Comment by MatteoFrigo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MatteoFrigo | Hacker News Reader

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> The effect exists but the data shows it does not matter.

You may have been right at a time where almost nobody had a previous infection. However, estimates by reputable sources https://covidestim.org/us show that a large percentage of people have been infected by covid at least once. The data are by state, I see ~75% for MA, 80% for CA and NY, and you can pick your favorite state.

At this point it is more correct to say that the vaccine does not matter, and immunity by prior infection is the dominant effect. Either that, or the Yale school of public health, the Harvard school of public health, and the Stanford Medicine institutes who run the covidestim.org site are full of shit.

If the vaccine does not matter, why do we still see such a prevalence of unvaccinated people among patients Who required hospitalization?

Because many of these are older individuals with contraindication. The elderly with unknown vaccine status. The homeless. People in nursing homes trying to live out the last years of their life without the discomfort of vaccine side effects.

Not age adjusting the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohort is disingenuous. Not breaking out ‘unknown’ vaccine status — which only becomes relevant for the stats after death - is disingenuous.

You are reading propaganda, and reading it uncritically.

The elderly (more susceptible) are overwhelmingly more vaccinated than the younger, not less.

Medical records are not well distributed. In most of these statistics, unknown vaccine status is considered to be the same bucket as unvaccinated. My hypothesis is that most of this group is either elderly or homeless.

Similarly, there is a selection problem for the elderly who choose to remain unvaccinated. You're saying that they think vaccines are ineffective -- and this is definitely a cohort of people! But there is a separate cohort of people, who are more likely to be hospitalized, who know they have severe existing health problems.

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