Transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 among fully vaccinated individuals | Hacker News Reader

Transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 among fully vaccinated individuals

thelancet.com

53 pointsTomminn44 comments

This is completely anecdotal, but something interesting happened to me recently. My trainer, who is unvaccinated, got really sick one week. Lots of throwing up, high fever, headaches, just feeling awful in general. He tested negative for COVID multiple times.

After his sickness went away, we worked out together (I'm vaccinated and boosted). Two days later, he calls me to tell me he tested positive for COVID but barely feels anything, just has a slight cough. He tested positive for a week and half afterwards.

I didn't get sick whatsoever. I mean, maybe one day I had a little bit of nasal congestion, but it could have just been the cold weather or any number of things. My wife also did not get sick (but she's vaccinated as well).

I think it's too early to write off that vaccines don't prevent transmissibility or even getting the virus. The immunization effects of these vaccines are so unknown to us given that they're so new. This whole COVID-19 situation is so damn weird, and that's why a lot of people are admittedly very skeptical of everything.

So one problem with thinking about vaccine protection from infection is that it’s hard to get data. In practice, when you see figures on protection against infection (typically these show limited though existent protection re omicron and significant protection re delta for boosted people) those figures are typically based on household infection. Which is kind of a worst case; constant exposure for days.

It may be that protection against infection by casual contact is significantly better, but it’s almost impossible to study that.

This isn't a reviewed article, btw, but a "correspondence", which per The Lancet: "Correspondence letters are not usually peer reviewed (we rarely publish original research in this section)".

Interesting, but the sample size discussed is very very small - 204 households - and, as the researcher notes, there are many confounding variables to consider. To me, this does not at all suggest that a change of public policy is warranted at this time, but it would definitely be interesting to see more research.

Problem is that any source of data will have the same quality issues. Not alleging general propaganda, but I guess it always tends to confirm the initial suspicions of researchers as the data can be molded either way.

This interesting article was posted earlier by another user and quickly received 28 upvotes but was flagged, presumably for editorializing the title. Reposted without the editorializing. A reply to this comment with a link to the unpaywalled pdf would obviously be helpful for many readers.

The link provides the full text. It's just a commentary essay, not a paper. The Lancet provides covid-related content for free. For example, I clicked the first link and got the full text of that particular reference at https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099...

PDF isn't paywalled.

This is not a reviewed scientific paper; this is a short letter citing a couple studies that didn't see much of a difference in infection rates between unvaccinated and vaccinated people. Conversely, we have a bunch of data showing the opposite.

At this point it’s hard to see vaccine mandates (certainly without alternative options such as proof of recent infection/recovery or recent/regular negative test) as anything but punitive against the unvaccinated.

(I am triple vaccinated, for the record)

The only logical reason at this point to mandate vaccines is if you wanted to remove the control group from the great human experiment. Or just see how far you can push your population.

* I am triple vaccinated

It creates a group to focus people's anger on, it caters to the "do something" crowd. It is a populist measure just like a border wall for example.

My government is sadly too incompetent to get out of panic mode and now has evasion ideas like a central vaccination registers...

I've heard it mused that with Omicron, vaccination may further spread COVID19 in the sense that those vaccinated are less likely to feel sick (so don't stay home from work/avoid other people) but are just as likely to spread the virus.

If this article is correct I hope that it will get incorporated into public policy swiftly.

The rhetoric has moved on to "prevents severe infection" as the reason you have to prove you've been vaccinated.

Okay. I'm not sure about the United States but here in NZ you can't enter a restaurant if you don't have a vaccine. You can't attend a funeral with over 25 people while unvaccinated. You can't attend or have a wedding with over 25 people.

I find it hard to think these restrictions can be justified as a public safety measure if they don't lower transmission. Limiting severe infection is up to the individual. They seem more like coercion to me. I think the government should be in the business of education not coercion. I'm triple vaccinated because I think it's the best choice for me, yet I have no right to make that choice for anyone else.

i'm not vaccinated and will not be getting the jab, and i think vaccine mandates are a laughably bad idea, but you could easily just say less severe disease = less pressure on public health systems and "justify" it that way.

This was my understanding of why it's the way it is in NZ. NZ's hospital system was pretty full before covid, and from my understanding, wouldn't take much to get overwhelmed with covid cases.

On the flip side, there are so few unvaccinated now, that I don't know how big of an effect the measures have with regards to unvaccinated restrictions.

Having said that, personally I've not had any issues with the current restrictions, they don't impact what I would usually do. But I'm probably the exception, not the rule when it comes to unvaxed people. I'm of mostly of the opinion, the restrictions are of a net positive for us, if you're not vaxxed I would avoid gatherings, especially indoors. Seems kinda reckless if you're going to parties etc while unvaxxed.

