Waterford has Ireland's 2nd highest Covid incidence with 99.7% fully vaccinated
irishpost.com
irishpost.com
(vaccinations carried out in waterford) / (population of waterford)
Waterford is a regional hub for the south east of Ireland. There are many vaccinations for people who reside outside of Waterford carried out in Waterford, including from counties kilkenny, tipperary and carlow.
"Co. Waterford has recorded 470 new cases of Covid-19 in the last week, accounting for nearly 5% of the adult population."
According to wikipedia its actually 116,176, so actually only 0.4% were infected last week.
If they meant 470 per 100k population that would still only be 0.47%...
The fact that virologists weren’t upfront from the beginning about this, and that the epidemiologists weren’t upfront from the beginning that it was clearly endemic by March 2019, has led to much of the dysfunctional response from the public and governments.
- Who got Covid (vaccinated or not?)?
- How sick are they (did they just test positive, are they in they hospital, ICU)?
Starting to feel like these essential questions are completely ignored on purpose. Well, just like the last dozen times an article like this has popped up, this "statistic" doesn't contain enough information to be relevant at all. It's just click bait crap.
I don't know much about Ireland's data w.r.t this article, but UK is similar in a lot of ways and provides an abundance of interesting reports.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
> Based on antibody testing of blood donors, 98.1% of the adult population now have antibodies to COVID-19 from either infection or vaccination compared to 19.7% that have antibodies from infection alone. Over 97% of adults aged 17 or older have antibodies from either infection or vaccination.
pages 13 and onward have nice tabular data on hospitalization, emergency care, and death which have comparisons in terms of Rates among persons vaccinated with 2 doses (per 100,000) and Rates among persons not vaccinated (per 100,000).
It doesn't have a county level breakdown for hospitalisations and ICU (since counties are too small for every one to have their own hospitals and definitely most don't have their own ICU). Waterford does have both, but I've been unable to find the figures for either the public or private hospital in the city.
Nationwide covid hospital cases: 634
Nationwide ICU cases: 119
Also this site has a more granular breakdown on case numbers:
https://opendata-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/27d401c9ae0...
Is there a religious commune in Waterford that has a moral objecion to taking the vaccine?
edit: added [some portion, (0,100]%, of the benefit provided by]
Those antibodies do not last forever. It is my understanding that the lifespan of antibodies is largely determined by the type of virus they are for. For example, luckily the antibodies for measles and polio last decades. On the other hand, antibodies for rhinovirus and coronavirus last months not years, which is part of the reason why you can have more than one cold in your life.
What a vaccine does - it primes one's immune system, so it fight the virus way more efficient. And that's it. No miracles or invincibility.
https://www.citizensjournal.us/the-cdc-suddenly-changes-the-...
It's generally recognized that the mRNA vaccine prevents neither infection nor tranmission of Covid-19. It does confer a certain benefit in terms of the severity of the disease if contracted. It's not an undiluted benefit as is indicated by the UK data (for instance) which documents significant numbers of deaths for fully vaccinated people.
See Table 2 in https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Viral loads can be the same for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.29.21262798v...
If this is a reproducible result, would it not render any vaccine passport pretty much meaningless in terms of public health?
It is an undiluted benefit (your chances of survival are much much higher if you are vaccinated), but not a miracle cure, unfortunately.
The UK data you linked still says 85% protection from symptomatic illness for Delta variant with Pfizer, 95% protection from hospitalization.
My understanding is that it does not really fight the virus (viral load stays the same), but that it does prime the immune system so as not react too violently. In other words it prevents a cytokine storm:
Compare this to, for example, nasal spray influenza vaccines.
Most interviews with experts I listened to in the media did stress at the beginning of the vaccine rollout that they didn't yet know how large the effect of the transmission would be.
So I think it's unfair to say that it was "sold" as anything of the sort, it's mostly people retroactively rewriting the past, either deliberately to fit and agenda or just that their memory is faulty.
Maybe you could argue that there was a disconnect between what virologists/epidemiologists were saying and what media, pharma, and government talking heads were saying, but it absolutely was sold as effective in preventing infection and spread. Hence the term "vaccine" which has since been redefined by the WHO and/or CDC (I forget which one changed the definition listed on their website).
There is too much political momentum for our institutions to acknowledge that they may have made a series of significant errors in their assumptions.
My whole argument was that the experts I listened to in the media didn't bill it as such, and your argument to refute that is to restate the argument I'm combating.
>Maybe you could argue that there was a disconnect between what virologists/epidemiologists were saying and what media, pharma, and government talking heads were saying
That's exactly what I'm arguing.
