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Comment by twofornone | Hacker News Reader

According to this source [0], it looks like something like 80% of the population is vaccinated. If they are still implementing lockdowns with an 80% vaccination rate, maybe it's time to acknowledge that the efficacy numbers we've been fed are a little optimistic?

This is hardly unique to australia. UK, Ireland, Israel, and other highly vaccinated nations are experiencing record case numbers. Where is the skepticism? I feel like 80% of the population has gone totally crazy, completely unwilling to question the safety or efficacy of the vaccines, as though they were sacrosanct.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-inter...

Edit: article is about austria. Still, the accusations of being "antivaxx" are dishonest. Not all vaccines are created equal. And in any case a ≈65% vaccination rate failing to contain the virus still does not bode well for estimates of effectiveness. Something's not right and the discussion needs to be had.

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The efficacy numbers you might be remembering could have been for the wild type, not the more infectious delta variant. A higher infectiousness also requires a far higher fraction of the population to be vaccinated to reduce spread (rule of thumb is that a fraction of 1 - 1/R_0 would be needed for a given value of R_0 iirc).

You also have to keep in mind that the incidences for vaccinated and unvaccinated are vastly different. Several German federal states record these values and the incidence among the unvaccinated is usually ~10x as high as for the vaccinated, so a small fraction of the population can be responsible for a good deal of the infections. I shall provide a link for the latter in a moment.

Example for Saxony, one of the more affected federal states at the moment. Ratio of incidences for unvaccinated:vaccinated is ~19:1, see:

https://www.coronavirus.sachsen.de/infektionsfaelle-in-sachs...

Example for Bavaria, also heavily affected. Ratio of incidences for unvaccinated:vaccinated is ~9.7:1. Source:

https://www.lgl.bayern.de/gesundheit/infektionsschutz/infekt...

Baden-Württemberg, taken from an article as I couldn't find the original source. Ratio of incidences unvaccinated:vaccinated is ~18.4:1 there:

https://www.swp.de/panorama/intensivstation-geimpfte-corona-...

Keep in mind that you would need to weigh that according to the vaccination levels if you want to calculate somethign with them but you should find the current levels on the same pages, I think.

Is germany also using a lower threshold for PCR tests for vaccinated vs unvaccinated, as was the official recommendation by the CDC last year? Because they would significantly skew the numbers.

Which source? The Austrian announcement stated that roughly 65% of the population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe.

[edit] aahh, you linked Australia instead of Austria - that's pretty much exactly on the opposite side of the globe.

LOL, grandparent actually mixed Austria and Australia up... well done!

You're confusing Austria and Australia, but hey, it's par for the course for the dumpster fire level of comments currently on this thread...

I'm going to trust the statistics that the vaccines work, and aren't deadly. The numbers seem to speak for themselves, thousands of samples and you can see any region with higher vaccination rates have lower infection and death rates (well, I guess until the efficacy wears down and boosters are needed...). On the topic of long term effects, I'm going to trust this scientist (of course at the end of the day, that's what it ends with isn't it, what statements do each of us trust):

https://www.uab.edu/reporter/resources/be-healthy/item/9544-...

> Unlike many medications, which are taken daily, vaccines are generally one-and-done. "Medicines you take every day can cause side effects" that reveal themselves over time, including long-term problems as levels of the drug build up in the body over months and years, Goepfert said. But "vaccines are just designed to deliver a payload and then are quickly eliminated by the body," he said. "This is particularly true of the mRNA vaccines. mRNA degrades incredibly rapidly. You wouldn't expect any of these vaccines to have any long-term side effects. And in fact, this has never occurred with any vaccine."

>The numbers seem to speak for themselves, thousands of samples and you can see any region with higher vaccination rates have lower infection and death rates (well, I guess until the efficacy wears down and boosters are needed...)

This is inconsistent with record case numbers in highly vaccinated countries across the globe.

