizer themselves) found 24% increase in all cause mortality (21 in vaccine arm vs 17 in placebo arm, each group 22,000 of reasonably health mostly 20-50 year olds)
  - csee 5y ago
    How many of them had COVID when they died? Probably not many or none, right?
    - peteradio 5y ago
      Death by Covid is somehow more important than other causes of death?
      - csee 5y ago
        Death with Covid is the baseline requirement (although, ideally, we look at death by Covid, even though that's methodologically difficult) for the above data to have any meaning for the question of whether vaccines work. Suppose there's 0 Covid cases over the study period. Then this is exactly the result we expect to see. Approximately half the deaths being among the vaccinated, and half the deaths being among the unvaccinated. Because there's going to be heart attacks and so on in the two cohorts over the study window.
        peteradio 5y ago
        Sorry, I think I'm confused, it sounds like all-cause mortality is not the important number to be looking at in your opinion? The person you responded to reports more deaths in the vaccinated group. But you were querying about Covid deaths. Why would you ignore the larger all cause death and concern yourself only with Covid deaths? Suppose someone offered you a pill. They say with certainty that you can trust that it will prevent you from dying of Covid but increase your likelihood of dying of something else by so much that your overall likelihood of dying actually increases. Is that some pill you'd want to take? edit: I just finally got your point about a period with zero covid cases. Kind of makes sense, but how could you ever use that to make a claim about a vaccines effectiveness if there is known zero challenge?