https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/12/janssen-group-most-at-ri...

https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/12/people-told-vaccinate-to...

> “Diagnosis of infection is three-times more likely in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated, the likelihood of hospital admission is some four-times higher, and the frequency of intensive care is five times more common in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated. So, we are seeing that vaccination is protecting against infection and especially against serious illness, which should be a spur to everyone to get vaccinated who has not been vaccinated so far,” Þórólfur said.

Anecdotally having had COVID before isn’t necessarily protection either. I’ve a relative who has now had both one of the original strains and the Delta variant.

Is anyone doing regular tests on large groups of people to measure the rate of asymptomatic infections?

Iceland has been as well you can see the breakdown on where infections came from here: https://www.covid.is/data

According to the second link, 255k people have been vaccinated in Iceland, out of a population of 364k (according to Wikipedia). So about 70% of the population has been vaccinated.

And according to the chart "Number of vaccinated individuals among domestic infections", about 60% of infections are among fully vaccinated people.

That suggests vaccination may not reduce the chance of infection much. As does the recent spike (the largest to date) in the "14-day incidence per 100 000 inhabitants" despite 70% vaccination.

Vaccination is still worthwhile, of course, to protect against severe illness, but if neither vaccination nor previous illness will prevent infection, it seems like COVID is going to be an illness we'll experience many times in our lives (hopefully with less impact once our immune systems adapt).

I quoted the Chief Epidemiologist’s most recent statement on the facts of the matter in Iceland in the comment you initially replied to but will do so again:

> “Diagnosis of infection is three-times more likely in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated, the likelihood of hospital admission is some four-times higher, and the frequency of intensive care is five times more common in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated. So, we are seeing that vaccination is protecting against infection and especially against serious illness, which should be a spur to everyone to get vaccinated who has not been vaccinated so far,” Þórólfur said.”

Literally out of the mouth of the people gathering and using these statistics.

That fact alone doesn't bode well for the hope of vaccination reducing the number of COVID infections.

Regarding the comparison between vaccination rates and infection rates: if the rates of infection are equal among children and adults, and vaccination doesn't affect the chance of infection, we'd expect about 30% of the cases to be among unvaccinated children, which isn't far from the current number. Unfortunately that page doesn't break down current infections by age, but that should be considered.

> “Diagnosis of infection is three-times more likely in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated, the likelihood of hospital admission is some four-times higher, and the frequency of intensive care is five times more common in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated. So, we are seeing that vaccination is protecting against infection and especially against serious illness, which should be a spur to everyone to get vaccinated who has not been vaccinated so far,” Þórólfur said.

If you read further down in the statistics data there is a breakdown by population age. You need to take into account the COVID is less infectious for the young. Iceland is also going to expand vaccination for the 12-16 age group and give people who got the less effective vaccine a booster. Not coincidentally the population with the largest set of infections mixes the most and got the Jannsen vaccine, those 20-30.

That makes sense. I think it's clear that vaccination makes the infection less severe and reduces hospitalization rates. But there's also a hope, which is the basis for a lot of policy decisions, that vaccination will reduce the chance of being infected, perhaps even eliminate the illness, and Iceland's data doesn't support that.

> If you read further down in the statistics data there is a breakdown by population age.

Only for isolation and for cumulative cases, not for current cases.

> You need to take into account the COVID is less infectious for the young.

Source please. I haven't heard that before; though it is less severe for the young.

You do you but that isn’t actually correct.

In fact, the article also quotes one of the authors as saying:

"The bottom line is, this can happen — it can be true that vaccinated people can spread the virus. But we do not yet know what their relative role in overall community spread is."

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...

That 39% number (protection against symptoms) wasn't checked at the trials, or at least wasn't reported. In that same article, they state that protection against being hospitalized/ICUed is still around 90%, which are the same values we heard before. Guess that doesn't sell clicks.

Saying that delta diminishes the effectivity from over 90% to 39% is spreading misinformation. Implying it, as the above linked article does, is spreading misinformation, knowing that lots of people doesn't read beyond the headline. Vaccines are still more than 90% effective against delta variant, or any other variant so far.

The 39% above only means that vaccinated people has "only" that protection against being infected (that is, being positive on a PCR test). Even if you are asymtomatic you are counted as infected, thus the vaccine alegedly didn't protect you. But vaccinated people still has around 90% protection against being hospitalized, even in delta variant environments.

The only conclusion we can get is: herd immunity is still far. Get vaxxed ASAP, because this thing will keep spreading.

Incorrect the vaccine trials only tested for symptomatic COVID not asymptomatic, so your assertion here is wrong. The 39% number is for symptomatic COVID only.

Also if you read my original comment you’ll see I only refer to symptomatic COVID and not to death or hospitalizations, perhaps you should read more closely before blindly accusing me of being misleading.

I mean, we all knew some vaccinated people would still get Covid, about 10% of them, so do we know that there is a higher number of breakthrough cases than even that?

J&J was tested in populations that didn't have the SA variant, and Pfizer was tested in populations that did (in addition to the other combinations you mentioned). Tests were done worldwide and we had natural experiments due to different tests in different time in different (relatively) isolated populations.

That effect exists, but only covers a small percentage of the difference in efficacy.

* this is a joke reflecting how’s the childhood game of telephone can be easily translated to “consensus says”