1) People who are vaccinated are more likely to get tested.

2) People who are vaccinated are more likely to be in positions where they are exposed to COVID (remember who got vaccines first?).

3) People who are vaccinated are probably more likely to be around other people in general because they are at low risk of severe COVID reactions and are following guidelines (multiple state health officials: if you're fully vaccinated, it's ok to not wear a mask).

I don't see why this is a story.

This is a story because it is showing something is wrong. This data implies that the vaccine isn’t effective enough to drop precautions. Vaccinated people need to know that and guidelines need to be adjusted, lest they become bigger spreaders than the unvaccinated, as this data is implying.

At the very least, this data needs to be very carefully followed up on.

I don't agree that the data imply that.

If 100% of people are vaccinated, 100% of covid infections will be among vaccinated people. In MA, ~70% of people are vaccinated. Vaccination rates are higher in some places. Given this, it's not surprising that most infections in certain places are among vaccinated people. The absolute number and how sick people are getting have to be considered as well.

The data does not at all imply that something is wrong or that we need to do more than is already being done. Vaccines are not 100% effective and we were never going to prevent infections entirely. The only real issue here is that way too many people are refusing to get vaccinated so that infections are still having a large impact on the population as a whole. Among people who are vaccinated, severe complications from COVID are extremely rare.

People need to stop thinking about COVID as a disease like polio that we can relatively easily eradicate, and more like a bad flu that we simply coexist with even though annual vaccines are widely available.

There are some blind areas. You are not counting people that weren't tested, or, people in different categories that were exposed but didn't got the disease, or people that got the disease previously, but it was asymptomatic or with mild enough symptoms to be noticed.

If 100 unvaccinated people (that really didn't got the vaccine) get exposed in the same way than 100 vaccinated people, the numbers that will get infected would be the same?

To stir up controversy. New outlets need any kind of story to stay relavent

There are skewing factors here.

Kids under 12 are 100% unvaccinated at the moment, for example. People who are anti-vaccine may have a tendency to also avoid testing. etc.

In the US, under 400 kids below the age of 18 have died from Covid since the beginning of the Pandemic. Many had comorbidities as severe as leukemia. What is the case for exposing them to the greater risk presented by the vaccine, when it has been shown that vaccinated adults will still get Covid either way?

Edit: And just like that, the CDC link has been flagged for presenting inconvenient information. Talk about a cult.

> What is the case for exposing them to the greater risk presented by the vaccine...

They tend to live with adults.

> it has been shown that vaccinated adults will still get Covid either way?

This hasn't actually been shown, at least not anywhere near as universally as you're portraying. Breakthroughs were expected; what we won't know for a while (and is subject to change) is how common they are.

The 69% figure is out of “eligible” people according to the report. As children aren’t eligible, I’d think they aren’t included in the denominator.

Your hypothesis about anti-vaxxers being hesitant to go test is definitely promising, but having a hypothesis alone isn’t enough, this kind of stuff needs to be looked into and not ignored/labeled conspiracy theories as it so often does.

Edit: just realized that even if the 69% was out of the entire population, that would still imply (on the surface) that being vaccinated is worse than not, since COVID doesn’t discriminate about who it spreads to which makes the whole population eligible to get it.

> The 69% figure is out of “eligible” people according to the report.

The vaccinated population is still skewed elderly, and the elderly are more likely to become “cases” than younger people in the same vaccination status. The population isn't a homogeneous blob.

I interpret this to be due to large scale gatherings or reduced mask and social distancing combined with a more aggressive variant.

To me, your comment read like being vaccinated itself is some disadvantage to the infection rate, is that how you intended it?

I intend to point that that that is what the data in this report implies at a surface level. I think that alone makes it very important for professionals to carefully follow up on this data. The worst thing to do would be to brush this away and ignore it.

It's a bit more nuanced but you're generally right. Intramuscular vaccines do not provide long term protection from infection of the mucosal tissues of the upper respiratory tract. So they can be infected and shed virus but the lungs themselves get IgG antibodies seeping in from blood serum and protection from serious disease.

If you want to have resident B and T cells in the upper respiratory mucosa generating IgA antibodies and generally killing infected cells right away you need to use an intranasal vaccination. In the UK they have already realized this (and it was known in the 1960s).

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... page 5, #8.

>"Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals."

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397 - "the ideal vaccination strategy may use an intramuscular vaccine to elicit a long-lived systemic IgG response and a broad repertoire of central memory B and T cells, followed by an intranasal booster that recruits memory B and T cells to the nasal passages and further guides their differentiation toward mucosal protection, including IgA secretion and tissue-resident memory cells in the respiratory tract."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-021-00550-x "Prospects for durable immune control of SARS-CoV-2 and prevention of reinfection" - any of it.

What happens to the unhealthy population in that scenario?

They get the vaccine which is effective at reducing symptoms but not from people testing positive on Covid tests?

The problem is that people are freaking out about people testing positive on Covid tests while fatalities are still very very low.

Which means the vaccines are working to stop sickness as intended...they're just not working with whatever Covid tests have going on.

If vaccines don't stop transmission, then the only reason to get a vaccine is to protect yourself from severe symptoms. That contradicts what I've often been hearing that you should get the vaccine for the benefit of others. When the only effect the vaccine will have is on yourself, it becomes a personal question rather than a societal one.

> That contradicts what I've often been hearing that you should get the vaccine for the benefit of others

I don't know why everyone keeps harping on this to blame the experts and cast doubt on them. The virus changed. What was said in the past was true about the earlier variants. The Delta variant works differently.

This is not casting doubt on what experts said. It's casting doubt on what others have said about what experts have said. It is media and politicians that say people should get the vaccine for others.

Of course, if experts said that too, well, they were wrong if the vaccinated can spread the virus about as much as the unvaccinated.

I'm not saying anything about experts. I'm saying that the concept that you should get the vaccines for others looks like it's moot. That means the only consideration you should have about getting the vaccine is if you want the extra protection for yourself.

If you get the vaccine and stay out of ICU, you’re doing it for others.

You mean by freeing up hospital beds? That's orders of magnitude less of a benefit than stopping exponential contagious spread, so not nearly as compelling of a reason.

You're not freeing them up if you're never in one ?

Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the 40's supported by experts.

Thalidomide was highly used by the medical experts.

The view that slaves and Jews were inferior was backed up by 'experts'.

The Vietnam war was sold by 'experts'.

This new found belief that the experts are infallible gods to be worshipped ...is super creepy, ignorant, and authoritarian.

The experts deserve to have doubt cast on them and need to justify their views and be held accountable.