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Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

I see the sentiment here expressed, that Covid is far from over. To be honest, I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago, so I am kind of ignorant here.

Is the main problem, the unvaccinated, or that the Delta (and co.) variants are still, too dangerous for vaccinated people? Or is it the fear, that they will get more dangerous?

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So here in Ontario where we're @ about 65% of the population totally vaccinated, today's new cases.

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

10.25/100k among people who are unvaccinated. 6.5/100k among people who are partially vaccinated. 1.0/100k among people who are fully vaccinated.

For hospitalization:

2.04/100k for unvaccinated, 1.11/100k for partially, 0.21/100k for vaccinated.

For current ICU status:

1.6/100k for unvaccinated, 0.7/100k for partially, 0.05/100k for vaccinated.

So basically the vaccines are really good, even against Delta. The disease is spreading primarily among the unvaccinated. And even those who get it who are vaccinated are on the whole not getting very sick.

EDIT: For those wondering about natural immunity: only 3.67% of the Ontario population is counted as having had COVID, so I doubt it's a significant influence on those statistics. Granted, the first wave had poor testing, so I'm sure the number is a little higher, but I doubt it's more than 5%.

EDIT: disregard the below comment about 10% ending up ICU; is incorrect because I was comparing the incremental new case count against current ICU status. I'll try to fix the # in a bit.

But what's kind of crazy is seeing that those numbers seem to be saying that among the unvaccinated who get it that almost 10% of them are ending up in ICU. And when you consider that those are probably overwhelmingly young people (here 92% of seniors are fully vaccinated and 95% at least one dose) that's scary.

thank you for the numbers!

But i think you got them wrong > 10.25/100k among people who are unvaccinated that should be 10.25k - so your statement at the end about 10% ICU admissions does not hold.

and honestly given this huge error in your statement, I have lost confidence in your entire comment unless you are willing to share the source.

The source is provided in the second paragraph.

That should be a clue that something is wrong with your numbers. 10% of unvaccinated people getting COVID are absolutely not ending up in the ICU. It's not even remotely close.

Also, as good as the vaccines are against delta, natural immunity is doing even better: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-makary-says-natu...

https://www.deseret.com/coronavirus/2021/7/20/22584134/whats...

https://arieh.substack.com/p/inside-israels-delta-outbreak-p...

I'm counting ICU admissions among the unvaccinated separately, not against the population as a whole. When you consider that the majority of the population (65% total, 80% eligible) is vaccinated, then you have to separate the two groups because the outcomes are totally different.

But I did spot something wrong with the way I'm counting, so yes the 10% is probably wrong. The reason is that the daily new case count given by the province is incremental, while the ICU count is current # of cases, not new admissions. So it's not possible to do the comparison in this way. I'd have to take a look at the current active case count by vaccination status, which is something I don't think the province is reporting.

Your biggest problem is that your data isn't accurate.

The page notes that it's case count isn't necessarily correct. This page shows the total case delta at 650 for today versus yesterday: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread

Whereas the spreadsheet from your page says 426. It's not even clear to me that the 650 number is accurate because not everyone may necessarily be reporting they have COVID. I know when my whole family got COVID we didn't report it to the government. I've seen estimates in the U.S. that actual case count is more than double reported case count: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/07/us-covid...

Secondly, ICU case counts are based on people who are in the ICU and happen to have COVID, not people who are in the ICU primarily because of COVID. So for yesterday the delta in ICU COVID case count was 15, but we don't know how many of those net new 15 are actually in the ICU for COVID symptoms primarily.

So taking the raw numbers for yesterday's delta, that's 15 / 650 as a rough estimate (dividing the deltas isn't really what we want but it's the best I can come up with), and that lands us at 2.3%. I also believe that number is far too high for the other reasons outlined above.

For comparison, the numbers here seem to indicate a 5% chance of hospitalization for the unvaccinated: https://www.wbay.com/2021/08/19/covid-19-wisconsin-dhs-compa...

