No "cowering" would be necessary if people would just get vaccinated.

Is it the official stance of the CDC or WHO that a country with 99% of eligible adults double-vaccinated would have no need for masks, lockdowns, social distancing, travel restrictions or other restrictions?

I'm vaccinated, and in a country with 80% of people on two doses and 90% on one dose. But we still have a lot of cases, and a lot of people stuck on ventilators in hospitals.

It depends on the R0 of the mutation, and the efficacy of the vaccine.

For instance if Delta has an R0 of 8, and we're 100% vaccinated, and the vaccine has an efficacy of 85% against infection, the resultant Rt would be 1.2:

8 * (1 - (1 * 0.85))

So that means that some other form of mitigation on top of 100% vaccination would be necessary to stop the spread.

But for mutations with lower R0, or higher vaccine efficacy, herd immunity may still be possible.

That's kind of a moot point since the Delta variant has now out competed all other variants in the wild. If another new variant takes over from Delta it's unlikely to have a lower R0. At this point nothing we do can really stop the spread. Everyone should get vaccinated if they can because herd immunity won't protect anyone from infection.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

> At this point nothing we do can really stop the spread. Everyone should get vaccinated if they can because herd immunity won't protect anyone from infection.

I think that's an overstatement of the links you are sharing.

Several parts of the country have pushed Rt < 1, so there are clearly things we can do to stop the spread, through a combination of vaccination and other mitigation measures.

And the definition of herd immunity is literally what protects people from infection. (Herd immunity includes vaccine immunity.) And even before the HIT, vaccination reduces contagion, reduces the doubling rate, buys time to implement further mitigation to drive down Rt < 1, and saves lives.

Anyway, what the Astra Zeneca guy is saying is just that our vaccines are not effective enough against infection to get Rt < 1 on their own.

mRNA Vaccines do have efficacy against infection, and additional effectiveness against infecting others; it's just that they're still not quite as effective as their effectiveness against hospitalization and death.

Improved vaccines, or the third-shots happening now (which do temporarily improve infection efficacy) improve those stats. Herd immunity isn't yet theoretically impossible even if it's a practical impossibility in our populations.

It probably is true that we can't go back to the way we were pre-covid, no distancing, no masks, and avoid COVID spread. We're not there and may never be since there's a likelihood that some variant of COVID will be endemic.

But there's plenty we can do - vaccination, and mitigation to get Rt < 1 during spikes. Those two practices protect people from infection.

Agreed that everyone able should get vaccinated.

Wait are you seriously saying masks, lockdowns, etc. during spikes _forever_? “The covid season is upon us, let’s stock up on masks, pull kids out of school, and cancel our overseas trip”? For the foreseeable future?

Not necessarily. And probably not to that extent.

The point is Rt. If Rt is above 1, and the disease has a degree of mortality similar to what it has now, then it means the case count will double at some rate. And ICUs will fill up, and people will start dying from things like broken legs and pneumonia from not being able to get sufficient care. Does that make sense? That's just what Rt > 1 means; case counts are doubling. If Rt is above 1, then if you don't want the disease to eat the world, something needs to happen to get Rt back below 1. If not, it will happen naturally, solely through natural immunity and unnecessary death.

So the goal simply needs to be to keep Rt below 1, or to knock it back below 1 before prevalance becomes dangerous and threatens ICUs.

But that doesn't necessarily mean lockdowns. If there's a spike but already a good level of immunity, it might just mean masks on public transportation for a couple of months, or people naturally choosing to go out to eat three fewer times a month, or whatever.

The measure of required mitigation depends entirely upon the circumstance in the moment. If Rt spikes a little, you don't need to do much. If it spikes a lot, you need to do more. But with enough vaccination, we might not ever need full lockdowns for covid again.

> For instance if Delta has an R0 of 8, and we're 100% vaccinated, and the vaccine has an efficacy of 85% against infection, the resultant Rt would be 1.2:

For herd immunity, you also need to take into account that infected people—even symptomatic ones—are less infectious to others, if they're vaccinated.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that - I think that can be bundled into the efficacy number if you look at it as "efficacy against infecting others".

