Younger Americans benefit less from booster shots than older people
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Despite the theory making no sense OP assigned the consequences of covid to the vaccination he received not due to a sound theory but due to proximity in time and will now make measurably worse choices for decades for lack of communicating with a medical professional.
We rarely know what we don't know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/comments/nnqm8u/lon...
We are also dealing with a novel (and evolving) virus and an even more novel set of vaccines. We're still learning about both. I find it silly that one could possess hubris about their stance on such a matter.
I was quarantining at the time and hadn't gone anywhere except the place where I got the vaccine. It would be ironic if I wound up getting COVID there, which lengthened and intensified my side effects. I hadn't considered that before.
It was about an hour of walking back and forth in the switchbacks. Outdoors in the sun.
Such is the cost of getting it during the early rush. Second shot was much quicker line, and booster I got a bit late so no line to speak of.
Having also had omni (apparently getting covid is my superpower) with symptoms on par with a mediocre sore throat, I have absolutely no desire to repeat the vaccine experience.
You're lucky if opting out is a practical choice for you. For a lot of people now, opting out means being expelled from your school or fired from your job.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2022/02/03/santa-clara-cou...
The focus should be on whether a given imposition has a net positive for society or not, rather than the imposition itself. I actually find it very indicative that the root comment's conclusion is entirely about the ROI for the individual.
It's fair to judge that not boosting doesn't have any net positive for society, but that discussion should be the focus.
2- Sorry you’re unlucky. But even fully vaccinated people there are going to be cases like this. Such is life.
It's a game of chance.
Digressing, some people suffer much more than others from the vaccines, and ditto from the disease. I've wondered whether they're the same. Is it the same unknown factor at work? Does suffering for days from the vaccines mean that you're someone who'd suffer for months from the disease, or even die?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-i...
Consider two possibilities, both fairly remote and I have absolutely no reason to believe that they're real.
First, suppose that the people who suffer badly from the vaccines/virus do so 100% because of some factor that comes and goes, such as having slept badly. In this case, suffering badly from a vaccine does not mean that you would suffer badly from the disease.
Second, suppose that the people who suffer badly do so 100% because of some genetic factor, such as having a single gene for a particular recessive disease. In this case, if you suffer badly from a vaccine it means that you've saved yourself even worse suffering when the disease finally finds you.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00214-3
>Blood from individuals who received one or two doses had little ability to neutralize Omicron. But blood from people who had received a booster dose of an mRNA vaccine fought the variant effectively. Their neutralization capacity against Omicron was only four- to sixfold lower than against the original strain.
While younger healthier folks are much less likely to have severe symptoms in the first place there is no reason to believe that what chance they have of experiencing such doesn't decrease further with boosting.
> Finally, the number of hospitalized individuals included was too small to draw definitive conclusions regarding VE[1] and durability of 3 doses in preventing hospitalization.
[1] Vaccine Effectiveness
effectively this isn't a source that supports the claim that young, no-comorbidity individuals are more likely to get severe disease with 2 doses compared to 3
This is from 1-dose - I couldn't find the supplementary data for that study on 2dose/3dose
but needless to say that no this study does not in any shape or form suggest that it's exceedingly likely that a young no-comorbidity person is more likely to get severe disease with 2dose vs 3dose.
edit: found the data for 2/3 dose comparison - which again does not support the claim, because this is not age stratified data - and we know covid had significant age preference
--Rochelle Walensky, Director CDC
I would recommend reflecting on what kind of bias it takes to be so confident without spending even the 30 seconds necessary to find that quote via google.
In fact, the data suggests otherwise. They would have most likely had mild symptoms if any at all.
It's not about your risk, it's about transmission to other people that have a much higher risk profile.
[edit] Thanks for the downvotes, confirms that people care less about others than experiencing any inconvenience themselves.
The current recommendation is to get a booster because it both reduces the severity of the disease and the chance of either catching a breakthrough infection or another variant[1]/[2].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...
