Hacker News Reader

Comment by liamwestray | Hacker News Reader

As of the latest data in the US for vaccinated people re: Omicron:

You're 13x less likely to land in the hospital.

You're 45x less likely to die.

It's gone from being 10-20x more deadly than the flu to half as deadly with the vaccine. And Omicron hasn't peaked yet in the U.S., these numbers are likely conservative.

Last I checked you had 1/14th the population and 1/30th the deaths we had. You got the vaccine later than we did, hit 93% vaccination rate while we're STILL below 65%.

Australia took things way more seriously than we did, maybe a bit "too conservatively" for your taste, but the alternative I live in is that 2 aunt's funerals were over zoom (pre vaccine), and my I'm waiting for my 63 yr old uncle (anti-vax) who had a heart attack 3 years ago, is obese, been a lifelong smoker, and just got CoViD to recover.

View on HN

> You're 13x less likely to land in the hospital. > You're 45x less likely to die.

So? Why should that inconvenience me? They are adults and have the privilege of living their lives how they want as long as they bear their own consequences. This strategy seems to be they face all those risks anyway and we make sure their lives are miserable for no obvious reason. That is cruel to them and also stupid.

These people presumably pay their taxes, it isn't like there is an unfair burden on everyone else. If there is, charge them a fee when they get to hospital or take it out of their estate if they die. If people want to take sill risks, let them.

I don't think you understood what I said.

Being vaccinated results in those outcomes. Not your lockdowns.

Your lockdowns only resulted in 50% less deaths than our mismanagement.

You're right, we shouldn't be inconvenienced by a death cult of anti-science morons.

You don't have to be because your country made better decisions than mine.

'You're 45x less likely to die.'

I'm surprised at how you could determine 45x without knowing the age or co-morbidities of the person posting. Particularly concerning is that a young person in good health has little chance of dying, and the 45x comment may be wildly wrong.

Because, and I'm just guessing, he's younger the 65 if he's posting on HN?

And, well because all of the actual data keeps proving that the unvaccinated are at orders of magnitude higher risk than vaccinated across all age groups.

https://azdhs.gov/covid19/documents/data/rates-of-cov-19-by-...

Here’s the data for rate per 100000 of hospitalizations+icu & death broken down into age groups for the entire 2 years of the pandemic in my province of Ontario Canada:

https://i.redd.it/qa9rj48mf6a81.jpg

The risks for anyone young is so negligible that it makes absolutely no sense to mandate the shots like my government has done.

Overall, looking at stats, I see that unless you are elderly, obese or have health conditions, the risks for young, fit and healthy are negligible. 90% of COVID-19 deaths in 2020 had at least one other comorbidity, 65% had two or more comorbidities and 46% had three or more comorbidities:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210514/dq210...

US studies show that most COVID-19 hospitalizations occurred due to four conditions - obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure and 64% of the hospitalizations could have been prevented if not for the four conditions.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/most-co...

Clearly, a young 30 year old being unvaccinated makes no difference to hospitals. But an elderly 75 year old being unvaccinated does make a difference. However, at that age, I am really doubtful they are unvaccinated by choice and more so because they have medical reason for not being vaccinated. I know an elderly with cancer who can't get vaccinated due to his immune system issues.

It makes absolutely no sense to mandate shots for kids or anyone young.

I don’t think you understand statistics, herd immunity, viral reservoirs, how comorbidities work, or genetic mutation of viruses.

It makes no sense to not get a free vaccine that is now the safest most tested medication in human history that can prevent the spread and continued mutation of the most deadly pandemic virus in 100 years.

Edit:

To reiterate. You do not seem to understand your own sources you provide. You have twisted every article you link to provide justification of not getting vaccines when they literally all state the risks from the vaccines are lower than the risks from CoVID-19, that while the vaccines do not provide absolute herd immunity they do slow the spread and reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

Your argument about myocarditis is inane given that young men are 100 times more likely to suffer it if they get CoViD-19.

Your argument that the vaccine isn’t preventative is nonsense as it clearly prevents death and hospitalization over non-vaccination across all age groups.

Your interpretation of this paper doesn’t understand that statistical analysis is highly flawed in comparing other treatments for continuous exposure disease to the singular event exposure is absurd on its face.

Please, get off Facebook, Reddit, or whatever other “mom” groups you’re in and go talk to an actual Immunologist and virus/vaccine researcher to help you better understand these things you’re so passionately ignorant about.