They give no ICU numbers, so we can expect the ICU odds to be closer to 2% again, and their data suffers from the same problems.

Not sure which spreadsheet you're talking about, the page I linked to has a series of feeds, and if you download today's CSV and sum all 4 case count columns it adds up to 650. 426 is the unvaccinated count. 650 is the count of all cases.

  Date covid19_cases_unvac covid19_cases_partial_vac covid19_cases_full_vac covid19_cases_vac_unknown
  2021-08-20 426 64 103 57

BTW, it's not "my page"; it's the official gov't of Ontario COVID data API. It's where the other link you pasted gets its data. There's another feed that provides just testing numbers, but doesn't break down by vaccination status. It also reports yesterday as 650. So the two accord.

But please, go on. "Your biggest problem" is that you don't read. Just like the 90% in Israel stuff.

You're right. We both made an analytical mistake, although yours was much bigger. If that means I don't read, then you must not read well either. Congrats on devolving to personal insults about my character though. I guess that means you ran out of data-based arguments.

If we adjust for my mistake and make 426 the denominator, the odds go up to 3.5%. If we take into account that at least half of cases go unreported, the odds drop to 1.75% or lower. If we take into account that 25% or more ICU COVID cases aren't really COVID-related, (hard to find data on that but it was what was reported that way for Florida last week), the odds go down to 1.3%.

I apparently read well enough to instantly spot that 10% ICU conversion of infected unvaccinated is a bogus number. And my Israel data mistake didn't affect my conclusions at all. Maybe you should work on your reading?

I think both of you would benefit from a less "engaged" discussion mode, more focused on the data.

Not which one of you is right or wrong, but rather what data and conclusions are right or wrong.

Because otherwise I benefited very much from your discussion. Thank you both.

> The disease is spreading primarily among the unvaccinated.

What is the evidence for this? Vaccinated people are capable of spreading the disease just as easily as those who aren't. And since they're much more likely to be asymptomatic, may be more likely to spread the disease unknowingly.

Those without the vaccination are more likely to end up in hospital, but that says nothing about how the disease is actually being transmitted.

I never said "spreading from the unvaccinated" I said "spreading among the unvaccinated" which is borne out by the fact that the unvaccinated (and partially vaccinated) here are only 35% of the population (25% of the eligible population) but are 75% of the daily new case count (and perhaps higher because there's a % with unknown vaccination status)

How are case counts determined? Why would someone who has no symptoms go for testing? Case counts among the vaccinated are surely being under reported because they're asymptomatic.

That would show up in the test positivity rate, as it would mess with the denominator. In my area it's pretty low (2.5%) still, despite case counts rising which shows that lots of people are testing negative.

Also your claim about people with the vaccine still being infected/infectious is a pretty bold claim. That's not settled science, and it's quite likely (and consistent with other viruses and vaccines) that the immune system fights off a COVID infection before it becomes communicable in most immunized people. There are definitely breakthrough cases but it's not clear that the majority of cases behave this way.

Of course we'll likely never know for sure because of the stubborn 30-50% who refuse to get vaccinated.

> That would show up in the test positivity rate, as it would mess with the denominator. In my area it's pretty low (2.5%) still, despite case counts rising.

I don't understand this. My conjecture is that people who are infected but asymptomatic due to vaccination would have no reason to show up in the case counts either way, since they would not seek out being tested at all.

As for being a bold claim, it's established science that vaccination can not prevent infection. The virus can still enter your system. I agree that it is a debatable question as to how many and to what extent those vaccinated people are infectious to others.

The vaccinated may be just as capable of spreading covid, but they’re less likely to be infected in the first place.

The vaccinated are not less likely to be infected. The vaccine can not stop infection, it can only help your body fight off the effects of infection.

You're describing mere exposure, which is quite unlikely to progress to an actual infection (a positive test result) among the vaccinated.