[2] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...
I don’t remember where I read it originally, but the lancet is roughly what I recall. It’s not 100% conclusive, but the data seems to point towards roughly the same transmission rate.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1476212140956553...
If that were true we would not be seeing 2,500+ deaths/day in the US which was higher than the initial first wave(2.2k/day) and is approaching the previous peak(~3k/day).
Everyone’s made their bed.
So to ask more of the actually compliant people - most of which wouldn't have ever noticed they had covid even during unvaccinated hardcore delta times - is not really that convincing. Even the fear of “long covid” has dissipated, as it looks like that will never be quantified and both vaccinated and unvaccinated have experience with actual covid by now. Add in a slight and unnecessary myocarditis risk and that introduces just enough unnecessary downside to make another shot from two seasonal covids ago a hard pass.
Covid was still worse in terms of duration. But I won’t be getting a booster more often than maybe 2 years, as this becomes endemic.
I mean, it's true anecdotally that the immunization is worse that the disease. It was true for my family at least (four Omicron cases, all extremely mild). But it's not true for everyone, and some of those people are going to die. I regret nothing.
[1] I haven't seen numbers but haven't heard of any
[2] This one is attested.
You're saying you don't think trading vaccine side effects for a 20% lower risk of death is a good trade? I mean, this seems like a no brainer to me. Are you really saying this is a bad choice?
The proper comparison is vaccinated omicron cases + vaccination vs unvaccinated covid.
Getting one every 6-12 months for an indeterminate number of years needs to be based on more than just a general precautionary instinct.
COVID isn't going away, everyone's going to catch a couple of varients in the next 60 years assuming they live that long.
The current stats suggest that even though the latest variants are way more infectious and can defeat the vaccine, most deaths still occur within the unvaccinated cohort.
It optimized for maximum vaccine efficacy at around the 5 week timepoint.
Canada took a slightly longer dosing schedule to get more people their first doses faster due to having less available doses. But they didn't go with a 6 month interval either, and there's a difficult calculus there where it isn't at all obvious that one choice is "stupid".
With Delta slamming into India and a lot of doses available in the USA the short schedule got the bulk of the population as immunized as possible.
There's a whole lot of hindsight bias going in trying to claim that was just dumb or unscientific. It probably did save some lives in the summer of 2021 because we did have the doses in this country. Someone who got vaccinated in early April would have only been getting boosted then in early Oct 2021 and that would have been after 75% of the Delta wave had already passed. Second doses clearly needed to be going into arms sooner than 6 months and you can only figure out what timing might have been in optimal in retrospect when you know what the virus was going to do.
It is correct that it didn't allow time for the immune response to mature before the boost and that is the rationale for the third shot. And for anyone getting vaccinated now, particularly young people a 6 month schedule of 2 doses may make more sense (although you always have to look at that 6 month interval and do the calculation on what the risk is of getting COVID during that interval -- at this point though presumably a person who isn't vaccinated isn't very concerned about that and probably has already been exposed at some point).
My understanding is the Moderna booster, being a 1.5x dose, often results in stronger side effects that knock a person out more often.
Source: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...
An interesting reversal of this: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccin...
"Being exposed to chickenpox as an adult (for example, through contact with infected children) boosts your immunity to shingles."
"If you vaccinate children against chickenpox, you lose this natural boosting, so immunity in adults will drop and more shingles cases will occur."
It's seemingly not the primary justification the vaccine isn't offered, but I wonder if, to cut to the core question, those who are pro/anti vaccinating the low-risk to protect the high-risk feel the same way when it's flipped.
I had a mild reaction to vaccination and lost no time to it.
I also recently caught COVID. I had severe fever, headache, muscle ache and chills. I still get much more tired after mild exercise, like a long walk, than I did before.
Vaccination certainly didn’t stop me from catching COVID but it likely did help me avoid a more severe outcome.