I'm saying "most experts I listened to in the media, from day one, stressed that they didn't know it's efficacy on transmissibility yet"
and your point back is
"ok maybe the experts said that, but what about what the media and phrama and talking heads were saying"?
When did I mention them?
My entire point was that from day one this was being said, but people either weren't listening, or strategically choosing to forget.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-fauci-vaccine-herd-immu...
And in Dec 2020 said things like: "If you really want true herd immunity, where you get a blanket of protection over the country ... you want about 75 to 85 percent of the country to get vaccinated,” Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a live-recorded interview with Rameswaram, the host of Today, Explained. “I would say even closer to 85 percent."
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2020/12/15/22176555/...
That's very different from stressing that they didn't know how large the effect would be. It was simply billed as being able to stop spread completely, provided enough uptake, with made-up % figures thrown in: https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500...
OP made a blanket statement of how 'it was sold to everyone'.
I provide an experience of how it was presented based on my viewings of the experts I listened to in the media, providing evidence against the blanket statement.
So you're telling me what I heard and read with my own eyes is false based on three america-centric articles?
From that, I hear that the necessary figure is somewhat unknown, but what's needed is likely higher than Waterford's current. If you assume that everyone vaccinated in Waterford lives there (and not in the suburbs) and that they live to be 100 years old on average, then their vaccination share is slightly below 82%. 100 sounds a little high and people in the suburbs do avail themselves of services in the city, so my guess is that the real percentage is lower.
And one sentence I don't see from Fauci is "we'll get almost the same benefit if a little fewer people are vaccinated".
This statement may be true. But it's not obvious to me. You could also argue that many people who got fully vaxed and even boosters where available are also more cautious in general, other things being equal. Again, not arguing this statement is untrue but a lot of people are still being cautious in various ways and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of overlap between that group and those who got vaccines early on.
Most places don't know how large their population is, that's why censuses are carried out. The city I live in knows a minimum number of vaccinations that have been carried out within city limits, and a maximum, but it doesn't really know how many of the people vaccinated live within city limits and how many live in the suburbs, and also doesn't really know how many people live within city limits. Calculating the percentage is a matter of dividing one approximate number by another, or if you will, dividing one number that doesn't mean exaxtly what readers assume with another that also doesn't mean exactly what readers assume.
I know that these problems are common. People move in with their SOs without filing paperwork everywhere, not just here.
However, if you want to keep track of how many people are vaccinated, you are going to have a counter. And if you want to tax people, you are going to have a number of inhabitants. Dividing one by the other is tempting, and it's accurate when you start doing it, because when 2% or 12% of the taxpayers have been vaccinated the count is fairly accurate. It only becomes really inaccurate as you approach 100%, and by that time changing the way you count breaks your time series, if you're using this data yourself.
Also, the Irish Post is not a well known news outlet, I never heard of it before, so take with a pinch of salt.
It says 99,7% of the adult population is vaccinated, maybe there was a huge outbreak at a school or something.
Some people will have issues with the commentary on this blog. I'm posting it in reference to these UK statistics because it's the only place I've seen the tabular data visualized, if you want to examine the raw UK government data yourself it's linked through from the blog.
0 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-... 1 - https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-...
I wonder if the willingness to get tested might have something to do with it. If you are unvaccinated and sick, do you go get tested knowing that you'll have to face the onslaught of "told you so"... "this wouldn't have happened if you got vaccinated". So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data?
Your model of unvaccinated people seems a little too simplistic. There is a cohort of folks who have recovered from covid, seen the published evidence around natural immunity, and consider getting the vaccine to be an unknown risk with a known small benefit. That kind of risk/reward calculation is the kind of thing that might have them avoiding (for example) packed indoor spaces.
> So perhaps vaccinated people are more likely to also get tested and therefore skew the data?
Anecdotal, but I think most of the people in my circles are vaccinated and I never hear of them getting tested, even when they have symptoms. Everyone has their own pet hypothesis in these situations, but who knows if any of them are even close.
The simple model of "no covid vaccine" = "antivaxxer" = "dumb/irresponsible/shameful/etc" may feel satisfying and may be heavily pushed by the talking heads, but I don't think it's actually useful.
I guess this depends on your jurisdiction. Where I live (Alberta) we have a vaccine passport system in place so you need to be vaccinated to get into many places. Therefore my assumption was based upon people not taking their past COVID history into account, and rather get the vaccine based upon their desire to go to a restaurant for example.
My theory on who is getting tested or not is admittedly skewed toward the vocal minority of anti-vax protestors that take up more airtime then they truly occupy. I suspect that small group would be hesitant to get tested in hopes of avoiding the "told you so's".
