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Comment by Ostrogodsky | Hacker News Reader

I suppose those miners are strong healthy men, wouldnt we expect the same results if they were exposed to the virus while being not-vaccinated?

> In other words, this case study is a relatively ordinary result in line with what we know: that the major COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness but leave nontrivial chance of infection and transmission.

I dont think this particular case is a proof of your claim at all.

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From the study: "Mine workers were mostly men (42/44); median age was 53.3 years. Eighteen of the workers had risk factors for severe COVID-19: high blood pressure (11/44), diabetes mellitus (4/44), or obesity (4/44)."

What is your point? You are not comparing against the general population to see if there is a difference.

Also from the study:

> Such a low vaccine efficiency against infection by the Gamma variant was not expected because in vitro studies have shown a similar reduction of neutralization for Beta or Gamma variants by BNT162b2-elicited antibodies (5) and a conserved CD4+ T-cell response against spike proteins from the Beta variant (6).

So, no, this was not "business as usual", in fact the results are so shocking that the investigators wrote:

> Given the surprisingly high attack rate, we hypothesized potential dysfunctions of conservation or administration of vaccines, but the absence of traceable cold-chain interruption and the use of different batches seemed to refute this hypothesis.

So the study so far suggests that the Pfizer vaccines may well have an actual low effectivenes rate against this virus variant.

It was in response to "I suppose those miners are strong healthy men"

They were not. They were obese and hypertensive. That is unhealty no matter what vaccines you take.

Well, isn't something like over half of America obese?

No, just around 36%:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity...

Also the median age seemed pretty high for miners in a country with lots more young people than old.

Small nitpick but French Guiana isn’t its own country, it’s a part of France. That being said their population does seem to trend young when compared to the rest of France or other western countries.

From family experience it seems miners these days tend to be in the old, lifer side. Once you've adapted to the hardship, you mostly keep at it. Can be well paying jobs too, in an area with not a lot of jobs...

Depending on the mine, I'd guess miner is a prexisting condition in and of itself

> those miners are strong healthy men

I think mining is exceptionally poor for your health, esp re respiratory disease, lack of vitamin D, and also usually highly correlated with near poverty (and the health issues that’s associated with)

Miners are not healthy or young.

The key point: The attack rate was 15/25 (60.0%) in fully vaccinated miners, 6/15 (40.0%) in those partially vaccinated or with a history of COVID-19, and 3/4 (75%) in those not vaccinated. Attack rate was 0/6 among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus 63.2% among those with no previous history (Table).

In other words, natural immunity from previous Covid case was the only protection and the vaccinated miners were not statistically different than the unvaccinated (sample size of 25 vaccinated at 60% attack rate vs sample size of 4 at 75% attack rate is inconclusive).

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