>On the topic of long term effects, I'm going to trust this scientist (of course at the end of the day, that's what it ends with isn't it, what statements do each of us trust):

Publishing literature critical of vaccines is social and career suicide. The science is effectively poisoned, one sided because of social shaming. But Pfizer et al. aren't complaining given that they are raking in the cash explicitly free of liability. Not like that's a huge conflict of interest or anything, we should continue to trust their safety and efficacy data unquestionably. Surely big pharma has a spotless ethical and safety record.

> This is inconsistent with record case numbers in highly vaccinated countries across the globe.

Let's see your data then.

> Publishing literature critical of vaccines is social and career suicide.

Ah yeah, of course, when you don't like the statement, the messenger is part of a giant lying conspiracy. Where's the science to prove otherwise? (Hidden by the money and power, I guess?) The studies that Jenny McCarthy and her doctor Andrew Wakefield[1] made up about vaccines = autism have been debunked. But I guess that's all because the powers that be have decided they need to be made pariahs, right? Sigh, I'm glad I live in reality. But hey, maybe I'm the one who's been brainwashed, and you're the clear thinking one, right?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/

It is amazing to see the anti-vaxers here on HN, especially with a comment this high up.

The people filling the hospitals are unvaccinated.

The vaccine doesn't prevent new cases. It isn't a super man cape. It lessens the effects, if you do get infected.

It's amazing to see people still buying into the idea that the vaccine or lock-downs will stop Covid from spreading. It's an endemic coronovirus, it will be around forever. People that want the vaccine (that doesn't prevent covid infection) can get it. Why destroy civilization to achieve less than nothing?

If it supposedly lessens effects if you get infected, why is there such controversy of worrying about those that don't want it?

The people filling the hospitals, which has consistently been overstated in magnitude, are obese/overweight and with other co-morbidities. For vast majority of Covid cases the symptoms are nothing to worry about. The risk of dying from under 50 is like 0.1% or better if not overweight.

This is an extreme modern aversion to any risk that would desire society grind itself to a halt forever and fight pointless mandate battles towards inevitable political chaos instead of just moving on with life.

> For vast majority of Covid cases the symptoms are nothing to worry about. The risk of dying from under 50 is like 0.1% or better if not overweight.

I'm not sure this claim is consistent with the available evidence. Long term cognitive side effects (e.g. "brain fog" and memory loss) and respiratory problems each seem to occur in ~15% of symptomatic COVID cases among working-age, not-particularly-unhealthy people. "Long term" here means 7-9 months after infection. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.18.21253633v...

> ~15% of symptomatic COVID cases

Okay? That's not inconsistent with what I said, and moreover this is an absurdly vague and nebulous set of supposed symptoms. It is just simply not that credible that this is a significant real world issue to any large degree worthy of the costs of (ineffectively) trying to mitigate them.

But also, everyone is going to get Covid more or less. It is not going away. It is an endemic coronavirus. Even if what you're saying was true, so what? Where does that leave us? It leaves us with those occurrences still happening, AND a perpetually degraded economic, political and social life due to ineffective mandates, shut downs, restrictions and mask drama. None of this stops the spread of Covid!

>The people filling the hospitals, which has consistently been overstated in magnitude, are obese/overweight and with other co-morbidities.

Good thing that only 15-30% of the Western world is obese. I don't follow the situation everywhere but here in Belgium fact is that people have been refused access to the ICU because there was no place because of COVID-19. And that's with postponing non-urgent care (which is happening, again) and all the measures taken.

What you call moving on with life means refusing people access to hospitals.

U.S.A. is 40% obese.

Hospitals at capacity has been wildly overstated and additionally none of these measures stop the spread of Covid. The cost is not worth the negligible benefit.

What makes you think they are overstated? Do hospitals refuse people and postpone treatment for fun?

Every time after measures are taken the spread of COVID slows down, every time they are loosened it increases again.

>Every time after measures are taken the spread of COVID slows down, every time they are loosened it increases again.

