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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

Vaccination does reduce the proportion of people that need ICU beds, but there are pretty rapid diminishing returns on just vaccinating more; countries have reached the point where the majority of Covid patients in their ICUs are vaccinated at well below 100% vaccination. Also, vaccinating younger lower-risk people doesn't help because they're at substantially lower risk of needing the ICU even unvaccinated than someone older or higher-risk who is vaccinated and because the vaccines aren't really useful to stop the spread of the disease either. Countries have generally had significantly higher vaccine acceptance amongst older people who need it more. (Though I think one of the big problems Germany has is their vaccine uptake amongst the elderly is somewhat low compared to other countries.)

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Right now in my province, unvaccinated individuals make up 11.2% of 12+ population but more than 66% of hospitalizations. I don't expect the ICU rates to be more favourable to the unvaccianted than total hospitalization rates. If there is a point of rapid diminishing returns, it is not at ~90% yet.

https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...

Are they hospitalized for Covid or all reasons?

These are only COVID stats.

Your missing the vaccine injured in those stats because they define unvaccinated as anyone less than two weeks after vaccinated.

What do you mean? The immunity doesn't kick in the second the vaccine is injected into your arm. How else should they count vaccinated vs unvaccinated? (Also note that there is a category of partially vaccinated in the stats that is people who have only received the first dose of a two-dose vaccine).

It means the stats aren't as useful.

These stats do not show the difference between taking a shot but still being infected within two weeks after it, and not taking any shots at all and being infected. If you're going to blame the second group for filling up ICUs, you cannot lump them together.

Its probably just time delayed. Give it a few months. The vaccine protection seems to wear off rather quickly, based on data from UK and Israel.

Protection from hospitalization and death, particularly in under-65 or so, does not wear off. Neutralizing antibody levels naturally wane and can allow infection, T-cell and B-cell populations don't (unless you get infected with measles or have some other conditions, and assuming you form a robust T-cell response to begin with and aren't immunocompromised or just quite old).

I think the vaccine is probably as effective as two doses of a laxative. Any 75+ year olds that survived the two doses of the laxative, will now have better outcomes against covid.

Keep in mind the effectiveness is measured in tens/100,000. An there are some very sick people given the vaccine, that die before the 14 days of the second dose.

> I think the vaccine is probably as effective as two doses of a laxative.

Well at least people know how much weight to give your opinions.

My views are based on science

https://mobile.twitter.com/MartinNeil9/status/14668143477626...

Correlation does not imply causation.

> countries have reached the point where the majority of Covid patients in their ICUs are vaccinated at well below 100% vaccination.

Which countries are you talking about? It's certainly not the case for Germany, and I don't know any other European country for which this would be the case.

You make a good point re vaccinating lower risk patients. In the UK, not only the population has a high vaccination rate, but the rate is particularly high among the population at risk (~95% for the >70yo [1]). As a result, hospital cases and deaths are a fraction of the Jan 2021 peak, even though infection levels are high.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833

> countries have reached the point where the majority of Covid patients in their ICUs are vaccinated at well below 100% vaccination

Which countries? I find it hard to get data at vaccination prevalence in ICU population specifically, but in Switzerland, the figures I see cited is 60-70% of patients unvaccinated (With 90% of 80%+ year olds in the population being double vaccinated).

> in Switzerland, the figures I see cited is 60-70% of patients unvaccinated (With 90% of 80%+ year olds in the population being double vaccinated)

For the 80+ group the latest data for hospitalisations is 47% vaccinated, 31% non-vaccinated, 22% unkown.

https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/vaccination/status

Well yeah, for 80+ with a vaccination rate of 92 %.

If you look at the total value, it appears that only 11 % of hospitalized are double vaccinated, though the latest seven day average puts that number at 27 %.

I was just giving a number consistent with the 80+ vaccination rate quoted.

For the broad population is 28% vaccinated vs 57% non-vaccinated. The remaining 15% is "unknown". But Switzerland has a relatively low vaccination rate at 67%.

Edit: looking at deaths instead of hospitalisations in the broad population:

  Fully-vaccinated 46%, partially-vaccinated 2%
  Non-vaccinated 41%
  Unknown 12%

Yes, those are the numbers for _hospitalizations_ in general, but the higher percentages I've been seeing (and for which I've been unsuccessful finding official documentation) are for _ICU_ patients specifically.

But they were not for 80+ patients specifically, or were they?

Edit: I can't find ICU numbers but the latest death stats for 80+ are 46% vaccinated, 33% non-vaccinated, 21% unknown.

Right now, young people take the "booster shots" that should be given to the elderly, first. Politicians will be very proud that "XY percent of the population are already boostered". The dying will continue.

Which country is that ? Here in Czech Republic there is clear priority for 60+ years for the third doses. Also a big vaccination drive based on volunteers to vaccinate ideally up to a milion eligible people with the third dose till Christmas.

Here in Berlin for example, in the first week of september my 85 year old grandparents received a booster shot invite letter from the Berlin senate. It said something like starting 20th september you can get the 3rd shot from any doctor or you can go without an appointment to a vaccination centre across the city.

what did they do? nothing because case numbers were low, I did push and push to finally get my grandpa to get is 3rd shot mid november while go to the doctor for something else... by coincident the rush to get the booster started 1 day after that.

I bet this happened a lot.... As far as I know just like for the 1st shot sverybody above 70 got that same letter. Meaning they had more than 2 months head start to get the boostershot.

So at least in Berlin I wont have sympathy anymore for taking away the shot from somebody else (got my appointment in january)

I dropped in to a local clinic this week to get my booster (no appointment, even) and was given the shot in about 15 minutes. Most of the other people there waiting looked relatively young. Seems that we're doing a terrible job of reaching out to the elderly to get them their boosters. Or they just don't want it.

Yes, and this is another example of the really bad management skills of our government. If you announce the wrong KPIs (XY percent vaccination regardless of personal risks) you might be performing great according to them and still fail miserably on your actual goals.

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