I'm not describing exposure, i'm talking about infection where the virus enters the bloodstream, regardless of test results (which aren't perfect and may not even be taken if the person is asymptomatic).

I'm curious to know, how does the delay between the first and second shot, and mixing of vaccines that was done in Canada affect thr current infection rate there and the overall efficacy of such vaccines.

This is the best article I've recently read that describes what is currently going on: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/delta-has...

(Pulitzer Prize winner for science communication)

Thanks for the link! Lots of interesting details in there. I'll attempt a TL;DR of points most relevant for non-Americans (but please check the article for context, particularly on numbers, and link to sources):

- Delta variant has ridiculously high R₀ - estimated to be between 5 and 9, where initial COVID-19 variants had it around 2 to 3.

- Viruses spread nonuniformly. Old COVID-19 (R₀ = 2-3) tended to spread through super-spreading events (few people infecting a lot more at a time). R₀ of 5-9 implies Delta variant doesn't need super-spreading events.

- This R₀ value also means it's not possible to eradicate the virus through vaccination or herd immunity - it's going to become endemic (which was always seen as a likely outcome anyway).

- Current vaccines have proven to be effective against the Delta variant, by significantly reducing infections (0.01% to 0.29% chance of breakthrough disease), such infections showing symptoms (~88% percent effective) and severity of those symptoms if they show up, as well as preventing hospitalization (~96% effective against Delta; >95% of all COVID patients in US hospitals are unvaccinated).

- There is evidence that vaccinated people can still transmit Delta, even if themselves they don't show symptoms. As expected, the virus seems to live shorter in the airways of vaccinated people.

- Above and high R₀ mean Delta can spread even through highly-vaccinated communities.

- Individually, for those who can get a shot, it's the best thing to do. Community-wise, we still need other precautions - like mask, widespread testing, hygiene, improvements in ventilation, to protect the vulnerable and slow the spread.

- Vulnerable groups now include children under 12 - they're not eligible for vaccination, and there's a growing (though still small) amount of children suffering from long-COVID and MIS-C.

- The end goal is still to slow the spread, to keep schools open and hospitals running, prevent healthcare personnel burnout, give time to develop better countermeasures and therapies, and let the economy slowly recover (instead of repeating 2020). Slowing the spread down also gives the virus less chances of mutating into a more problematic variant.

What is the delta variant R₀ in fully vaccinated communities though? Certainly it's not in the range of 5 to 9. If it's something like 2, then sure, a mask mandate makes sense for everyone. But if it's much lower than 1, then is it fair to force the vaccinated to wear masks? Is this sort of information hidden from the public because officials are too cowardly to force vaccine passports? There are so many information gaps like these that leave room for doubters.

You can figure it with math. Given a starting R0, a vaccination level, and an efficacy, you can figure effective Rt:

Rt = R0 * (1 - (vacRate * effRate))

So if Delta R0 is 6, a community is 65% vaccinated, and a vaccine is 80% effective against transmission, then effective Rt would be:

Rt = 6 * ( 1 - (.65 * .8)) = 2.88

Real effective Rt includes impact of mitigation levels and natural immunity. So for instance, in Portland OR, Rt is about 1.4. We didn't get hit as hard as surrounding states in the first few rounds, so we don't have as much natural immunity. In contrast, Seattle got hit harder early on; their effective Rt is a little lower - and Silicon Valley is actually pretty close to 1 right now.

You are assuming that R0 for vaccinated that contract the virus is the same as those who are unvaccinated that contract the virus, which does not appear to be the case.

That was my question - how much less do those who are vaccinated and contract the virus infect other people than those who are unvaccinated and contract the virus. That can't be calculated from a single R0 number.

If you restrict it to the vaccinated population and the unvaccinated population, then you can consider the vaccinated population fully populated, and the unvaccinated population entirely unvaccinated.

Vaccinated group:

Rt = 6 * ( 1 - (1 * .8)) = 1.2

Unvaccinated group:

Rt = 6 * ( 1 - (0 * .8)) = 6

The question of "how much less" is hard to parse, but the point is that even among the vaccinated group (in this scenario), the virus is still spreading and growing exponentially.