We should probably keep doing this merry go round yes? Expecting different results. This is like arguing we should never pull out of Afghanistan because chaos would ensue. Just lock-down forever yes?

Stopping the spread of a coronavirus is impossible, how do you not understand this?

Where did I say stopping the spread?

It's not going to go on forever, we have vaccines, every time more people aquire natural immunity, we get better treatment, etc. But we will do this until we don't have to worry about our hospitals anymore. How do you not understand this?

0.1% is low?

JFK airport has about 500 takeoffs a day. 0.1% chance of a crash means on average a jumbo plane full of passengers (400 people?) crashes every 2 days. How would you feel about air travel if these were the risks?

Is this number really true? I remember a study from Italy (on Dr. John Campbell's channel) that there were 0 death from Covid* in people under 40 that were healthy.

*Covid was the cause of death, not sepsis and btw he tested positive for Covid.

I would feel great because I have a low body fat, I workout, lift weights, eat healthy and get sun and vitamin D in high amounts.

0.1 was for everyone...without co-morbidities it's even lower and more of a non-issue. People that want to take the vax should do it. Why do they care what young and healthy people do?

Again though, coronvirus's don't go away it will be around forever and likely everyone gets it eventually. So what are we even talking about accomplishing here?

Yeah and those things make you safe, huh.. are you sure about that?

Maybe you should read this (and feel free to conclude it's lying media): https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/30/fact...

A strong immune system might even be better for the virus: https://magazine.ucsf.edu/your-immune-system-could-turn-covi...

Sure it'll probably be around forever. But a higher vaccination rate will decrease the rate of hospital overflow. Currently in the UK no one else can get sick or end up in the ICU, and ambulances queue for hours. Suddenly we've gone to third world level of healthcare accessibility. Maybe the answer is expand the hospital network, but no one else is doing this either.

Good luck with your health... you'll need it, since you said everyone will get the virus.

>Yeah and those things make you safe, huh.. are you sure about that?

Well, for context, the US military is overwhelmingly physically-fit and healthy compared to the general population.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/09...

50% of the 6 deaths reported in the article were >50 years old.

"Their deaths bring the military’s COVID-19 mortality rate to just over 0.02, much lower than the roughly 2-percent rate nationwide, but 50 times higher than it was during previous surges last year."

Seems like banking on your overall fitness isn't a terrible position to take... Delta variant is probably the main cause of the uptick in fatalities but they remain comparatively low (nevertheless something that led me to get vaccinated....just before they made it mandatory to keep feeding my family anyway).

What evidence do you have that civilization is being 'destroyed'? Seems "extreme" no?

Nobody is saying "stop" the spread, it is obvious it isn't going to just stop. "slow" it is a more admirable goal.

IMO, in the modern world, either the professional institutions of your society are trustworthy or people are screwed. Individual investigation into the sciences cannot be the last refuge of a nation under stress.

NL is at 84% and a bit for 12 yrs and older. We have record numbers of infections and restrictions are tightening.

Please get vaccinated, if not for your sake for others needing to use emergency services. I waited 4 hours in a good deal of pain in an ER waiting room to be stationed to an overflow bed in the hall because of unvaccinated covid cases filling up the rooms. Being next to the nurses' station I got to hear multiple ambulances and helicopters be redirected to farther away hospitals due to lack of room while doctors and nurses constantly rushed between rooms with confused oxygen deprived patients trying to get out of their beds and take their oxygen masks off while they waited for spots in the ICU to open up.

Talking to the nurses the vast majority of hospitalized cases are unvaccinated and looking it up 40% of the state is unvaccinated but they represented 98% of the covid hospitalizations that were filling up over 1/3 of the beds that night. Exactly 0 beds across the entire state were taken due to being vaccinated.

Thankfully 4 hours of pain is something that is easy to get over and I was able to get treated before it caused life threatening problems, some of the people that were redirected won't be able to say the same.

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