California nurse tests positive over a week after receiving Pfizer vaccine | Hacker News Reader

California nurse tests positive over a week after receiving Pfizer vaccine

reuters.com

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Misleading sensationalist headline. First dose ≠ immunity.

> Six days later on Christmas Eve, he became sick after working a shift in the COVID-19 unit, the report added.

Since when are six days "more than a week"?

Technically, he only got tested the day after Christmas, so I'm assuming they picked the more dramatic date.

True. Which leads us back to that it is a "Misleading sensationalist headline." as somebody else mentioned here.

This is not a surprise.

It takes 2 weeks before the first dose is effective, and 3 weeks after the first dose, a second dose is required to boost the efficacy. It’s 2 weeks after the second dose that the vaccine takes about 95% efficacy.

Also, it's 95% effective, so it's expected to have a 5% failure rate

What does "95% efficiency" actually mean?

The third phase trial was double-blinded and when they unblinded it, it turned out that of all the people (170 persons) who got infected, only 5% (8 persons) were in the group of those who got the real vaccine.

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

that's not what your links says nor what pfizer tested/claims? pfizer didn't test for infections, they tested for symptoms. Pfizer doesn't know if the infection rate is changed (could be more, could be less, who knows)

I phrased that incorrectly indeed.

It means that it's double blind study showed that only 5% of those who took the vaccine contracted and developed covid19 symptoms when compared with the placebo group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/learning/what-does-95-eff...

“5% of those who took the vaccine developed covid19 symptoms” is somewhat misleading. Rather, for a vaccine and a placebo group of the same size, the number of people in the vaccine group who developed covid19 symptoms (only 0.037% of that group) was 5% the number of people in the placebo group who developed covid19 symptoms (0.74% of that group).

> “5% of those who took the vaccine developed covid19 symptoms” is somewhat misleading.

You misquoted me for some reason.

I explicitly stated that "only 5% of those who took the vaccine contracted and developed covid19 symptoms when compared with the placebo group."

This is a direct quote of what I actually said, which bears no resemblance to your comment.

Vaccines have "efficacy" (lab conditions) and "effectiveness" (real-world conditions) as two different metrics.

Vaccine efficacy- % reduction in disease incidence in a vaccinated group compared to an unvaccinated group under optimal conditions (example: Randomized Control Trial).

Vaccine effectiveness- ability of vaccine to prevent outcomes of interest in the “real world”.

This short interview with a virologist is interesting for contrasting between different vaccines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2KVKn0BvlM

Geez, they need a more clear term.

It’s no wonder, nobody understands what the hell they’re talking about.

They should use: theoretical vs. real world, instead.

Not only that, but she could have been infected before she was vaccinated.

This is to be expected, if only statistically.

This is as suprising as the amount of comments assuming the nurse is female.

Edit for those who just comment after reading the headline: The article clearly states the nurse is Matthew W. and uses the he pronoun in the following sentences.

It's a reasonable assumption, considering that 90% of the nurses in the US are female.

But why make the assumption at all? 90% or not, in this case it was wrong.

That's true -- maybe they merely skimmed over the article. That's the kind of info I'd probably miss when just skimming over something, too.

If you condition on having read the article, you would know it’s a male nurse:

“ Matthew W., a nurse at two different local hospitals, said in a Facebook post on December 18 that he had received the Pfizer vaccine”

Nurses make really good money in the United States. And it is always in demand.

With the union rules and all the mandatory overtime, they can earn well over six figures.

The salaries are easily comparable to some senior software engineering salaries. And they can reach that level a lot faster than some engineers can. They can also work at multiple hospitals, to further boost their income.

Given all that, it’s reasonable to assume that some men will enter the profession also.

In Germany, at least three quarters of nurses are women from what I would guess. So if you actually want to take a bet, betting on them being a woman makes you at least three times as likely to be correct as other bets.

Edit: first source I could find says that in 2007, 86% of nurses were women in Germany:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krankenpfleger#Besch%C3%A4ftig...

There's no need to take that bet if you can instead just read the article, however. No idea why you bring up a German statistic.

It’s to point out that people are basing their bias in reality.

Articles are mostly a jumping off point for conversation, some people just go by the headline or the comments on the page.

No more surprising than people assuming that a "plumber" is usually male.What are you trying to imply here?

I'm implying they did not read the article.

More importantly, you’re implying that it’s not surprising that people don’t read articles whose titles they’re commenting on. (I don’t disagree.)

The HN FAQ writes about better and more respectful ways to behave when you think that somebody hasn't read the article. This is not Reddit, and many of us are here _because_ this is not Reddit.

Not sure what you're referring to. The amount of comments using a personal pronoun to refer to the nurse, at the time of your posting, is one.

At the time of writing, you mean all of two comments got the gender wrong. Not _that_ surprising. Of course, people not reading the articles before making a comment is common anywhere.

As other comments have suggested, in most places you have ~90% female nurses, so it would be a reasonable assumption for somebody that didn't read or skimmed.

I wonder if she changed her behavior wrt corona precautions after she had her vaccine shot.

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