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Comment by pstrateman | Hacker News Reader

If you're in a high risk group surely you want the more effective vaccine?

I doubt you can have both (even if safe, it's not tested at all).

Given the choice, yes but anything now is better than something in a few months, time, especially looking at current UK mortality rates. These are now rivalling the first wave, even with treatments learning in the last nine months and NHS fully geared up.

> looking at current UK mortality rates. These are now rivalling the first wave

Are you sure? This is the data I'm looking at:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

This link goes to "confirmed deaths" per million people, see also the "case fatality rate" setting. The former is about 6.8 now versus 13.8 at the peak in April; the latter is 3% versus 15% at the peak in April. There are half as many deaths and a fifth of the deaths per case. That's not even close to "rivaling it despite being geared up", at least from this data. Is this data wrong?

Here’s the official UK data:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Deaths are a bit lower. Cases are higher. Hospitalisations are about the same as the previous peek, but heading further up.

Cases can't really be compared with the first wave because of significantly higher testing (450k per day now vs 60k per day in May, or 20k per day in April at the peak of hospitalisations).

Yes, that’s true, but neither can deaths as more is known about how to treat severe cases.

Note that the official data on deaths only includes those confirmed (through a positive test) to have COVID-19; this almost certainly understates the total number of deaths in the first wave due to lack of testing capacity.

There's no almost about it, if you look at the percentage of positive tests.

Deaths are also a lagging indicator. This happened in the first wave too.

If you look at the charts you’ll see a marked difference in outcomes after hospitalisation. Deaths are significantly lower this time, probably a combination of the most vulnerable dying in the first wave and better treatments.

UK cases have surpassed the first wave (with obvious caveats about far more testing now).

The hospitalised patients per day is probably a more reliable measure - that has not surpassed the first wave yet on either patients per day or patients in hospital, but it does look like it might surpass it in January.

UK deaths are nowhere near the first wave yet, though it may approach it in the coming weeks, however at present deaths are trending down as stricter measures were finally put in place again in December and we may be starting to see the impact of that. We will then of course in a few weeks see the impact of the government attempt to 'Save Christmas' so things will probably get worse again in January.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

> that has not surpassed the first wave yet on either patients per day or patients in hospital

In England (and probably the rest of the UK) more patients are in hospital compared to the first peak.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/england-hospitals-...

Perhaps the stats on this website are a little behind, but I trust them more than a newspaper. See the second chart down.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

The UK totals for patients in hospital on the 25th December hadn't passed the peak yet, though they are very close. Doesn't matter too much though, they will no doubt pass that total of 21.6k at some point in January if they haven't already, especially as fewer patients are dying this time round.

I've been quite unimpressed by the official stats on that page throughout the pandemic.

If you click on the "Data" tab, it says for 28th Dec the total of 23,771.

I've no idea why the graph doesn't show that.

Both vaccines seem to stop hospitalisations completely, which seems to be the most important part.

> No hospitalisations or severe disease observed in the vaccinated groups from three weeks after first dose

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-08-first-peer-reviewed-res...

I'm thinking more the other way around. All the vaccines practically prevent hospitalization/death. But the AZ one is coin flip odds for symptoms, however minor. But even minor symptoms from COVID can have medium term damage (loss of smell/taste/lung capacity) that may not be recoverable.

If you're part of the elderly high risk group, long term isn't that much longer anyway. It's the people with most of their life ahead of them that has to pick between the long term damage of COVID vs the unknown potential of long term effects from mRNA/adenovirus.

Mixing vaccine types is under consideration. An experiment is proposed combining AZ and Sputnik.

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