*not vaccinated, mostly because I don't socialise much so don't see the need, not until I want to fly. I see it as, the longer I can wait, the more we'll know about the vaccine, and hopefully there will be better (more effective) options.

I guess my point is why does a stretch on the health system warrant removal of personal freedoms. We don't do it for other conditions.

Why don't we do the same with overweight people or smokers. Sorry you can't go to a restaurant or funeral unless you lose weight or quit smoking. That would take pressure off the public health system.

Is there an epidemic of smokers or overweight people clogging up to all hospital beds, as was the case with Covid a few times in a few different countries? No? Then it's not comparable.

obesity- and smoking-related illnesses take up a huge share of available health care resources. to say they are "clogging up" hospital beds is a little insensitive though.

Patients with heavy Covid cases ( like the ones that needed ventilators to breathe) took all the place in many hospitals and healthcare systems, and then some ( temporary and military hospitals were deployed to help with that). It's not even remotely comparable.

i recall looking over the occupancy numbers for the temporary hospitals and hospital ships deployed as a response to the 2020 outbreaks in the UK and US, and they were mostly empty. sadly i cannot find that info now so i guess i'll just have to shrug about it. and i assume "took all the place in many hospitals and healthcare systems" is an exaggeration. i would still have to assert the health care costs to society of obesity and smoking are comparable to the costs of acute covid surges though.

Look up the numbers for the French healthcare system, during the two lockdowns we had, hospitals were over capacity.

Being overweight or smoking increases the probability that you will need healthcare, but the probability density function (PDF) for that is flat and wide.

When obesity or smoking goes up the increased health care needs are spread out over decades because of the flat wide PDF. There is plenty of time for the healthcare system to expand to handle this before it can become overloaded.

COVID's healthcare needs PDF is tall and thin.

Because of the tall and thin PDF, COVID's strain on the healthcare system is short term.

>Why don't we do the same with overweight people or smokers

If there was a safe, easy to take and effective vaccine against obesity and smoking, but they refused to take it, maybe.

Plus neither obesity nor smoking infect other people.

You just eat less and stop smoking. No vaccine required.

Ego and the belief it could be used against them in campaigns this year will keep most politicians from allowing a change in public health policy due to the results in the paper. "We need more studies" likely will be how they proceed though there's a chance they'll simply try to discredit the authors and discourage anyone else from finding similar results.

But this isn’t even a study - it’s one person’s interpretation of a variety of studies, none of which directly show what he is suggesting. In this case, more research is literally needed to have any sort of answer to the question the author is bringing up.

while you wait for more research, i suggest looking at the countries that have ended their mandates this year, and how they are doing, as a cheap and expedient form of research into the question of how useful mandates are.

We're talking about the efficacy of vaccination in preventing infection. I assume you're talking about ending mask mandates, which seems like a bit of a silly thing to bring up.

you could do it for any covid-related public health measure or mandate, depending on the places you compared. denmark and sweden and norway and the UK are all ending, or have ended, all restrictions this quarter. i recall other countries (and states in the US) have done similar at different times in the past 2 years, but i'm not feeling like googling them right now.

That doesn't seem to be a reasonable kind of logic-- "some places are choosing to end mask mandates, therefore vaccines don't work."

who are you quoting?

Please explain how your logic differs from that in the quote.

You may be reaching for something like "I have no confidence in public health mandates of any kind, based on our experience so far... therefore I'm inclined to not believe vaccine mandates will be effective."

But you seem to be leaping to say that vaccine mandates are not effective in preventing transmission ... because some regions are discontinuing requiring masks... This is very confused.

I do acknowledge the benefits of public health mandates in certain dire situations, i was simply trying to say comparing data between different places with different degrees of restriction can be helpful determining how beneficial those restrictions are. You can do this with vaccines as well if you wish, comparing countries performance and vaccination rates against each other.

They will get destroyed in the election with that approach. Instead, I think they're looking for a way to declare victory and stop the masks and quarantines. In fact, I think I see signs of them pivoting to that already.

This is not an article, it’s correspondence (e.g. what one guy thinks about some other articles he’s read). Plus, the articles being discussed have very small sample sizes.

the "one guy" you are referring to seems to be reputable and experienced enough to be speaking through the lancet. https://www.rmian.org/dr-carlos-francoparedes

Sure. But it's not a peer-reviewed Lancet paper. It's just one (well-qualified) person's opinion who disagrees with the current prevailing view held by other well-qualified people.

Is there a current prevailing expert opinion?

Current prevailing expert opinion is that vaccination reduces the chance of being infected by about 30-40% with Omicron, based on observational and case control studies.

Some studies see no signal of reduced transmission. Other areas see massive effects. It's all confounded because the vaccinated do not behave exactly like the unvaccinated.

Disregarding the correctness of its thesis article will be used by opponents of vaccinations.

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