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It's hard to take some of these arguments seriously when one of the core arguments: > In people who are previously infected vaccines offer zero additional bene

It's hard to take some of these arguments seriously when one of the core arguments: > In people who are previously infected vaccines offer zero additional benefit with respect to hospitalization is so fatally flawed. The reason that previously infected people have lower hospitalization rates is that some percentage of people who were previously infected and at risk of hospitalization _died_. You're literally clearing out the population that is most likely to skew these numbers. Second, this argument: > vaccinated and unvaccinated persons with detectable infection have the same viral loads, despite the reduction in disease severity for the former group. is similarly flawed, in that it goes right to transmission after successful infection, without touching on infection rates themselves. Sure, yes, when you have a breakthrough case, and are infected, you're probably similarly likely to infect household members. It's common sense. But the raw infection rates for fully vaccinated people are much lower, even with omicron. The data from NYC is very clear: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fQBNe/16/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fQBNe/16/ So vaccination is important because it reduces spread, and reduces infections. The medications he cites as justification for reduced need for vaccination are not widely available, and in the case of fluvoxamine, not widely prescribed. Over and over the author simply manipulates data to support their argument.

Jtype 5y ago
Even the CDC admits that vaccination has not reduced spread and infections. You're spreading misinformation now. Your graph includes no sources, no raw data, and is open to interpretation. For example, fully vaccinated people are much more fearful of covid and are more likely to self isolate. Fully vaccinated people are more likely to have minimal or no symptoms, so are less likely to be tested, while still being contagious. I watched in December a community that is over 99% vaccinated have an omicron spike which led to 10% of the population test positive in a week. This started a spike which then spread to the outlying areas, and was likely only even discovered because of surveillance testing. If 10% of a fully vaccinated population could become infected within a week, then clearly the vaccines were not reducing spread or infections.
- empthought 5y ago
  > If 10% of a fully vaccinated population could become infected within a week, then clearly the vaccines were not reducing spread or infections. This is just a fallacy. Even measles vaccines have a breakthrough rate—cases are so low because there is not widespread community transmission. Just because it's not reducing transmission to your taste doesn't mean it's not reducing transmission.
- dekhn 5y ago
  Does your 10% include false positive tests from people who recovered? I didn't quite realize this but PCR tests often test positive (repeated) for weeks post-infection. Also where are you that's 99% vaccinated?
  - empthought 5y ago
    > Also where are you that's 99% vaccinated? Someplace where children are forbidden, I guess.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      It looks like, statistically, each person in Gibraltar has been vaccinated 3 times. So either they are vaxxing children (couldn't find any articles about that), or not including them because they're not eligble (which means saying "99% vaccinated is not correct unless there the population of Gibraltar is 1% or lower).
      - empthought 5y ago
        It looks like, statistically, the number of people crossing into Gibraltar at the border per day is 50% the resident population of Gibraltar.
        dekhn 5y ago
        Hahahah, I was going to say something abiout "covid vaccine tourism". The combination of comments raises enough doubt about the claims of high vax rates not protecting people that we can simply ignore it. Folks: please stop claiming your data proves something if the observation is better explained by biased samples. In this case, we're talking about a tiny nation that has significant through-traffic, so it's entirely inapplicable to more or less any large nation.
ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> is so fatally flawed. The reason that previously infected people have lower hospitalization rates is that some percentage of people who were previously infected and at risk of hospitalization _died_. The deaths are obviously a tragedy, but given that they've already happened, what is their relevance here? Having survived a past infection predicts better outcomes. If that's because all of those that would have succumbed already did, it doesn't change that the surviving convalescent crowd is not high risk.
- nojokes 5y ago
  I am from EU where previous infection is somewhat recognized. If the discussion is about why convalescents are not equally recognized, I am for it. If the discussion is about not vaccinating and promoting natural immunity as the solution to end the pandemic then I must note that this has been tried and it failed. We got delta, gamma and lambda from it and now omicron. Natural immunity did not end pandemic, it has prolonged it greatly.
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
    The article claimed that mandating vaccines for convalescents doesn't make sense since it's been shown that they don't benefit. Parent said that this argument is so fatally flawed... because people died? I couldn't quite follow. The article is "why I'm for vaccines but against vaccine mandates", so that's what the discussion is about. We've done something like 10B doses worldwide. A massive proportion of the population has had exposure via vaccine and/or infection. Mandates are an odious, blunt instrument, especially when there are so few remaining naive hosts.
    - nojokes 5y ago
      I wrote about this opinion piece in more detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172569 I think its arguments are really flawed and not grounded in reality but like I said, I do not think that convalescents should vaccinate but I think they should be highly encouraged to have a booster shot because it about halves the change to become reinfected. I think that this discussion if previously infected should or should not be vaccinated has generated just too much distraction. Even in EU, where one, who had PCR test confirmed infection, can get COVID-19 certificate for 6 months (compared to 12 months for double vaccinated, now 9 months), it has given the anti-vaxxers too large platform. They would not have gained it without this mistake in politics.
nojokes 5y ago
The vaccination has reduces community spread but in much lower rate because of prolonged close contact. There is much lower amount of infectious virions compared to somebody without previous immunity and the period of being infectious is reduced. Still breakthrough infections can infect somebody, especially somebody without previous immunity and nobody should rely on somebodies else immunity for their own security.
nojokes 5y ago
He actually gets the data wrong about fluvoxamine. It has about 30% efficacy against hospitalization (it is actually more complicated but I let it slide at the moment).
ls15 5y ago
> is so fatally flawed. The reason that previously infected people have lower hospitalization rates is that some percentage of people who were previously infected and at risk of hospitalization _died_. You're literally clearing out the population that is most likely to skew these numbers. But currently there are countries that mandate vaccination for people who did survive a previous infection without dying. Isn't that flawed?