I don’t believe in forcing it on others but I would strongly recommend it.
A friend of mine, same age, is in a couple where he isn’t vaccinated and she is (Pfizer). Of course he got sick last month and contaminated her because they live together.
He had to take 10 days off and felt like shit the whole time, unable to do anything. She kept working because since sh was vaccinated she had very very mild symptoms that didn’t hinder her.
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, and you don’t even mention what vaccine you got.
What I’m considering doing for the next booster is to check how many antigens I still have before deciding if I take the booster when it’s due or wait a bit longer (barring a virulent mutation that would change the decision making).
In any case, I’ll take 24–36h of flu like symptoms (without having an actual virus damaging my body) any day over 7–10 days of agony like my friend went through.
Antibody levels will always decline over time after infection or vaccination. A third booster might have some long-term benefits for certain patients but beyond that trying to keep those levels elevated with repeated boosters is pointless for most patients.
The direct health benefit from the booster shot for 12-17-year olds is very limited, even for high-risk individuals. Break-through infections with the Omicron variant are very mild and the chance of hospitalization for vaccinated teens is minimal. Similarly, the risk of developing MIS-C due to infection is deemed very small. Moreover the booster shot also carries the (very rare) risk of developing myocarditis. The European Medical Agency also has not officially weighed the booster benefits against the risks for teens, making its use effectively off-label.
In the same publication they make the following claims regarding booster effectiveness (for all age groups, not specifically teens):
- full protection (only asymptomatic infection) drops to 50-75% within four weeks, drops further to 25-40% after three months.
- protection against hospitalization due to Omicron is around 90%, drops to 75% after three months.
- vaccinated but not-boostered people still have 70-80% protection against hospitalization due to Omicron in the first six months, drops to 60% efficacy after that.
- Against the Delta variant, non-boostered people still have above 80% protection against hospitalization even after more than six months.
The citations for these claims are from NL,UK,IS and US, but only two have a hyperlink. If someone wants to hunt them down, they're cites 10,21,23,24,25,36,37 in the PDF linked from [0].
[0, in Dutch]: https://www.gezondheidsraad.nl/organisatie/vaccinaties/docum...
[25] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4011905
[37] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm?s_cid=mm...
As policy it's definitely not worth it. We can pretend that we as a country care about covid, but if we're stressing the importance of patents and boosting our own over vaccinating the world, we don't really care. If we take years to send out masks, we clearly think more about masks as a public declaration of loyalty than disease prevention devices.
I hate that we've split into two groups, one of nationalistic bleach drinkers that don't believe in the germ theory of disease, and the other of nationalistic OCD paternalists. Now I'm expected to believe that there's no level of protection that is enough i.e. evidence that a booster helps is evidence that I should be taking a booster is evidence that everyone should be taking a booster. I'm worried about covid, but I'm worried about things other than covid.
At least the NYT is staying pretty steadily rational about this.
Since the Omicron variant emerged in late November and it bypasses even boosted immunity to infection in somewhere between 30% and 60% of people, as a result we've seen worldwide that vaccination is unable to bring R0 below 1 and stop the spread of the virus.
> If we take years to send out masks, we clearly think more about masks as a public declaration of loyalty than disease prevention devices.
The masks being sent out by the US Government seem more like a reaction to the realization that Omicron bypasses vaccine immunity to infection in a massive number of people, who still want some way to protect themselves from the virus. In 2021, the government was attempting to push vaccination as the only way to protect yourself from catching the virus, because social distancing and wearing masks annoys their voters (especially swing/independent voters) and they have an election to win this year. They only sent out masks and tests when the media/people began to demand it after the vaccine failed to stop Omicron.
Covid-19 is much more dangerous than the flu though, so the reaction and concern has been different…
1) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2017/02/studies-...
As a younger person it has been my observation that vaccinated folks are more likely to get break through cases 6+ months after vaccine / booster. Speaking for myself I got COVID almost exactly six months after being fully vaccinated.