I suppose if Rt was clearly below 1 for the vaccinated group, that might mean something, but if the groups intermingle, that advantage would be lost pretty quickly.

I think you are still missing my point. You are using a circular definition of R0. Where did you get that number 6? Is that for a fully unvaccinated population? Are partially vaccinated population? If so, what percentage? Your calculation makes absolutely no sense, it's circular. You can't calculate R0 using R0.

No, R0=6 is a given. I'm not calculating R0. R0 for Delta is estimated between 5 and 9.5. I picked 6, just for illustration. Given a starting R0 and a vaccination rate and a vaccine effectiveness, that is how you can calculate effective Rt. There's nothing circular about that.

There's no such thing as "R0 within a vaccinated community" - R0 is the starting reproductive number. Effective reproductive number - given various mitigation measures like vaccination, masks, natural immunity, etc - is Rt.

You can try the calculations using any other starting R0, from 5 to 9.5 if you stay consistent with estimates of Delta transmissibility.

The point is that it's possible that a group of vaccinated people would never have an Rt below 1 from vaccination alone, simply because of the limited vaccine effectiveness against transmission.

If one population spreads a disease more than another, it makes absolutely no sense that R0 is a constant across all populations, by definition. Perhaps you should look up the meaning of R0.

One clarification - between 0.01% and 0.29% (actually 0.54% now) of fully vaccinated people are affected by breakthrough infection, while 88% effective means in a situation where an unvaccinated person would become infected, the vaccinated person would have an 88% chance of not being infected. So the difference between the two is exposure, which is a function of prevalence.

> Is the main problem, the unvaccinated, or that the Delta (and co.) variants are still, too dangerous for vaccinated people? Or is it the fear, that they will get more dangerous?

Lots of problems.

- The virus causes serious sequela; people who have been infected may have life-long damage, and some of that damage looks really bad. There's little correlation between severity of the initial infection and severity of the damage, so we don't know if vaccines help either.

- Not all people can be vaccinated. Young children can't be (their immune systems don't work the same way), people with some other underlying diseases can't be, etc. It's by no means just anti-vaxxers who are at risk.

- People aren't dying enough. Historically, this sort of pandemic only ended once the people who were genetically at risk had all died, and we're not letting that happen. Now, to be very clear: I'm not saying we should!

- Having a vaccinated population intermingling with an infections population means there's immense pressure on the virus to evade those vaccines. Many of the means by which it might do so will make it far more deadly to anyone who isn't vaccinated; Delta, for example, has adopted 'human wave tactics' to overwhelm the antibodies.

However, this does mean that history is a poor guide to what might happen.

Viruses don't generally have any reason to want their hosts dead, but there's also little evolutionary pressure for having that not happen.

We're helpfully adding pressure that's well suited to make it more deadly. Yay.

(1) vaccinated people who get infected can infect others (this wasn't common before Delta)

(2) Kids aren't being vaccinated, and masks have become political despite being the cheapest non-pharmaceutical intervention when most or all are masked (versus costs of shutting down, increasing ventilation, etc.). Some others also cannot be vaccinated due to health issues or availability (not in the US, it's widely available)

(3) most, but not all, hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated.

Kind of a combination of Delta and unvaccinated. Delta is more infectious than previous variants., which means that we need more vaccinated people to reach herd immunity.

> I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago

You're mostly fine, but you should not get disconnected completely from the news.

Vaccine efficacy seems to wane slowly (faster for old people). Probably before the 1 year mark you should get a booster shot.

The Delta variant is skewing some of the initial estimates, for the worse.

The odds that you will catch the virus but have no symptoms or repercussions are still rather substantial, but definitely less than 50% (estimates vary). So there is a chance that you can still transmit it. Please wear a mask indoors in public places.

I disagree.

