Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

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> In seriousness, the whole point of vaccination is public health, which means you're not doing it just for yourself but the person who's working next to you.

9/23/2021: 99.7% of Waterford adults fully vaccinated against Covid-19 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40704104.html

10/11/2021: Waterford Now Has Highest Incidence of Covid in Ireland https://waterford-news.ie/2021/10/11/waterford-now-has-highe...

Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

Covid cases hit records in South Korea and Singapore despite widespread vaccinations https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/covid-cases-hit-rec...

Chile sees Covid surge despite vaccination success https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56731801

World's Most Vaccinated Nation Is Spooked by Covid Spike https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/business/economy/covid-se...

Vermont sees the biggest surge in COVID cases despite having the country's highest vaccination rate https://fortune.com/2021/08/12/vermont-covid-cases-vaccinati...

Iceland has been a vaccination success. Why is it seeing a coronavirus surge? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-covid-su...

Nearly 60% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Israel fully vaccinated, data shows https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/nearly-6...

Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-pande...

A few more:

Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have similar viral loads in communities with a high prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v...

Covid-19: Fully vaccinated people can carry as much delta virus as unvaccinated people, data indicate https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2074

No Significant Difference in Viral Load Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Groups Infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v...

>Nearly 60% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Israel fully vaccinated, data shows https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/nearly-6...

But almost everyone in Israel fully vaccinated, so a per capita number would be needed instead, and would tell a very different story. This is a pretty miss-leading title.

I haven't read the rest of the articles you posted, and likely won't given you included this one.

The title is not misleading. It's a statement of fact inferred from data presented in the first paragraph. Calculating per capita hospitalisation would be a measurement of a different metric and require a different title too.

It's not that it's not true, it's that it that you can't make the conclusion that vaccines are ineffective at stopping the spread of covid from it. And if you don't understand that, you are either (a) deliberately trying to misrepresent the evidence or (b) just exercising confirmation bias. Given your response to the parent post, it seems more like the former.

High vaccination rate (meeting state targets) leads to revoking mask mandates and reopening schools and social venues. This increased social contact leads to a spike is cases. Nothing surprising here once you think about it.

Your list of articles fails to illustrate a point once you read beyond the click-bait headlines. Most articles say that even though there are spikes the cases are mild due to vaccine (Iceland, for example, has not hospitalized a single Covid case during their “surge”)

> High vaccination rate (meeting state targets) leads to revoking mask mandates and reopening schools and social venues. This increased social contact leads to a spike is cases. Nothing surprising here once you think about it.

What then was lockdown and mass vaccination for, if not to reduce spread? That's certainly what we were told where I live. If spread spikes when vaccinated people are again in close contact then wasn't the whole thing just a giant waste of time and money given the motivation?

>What then was lockdown and mass vaccination for, if not to reduce spread?

To reduce death and serious illness.

...in which case, restrictions should never have been mandated, and those who looked at their personal risk and decided that going about their lives as normal was acceptable should have been allowed to do so.

And besides, in the UK the continuing lockdowns were very much sold on the hypothesis that they prevent transmission.

And before anyone replies that mandates stop hospitals being overwhelmed, read the other comments here on the load obesity, smoking, alcoholism etc. places on the health services - mandates for COVID-19 are inconsistent with our past behaviours regarding causes of hospitalisation.

>in which case, restrictions should never have been mandated

Which would have resulted in more death and serious illness.

You either didn't read or understand my comment, or you're intentionally choosing not to address my points, so I won't reply to you any more.

I did read and understand your comment. I just chose to pick on the most obvious falsehood at the start.

It’s very interesting seeing doctors around me start to adopt the opinion that vaccines are effectively useless. I’ve talked to numerous doctors working in hospitals here who say that media publicity about the unvaccinated prevalence in their icus is bullshit.

It's hard to imagine doctors around you adopting the opinion that vaccines are useless. Because they're not.

Sadly, it's a moving target. After a number of months VE against infection falls off a cliff. VE against severe infection has decreased some 10%, but has not fell off a cliff. I don't know what the future will bring, I'm keeping a nervous eye on the situation. That Israel and FDA/CDC are clearly pushing for boosters is definitely not helping increase the confidence. They are in a much better position to glimpse at the future, and have decided for reasons they are not candidly sharing with the public that the vaccines as-is are not sufficient.

Vaccines and COVID prevalence are statistically uncorrelated. Does that seem like the mark of an effective vaccine?

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