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Comment by j_walter | Hacker News Reader

39% effective against infection, but the big sticking point is that it "Largely prevents severe illness"...ie keeping people out of the hospital. That is the crucial need right now with the delta spread.

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This is the media "grift" I absolutely can't believe. The vaccine IS preventing people from dying and it's largely known that the vaccine doesn't prevent infection or spread. That said, GET THE VACCINE, I do not intend for this to sound like I'm condoning any kind of anti-vax narrative!

Political fluff is expected, but keeping millions of people afraid and irate about information that deeply pertains to both their physical and mental health for what gain?

>for what gain

Those clicks!

Obviously! But at what point will educated people (regardless of their political views) realize that playing fast and loose with this kind of media is damaging to everyone and their wellbeing?

39% against infection is bloody good.

I'll take that (actually i already have)

The 39% is against getting an infection, and I believe that includes the ability to transmit the infection on. It definitely is crucial that Re (R0 modified by measures like vaccines and masks) be kept below 1 if at all possible.

The preventing severe illness is still holding pretty firm, but not as strong as against other variants. Still a very good chance. And preventing hospitalizations is even stronger.

I haven't seen any good information on transmission. My gut feeling is that less symptoms == less transmissibility, but I have no data to back that up.

One study has put the delta R0 around the same as Measles...which is 3x original COVID, but still less than Chicken Pox.

> less symptoms == less transmissibility

doesn't really hold up when asymptomatic spread (no symptoms at all) has been one of the main concerns for the entire pandemic

Sure, but everything also said its spread through the air...no coughing == less droplets. The spread concern would be if people aren't taking the same precautions because they aren't showing symptoms, but if still wearing masks or social distancing then the transmission should be less.

That being said most people aren't taking precautions any more because of this...I've seen people directly exposed for up to 2 days to someone with COVID w/ symptoms who then gets an immediate negative test and goes on with their life and not wearing masks in public/work. No amount of yelling or shaming does any good when people are oblivious to their own self destructive behavior.

It’s important to distinguish between asymptomatic infection and presymptomatic infection. The biggest problem with COVID-19 compared to previous forms of SARS viruses is its ability to spread before the onset of symptoms, which is different from someone displaying no symptoms at all from infection.

I’m not completely sure how infectious an asymptomatic infection is, but i just wanted to note a lot of the concern has actually been about presymptomatic infection.

Both asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission are possible. [1] And there has been a lot of published concern about both.

[1] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/4/20-4576_article

> One study has put the delta R0 around the same as Measles...which is 3x original COVID, but still less than Chicken Pox.

I think you swapped Chicken Pox and Measles in your example, as the delta R0 seems similar to Chicken Pox and Chicken Pox has a lower R0 than Measles.

Chicken Pox, which, pre-vaccine, was considered an infection everyone would get.

Thats very possible...I was going off information my significant other mentioned to me yesterday that she heard on the news. Hearsay of hearsay...so my bad...

Hey, that's pretty good information coherence for that long a game of telephone.

(Or wikipedia is wrong about R0 values for various diseases, including the delta variant)

My understanding is that it's pretty clear that vaccine do not do a good job at preventing infection (i.e. testing positive and/or having cold-like symptoms), Delta or not. I don't think they were ever advertised as such.

The mRNA vaccines were very good at preventing any infection, between 80% and 95% effective depending on variant and study. J&J was between 65 and 80% depending on the variant and study. All of them have been excellent at preventing hospitalization and death.

And they definitely were advertised as helping to prevent the spread. That's the whole "herd immunity" thing. After all, one goal is to prevent the epidemic from hitting the unvaccinated.

Vaccines does not _prevent_ infection.

Vaccines prevent _diseases_ that can be dangerous, or even deadly. Vaccines greatly reduce the _risk_ of infection by working with the body’s natural defenses to safely develop immunity to disease.

You're speaking nonsense. If you mean the vaccine doesn't prevent a virus particle from going into your body, you are correct. They aid the immune system in fighting the virus once it's inside. "Infection" is usually used when some boundary of viral load is crossed, a boundary almost impossible to reach through any means other than internal incubation. Hence, vaccines prevent infection.

Politicians certainly didn't deliver a great message about it though...when they are the ones that are giving out 99% of the information about the vaccine (since I don't think the drug companies can advertise a non-approved drug). Many vaccines are meant to prevent infection, but this type is meant to mostly reduce the chance of severe infection by training your body to see the virus sooner and know how to attack it with less "training".

>>> training your body to see the virus sooner and know how to attack it with less "training"

This is literally how every vaccine ever made works.

Yes, but some are better at never getting infected in the first place, like chicken pox, hepatitis or measles.

That depends on what you mean by "good job". It's certainly better at preventing sever illness than it is at preventing infection altogether, but it's still quite good at that (better than the typical flu vaccine, for instance).

> I don't think they were ever advertised as such.

Correct based on my understanding. But sadly I see people quoting all the time (on social media) that it prevents infection. So there's probably a fair bit of misconception out there

it is my understanding that mRNA technology makes it easier to create vaccines. Why can we just do a version 2 that does work better against delta?

Probably because this version is doing well enough?

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