Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnchristopher | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to know the death rate of infected unvaccinated people who get covid again against vaccinated people who get covid and get sick.

View on HN

According to this study it could be a long time before we know that - I think cov-19 in the presence of a non overwhelmed medical system armed with steroids and oxygen kills less than 2/100 infected folk so getting enough incidents in either of those arms of a trial is going to be hard work.

The death rate for certain demographics (especially say over 70s) is far higher than 2-in-100. While some countries have high levels of vaccination - especially in those demographics - most don't.

The UK is enterring a third wave, and has a high number of elderly people having been fully (2 shot, mainly AZ) vaccinated. Early indications are that those enterring hospitals now on the whole have not been fully vaccinated.

And for most people under 70, it's way under that, FWIW.

It does suggest that people with 2 shots are unlikely to end up in hospital. I haven't seen enough data about the hospitalisations when adjusted for age+vaccines to draw any more conclusions.

There are still many over 70s who haven't had any shots though. My (estranged) uncle and his mother-in-law haven't left the house for 18 months, he disinfects his food deliveries and leaves the post in a box for 3 days. He refuses to get the vaccine because he's worried about catching it. Chances are he won't end up in hospital either, but people like that could skew the cases as more data comes out to allow spurious claims from anti-vaxers (They might claim that 'before 2 in every 100 over 80s were going into hospital) , now it's only 1 in every 100 unvaccinated over 80s going in to hospital), because the chance of catching covid from the population still unvaccinated dwindles because of continued isolation

The infection fatality rate varies exponentially with age. A good rule-of-thumb is that for a given age group, the IFR of catching Covid is about the same as the all-cause mortality risk over one year of life. It just so happens that these two numbers are about the same, when looking at age groups.

Edit: nicely presented here: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3259

I'd like to know the disability rate, which seems much higher than the death rate.

Yes, this and "long COVID" are quite underreported, and it's the much bigger risk. However, there is some evidence that getting vaccinated improves/cures long COVID.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com