My anecdotal experience currently is that all my friends are vaccinated and get tested when sick. I know this because it derails plans every weekend..."Have to cancel Saturday plans, family is sick and booked a test for tomorrow". It happens almost every weekend in my life!
The larger point about being effective against severe illness and death still stands, and seems to be so robust that it's not going to change now, so the vaccine is still very much worth it.
The article also gives a much more realistic two-week incidence rate of 404 per 100,000 population, which is about 0.2% of the population per week.
After 4 months the effectiveness waned to 47-67% (depending on the variant). So now the focus on boosters.
My point is that 100% vaccination should never have led to the expectation of 0 cases of covid. But the main thing was reducing ICU numbers/severe infections.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
-Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director 2021-03-21
https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-s...
We have overloaded the very term "vaccine" in a fairly misleading manner. One one hand we have vaccines that are highly effective in the longterm and can virtually eradicate dangerous diseases. On the other hand we have flu & covid vaccines, which can help control the severity of the disease, but are incapable of preventing regular widespread outbreaks.
Childhood vaccines are from the first category. Let's enumerate: polio, smallpox, tetanus, hepatitis b, hepatitis a, rubella, hib, measles, pertussis, pneumococcal strep, rotavirus, varicella, diphtheria, mumps. Some of these had no cases for decades, for others very rare localized outbreaks make the news. From the second category, flu and covid have regular outbreaks in highly vaccinated communities and there is no hope for herd immunity.
Perhaps it's time to clear up the semantic overload and create a new term to delineate the important difference between the two classes of vaccines. For example, use "vaccines" for the first category and "immunity stimulants" for the second.
https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/vaccines/14-diseases...
A study of almost 800k US veterans showed efficacy drops from ~90% to ~50% after 6 months, depending on vaccine; all the way down to 13% for J&J.
They're still effective for preventing death, but that looks to wane too.
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021110...
As for reduction of adverse symptoms it's unknown since deaths of vaccinated vs unvaccinated within 30 days of COVID is tracked, but not how many deaths occur within 30 days of vaccination for comparison.
Infections, as is the case here, were never rare.
If there is a health-pandemic, that suppresses the imune-system (like unrecognized diabetes/ vitamin-d deficiency / rheumatic suppression medication) the disease will wage its attack against a weakened imune-system.
Which creates ideal conditions for a full disease break-through.
So Covid only highlights all sorts of failing health systems.
Vaccines aren't binary
According to Wikipedia, the population of Waterford County is 116,176. With an infection rate of 405.7 per 100,000, that means ~471.3 total infections at present. At 99.7% vaccinated, that leaves 348.528 unvaccinated.
So that could mean all of the unvaccinated got infected + 122.772 breakthrough infections, which would mean the vaccine is approximately 99.895% effective at preventing infection based on these numbers.
Let's assume the worst case scenario from the numbers given, that all the cases are breakthrough cases and none of the unvaccinated are infected (unlikely to say the least). At that point based on these numbers the vaccine can be considered 99.6% effective at preventing transmission. So if you're going to challenge vaccine effectiveness, do it with better data.
I should add that the OP I was responding to was literally questioning vaccine effectiveness, with a vagueness that suggests some sort of anti-vax dog-whistling. And I am sick and tired of the vaccines being questioned by people who refuse to engage even childhood math skills to analyze the crappy data they bring to the table, but yet speak with triumphant, quippy rhetoric like imitating their favorite TV characters somehow lends credence to their argument. Am I projecting too much onto the OP? Maybe, but I've been in enough of these conversations to know what they're likely to sound like.
We do have data on vaccine effectiveness; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253672
It's maybe not as perfect as we might have hoped but I'd say it's certainly having a hugely positive effect.
My understanding it that it had reduced efficacy against infection initially, which could be even more pronounced since Delta became dominant.
I think people who originally got J&J did get the option to get Pfizer later.
The article would be more interesting if it was able to include a breakdown of the types of vaccines in the population for the period of time it's referencing.
All you can say is that the _rank_ of a county by incident rate seems uncorrelated with its vaccination rate _given_ just these two points of evidence.
There are 26 counties and vaccination stats and incident rate stats going back nearly a year which suggests this sample size (2) is too small to draw any kind of useful conclusions about the overall relationship.
In any case it makes little sense to look correlations with the _rank_ (within the counties of Ireland) of the infection rate. The rank will have much higher variance than the underlying rate if the numbers are low for example which could be responsible for more outliers and it's outliers that attract media reports which can create a misleading impression.