These break thru cases, while not life threatening, are nonetheless NOT fun, may lead to long haul symptoms, and put others at risk.
I personally would like to see boosters available every 5 months for those who want it
I’m not convinced the story actually says what the title claims it does.
Making up numbers here, but if 10 out of 100 unvaxed people get sick among the elderly, and 6 out of 100 unvaxed get sick among younger folks, then the vaccine "helps" 5 elderly but only 3 younger folks.
But I agree with you that it's certainly misleading.
My sisters caught Omicron days before their boosters were available and they missed ten days of University and work. The booster doesn’t guarantee you won’t get a breakthrough but every bit helps.
I will offer though that if we’re not seeing a massive public health benefit, as opposed to an individual health benefit, that should factor into how many doses you need when they create vaccination requirements. I don’t think a double dosed 20 year old should be told they can’t eat inside if their risk of death or hospitalization is less than a triple vaccinated 65 year old.
Even if younger people stopped getting infected with these numbers, they could never have similar benefit compared to the older cohort.
These titles are designed to get clicks, but they are very "dangerous", for a lack of a better word, because of how often the title will be shared without reading and understanding.
65+ hospitalization: 27.4 -> 4.9 (-82%) 65+ death: 3.6 -> 0.5 (-86%)
50-64 hospitalization: 9 -> 2 (-78%) 50-64 death: 0.4 -> 0.1 (-75%)
They did not break down the 18-49 hospitalization stats, presumably because they are even lower than the 50-64 group (according to the CDC stats linked from the article, < 5 people / 100k in the vaccinated 18-49 group were hospitalized due to COVID-19 in December, and < 1 person / 100k across all 18-49 died from COVID-19, and that number is well under 1 in a million per week for regularly vaccinated, meaning stats are going to be fairly noisy).
There fixed it for you
My god, science reporting in the US is dead.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem...
https://gothamist.com/news/new-preliminary-state-data-shows-...
Public health officials in the US have both the reported numbers as well as piggy backing on the system set up for influenza monitoring (CLI & ILI).
Simply because not all public reporting is as rich as, say, Illinois or Pennsylvania's, doesn't mean these figures aren't carefully scrutinized -- especially when threatened by political leaning from either side of aisle (such as when the then-current administration pressured the CDC to change and alter reports).
In my experience, hospital operations officers, health information exchanges, and, depending on the state, state HHS agencies don't mess around.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/09/trump-officials-bragged-abou...
Ok wow downvoted. Well, if this actually happens, I will be sure to link back to this downvoted claim. Be careful, I have been right about "out of left field" events in the past that I've recorded on hn (such as failure of the Boeing starliner https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21839565) and in this situation I do have PhD training in biology, so this wasn't one point at least reasonably close to my wheelhouse
Yes, Jevon's paradox could exist in this instance.
> This would be a genius evolutionary play by the virus
It's not sentient. It's simply filling niches.
It would be a net benefit if, in US culture, we normalized health being a priority (including taking time to recover and not spread to others, whether a cold or flu or COVID-19).
> Ok wow downvoted.
From the guidelines:
>>> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
I've noticed here and, if I recall correctly, in other COVID-19 threads that sea-lioning comments tend to be downvoted. I expect this is because people are tired of science denialism, whether it is couched as "just speculating" or as "just asking questions."
The above is what has been used to justify why vaccines still have to be mandatory, despite everyone who wants one getting one, while at the same time, masks and other restrictions need to stay, because the vaccine doesn't actually prevent the spread.
When you say it like I have above, people dont like it, but we've celebrated and mandated a "vaccine" that is a lot different in it's protection than what we would normally think of.
I have all three of my shots FYI. I'm really curious to hear a substantively different take than mine.
