Don’t Panic, but Breakthrough Cases May Be Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Panic, but Breakthrough Cases May Be Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told

nymag.com

25 pointsbookofjoe23 comments

Wow more headlines trying to cause panic. When will this end its so mentally draining.

At this point im sure the reporting on covid is causing just as many mental health issues as covid itself.

It's all about the bottom line. What emotion sells best in the modern-day attention economy? What keeps the clicks coming? What keeps the eyeballs watching? Well, that's what you can expect to see more of...

I refuse to even click on the above link or any headline with similar sensationalism. If this is the direction news is going to keep going i can only see how fun life is going to be in the future. Anything you say will be so triggering to someone one way or another for no reason.

I already know that at work I hardly talk to anyone anymore because of fear that something i say will set someone off. This wasn’t an issue 5 years ago i use to love talking with people at work even when they completely disagreed with me at least we could talk.

Its one of the things that has accelerated my save everything and invest everything so i can be done with this crap and get on with my life. Likely just move back by family where I can actually have a normal conversation.

From a mental health stand point I find this post-vaccine phase worse since there is no clear end. A new culture war among the vaccinated may also be starting.

For example, I have family members with children who are highly opinionated about what is safe to do now. My outdoor beach volleyball match without masks was "reckless" but their masked dinner party at a restaurant was "responsible". It's truly draining as you said and I no longer share photos of when I am having fun.

About halfway through the journalist makes the mistake of comparing the infection rate for vaccinated vs unvaccinated with the proportion of deaths coming from the vaccinated population. I see this in nearly every article I read- saying that the proportion of cases coming from the vaccinated is rising. At this point it’s nearly impossible to distinguish fact from fiction because the average article butchers basic statistics.

Don’t panic in general. It’s really bad for you.

https://archive.is/t3yv4

The word efficacy used to seem very glamorous to me until I realized that the people who use it are probably the same people that overuse the word ‘utilize’.

Yeah these are good reports I guess, but it’s not helping the cause. People are already panicking about serpent dna and other crap and not taking vaccines. We know the vaccine prevents serious illness. If the breakthrough cases are indeed high, it means we should increase vaccination rates. However, the anti vaxxers will use this as proof that they shouldn’t vaccinate as it doesn’t stop the spread.

Do you think they really care about the spread? If the vaccine will diminish their personal risk, they'll be more likely to cave. Not all of them, but many. If, like other comments suggest, this is just hype to influence behavior, I would guess the "trick" is to get more people to just get the damn thing to lower the danger to themselves and the kids whose lives they have power over.

The 30% of the population in the country is qanon and has gone off the deep end. They will not take it no matter what proof you show them. They will cherry-pick these kind of reports to further reinforce their group stance.

I know several people who've gotten covid after being fully vaccinated.

Now did they have serious issues and need to go to the hospital? So far no.

From what I understand, the covid vaccines also shorten how long people are infected.

I've just decided to live my life normally, now that I've gotten my shots. We're all going to be exposed sometime. Life goes on.

(don't) PANIC

Not worth panicking about but it changes the lockdown mentality Australia has... at some stage we need to decide that we have flatlined the growth in people getting vaccines and we'll have to no longer lockdown.

But i suspect that wont happen until kids under 11 are vaccinated.

My wife and I are both fully vaccinated for covid but there is no chance in hell I’m injecting my 4 year old son with essentially an experimental drug when there is practically zero risk to him from said illness.

1) I wont argue this point with you beyond this post, but I honestly think you're mischaracterizing the maturity of the technology and vaccine.

2) if you think a 4 year old is at no or little risk from the Delta Variant you're not paying enough attention. Alpha Variant I would agree. Delta is wrecking the children when it hits them and its hitting them a lot more often as well.

We've heard this about Alpha as well, hence the kids missed a year of schooling. The death risk was about 1% of the already minuscule risk of death for kids in a modern country.

Could be that Delta is worse, but is there data to quantize how much worse?

PS. I don't have data about kids hospitalizations and 'long covid'. I'll be very happy if someone shared such data. Ideally with a separation between Alpha and Delta, but alas nobody (looking at CDC) is providing that level of detail. To note, there is some fear mongering around 'long covid' as well: there is such a thing as 'long influenza' as well, rare enough to not be a reasonable concern.

https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/public-health/covid-...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/causes-of-death-in-5-14-y...

In florida its spreading like wildfire in the kids

https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/08/11/pediatric-hosp...

The head of one hospital said the other day said if they had a school bus full of kids in an accident, they would not be able to save them. They do not have the bed space. its full of children.

Here in Australia it seems to be hitting the kids first as well. Its spreading in schools fast so we enter into lockdown to stop it. mostly with success except where they dont bloody take it seriously (cough NSW cough).

I have an 11 yr old and a 13 yr old. While we have approved the vaccine for my 13 yr old we don't yet have the supply.

I'm terrified what it will do to my two if they get it, my daughter gets croup at the drop of a hat and my son is mildly asthmatic.

It seems like absolutely everyone has forgotten about superspreading in the past 6 months.

Do vaccinated breakthrough cases still cause superspreading events?

Yes, the Provincetown outbreak was a superspreader event that happened primarily amongst the vaccinated and what prompted the CDC to drastically revise their priors.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

The CDC paper does not use the phrase "superspreading" in that article.

And it is not a superspreading event if 30 people show up to an event and 60 people get infected.

It is a superspreading event if 1 person shows up to an event and 60 people get infected.

And that case doesn't even prove the existence of purely vaccinated spread since 25% of the cases were unvaccinated and could have spread it more effectively to the 75% vaccinated. They didn't study the transmissibility from the vaccinated cases.

With intramuscular vaccination there are two types of "breakthrough". There is the real breakthrough where internal body organs have extensive viral replication. Then there's infection of the surface tissues of the tubes that run through our bodies.

Intramuscular vaccination provides long lasting antibodies to the body proper and these seep into the lungs surface tissues too. But there's no long term antibodies (or resident B or T cells) in the upper respiratory mucosa (throat/nose/sinuses).

That means even if you're doubly vaccinated + 2 weeks your nose/sinuses (where they test for virus) can be infected and shed virus. But just because you test positive in the upper respiratory mucosa does not mean your internal organs will be infected. This shows clearly in hospitalization vs. confirmed infection cases in the vaccinated.

So... there's breakthrough... and there's BREAKTHROUGH. Studies, and news reporting, really need to begin presenting a more nuanced message about these numbers. And more importantly we need intranasal vaccine boosters to follow intramuscular to end the pandemic.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397 "the ideal vaccination strategy may use an intramuscular vaccine to elicit a long-lived systemic IgG response and a broad repertoire of central memory B and T cells, followed by an intranasal booster that recruits memory B and T cells to the nasal passages and further guides their differentiation toward mucosal protection, including IgA secretion and tissue-resident memory cells in the respiratory tract."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... page 5, #8. "Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com