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Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

As someone that was always very skeptical of the claimed effectiveness of the vaccine, despite the claims of its effectiveness by the experts at the time from both administrations. I feel vindicated when real world numbers come out like this.

https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.j...

Page 3, showing the unvaccinated testing at a much lower rate for covid than the double or triple vaccinated despite being forced to take a lot more tests.

I just assume it's easier to claim success than to actually achieve it. I also took a few stat courses at university, and saw problems with claims being made at that time. So I opted to wait. Now I'm glad I did.

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Did you see their response on page 5? I'm skeptical like you generally but I find it a believable explanation.

"All results, including the positivity rates by vaccination status graph, are unadjusted. The team has observed that the positivity rates among unvaccinated individuals seen on the bar graph appear to be lower in comparison to vaccinated individuals. Furthermore, repeat testing among those who were previously positive in the last 90 days appear to confound the results. The team conducted additional analyses examining characteristics of the patient population by vaccination status and the impact of excluding recent COVID-19 cases (5.0% of total tests). Findings show that the unvaccinated group are typically younger and healthier, less symptomatic and less likely to report direct COVID-19 exposure or recent travel compared to vaccinated groups. Controlling for recent COVID-19 cases, results show that the unvaccinated group has a 17.1% higher positivity rate compared to the 3-dose group. Controlling for additional factors leads to a larger difference between groups."

Without a paper to show on how exactly they controlled for this difference its neither here nor there.

"Findings show that the unvaccinated group are typically younger and healthier, less symptomatic and less likely to report direct COVID-19 exposure or recent travel compared to vaccinated groups."

This just seems to be adjusting results until it fits your hypothesis. Release a a paper on the adjustments and lets see if it will withstand scrutiny.

Even without more details, I can already see some logical flaws here in the way they penalize the unvaccinated population.

They admit the unvaccinated are healthier and less likely to get sick, and adjust. Now the problem with this is they completely ignore the possibility they are healthier, because they did not take the vaccine.

They also discard recent results...why?

Also notice how they break down the into sub groups of the vaccinated into 5 months and over 5 months. This makes it seem closer than it really is. If you don't do that, you get even a wider gap:

6.9 % infection rate in the unvaccinated

12% in the single dose vaccinated

23.5% in the two dose vaccinated.

29.9% in the three dose vaccinated.

It could easily be that unvaccinated people are more likely to get a test when they have no symptoms but did have an exposure, because they know C19 has worse outcomes when unvaccinated.

Or, as you say - they are tested more often, routinely, without symptoms or exposures because of their status.

I'd say both are more likely explanations than the vaccine makes people more likely to contract covid, which appears to be what you're suggesting.

Well except. Take two groups, A and B. If A tests more often, then the accuracy of the results are more accurate, because you have more data points confirming the results and are more likely to count all the positive cases during the 10 day window when someone might test positive. This is not a trivial difference either. The triple Vaccinated are 3 times more likely to test positive now, according to the Walgreens results, despite that group going in for testing at much lower rates.

Are there some circumstances under which we might see this pattern, sure. But there are also some circumstances on the other side of the argument like Marek's disease that lead to the disease evolving to target the vaccinated.

Anyway, we went from expert claims of vaccine being 98% effective at preventing covid, to what now? hoping they will get the same infection rate as the unvaccinated. You have to admit the standards keep dropping.

Now this doesn't even consider the economic damage done by the lockdowns. That same Walgreens is running out of baby formula. It was a mainstream story just a day ago.

Also, Ontario is showing the same pattern. Though it over counts the unvaccinated in all categories, by including those that received a single dose, and those getting sick within 14 days.

https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=1

Seems like more is being found out about covid, and so things which were thought early, turned out to have more nuance to them. Vaxxed people absolutely don't get hit as hard by covid, therefore requiring far less expensive hospital care. Since we all pay for this, this seems a reasonable thing to do.

What is not reasonable is me trusting YOU, someone who's arguments, seem somewhat ... unconvincing, about the severity of the covid infection you would spread to me without a care.

As for your babies, supply chain issues coincided with covid, they are not caused by it. Please research the issue, you will see.

Why not take a trip to a hospital and ask the staff what they see and think? Oh, and a mortuary, see what they are seeing.

I look forward to your report, sir.

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