Last I heard, the CDC gave a 95% CI of the mRNA vaccines being 26% - 84% against infection (from Delta), and there's an additional 40% - 60% protection against infecting others (I've seen that estimate in multiple places but I don't know the source). If that's true, it suggests an overall range of 55.6 - 93.6 effectiveness against infecting others.

> I think that can be bundled into the efficacy number if you look at it as "efficacy against infecting others".

Absolutely, I'm just stressing it cause people have used the word 'efficacy' to measure lots of different things!

The UAE?

300 new cases / day, 5500 active cases, and 2 deaths / day, for a country with 10M people. (3 new cases / day, 55 active cases, 0.02 deaths / day, per 100,000.)

Compared with, say, the US: 112,000 new cases / day, 9,800,000 active cases, 2000 deaths / day. (34 new cases / day, 3000 active cases, 0.6 deaths / day, per 100,000.)

I'd say you're in better shape than we are.

(https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus)

This always makes me laugh. The virus comes in waves and someone will point out one country is doing “better” when it’s just the fact the country is past the latest wave.

I even saw different regions of my country do this. Fast forward 2 months and the situations are reversed and so is the finger pointing.

It’s absurd.

Nobody is willing to take a stance that strong, because they can't know that for sure. There could be further viral mutations, an unexpectedly sudden decline in immunity from vaccines, a string of unlucky superspreader events, a completely unrelated pandemic, or any of a lot of other uncontrollable, unknowable factors that could make continued restrictions necessary in an almost-fully-vaccinated population.

It's an unfortunate circumstance that 90% of people being fully vaccinated might not be enough to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. Even just 1% of people being unvaccinated makes millions of people who could catch, mutate, and transmit the virus. Especially if those people were loosely clustered together, and didn't take precautions against spreading disease, they could possibly keep the virus active (and hospitals busy) for a long time on their own.

You have no right to tell other people what to do with their bodies.

I agree in theory, but... we as a nation already crossed that boundary ages ago. Kids can't consent to anything, adults can't do certain drugs, adults also can't drink or smoke if they're under 21, and a lot of this isn't even recent. World War II saw the nation doing a lot of gymnastics to avoid letting people do things with their bodies. Further, we already ban certain forms of abortion, and it's not universally controversial that we do.

I think you're arguing from a fictional frame of reference.

Ideologically I'm somewhere in the right half of the spectrum, and even I'll admit that the state has absolutely taken the right to bodily autonomy, and I don't think it's a universally bad thing.

That is a good point. I used to fantasize of living in a fictional world where there is such a thing as inalienable human rights. I struggle to swallow the hard pill that a disease with a survival rate of 99.9% in under 65s has upended that fiction. (BTW, I am not facetious, and the coming winter risks being brutal).

I have long suspected that the modern 80 year life expectancy was a grand illusion. I wonder if the covid pandemic is Mother Nature's way of signalling that the party is over and it's time to return to 'Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenes dum sumus'.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Look, if you could actually show up with actual bodily autonomy then this would be a different conversation.

The fact of the matter is that no one is capable of being autonomous in the face of communicable diseases because if you are infected you turn into a factory for the disease that affects everyone else.

Citing a 99.9% survival rate is disingenuous when it’s infecting everyone. That’s blatantly obvious with Covid shooting up to 2-3 place for cause of death and if recall correctly one of those other major causes of death it’s competing with is cancer which is actually a basket of diseases with unrelated causes.

Even with the vaccine “mandate” the US gov has set, you still have the option to get tested frequently and not be vaccinated.

You can’t refuse the vaccine, refuse to get tested and prove you are immune, and want to walk around uninhibited in public when you could be carrying this disease. That’s not bodily autonomy that’s just saying “fuck you I do what I want” to society, so don’t be surprised when claims of “my body, my choice” or clamoring about rights falls on deaf ears to the rest of society

CDC estimates do show a 99.9% survival rate for the 18-49 age group. Survival rates do decline for the older age groups.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, it's the smart thing to do. But vaccinated people can still carry and spread the virus. They may be somewhat less contagious but we don't have clear data on that yet.