Jtype 5y ago

Even the CDC admits that vaccination has not reduced spread and infections. You're spreading misinformation now. Your graph includes no sources, no raw data, and is open to interpretation. For example, fully vaccinated people are much more fearful of covid and are more likely to self isolate. Fully vaccinated people are more likely to have minimal or no symptoms, so are less likely to be tested, while still being contagious. I watched in December a community that is over 99% vaccinated have an omicron spike which led to 10% of the population test positive in a week. This started a spike which then spread to the outlying areas, and was likely only even discovered because of surveillance testing. If 10% of a fully vaccinated population could become infected within a week, then clearly the vaccines were not reducing spread or infections.

empthought 5y ago
> If 10% of a fully vaccinated population could become infected within a week, then clearly the vaccines were not reducing spread or infections. This is just a fallacy. Even measles vaccines have a breakthrough rate—cases are so low because there is not widespread community transmission. Just because it's not reducing transmission to your taste doesn't mean it's not reducing transmission.
dekhn 5y ago
Does your 10% include false positive tests from people who recovered? I didn't quite realize this but PCR tests often test positive (repeated) for weeks post-infection. Also where are you that's 99% vaccinated?
- empthought 5y ago
  > Also where are you that's 99% vaccinated? Someplace where children are forbidden, I guess.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    It looks like, statistically, each person in Gibraltar has been vaccinated 3 times. So either they are vaxxing children (couldn't find any articles about that), or not including them because they're not eligble (which means saying "99% vaccinated is not correct unless there the population of Gibraltar is 1% or lower).
    - empthought 5y ago
      It looks like, statistically, the number of people crossing into Gibraltar at the border per day is 50% the resident population of Gibraltar.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        Hahahah, I was going to say something abiout "covid vaccine tourism". The combination of comments raises enough doubt about the claims of high vax rates not protecting people that we can simply ignore it. Folks: please stop claiming your data proves something if the observation is better explained by biased samples. In this case, we're talking about a tiny nation that has significant through-traffic, so it's entirely inapplicable to more or less any large nation.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago

> is so fatally flawed. The reason that previously infected people have lower hospitalization rates is that some percentage of people who were previously infected and at risk of hospitalization _died_. The deaths are obviously a tragedy, but given that they've already happened, what is their relevance here? Having survived a past infection predicts better outcomes. If that's because all of those that would have succumbed already did, it doesn't change that the surviving convalescent crowd is not high risk.

nojokes 5y ago
I am from EU where previous infection is somewhat recognized. If the discussion is about why convalescents are not equally recognized, I am for it. If the discussion is about not vaccinating and promoting natural immunity as the solution to end the pandemic then I must note that this has been tried and it failed. We got delta, gamma and lambda from it and now omicron. Natural immunity did not end pandemic, it has prolonged it greatly.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  The article claimed that mandating vaccines for convalescents doesn't make sense since it's been shown that they don't benefit. Parent said that this argument is so fatally flawed... because people died? I couldn't quite follow. The article is "why I'm for vaccines but against vaccine mandates", so that's what the discussion is about. We've done something like 10B doses worldwide. A massive proportion of the population has had exposure via vaccine and/or infection. Mandates are an odious, blunt instrument, especially when there are so few remaining naive hosts.
  - nojokes 5y ago
    I wrote about this opinion piece in more detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172569 I think its arguments are really flawed and not grounded in reality but like I said, I do not think that convalescents should vaccinate but I think they should be highly encouraged to have a booster shot because it about halves the change to become reinfected. I think that this discussion if previously infected should or should not be vaccinated has generated just too much distraction. Even in EU, where one, who had PCR test confirmed infection, can get COVID-19 certificate for 6 months (compared to 12 months for double vaccinated, now 9 months), it has given the anti-vaxxers too large platform. They would not have gained it without this mistake in politics.

nojokes 5y ago

The vaccination has reduces community spread but in much lower rate because of prolonged close contact. There is much lower amount of infectious virions compared to somebody without previous immunity and the period of being infectious is reduced. Still breakthrough infections can infect somebody, especially somebody without previous immunity and nobody should rely on somebodies else immunity for their own security.

nojokes 5y ago

He actually gets the data wrong about fluvoxamine. It has about 30% efficacy against hospitalization (it is actually more complicated but I let it slide at the moment).

ls15 5y ago

> is so fatally flawed. The reason that previously infected people have lower hospitalization rates is that some percentage of people who were previously infected and at risk of hospitalization _died_. You're literally clearing out the population that is most likely to skew these numbers. But currently there are countries that mandate vaccination for people who did survive a previous infection without dying. Isn't that flawed?