Before Delta, it was reasonable to resume almost all activities after being fully vaccinated.

I don't believe that is true any longer. There are too many breakthrough cases, presumably driven by a much higher viral load that can overwhelm defenses. (The figures I have seen are 1000x in the upper respiratory tract of infected people; I haven't been following well enough to know what the increase is in actually expressed viruses. But it's going to be a lot, and viral load has proven to be a very significant factor for transmission.)

Well, I made no predictions for the future. :)

Vaccinated people are still mostly fine, even with Delta. You just don't get the close to 100% protection against severe disease, it's a little lower than that. It's still pretty good protection against severe cases (talking about mRNA vaccines).

What's clearly disappointing is that the vaccines are not very good at preventing Delta from spreading. I have not seen good estimates, but the numbers floating around seem to indicate the vaccines (again, mRNA) are still at least 50% effective against spread, but nowhere near 100%. That's the biggest gap right now.

It is true that viral loads are orders of magnitude higher with Delta. That is still compatible with all the statements above.

Sorry, I was only disagreeing with the summary "You're mostly fine [because you are fully vaccinated]". I agree with everything else you said. My only disagreement is that I read "you're mostly fine" implying that it's still ok to resume (or in this case continue) regular activities. In my opinion, that is definitely no longer true if you live in or near an area with overburdened hospitals, and at the very least changes your calculations in other areas because it's again important to reduce transmission.

Before Delta, I felt like reducing transmission was good but not that important compared to the disadvantages of isolation. Delta shifted the tradeoff back in the other direction. How much is debatable, but personally I feel that quite a few activities that were ok, aren't anymore. I'm definitely still doing more than pre-vaccination, though.

For most people I know, other than mask requirements when going out certain places and the constant fear mongering on TV, COVID-19 is completely over and their lives are back to normal, complete with in person graduation parties this summer, going to ball games, family gatherings like it doesn't exist, etc. Other than both my parents last year (who recovered, didn't need hospitalization but were very ill for 2 weeks) I don't know anyone who has gotten seriously ill from it since.

For a balanced perspective and as a parent of ineligible children about to enter a new school year, Covid is far from over! We have no idea how long our school will be open or if we'll need to split attention between work and quarantined children at home. Similar to the evaporation of empathy for unvaxxed people who are admitted to the hospital, I'm concerned about a similar fatigue of tolerating working parents who are still partying like it's 2020, except we have no choice in the matter.

I have a friend that is an ER nurse that works at Cedars and she's ready to quit because of the attitude that "covid is over". She loves her job and helping people but the shitty attitudes of patients and people in general over this issue have caused her to rethink her life choices.

The main problem is that the U.S. federal government in particular has been pretending for a while that we can get to zero COVID, then blaming the unvaccinated when it doesn't happen. First, they said we need 50% vaccination to achieve, herd immunity. Then 60%. Then 70%. Then 80%. When things don't work out, they vilify and blame the unvaccinated.

In reality, unvaccinated with natural immunity are likely more protected against the virus than the vaccinated. Israel's vaccination rates are among the highest in the world, and they've suffered the same delta outbreak as everyone else. Further, Israel has the most accurate and comprehensive data to date, and their numbers clearly show the naturally-immunized outperforming the vaccinated during their delta wave. They've since resorted to giving 3rd booster shots to the most vulnerable to compensate.

https://arieh.substack.com/p/inside-israels-delta-outbreak-p...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/israel-delivers-boos...

The real issue is that COVID is likely going to become endemic, and at some point the world needs to face this and move on. Unfortunately, our politicians have been lying to us and using COVID as a tool to gain political power for so long, that they are unwilling to admit they were wrong and to steer us in the right direction. The best we can do is elect these people out.

Please share some scientific citations showing natural immunity gives better protection than vaccines. This runs counter to what I'm hearing from my virologist sources.

There is no scientific consensus that naturally acquired immunity gives better protection than vaccines.