I feel like you read part of my response and then wrote yours immediately.

You are talking about how the vaccinated can spread the virus, which is I agree is true, but ignoring that they can only spread the virus when they get a breakthrough infection. The vaccine massively limits the chance of being infected.

If you cannot recognize the fact that the change of infecting someone else is a function with two variables where x*y where x is a Boolean of isInfected and y is a floating point of chanceOfBeingInfected then I don’t know how we can continue talking as you are in a different reality than I am.

If you get the vaccine your y value in the previous function drops dramatically. If you only look at the x value then of course you won’t see a value in getting vaccinated because you are ignoring the effects of vaccinating

CDC data shows that breakthrough infections are common. Since the virus is now endemic in the worldwide human population and can't be eradicated, all of us can expect to be exposed to it multiple times in our lives (just like the other 4 endemic human coronaviruses). Whether we're exposed by a vaccinated or unvaccinated individual is irrelevant.

Since exposure is inevitable, the smart move is to get vaccinated yourself. And take other steps to maximize your odds of surviving a breakthrough infection.

> CDC data shows that breakthrough infections are common

What do you mean by common? Do you mean that it happens or that it’s the same rate of infection as being unvaccinated? Your argument only works if the breakthrough infections are as “common” as getting infected without the vaccine.

> Whether we're exposed by a vaccinated or unvaccinated individual is irrelevant

But it is relevant that the chance of a vaccinated individual being contagious is _massively_ lower. You can’t argue that breakthrough infections of vaccinated individuals exist, so therefore coming into contact with a vaccinated person is as risky as coming into contact with an unvaccinated person.

You're not thinking this through clearly. Zoom out and consider longer time periods.

For any single interaction, your risk of virus transmission is probably lower with a vaccinated individual than with an unvaccinated individual (although the magnitude of the difference is unclear). But unless you're living as a hermit you're going to be in contact with thousands of people over the next several years. Some of those people will be infected and contagious. So you will inevitably be exposed multiple times.

The length of time does not matter when talking about infection rates and population groups.

If you have two population groups A and B and A has a massively lower infection rate then population group A is not going to have the virus surge through the entire population.

But this is all veering off my original point that you can’t claim bodily autonomy as a reason/right to not take preventative measures like the vaccine if you aren’t actually being autonomous.

It isn't infecting everyone or affecting everyone equally. Generally, more dense and poor areas have higher case rates. It doesn't make sense to apply the same restrictions everywhere, if your odds of catching the virus happen to be slim.

>It isn't infecting everyone or affecting everyone equally.

You are 100% correct. The vaccinated are barely affected while the unvaccinated are heavily affected.

>It doesn't make sense to apply the same restrictions everywhere, if your odds of catching the virus happen to be slim.

Correct again. We should not limit the vaccinated and prevent the unvaccinated who refuse to take routine tests from affecting the public.

Just so you think I am not allowing for any other option. I am 100% fine with someone who takes a Covid test and gets a negative every single day being allowed the same public privilege's as someone who gets the vaccine. My actual issue is with people who conflate not getting the vaccine with not getting tested as well but still somehow being allowed to walk around in public

You deliberately missed my point, which was about how and where the virus spreads, regardless of vaccination rates.

Transmission happens where people are crammed together. The Provincetown case from the summer vividly illustrated how this applies in highly vaccinated populations.

> You deliberately missed my point, which was about how and where the virus spreads, regardless of vaccination rates.

I didn’t deliberately miss your point, I’m saying your point is wrong.

You can’t talk about the “how and where the virus spreads” if you are acting as if vaccinated and unvaccinated populations have the same rate of spread. The existence of breakthrough infections does not invalidate the fact that the vaccine lowers transmission rates in the population.