Not sure the definition has been updated, this article from 2015 discusses a similar vaccine behavior: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
“ The reason this is a problem for Marek’s disease is because the vaccine is “leaky.” A leaky vaccine is one that keeps a microbe from doing serious harm to its host, but doesn’t stop the disease from replicating and spreading to another individual. On the other hand, a “perfect” vaccine is one that sets up lifelong immunity that never wanes and blocks both infection and transmission. [. . .] But the results do raise the questions for some human vaccines that are leaky – such as malaria, and other agricultural vaccines, such as the one being used against avian influenza, or bird flu.“
That said, the covid-19 vaccines we have do prevent some infections even of the mutant omicron variant, just not 95% of infections like it did against the original strain of COVID-19. And luckily omicron, while still dangerous and not really “mild”, is milder than the delta variant and the vaccine seems to be able to save a lot of lives.
It has. To see proof Merriam-Webster changed it, compare https://web.archive.org/web/20191013020123/https://www.merri... and https://web.archive.org/web/20220203031512/https://www.merri...
And to see proof the CDC changed it, compare https://web.archive.org/web/20191111050113/https://www.cdc.g... and https://web.archive.org/web/20220205010915/https://www.cdc.g...
It makes sense that the dictionary had updated its entry - they are supposed to be reflecting current usage, not defining words as an authority. But the government making changes is absolutely Orwellian.
The CDC working definition didn't change. They removed a redundant reference to protection from a page for the public because some people claimed it meant anything under 100% effective isn't a vaccine.
“The definition” would refer to how people actually use the word, and examples of pre-2020 writing (as I gave) where e.g. the vaccine for Marek’s is called a vaccine would suggest merriam-webster’s definition was too limited.
That said, I think the old Merriam-Webster definition still applies to the covid vaccine anyway, so this is a bit of a side conversation. “ produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease” an increase of immunity suggests that this definition also covers leaky vaccines.
The definition update seems to be more about, as sibling poster said, the first part of the definition not covering mRNA or toxin based vaccines accurately.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Unless Omnicron dissociated it, worse experience == more viral load == more infectious; vaccine reduced (and potentially for some elimintated) viral load and thus reduced infectiousness.
I'm not quite sure what you're stating here. You disagree with the conclusions here and believe there is evidence that vaccinations significantly impact community transmission of covid? If so, could you provide references to that evidence?
Delta allowed for breakthrough cases; the rate was dramatically lower than unvaccinated overall (I handled reporting on some these stats in our region).
I haven't been as involved since the start of the omnicron variant, but my understanding is that the relationship still holds that prob(infected | vaccinated) < prob(infected | unvaccinated and no reported prior case).
COVID-19 intensity of illness was (and may still be?) associated to the relative infectiousness of an individual to others in their network (across the entire episode). So an asymptomatic individual (vs. presymptomatic before intense illness) was less infectious overall.[0]
> Question What are the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 G614 viral shedding in incident infections in association with COVID-19 symptom onset and severity?
> Findings In a cohort study of persons who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after recent exposure, viral RNA trajectory was characterized by a rapid peak followed by slower decay. Peak viral load correlated positively with symptom severity and generally occurred within 1 day of symptom onset if the patient was symptomatic.
[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
I'm aware there is data about severity of cases in individuals, but I haven't seen good data showing the impact to community transmission.
I'm trying to remember if our herd immunity artcle covered the monitoring stats ratios between vaccinated and unvaccinated. I'm thinking that the lead author left it out
The incidence rate ratios of COVID-19 are impacted by vaccination status.
Published January 28, 2022:
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7105e1.htm
> All incidence and hospitalization rate ratios exceeded 1, regardless of predominant variant, indicating that the risks were consistently highest for unvaccinated persons and that COVID-19 vaccines were protective against SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19–associated hospitalization among fully vaccinated persons, and most protective among those with a booster.
Published 2/2/2022
[1] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
This one shows a nice breakdown of the incidence rate ratio among age groups and similar.
------------
What does this have to do with community transmission?