Two facts that are trending toward consensus in the scientific literature:

A) Naturally infected individuals who recover will acquire robust and durable immunity [1][2]

B) Natural infection induces an immune response that is mostly similar but slightly different than the immune response induced by vaccination. The primary differences can be summarized as: naturally infected individuals have nucleocapsid protein antibodies whereas vaccinated individuals do not, and vaccinated individuals have an immune response highly targeted toward the spike protein RBD. [3][4][5]

In summary many people hypothesize that natural infection is better because it induces a broader and more balance antibody response, but the literature has not established consensus that this is necessarily "better" in terms of health outcomes for individuals.

[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf

[2] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

[3] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3

[4] Distinct SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Responses Elicited by Natural Infection and mRNA Vaccination https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v4

[5] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

> In summary many people hypothesize that natural infection is better because it induces a broader and more balance antibody response, but the literature has not established consensus that this is necessarily "better" in terms of health outcomes for individuals.

Great summary - I have seen no evidence that natural immunity is better. The opposite could be true. A nucelocapsid-specific immune response cannot be used to kill live virus (the nucleocapsid is not accessible for binding on the surface of a live virus). This means natural immunity will result in an intense off-target immune response (in addition to an intense on-target one for the spike). That off-target response elevates the chances of collateral tissue damage (cytokine storm).

Here are a couple of preprint studies that show naturally acquired immunity provides protection.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33948610/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33907755/

Meanwhile the CDC published this study showing the opposite:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

I can understand why people are confused.

There appears to be two camps, one that believes that science can defeat this disease, and in the other camp people that believe we need to learn to adjust to our new reality.

I don't understand how a man made vaccine can provide better protection to the virus better than my body after recovering, but I'm not specialist.

Aren't the pharmaceutical companies financially incentivized to provide minimal protection, and annual booster shots? Why would they make something better?

As long as fear navigates our course, we won't see an end to this.

It really depends on the virus. For some viruses, the vaccines are far more effective and less risky and have helped eliminate or mostly eliminate the virus entirely. For other viruses, vaccines are far less effective.

The Israel data is clearly showing natural immunity doing better for COVID, and every other peer-reviewed study I have seen shows natural immunity doing "at least" as well as vaccinated immunity.

>There appears to be two camps, one that believes that science can defeat this disease, and in the other camp people that believe we need to learn to adjust to our new reality.

Vaccines are part of our adjustment. There's one camp which tries to adjust, and another which places hands in their ears.

>I don't understand how a man made vaccine can provide better protection to the virus better than my body after recovering, but I'm not specialist.

The same way an antibiotic could cure certain diseases much better than your own body. Besides, you're much more likely to survive the vaccine than the disease.

>Aren't the pharmaceutical companies financially incentivized to provide minimal protection, and annual booster shots? Why would they make something better?

Efficiency isn't something pharmaceutical companies could just decide in advance. If they try to make something inefficient, there's a good chance it won't be effective at all, and they'll lose all the money invested in R&D.

And ultimately, less effective vaccines will be crowded out of the market, we already see this in some countries with AZ and J&J.

That first paragraph really isn't fair because R0 has changed. So of course scientific opinion has changed. That's not same thing as pretending and then vilifying.

Your second paragraph is eliding a lousy "therefore" - obviously, the cost of shooting for natural immunity versus vaccination is that you have to experience the actual disease and all its risks. Survivorship bias.

Scientists are allowed and should be allowed to say "the data changed, so our recommendation changed". Politicians and health leaders have a responsibility to interpret the data and develop communications and policies that build trust and inform the public. It's a failure on the part of the latter when they make promises to the public that they know are not guaranteed.

They have made definitive statements that are wrong too many times in the past year and a half. That is a massive failure. The average joe has nowhere near the time nor expertise required to interpret the scientific data out there, so trust is everything for them. At some point, you run out of the good will required to say "ok, I'll trust you again". Maintaining trust is a leader's most important job.