It isn’t some binary field of isUseful where the presence of single transmission of the virus from someone who is vaccinated flips the value to false

As we delight at the thought of bringing misery to our fellow man, let's take a look at this intriguing report from UK, specifically the covid cases table at page 13 and covid case rates at page 17. Something strange: covid case rates among vaxxed/unvaxxed are roughly the same for >30 age group, showing a 2x-5x decrease in the vaxx population only for younger ages. Me thinks that this data warrants forcing all older people, vaxxed or unvaxxed, take a covid test every living day of their lives to prove their cleanliness and gain the priviledge of walking amongst the rightful. Hmm...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Making a second separate post. As this actually made me question things I went looking down this rabbit hole. Lo and behold this looks like a google bomb of bad material[1]. I then follow this through and find a whole set of people already pointing out how the paper does not claim that the vaccine is known to cause issues and pointing our your cherry-picking[2].

If you are going to spread misinformation across the internet, please at least run your clips through a thesaurus so they aren't a few seconds of googling away to discover the issue.

[1]https://imgur.com/Dgujf3N [2]

I am interested in push back, because the publication is internally inconsistent. One one hand they say on page 5 "With the delta variant, vaccine effectiveness against infection has been estimated at around 65% with Vaxzevria and 80% with Comirnaty", on the other hand their own data says roughly no difference in infection rates between vaxx/unvaxx in >30 age group.

Alas, your link [1] is just a random reddit screenshot and link [2] is accidentally missing.

My apologies for missing that link last night especially as the user appears to have scrubbed the comment. Let me quote the same information I meant to have linked to.

This is from page 12 of your linked source, the bit with words before the nice graphs you wanted me to focus on.

> These data should be considered in the context of vaccination status of the population groups shown in the rest of this report. The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness and there is a high risk of misinterpretation. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is described earlier in this report. In the context of very high vaccine coverage in the population, even with a highly effective vaccine, it is expected that a large proportion of cases, hospitalisations and deaths would occur in vaccinated individuals, simply because a larger proportion of the population are vaccinated than unvaccinated and no vaccine is 100% effective. This is especially true because vaccination has been prioritised in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease. Individuals in risk groups may also be more at risk of hospitalisation or death due to non-COVID-19 causes, and thus may be hospitalised or die with COVID-19 rather than because of COVID-19.

Your own source is saying your interpretation of the data is incorrect and explaining why you’d see higher rates of vaccinated individuals hospitalized. Why are you claiming that the study proves what it says it doesn’t prove?

Thanks for sharing. Just to make it clear, I am in full agreement that covid vaccines are very effective at reducing covid infection severity, especially in older age groups. The document we are discussing confirms as much.

> simply because a larger proportion of the population are vaccinated than unvaccinated and no vaccine is 100% effective.

They are computing case rates. This part of the argument doesn't explain that the case rates are similar in vaccinated vs unvaccinated population.

> This is especially true because vaccination has been prioritized in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease.

The cumulative vaccination uptake rates are 85%+ in >50 ages group, see charts on pages 9-10. While prioritization may have a sizable effect at small vaccination rates, once almost all of the population is vaccinated we have to assume the most of the vaccinated are not 'more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease', otherwise we are simply saying that (almost) everyone is more susceptible. Also, it is 'susceptible of severe disease' not simply 'susceptible of getting infected with covid'. If 10-15% of the population were to have 90% smaller susceptibility to covid infections within the same age group from natural causes, we would have heard about that by now.

For me, the mystery remains.

I could speculate a number of hypotheses, the first one being that there is something about they count 'covid cases' that doesn't match the rest of the literature, but I was unable to find the specific paragraph describing that. Perhaps there is something really dumb that escaped me :(

On the flip side, I also don't have visibility in how 'vaccine effectiveness' rates are computed in the rest of the literature. Perhaps there is something about how other people count 'covid cases' that presents a different picture.

That being said, theirs is a real life measurement of an entire country on natural timeframe, vs. studies that are usually done on population samples on limited timeframes, and then extrapolated to entire countries on natural timeframe. So while this is a single source, it is from a highly credible org with a highly credible setting, making it difficult to dismiss offhand.

