I’m curious why people think vaccinations will solve the mutated variants problem. We’ve been told from the very beginning that the vaccines only reduce symptoms and only marginally prevent you from getting COVID in the first place. If people are still getting it, why would there be any less of a chance for SARS-cov-2 to mutate? In fact, if the vaccines specifically only target spike, that would, if anything cause a selective pressure for the virus to mutate it’s spike protein.

> We’ve been told from the very beginning that the vaccines only reduce symptoms and only marginally prevent you from getting COVID in the first place.

No, we’ve been told that the mRNA vaccines are, based on the current evidence, both “ highly effective against hospitalization and death for a variety of strains, including Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), Gamma (P.1), and Delta (B.1.617.2)” and that they make the vaccinated “less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to transmit it to others”, though they have “lower effectiveness against confirmed infection and symptomatic disease caused by the Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants compared with the ancestral strain and Alpha variant.”

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

So if that is the current understanding of how the vaccine works, isn’t it important to follow up on data that seems to not align with those statements? If 69% of people are vaccinated, I would expect <69% of recent COVID cases to be from the vaccinated.

When we get data that contradicts what we expect, it needs to be taken seriously, it needs to be broadcast, it needs to be followed up on, and the correct conclusions need to be drawn from experts in a transparent way.

> So if that is the current understanding of how the vaccine works, isn’t it important to follow up on data that seems to not align with those statements?

Sure.

> If 69% of people are vaccinated, I would expect <69% of recent COVID cases to be from the vaccinated.

I would expect both vaccination and detection of cases to overrepresent people with better access to and inclination toward medical services

In addition vaccinations are biased towards the elderly, and (because vaccines haven't been approved, even on an emergency basis, for this population) completely exclude young children. This also biases the figures.

Basically, the media reporting of “contradictory” findings is pretty much completely abuse of statistics rather than actual contradictory findings.

A decent discussion is here: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-07-27/covid-19-infection...

I am familiar with Simpson’s Paradox but I carefully read your linked article anyway and it truely is enraging to me when statistics is twisted to lie to people. I totally agree there is a very large amount of really bad headlines and non-expert pundit conclusions from right wing media. And it is harmful. I wish more people took the time to understand what statistics are actually saying. Unfortunately I think some portion of the population might just be incapable of properly understanding stats, it really is a hard and tricky subject.

That said, I don’t think the data from the OP’s CDC article is a case of Simpson’s paradox. The quoted statistic in the CDC article is that 74% of infected people were vaccinated. I am comparing that to the vaccination rate in MA of 69% (also from the article). The denominator in one stat is a strict subset of the denominator of the second stat. Simpson’s paradox requires disjoint denominators.

So that being the case, I would still like for actual experts to follow up on this data and come to some conclusion.

If you simplify it to threads * execution time, the more parallel processes running, for a longer duration, means more opportunity. Everything here is almost always a spectrum not a binary solved/unsolved.

If less people have covid, less severely, for less time, that is less mutation potential.

> In fact, if the vaccines specifically only target spike, that would, if anything cause a selective pressure for the virus to mutate it’s spike protein.

My understanding is that changes to the spike protein significant enough to escape vaccines entirely are likely to also render it unable to enter the cell.

Are vaccines creating an environment for viral mutations?

Have major mutations been noted after vaccines are administered in the population?

> Am not interested in rebutting every issue someone flags with this - its a high-level generalization. Am not a doctor etc. Look to CDC for guidance and authority.

I understand, but you have a glaring bit of misinformation:

> - Variants will continue to mutate as a significant % of people go unvaccinated.

The virus mutates in vaccinated people as well. If the entire population was vaccinated, we would still get new variants, mutating enough to defeat vaccines.

Common sense would have it that if the virus was under attack from the moment it entered your body, it’s less likely to mutate, than if it’s lingering for weeks in an unvaccinated person doing its thing?

I would assume any sort of attack, if it's not able to outright kill the virus, would accelerate mutation. The experts have conceded for a while now that the vaccine has been proven to reduce symptoms, but not necessarily reduce spread, so probably the right environment for mutation.

So where are all the crazy new mutations then ?

I can tell who has been recommended Darkhorse podcast pretty quickly. I've listened to it too.

I'm not saying there should be mutations. Just that if there are mutations, it's not clear whether the vaccinated or unvaccinated would be stronger drivers of it.

Exactly so is it useful to constantly speculate about it ?

> - Vaccination means a significant reduced risk of getting COVID.

Can you provide a source for this?

To be clear, I’m absolutely not arguing that you’re wrong. What I am saying is that I’ve not seen a source for this oft-repeated assertion, and that the data in the linked article contradicts it - a larger proportion of people in that cohort who were fully vaccinated got COVID than those those who were unvaccinated.

It seems like a glaring omission to me that they didn’t enumerate the number of unvaccinated people who had recovered from previous COVID infections. If that number is substantial it would explain why the proportions are so different from what you might expect.

See https://twitter.com/bob_wachter/status/1420974072414957570?s...

Which references a cdc documebt

This is the CDC

There's a big difference between "this thing comes from the CDC" and "I am qualified to accurately interpret this thing that came from the CDC".

This seems like a straightforward study.