You were (legitimately) attacking my numbers elsewhere but here you are posting completely inaccurate information. Israel is nowhere close to "90%" vaccinated. Haaretz from 4 days ago reports them at 78%: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-vaccine-data-how-...

Given the vaccine is not approved for people under 12, there's no way it could be 90%, as 28% of their population is 0-14 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Age_str...

I misremembered. It was 90% of people over 50 that were vaccinated. It's in the article I linked. But I don't think that discredits my main point, that increased vaccination rates aren't going to eliminate the virus entirely and that natural immunity is actually doing better.

Here in Canada "natural immunity" would only cover maybe 4-5% of the population. Official testing numbers of total cases in Ontario since the pandemic began put it at 3.7% here (though it's likely a bit higher because of bad testing during first wave.)

Maybe in some US states where the disease was horribly mismanaged that number is much higher, but it's a) not reliably counted b) badly researched. Knowing whether someone is "naturally immune" is a big roll of the dice, whereas we know for sure when someone is vaccinated.

And to get to a high "natural" immunity rate requires unnecessary death and suffering.

But yes, half of the 18-29 year olds here seem to be rolling the dice and playing this "natural immunity" game; which is why they are now the vast majority of hospital admissions for this disease.

What's wrong with your 18-29 year-olds making that choice? Freedom means freedom to make sub-ideal choices or even bad choices, including choices that affect others negatively. Really almost every choice we make affects others in some capacity, for good or bad. Do you want to outlaw all choices you deem bad?

The state of COVID is such that if you are an adult you can get vaccinated and you are safe enough, no matter what decisions others make. If you are not an adult then the risks to you are so low that you are safe anyways. The 2009 swine flu killed 3 times as many children in 9 months as COVID has killed in 18 months: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2009/12/cdc-shar....

Yet This flu did not require masking, lockdowns, forced vaccinations, or any shutting down of schools.

If you are immunocompromised, or otherwise vulnerable even with the vaccine, then it is up to you to take extra precautions, like wearing an N95 in public or avoiding crowded areas.

COVID simply isn't deadly enough to warrant the curbing of freedom that is being done or the vilification of those not making choices we think they should. Get vaccinated if you want to and move on with your life. Stop forcing people to get vaccinated, especially those who've already been infected. And finally, get the government out of the business of mandates of any kind. They aren't needed. People have the tools already to protect themselves how they see fit.

Personally I think the real problem with COVID is that it is a disease which kills many people and harms many more, not that some people supposedly vilify unvaccinated people.

Why not fight heart disease with this voracity, since it kills more people?

What fight, and what voracity?

There's not a single heart disease, and a lot of cardiovascular issues are caused by bad habits rather than infectious pathogens.

That's the reasoning used to vilify unvaccinated people, which is my point. Cheers

Your numbers are wrong (see other responses for why.)

The herd immunity figure (1) legitimately changed with the variants, and (2) is always going to be a shot in the dark so personally I don't find much point in paying attention to government figures anyway. Government is providing figures to achieve an outcome; it's fundamentally a policy tool. If you want the science, listen to scientists.

The delta variant is currently overwhelming a large number of hospitals, and it wouldn't have done so with higher vaccination rates. Whether or not you view that statement as vilifying unvaccinated people is beside the point.

If it is going to become endemic, and there are very good arguments that it will, then I agree that we'll need to move on. But "moving on" != "ignoring". Flushing the existing vaccines down the toilet and letting the cards fall as they may is not a winning strategy, yet that's exactly what 40% of the US population is presently choosing.

"Moving on" means treating it like chickenpox or at least the flu. Not like meteor strikes.

I misremembered the numbers but if you click to the linked analysis the numbers are correct there.

As to the delta variant overwhelming hospitals, that's partially because hospitals are firing nurses that won't get vaccinated. The lack of beds is primarily a staffing problem and hospitals are shooting themselves in the foot. I've also heard they have been underpaying nurses and some are just quitting or switching to better-paying contract work.