For the record, somebody provided an alternate explanation along the lines of 'they are doing a dumb thing'. Specifically, population estimates are less reliable than vaccination counts, and as vaccination rates go near 90% and over, the unreliability greatly increases when computing unvaccinated_estimated = pop_estimate - vaccinated. A corrected graph using a different population estimate:

https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1436017485262823424?s...

> For me, the mystery remains

Same bud, not really sure where to take the conversation if you are dismissing offhand your sources interpretation of the data and then still say

> So while this is a single source, it is from a highly credible org with a highly credible setting, making it difficult to dismiss offhand.

Oh hey, you finally posted data from a not immediately bad source that backed up your point. This is legitimately something that makes me look at the data and question current course.

Now question for you. Do you have other data sets backing this up, or only the single one that goes against the other data sets?

I actually am taking this into account, but a single set of data or studies that purports one conclusion is not going to make me ignore the hundreds of other studies that disagree

> it's time to return to 'Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenes dum sumus'.

Crescat una veritas.

We actually do this quite a bit here in the States (and abroad)!

* Children are required to be vaccinated against several diseases before attending public school

* In Texas (TEXAS!), all university students attending in-person must present proof of a meningitis vaccine

* To travel to many countries you need to present a “yellow card” demonstrating vaccination status against specific diseases.

Certainly, and you have no right to walk around spreading viruses that affect other’s bodies.

Concentration camps for HIV positive people?

There’s no concentration camps for Covid, you can stay home.

You don’t catch hiv by walking by someone positive with it, and if you did like you do with Covid and it caused the same level of casualties then yes I would be all for the measures as we are using against covid

Until your landlord or your bank kick you out for being behind on payments. Which is bound to happen if you can't go outside and, I dunno, work.

I happen to agree with that logic. Corporations have too much power. What I don't agree with is limiting regulation to a few companies based on the current situation.

When Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission got decided on narrow technical grounds this is the kind of thing my political ideology warned about. We gave far too much power to corporations to decide who they do business with. The laws around that sort of power were decided long before everyone could find out some of the most intimate aspects of your life in a few google searches.

The only reason I am against the anti vaxxers/anti covid measure people trying to take down the faang companies ability to stop their speech right now is because they only want to limit corporate power and private property as it extends to themselves.

Look at the florida law for instance that tried to damage social media companies that blocked people based on their political speech unless they owned a theme park, which was an explicit carve out for Disney.

I can get behind a movement that wants to prevent corporations from having enough power to limit individual rights. I cannot get behind a movement that only wants to prevent corporations from limiting rights on a group of people that I believe are hurting me, but will not limit corporations from limiting rights on everyone else.

Either the logic applies to all, or people are lying about caring about rights and just want to be the people on top.

I can't get HIV from sharing the same space as someone who is infected, and it's a crime to knowingly spread HIV.

Where are the camps for people with COVID?

The original post was less specific about that.

that’s disengenous. you can’t get HIV by eg. dining in the same restaurant as someone who is positive. you can with covid.

There are human "rights", and then there is Mother Nature's reality. Rather than thread after thread of arguing over whose fault it is and taking potshots at our respective outgroups, perhaps we should instead consider finding The Experts on reality. Perhaps they do not exist, just as we once did not have various other experts.

I do not understand what point you are trying to make in response to my comment

If you/society do not like people walking around spreading viruses that affect other’s bodies, then perhaps you and society should do something about it.

For example, when the covid virus broke out on the scene, some experts developed a vaccine that seems to be pretty darn good at rectifying the situation. Now there seems to be a related but different problem: a fair amount of people who are opposed to taking that vaccine (walking around spreading viruses that affect other’s bodies), so perhaps a similar approach should be taken: find some people with expertise in the problem, and let them do their thing (maybe throw a few ten or hundred million at them to grease the wheels). As it is, the people who have been tasked with this job seem to be not performing up to the expectations of lots of people, so it might be a good idea to start looking for some who can.

