CBS: “boosted” Americans are catching Covid at double the rate of “non boosted” | Hacker News Reader

CBS: “boosted” Americans are catching Covid at double the rate of “non boosted”

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"So, one of the dynamics here is that people feel, after vaccination and boosting, that they're more protected than they actually are, so they increase their risks," he says (at 1:40). "That, I think, is the major driver of these statistics."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-booster-shot-i...

CBS's own headline pointedly used the word "seem". ("Why boosted Americans seem to be getting more COVID-19 infections.")

Maybe people who anticipate being put in more risky situations are more likely to get a booster?

This is one of those situations where a "pseudoretrocausal" explanation kinda makes sense if you consider people's ability to predict.

Given the lower odds of something terrible happening after you contract Covid if you’ve gotten your shots, isn’t it completely rational for people who’ve been boosted to take more risks? Did we expect boosted people to limit risk forever?

I don't think many people are limiting risk. As far as I can tell where I am, people are living life just as it was in 2019. Maybe I'll see one or two masked people a day, but I highly doubt that means everyone else is boosted. It's a good feeling rationalization, but I don't think it's a valid explanation considering what I see happening outside.

Bottom line from the interview: false sense of security.

This is happening around the world. Any vaccine doses seems to be more protective than no vaccine doses, but, after a few months from latest dose, the fewer (but nonzero) doses you have, the less likely you are to get sick, be hospitalized, or die.

> The new data do not mean booster shots are somehow increasing the risk. Ongoing studies continue to provide strong evidence of additional protection offered by booster shots against infection, severe disease, and death.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-booster-shot-i...

So, more shots is more protective against severe disease.

The higher rate of infection right now is likely to due this cohort being the last to get exposed to the virus, because they were taking precautions all along. Vaccines in your arm don't give you sterilizing mucosal immunity in your nose (even assuming that exists for this virus at all).

That's interesting. Do you have the rationale for why that is the case? What about recovered individuals?

It's still unclear exactly why that's the case, but it keeps turning up unlooked-for in different datasets (including from different jurisdictions which use different methodologies)

So far, the most promising theories involve new variants exploiting the immune effects of repeated exposure to the original spike proteins. In particular, the South African and Portuguese datasets on BA.4 and BA.5 lend themselves to this explanation -- but even with older variants, like BA.2/Omicron, the graphs just keep pointing in this direction. It seems that about 4-6ish months after boost, you're worse off than you were pre-boost.

Has anyone quantified the increased risk taking from more vaccinated folk to actually rule it out? Perhaps one could use a survey of time spent in public as as indicator of risk taking behaviors.

I suspect that some people believe (consciously or not) that it's ok to be more careless because they've been vaccinated.

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