[1] If you aren't infected, you aren't spreading the disease
[2] A lower transmission rate equates to lower community spread all else equal (as someone identified earlier, Jevon's paradox could come to head)
[3] The lower IRR is a lower propensity (or, if you prefer, a lower R_t) between the two groups.
-----------
This matches what I see in my regional reporting; the IRR is significantly different between the two groups. In my area (a red state in the US) behaviors are mostly back to pre-pandemic levels of behavior, so it is reasonable to conclude that the IRR in my area is representative of life following any COVID-19 protocols being relaxed.
A reduction in the incidence rate ratio among vaccinated individuals is a reduction to community spread, ceterus paribus.
Have a good evening.
I don't believe you do and I shouldn't need to either way. "Believe me bro" isn't science.
> Hence the reason I've explained
What's that supposed to mean? What reason, what explanation?
> and pointed you to the appropriate resources.
You pointed to no appropriate resources. You actually deflected from the question and provided a lot of links and waffle that did not answer the question at all. In case it wasn't clear, I was not asking for techbro handwaving about whether vaccines impact community transmission. I was asking for actual data.
> A reduction in the incidence rate ratio among vaccinated individuals is a reduction to community spread.
An assertion that you have failed to prove and have no evidence for, as far as I can see.
> Have a good evening.
You too. And try not to make any more claims you don't have evidence for, it's misinformation.
I'll respond here in case your engagement with disinformation caused anyone confusion.
> "Believe me bro" isn't science.
Correct. This is a public internet forum where private or restricted access sources are not shareable, not an open science conference. Hence the reason the Washington State and CDC studies were shared, which align to claims made.
> What's that supposed to mean? What reason, what explanation?
I'll refer you to prior comments in this discussion chain.
> pointed to no appropriate resources. ... provided a lot of links
Read the links provided.
> An assertion that you have failed to prove and have no evidence for, as far as I can see.
Tautologies generally don't need proof. I believe you're being intentionally deceptive here.
Why tautological: a reduction in an individual's capacity to become infected with the virus reduces their individual capacity to spread the disease. A community is a collection of individuals; reducing many people's capacity through a vaccine to spread disease reduces community spread.
I refer you to both the Washington State study as well as the CDC study for the recent incidence rate ratio comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
> You too. And try not to make any more claims you don't have evidence for, it's misinformation.
It's comments like these that show you are sealioning. Strong evidence for your questions have been provided in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30232957 -- your inability to acknowledge the evidence provided because it disproves your attempt at sowing confusion doesn't mean the evidence is not clearly presented and available.
Versus sealioning on a controversial topic -- that's disinformation. I find insulting when people engage in it, and I'll not entertain your comments further.
--------------------
For any reading this comment chain who may be confused -- vaccinations reduce community spread, the evidence has been provided in the comment linked, and I encourage you to strongly distrust when people are "just asking questions."
You can't just cry "sealioning" after you make unsubstantiated claims and refuse to provide evidence for them.
> Correct. This is a public internet forum where private or restricted access sources are not shareable, not an open science conference.
Very convenient you just brought that up only after several back and forth posts that showed you were unable to substantiate your claim with actual data. You can see why I don't believe you.
> For any reading this comment chain who may be confused -- vaccinations reduce community spread, the evidence has been provided in the comment linked, and I encourage you to strongly distrust when people are "just asking questions."
Evidence was not provided. If evidence was provided, then you wouldn't be talking about these non-public sources of evidence you claim to be privy to, would you? They would be irrelevant because you would be able to just provide the evidence.
Your story has fallen apart badly. It's clearly pointless to keep beating a dead horse here and obviously you're not the type to ever admit they're wrong. Just keep it in mind for next time and stop yourself from spreading misinformation.
You can't transmit if you aren't infected.
