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Comment by jeromegv | Hacker News Reader

Just stop twisting the truth. Yes vaccinated people can get covid, but at a much lower rate, and when they do, they spread it less. In fact in Ontario (largest province in Canada), you are 30x more likely to get COVID if you are unvaccinated (and 50x more likely to get in the ICU).

Source https://twitter.com/EdTubb/status/1426182876383612931

and

https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/covid-19-vaccine-data-in-ont...

And everyone vaccinated that got COVID on that cruise had low or no symptoms, which is a pretty good outcome if you compare to all those unvaccinated people in hospitals in Florida right now.

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I'm deeply uncomfortable with the picture all the anecdotes paint. Closer to home, a colleague reports that her sister-in-law brought Covid home from a conference and then have it to her husband. Both were vaccinated (Pfizer/J&J).

Yes, being vaccinated keeps out out of hospital and out of a coffin, that's enough reason to get the shot. But it doesn't prevent synptomatic infection as well as we've been told (latest numbers indicate 50 % efficacy against Delta), and there's still the risk of long Covid (~ 20 %). The older you are and the longer ago yhour shot was the greater the risk.

We need to limit large gatherings again and increase ventilation. I work at a university and am frankly sick of being asked to take risks to my health while others can hide out until there's the Delta/Lambda booster, all in the name of propping up the value of commercial real estate.

We can't limit large gathering forever. Since the virus can never be eradicated and will always be around the most likely scenario is that almost all of us will eventually get infected regardless of what infection control steps we take. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing bad outcomes.

Is getting COVID after having been jabbed twice within the last 6-months worse than the regular flu in terms of mortality risk or ICU risk?

Should be either comparable or much better for most age ranges. Most important, it becomes much harder to overload the healthcare system. If the vaccine prevents you from getting into ICU most of the time, it's "as if" you multiplied the number of ICU beds by 10-20.

Behavior should be factored into those numbers - unvaccinated people are less likely to believe covid is serious (on average) ergo are more likely to be putting themselves in risky situations and/or less likely to wear masks. Studies are all over the place on vaccine effectiveness - clearly much better than zero, but not a reason to be complacent.

I'm not an expert in this field but I am a scientist and have been looking at the various data released on this point, because it's foundational to the reasoning behind the push for universal vaccination using unapproved drugs. I think that which you say is being twisted, the "truth", doesn't yet exist on this topic. We simply don't have scientific consensus yet on whether the current vaccines are fully neutralising. Lots of conflicting data for experts to untangle. I would not start calling people truth twisters until we know more. As an example of scientific studies with opposite conclusions to those you linked, see e.g. the links in the fourth paragraph here [1]. The fifth paragraph also provides a hypothesis as to why the vaccines aren't fully neutralising.

[1] https://www.hartgroup.org/vaccination-prevents-transmission-...

Did you actually look at the data? Deaths in Israel went from over a 1400 in the month of January to 20 in July, with a vaccination rate of [0] 67%. I would say that that's a pretty darn good result, wouldn't you?

Again, from the data in your link: 91.4% efficacy against severe Covid - IE: ventilators or death, 88% efficacy against hospitalization. I'll take those chances.

The kicker for the article is quoting an "epidemiologist" - Andrew Bostom - that is not one. His argument: Israel sees a high percentage of deaths due to Covid among the vaccinated, ergo the CDC data is wrong. Omitting that Israel deaths are less than 1/10th of what they were in January, while in the U.S. they are at 1/3. So - as you may guess - not really close.

You won't get scientific consensus if you reject the numbers that don't support your theory.

I have been fully vaccinated and I do still wear a mask in public - following CDC guidelines put into place because we know that the vaccine is not fully neutralizing.

Is the vaccine a silver bullet? No. Does it save lives? Yes - in 98% of the cases.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

I think if you re-read my comment you'll see that I was specifically making a point about reduction in transmission in vaccinated vs unvaccinated individuals, not efficacy. Re-reading it myself, I see that might not have been 100% clear, so apologies if that's the case. For the record I don't doubt the vaccines reduce risk of death.

We have clear scientific consensus on the fact that vaccines reduce the negative effects of getting COVID, and reduce the likelihood of getting COVID in the first place.

So declaring that vaccine mandates won't affect populations 'because you can still get it' is effectively twisting the truth. Or at least applying some really bad logic.

The link you provided is unfortunately not helpful. Again, there is overwhelming evidence that actions taken by governments were successful in most ways in preventing spread during the pre-vaccination era. Huge spike is case rates were immediately neutralized by lockdowns etc.. The moral and legal case is ambiguous, but not the overall effect of the policies was clear. In my area, we had two huge spikes, after which there were lock-downs declared, and immediately the case rates dropped dramatically. I'm wary of the civil issues, but the results were clear.

The article provides no evidence that vaccines don't work, other than to indicate that protections against Delta variants is weaker, which we already knew.

This statement: "The principle defence against a respiratory virus actually takes place in the mucosal membranes of the respiratory tract, and the high proportion of those with some degree of natural immunity fight off SARS-CoV-2 there, preventing it replicating significantly in the bloodstream. Therefore, it is not actually surprising that a vaccine which works mainly in the circulatory system has little effect on stopping what starts as a respiratory infection. If that is the case, it is illogical to expect any reduction in transmission."

Is hugely speculative, not Scientific.

The author of this piece failed to play their own devil's advocate because there's tons of data to debunk most of what he is trying to say, in a nutshell, the author is cherry picking.

I don't doubt the vaccines are effective at reducing negative effects on the vaccinated individual. Nothing in my comment above was intended to imply that.

The specific point I was trying to make is that there is conflicting evidence that the vaccines reduce transmission. Since governments around the world pushed vaccines for everyone partly on the hypothesis that it should reduce spread, this is a big problem. The truth about transmission reduction from vaccination is therefore in my mind critical. And so far from what I've read, there is not yet a clear scientific consensus on whether vaccines do indeed significantly reduce transmission.

And for the record, in case anyone is wondering, I'm not a tunnel-visioned troll. I welcome being shown studies that do (or don't!) demonstrate reduction in transmission, which I will read and digest before the next HN debate on this topic. It's only by scientific inquiry and debate that we will get to the truth here.

The consensus has shifted to the point wherein the preponderance of evidence points to reduced transmission.

Here is Nature in Feb [1]

Here is Nature now [2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00450-z

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z

Thanks, [2] is interesting. Sadly lacking much information on the transmissibility of the delta variant, which is the dominant strain in most (?) western countries. Such information would tell us whether achieving herd immunity without direct infection from SARS-CoV-2 requires continual application of boosters forever (i.e. for each seasonal variant). I say this because there is evidence from other respiratory viruses that, after having transitioned from animal to human, they typically mutate to become more transmissible but less deadly, which we normally deal with by letting sweep through the country without mass vaccination (only for the vulnerable).

The data shows you are 30x more likely to receive a positive COVID test result if you are unvaccinated, not that you are 30x more likely to “get COVID.” You need to give the distribution of tests between vaccinated/unvaccinated to draw the latter conclusion.

> You need to give the distribution of tests between vaccinated/unvaccinated to draw the latter conclusion.

That wouldn’t give you the information you want.

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