You do know that the developer of the AstraZeneca shots himself stated in august 2020 that these shots cannot achieve herd immunity because they allow infection and transmission and are merely a potential severe symptom mitigator which wane drastically in 3-6 months? He even warned policy makers to not make policies based on achieving herd immunity from these shots.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/herd-immunity-is-mythical-wi...

Viral load is the same between vaccinated vs unvaccinated folks as shown by several studies now. In many cases, it’s even higher in vaccinated folks.

When a shot doesn’t prevent infection, that also means it allows mutations to occur in the vaccinated person which created immune escape variants more likely.

You are conflating these shots with more traditional shots. The purpose of those traditional vaccines are to PREVENT infection and transmission. Smallpox, polio, measles etc vaccines all stop infection and transmission.

Also those vaccines are long term tested for many decades. Smallpox vaccines are 200 years old.

Smallpox, polio, measles etc also have severe problems to the person who gets them including kids.

The COVID shots neither prevent infection and transmission, not have they been long term tested. And COVID is negligible for kids and youth unless you are obese or have pre-existing conditions (in which case, the COVID shots also aren't much effective).

These shots should never have been called a “vaccine” because they do it fit the definition of a vaccine as they don’t prevent infection. Legal definition of a vaccine is:

> The term “vaccine” means any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of 1 or more diseases.

Notice the word “prevention”. Covid shots don’t do that.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/4132

Nearly every vaccine in human history has some level of escape or immunized infection rate. Flu, polio, MMR. They're all vaccines

Covid vaccines do prevent (not all, but some) transmission and prevent (not all, but many) serious infections. This is the same as pretty much every other vaccine out there.

Covid vaccines are still very effective if you have preexisting conditions.

You're spreading lies, please don't do that.

Accusing me of lying while you are doing that is ironic. Covid vaccines do not prevent transmission. Ontario is 77% vaccinated but over 81% of cases are vaccinated. Even the rate of hospitalizations is now almost the same between the vaccinated vs unvaccinated here in Ontario.

That is not the same as real effective vaccines like polio measles etc which prevent transmission and infection. Polio disappeared as more and more vaccinations occurred. Covid on the other hand has not and will not disappear. And why take my word for it when you can literally listen to the word of the vaccine developers themselves who say these shots will not achieve herd immunity and Covid is here to stay.

Flu shots fail because of the mismatch and how fast it mutates.

If you are willing to call something which does not prevent infection and transmission a “vaccine” then there’s no difference between a vaccine and a therapeutic.

You are willing to conflate these shots with traditional vaccines without questioning whether these shots fit the definition of a vaccine. By simply calling any drug a vaccine, you are doing a major disservice to the real actually effective vaccines.

> Ontario is 77% vaccinated but over 81% of cases are vaccinated

77% fully vaccinated, 84% partially vaccinated. So yeah, lower. (By around 20% once you do the math)

> Even the rate of hospitalizations is now almost the same between the vaccinated vs unvaccinated here in Ontario.

No, it's like 6x lower.

Edit: Ah, I was looking at ICU numbers. Hospitalization rates, today, are similar. However, if Ontario is anything like other places hit by omnicron, the vaccinated patients will be out of the hospital in under a week, and the unvaccinated ones will remain longer and face more complications. So come back and see how things look in a week or two.

> By simply calling [a vaccine] a vaccine, you are doing a major disservice to the real actually effective vaccines.

No, I'm rejecting your antivax nonsense. Trying to say "no this isn't a vaccine so I'm not really antivax" is the trick you're trying to pull and I won't let you lie about that.

> So yeah, lower.

Not sure what math you are doing. In fact, as of today, 83% of Ontario's cases are vaccinated while 78% of the population is vaccinated with cases being at an all time high for the past month.

> No, it's like 6x lower.

No it's not. As of today 71% of hospitalizations in Ontario are fully vaccinated. The rate per 100k for unvaccinated is 16.01, 11.66 for fully vaccinated and 12.88 for partially vaccinated.

So 16.01 / 11.66 = 1.4.

In Toronto, 77% of hospitalizations are fully vaccinated.

> No, I'm rejecting your antivax nonsense. Trying to say "no this isn't a vaccine so I'm not really antivax" is the trick you're trying to pull and I won't let you lie about that.

Please don't bother replying as you are more interested in inflammatory language than stating facts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com