Second, the media and even some hospital administration officials are blatantly deceiving people on actual hospital status: https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/08/06/fact-checking-4-claim...

There's a whole section there debunking the claims, for instance, that hospitals in Florida are overwhelmed.

I don't think anyone thinks that "moving on" means forgetting, but I do think it does entail having the government get out of the business of mandating lockdowns, masks, or vaccines. The problem lies in the fact that the media were too successful in scaring people to death about COVID. It makes handling the virus in a sane way impossible without negative political fallout.

I know some doctors in affected areas. The hospitals were overwhelmed before any unvaccinated firings happened. The staff are incredibly exhausted, angry, and demoralized. Many went through this before with the first big wave, and not only are they back to insane hours and filling body bags, but now they have to deal with the awareness that it's unnecessary and avoidable.

If you'd like to confirm, dig up some medical staff on Twitter. "MedTwitter" is a thing. (But don't search based on keywords like "vaccine", because you will find what you seek. It'll be massively biased in a pro-vaccine direction. Find the medical professionals first, then see what they're saying.)

I think the question of whether to allow unvaccinated staff is a tricky one. I don't think it should be decided because some people are pissed off at vaccine resisters, and I haven't seen any strong evidence that it is. (I haven't looked, either.) Unvaccinated staff put their patients and coworkers at risk if they work, or if they don't work. Someone has to do the math.

Similarly for government intervention. It really bothers me when the government mandates anything. But I think of it like this:

Let's say I'm in a community that is fond of keeping tigers as pets. 5% of the population dies every year from wild tiger attacks. Many community members insist on letting their tigers be off-leash, calling it a fundamental part of their identity as tiger owners. Off-leash tigers kill 50% of the (remaining) human population each year.

I don't like leashing my tiger. But over half the people I know are dead. I would gather the community together and say, sorry guys, but we're going to have to agree to keep our kitties on leashes, no matter how friendly we think they are. And we're going to have to back up that agreement with expulsion, imprisonment, or taking tigers away. It sucks, but the risk is too high.

55% annual death rate is insanely high, but it makes the point that there is a number at which community (aka government) mandates are the right thing to do. We can argue at where the number ought to be, but not whether or not there is a number.

Right now, there are a lot of people dying, and a lot of "dry wood" that the virus is burning through. I think it's time to wet some of that fuel, whether it wants to get wet or not. (And even though we know some of that wet wood is still gonna burn.)

Your tiger analogy is a bit ridiculous unless you give people the ability to carry around a force field and laser defense system for free that gives them practical immunity to death or dismemberment by tiger.

At this point we have the tools we need to be safe against COVID. Any adult that wants to get can vaccinated. Kids are under such low risk that they don't need to be vaccinated. The 2009 H1N1 flu killed 3 times as many children as COVID so far, and in half the time! Yet we didn't lock down, shut down schools, or torture our little children with masks during that pandemic. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2009/12/making-s...

If you're immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable even with the vaccine, then it is up to you to take extra precautions because COVID will be around forever.

COVID is not the equivalent of a population of tigers running rampant through our community. It's time for the fearmongering to stop and for us to get back to normal. And hospitals may need to adapt. Even during the height of the delta surge, data I've seen suggests that 80% or more of ICU beds are filled by non-COVID patients. Our hospitals are so designed for efficiency and cost reduction that we are incapable of handling surges of any kind, including ones that increase our ICU utilization by at most 25%. I see that more as a failure of our hospital systems than anything else.

> it wouldn't have done so with higher vaccination rates

That is the rhetoric that Fauci and others have been pushing, but the scientific literature is accumulating mounting evidence that counters the claim. Not to mention the data out of Israel - which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world - is also strong evidence against your claim. Israel is struggling with overwhelmed hospitals due to variants reducing the efficacy of vaccination and also naturally acquired immunity.

FWIW I'm keeping an open mind, please cite primary sources to support your claim and I will happily consider them.

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