That is mentioned in the article, but right now there isn’t really any evidence suggesting the vaccine doesn’t actually stop infection in at least some cases. PCR tests can discover asymptomatic infections for instance and some workplaces had mandatory testing regimes. The initial moderna trial tested everyone even without symptoms on reception of the 2nd dose and found that just one dose of the vaccine had greatly reduced PCR + compared to the placebo group, there seems no evidence that behavior of the vaccines isn’t generalizable.
“ you don't know that it isn't strategically better to have vaccinated, low risk people get breakthrough infections and get immunity to omicron proper”
How do you you see this as an alternative while still suggesting the vaccine wouldn’t work or provide immunity?
If the vaccine makes a specific person immune to Omicron infection, they don’t need breakthrough immunity because they already have it. If it fails to make that person immune to Omicron infection, they’ll still “strategically” get sick by being in the community and being infected.
Unless you are suggesting an alternative of young vaccinated people specifically exposing themselves to Omicron positive cases en masse in an attempt to have a breakthrough case and boost their immunity I don’t see how your comparison makes sense.
Nobody is disputing that. The question is how much.
> Unless you are suggesting
That's exactly the comparison.
Our health authorities are too scared of making mistakes to do either though, so it seems purely hypothetical either way.
I agree. We don't have that yet (I know someone in the trial).
This article (typical of NY Times, honestly) is editorialized. There are so many questions to ask:
> Booster doses cut the risk of infection in vaccinated people by about half across all age groups. The gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated groups was much greater. The numbers most likely reflect only symptomatic cases, and may be different for asymptomatic infections, Dr. Barouch noted.
To this day I have not seen a single study that controls for the obvious confounders. In particular, people who get vaccinated are likely "safer" in general. They most likely work out more, they most likely care about their health, they most like wear masks, and most likely listen to their doctor unquestioningly. ALL of these are confounders that MUST be controlled for in order for any study on booster efficacy to meet the bar of actual science, and not this pseudo-scientific idol worship we have right now.
> Some people have worried about persistent symptoms even after a mild bout of Covid. But a recent study suggested that the risk of so-called long Covid is highest among people with one of four predisposing factors, including Type 2 diabetes and the presence of autoantibodies.
Weird, just recently we were hearing long covid is unavoidable even with vaccination in some cases. This was never mentioned. Yet another ultra low quality "studies say" post written by a non-scientist.
> In those age groups, vaccination itself — two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that a booster shot did not seem to add much benefit.
Indeed, despite my area being pretty well boosted we still had a massive peak in cases. Without a doubt the "journalists" spun it as a catastrophe that is the unvaccinated's fault. Well, if 80% of my location is vaccinated, do you think a positive rate of 38% can only be because the unvaccinated? I suppose if you listen to MSM like NY Times and the mouthpieces at the CDC you'd probably believe so.
This calls into question the vaccine effectiveness in general. Which have the same problem, confounders are everywhere and no one is controlling for them. It's far easier to sell fear than science, because science takes time.
One day we'll get actual information. Until then we're stuck with these faux-journalistic pieces that are just cleverly dressed up op-eds with reddit-tier "studies say" bait.
Clinical trials give people a placebo. The efficacy is well established.
> Weird, just recently we were hearing long covid is unavoidable even with vaccination in some cases. This was never mentioned. Yet another ultra low quality "studies say" post written by a non-scientist.
Some study suggesting something does not imply consensus. There has never been a consensus that long covid is unrelated to disease severity.
> Indeed, despite my area being pretty well boosted we still had a massive peak in cases. Without a doubt the "journalists" spun it as a catastrophe that is the unvaccinated's fault. Well, if 80% of my location is vaccinated, do you think a positive rate of 38% can only be because the unvaccinated? I suppose if you listen to MSM like NY Times and the mouthpieces at the CDC you'd probably believe so.
Seems almost purposefully obstinate in how you try to refute a claim about metrics of hospitalizations and death with a fact about new cases.
Unvaccinated people in every age group are at higher risk of infection, hospitalization and death than those who have been immunized, according to the C.D.C.’s data — a persistent trend ever since vaccines were introduced.