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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Over the long run your risk of catching a SARS-CoV-2 infection approaches 100%. The virus can never be eradicated and we'll all be exposed to it occasionally. Vaccination — and other measures to strengthen your immune system — can reduce the risk of serious COVID-19 symptoms to fairly low levels.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

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But since the vaccine only works for a couple of months, doesn't it make more sense to consider the risk of catching Covid in that short time frame?

It seems likely that future Covid strains will be less deadly, too, just as the flu has years that are more or less deadly than others.

Also, isn't a fraction of the population immune to begin with?

There is no evidence that the "vaccine only works for a couple of months".

The vaccine has continued to show efficacy against hospitalization and death (severe covid) even as there has been some waning in infection immunity over a period of multiple months (more than 2 or a couple months though). See e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7049a2.htm "During February 1–September 30, 2021, mRNA vaccine effectiveness in preventing COVID-19–associated hospitalizations among U.S. veterans ≥120 days after receipt of the second dose was 86% for Moderna and 75% for Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines"

Future covid strains may be more or less deadly - data coming in on Omicron indicates it's more deadly than original COVID but perhaps slightly less deadly than delta. Still quite dangerous to an unvaccinated or immune naive individual.

WTF - then why are "booster shots" needed? In my country they are moving towards recommending them after three months already.

I don't have a English language resource ready, but this article in a renowned German science magazine shows protection against severe illness is drastically reduced after six months for the current vaccines: https://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-lange-schuetzt-der-impfstof...

For example from the chart, after 6 months the protection from Biontec is only 30% of the protection in the beginning.

I cannot read German but the paper the article references is in English here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410

“ The effectiveness against severe illness seems to remain high through 9 months, although not for men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities. This strengthens the evidence-based rationale for administration of a third booster dose.”

Possible difference between the Swedish study and the CDC - time period comparison of 4 months (120 days) vs 9 months (270 days) - differences in Swedish population or statistical errors.

Just eyeballing CDC data on who is dying of coronavirus it’s very hard to see how any statistical analysis could show the vaccine not “working” - the smaller unvaccinated population is making up a majority of hospitalizations and deaths in the USA, and most vaccinated persons haven’t received a booster in USA.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitali...

The risk of serious COVID-19 symptoms are already at quite low levels in the < 40 male group.

Yes, and WAY higher than the risk of serious symptoms for the virus. For males 18-29 the risk of hospitalization is 0.4% compared to 0.1% for myocarditis, and most myocarditis cases do not require hospitalization. Risk of severe disease is of course much more than risk of hospitalization.

I am older than 40 and according to qcovid my risk of hospitalization is about 0,1%, so I doubt your 0,4% number. I am slightly overweight, which increases my risk by about 20%. But I doubt all the 18-29 year olds in your group are so obese that they get to 0,4%.

I don't know about qcovid but these two sources disagree : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33729203/ https://riskcalc.org/COVID19Hospitalization/

qcovid.org gives an evaluation of the risk of catching and then being hospitalized from Covid, whereas your sources give the risk of being hospitalized when tested positive for Covid. Depending on the testing regime, the latter number may also be biased towards people who are already sick, as they may be more likely to be tested.

That 0.4% chance is not random though - it's heavily weighted toward 18-29 year olds with severe existing co-morbidities, extremely high BMI's, etc.

For an otherwise healthy 18-29 year old, it appears that the risks from taking the vaccine are comparable / slightly exceed the risks of getting Covid.

Your statement that most myocarditis cases do not require hospitalization is inconsistent with the public health data Ontario is releasing - it's closer to 60%+ of (confirmed) myocarditis cases that require hospitalization.

(https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/1462266769880621056/...)

Wait a second. You went from one dataset to another. You can't do that without re-doing the entire analysis.

According to the dataset you are citing, the rate of myocarditis for 18-29 yo. is 129 per million, which is 0.0129%.

COVID hospitalization rates are 0.4%.

So with that dataset instead of this one, you run as 40x higher chance to be hospitalized from COVID than from vaccine-related myocarditis.

And it is quite likely that comorbities have an effect in vaccine-related myocarditis hospitalizations.

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