We(society) are doing something about it. The convincing based on logic is over and now economic pressure and choosing who or who not to associate with is occurring.

I am sorry that you can’t have your hand held every step of the way as you and your group continually shit on everything and put the rest of us at risk.

Sucks to suck for everyone who loses their job cause they want to take a stance. They’ll be remembered as martyrs should they be proven right, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

> Based on my observations, when people lose their income (particularly as a result of policies they disagree with), they often become angry. On one hand, this can be enjoyable for observers. But then on the other hand, sometimes Mother Nature has a surprise in store that more than makes up for the pleasure. Let's hope for everyone's sake that this is not one of the times that the law of unintended consequences pays us a visit.

Would you mind not being cryptic and stating what you actually mean? I don’t expect people to find my beliefs tasteful or agree with them, but I am laying them out on the table to discuss at least.

Domestic terrorism is one potential outcome that doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

If your claim is "handle these people with carebear gloves or they are gonna domestic terrorism you", then I ask you to consider why that logic would not work in reverse. If you have an entire group of people saying "let me spread this virus amongst your people and if you even try to say I am wrong, I will terrorize your people" what do you think the response from any rational group is?

While you haven't said it directly as you are, in my opinion, a coward. I see how you are implying that society should let the crazy do as they like or they will attack anyone who disagrees.

You should consider how well that went for the Confederate States of America when they decided their gumption could dominate industrial might and innovation.

Good luck sir, Mother Nature has a surprise in store for those who think they can outfeel logistics. Say hi your boog bois too

Thank you for the advice, and I offer some in return: be careful to not mistake what seems to be for what actually is.

Likewise, they have the responsibility not to harm other people with their bodies.

Yeah, because in the USA nobody ever instituted vaccine mandates until COVID happened. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot about all the vaccines we require children to receive before they can go to school.

> Oh wait, sorry, I forgot about all the vaccines we require children to receive before they can go to school.

Weren't those just for public schools? If someone was homeschooled, couldn't they have made it to adulthood without those vaccines, and then never again be asked about them?

It's amazing how vaccine mandates weren't freedom stealing socialism until now.

Until now, which vaccines did you have to show a vaccine card and photo ID to prove you have every time you go to a restaurant?

Until now, what public health crisis would have necessitated it?

You have no right to spread disease and exacerbate a public health emergency.

This pandemic isn't a scenario in a board game where the rules are clear cut and easy to parse. A lot of the "wishy-washy"-ness that people attribute to the CDC is actually just them responding to the changing situation on the ground. People demand to know what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to return to normal so answers are given - but those answers will change as our understanding evolves.

Vaccinations save lives - and not only your own. Do it.

It's actually only around 60% of the nation that's got a single dose or more. We aren't anywhere close to 98%.

Specifically, 55.07% (fully) and 8.47% (partially).

(https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)

He likely means the Adult and eligible population, we are close to 80% if not higher that has at least a single dose.

I meant vaccination targets, according to recent remarks by the President. I edited the OP accordingly.

Vaccines make people who are vaccinated almost entirely immune. The current outbreak is a plague of the unvaccinated largely

Not quite true. Vaccines protect people against the worst effects, but they're not as effective against infection. So a lot of unvaccinated people with the disease might have caught it from vaccinated people. (I'm pro-vaccination, I just don't like the practice of blaming it all on the unvaccinated people.)

No, it does not. It only prevents serious cases.

If vaccinations encourage new variants is a total different question. It is very possible. Evolutionary pressure is a bitch.

> No, it does not. It only prevents serious cases.

That's not true either. Double vaccination completely prevents infection (even asymptomatic infection) in 50-70% of cases. See e.g. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/227713/coronavirus-infection...

> If vaccinations encourage new variants is a total different question. It is very possible. Evolutionary pressure is a bitch.

Fewer infected people means fewer mutations. As to whether those fewer mutations spread better (thanks to selective pressure)? It's a legitimate question, but thankfully the answer appears to be the no, the opposite, thanks to the neutralising antibody response. See https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/142544990582960128...