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Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:32PM (#28753065)
We have ample evidence that the current vaccines reduce COVID's spread[1].

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z

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Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:43PM (#28753227)
I don't know what the Provincetown study is, but see above for up-to-date evidence that vaccines continue to be effective at reducing transmission.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by ipaddr on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:03PM (#28753471)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/30/provincetow...

Whatever you do, please understand that if you had the vaccine it doesn't mean that you cannot transmit covid.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:14PM (#28753581)
Who said “cannot”? It’s about reduction.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by munk-a on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:01PM (#28753454)
Please link your sources and highlight the relevant information.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by iammisc on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:35PM (#28753097)
Hold on hold on... this article makes the claim you're trying to show, but then immediately backtracks on the currently most-spreading strain.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:38PM (#28753150)
They don't "backtrack." Nature is a scientific publication, so they don't make claims before the evidence supports them. The article is from July, before we had strong evidence of the vaccine's effectiveness at reducing transmission agains the Delta strain.

Here's a research summary from last month[1] that shows that vaccines continue to perform strongly at transmission reduction.

Edit: A direct link to the NEJM study (9/8/21) showing reduced transmission[2].

[1]: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/09/covid-va...

[2]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2106757

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by iammisc on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:49PM (#28753304)
Yes, they did backtrack. They said the vax prevents COVID spread. Then in the next phrase said.. but we don't know about Delta yet. At the time of publication, delta was the most commonly spreading variant. That means they made a claim 'the vax prevents COVID spread' that had an unknown truth value at the time, especially in the context of contemporaneous events.

The second link you provided is actually relevant. Thanks.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:56PM (#28753388)
I think it's a remarkable stretch to frame responsible editing ("the current evidence suggests reduced transmission with vaccination, but there's a confounding unknown") as "backtracking."
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by iammisc on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:12PM (#28753563)
Except, this is like saying the current flu vaccine provides 100% resistance to the 1918 spanish flu, while leaving out that it doesn't work for this year's virus. All perhaps statements that could be considered true, but not useful if it's dealing with current events.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @09:02PM (#28754353)
Nobody uses language like “100% resistance” when talking about diseases. That’s not what the Nature article claims, and not what any reputable source would claim.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by david38 on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:15PM (#28753590)
Just because Delta was spreading doesn’t mean they had time to do a study on it. You have to look at the paper’s submission date.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by beerandt on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:46PM (#28753854)
Which is fine- but that also means it isn't applicable to the current variant.

If you say it's too old to study the current virus, it's also too old to justify any treatments or policy with the current virus.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by woodruffw on Monday October 04, 2021 @09:07PM (#28754382)
Viral changes are incremental; research needs to be updated as changes occur, but it would be extraordinary for it to be invalidated outright. Thus far, the research has mostly shown incremental changes to transmissibility &c., changes that do not warrant significant policy shifts. Getting vaccinated continues to be an excellent public health policy and goal.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by beerandt on Monday October 04, 2021 @09:32PM (#28754521)
That's not what I'm saying- people are picking and choosing when to apply marginal changes to questionably applicable research and when not to.

The same people saying "close enough" with vaccine transmissibility trials based on the original virus applying to delta, are the same ones saying natural immunity transmissibility studies done on the original virus don't apply to delta.

And now that we've got real numbers on natural immunity that beat vaccination (alone) numbers, that number is no longer "good enough"?

BS. It's not just moving goal posts, it's completely different moving goalposts for each side.

ETA:

>extraordinary for it to be invalidated outright.

Actually, if the whole "vaccinated cases are usually so mild you don't have symptoms" is true, and the Israeli research about viral loads for break through cases being as high as unvaccinated cases is also true...

Then vaccinated workers at a hospital could very well be worse, because they'd be transmitting the virus and infecting patients, while being less likely to have symptoms making them aware that they're likely infected and causing harm.

That's not exactly far fetched, based on current claims.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by jjwiseman on Monday October 04, 2021 @11:20PM (#28755156)
> And now that we've got real numbers on natural immunity that beat vaccination (alone) numbers

You know what gives far superior protection than natural immunity gained via infection? Getting vaccinated after having been infected. You're more than twice as likely to be re-infected if you've had COVID once and don't get vaccinated vs. having COVID and then getting vaccinated[1]. So even if you've had COVID, if you take the free, extremely safe vaccine you are now less than half as likely to be re-infected, which likely means you're much less likely to spread it to someone else.

> Then vaccinated workers at a hospital could very well be worse, because they'd be transmitting the virus and infecting patients, while being less likely to have symptoms making them aware that they're likely infected and causing harm.

This is something that anti-vax people seem to like to bring up as a possibility with no data to back it up. The data we actually do have[2], by directly measuring the secondary attack rate ("chance that an infected person infects another person") actually shows that vaccinated people are less likely to infect others.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... 2. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by AndrewBissell on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @09:00AM (#28758783)
How do you know the vaccine is safe to take after having recovered from infection? That has never been studied in a rigorous way, recovered individuals were excluded from the trials.

People keep bringing up these studies and links to research that was conducted before the Delta variant became dominant. Are you all simply unaware that it's not relevant anymore?

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by lamontcg on Monday October 04, 2021 @08:22PM (#28754092)
No, Vaccinated People Are Not ‘Just as Likely’ to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/the-vaccin...

The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha & Delta variant transmission

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v...

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by tomrod on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:34PM (#28753087)
Usually I would respond with a scientific source to correct your claim. However, since that has already been added to comments, I am really curious. How did you arrive at your current conclusion?
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by AndrewBissell on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:44PM (#28753239)
A CDC prison study of a Delta variant outbreak showing an attack rate of 93% on unvaccinated inmates & staff versus 89% for those vaccinated more than 4 months prior: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7038e3.htm

Another example of a major outbreak in a 96% vaccinated and high PPE setting: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...

No relationship between case rates and vaccination across 68 countries: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by jjwiseman on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:02PM (#28753464)
I feel like you've posted evidence that vaccines are effective at reducing spread (in addition, of course, to being extremely effective at reducing deaths).

The CDC prison study says "The attack rate was higher among unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons (39 of 42, 93% versus 129 of 185, 70%; p = 0.002)."

The Eurosurveillance article you posted says "The calculated attack rate among all exposed patients and staff was 10.6% (16/151) for staff and 23.7% (23/97) for patients, in a population with 96.2% vaccination rate (238 vaccinated/248 exposed individuals)." Do you think that indicates that vaccines don't reduce spread? What do you think the attack rate would be in an unvaccinated population?

The European Journal of Epidemiology article isn't actually trying to look at vaccine effectiveness in reducing spread. It has some interesting information, but that's not what it's about.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by lamontcg on Monday October 04, 2021 @08:35PM (#28754166)
So the prison study is of tightly packed inmates and shows a high attack rate and bears on infectivity during an oubreak. There is literally nothing in there on onwards transmission from the vaccinated or in contact tracing because it was most likely quite impossible to do.

That study cannot be used to disprove the idea that the unvaccinated inmates all gave the virus to the vaccinated ones. That is almost certainly wrong and there should have been some onwards transmission from the vaccinated, but that sentence is quite literally correct. The study says nothing about it.

Meanwhile I've posted elsewhere:

The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha & Delta variant transmission

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v...

That study is real world contact tracing.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by tomlockwood on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:46PM (#28753276)
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by AndrewBissell on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:52PM (#28753338)
I don't dispute that the vaccines may be effective in reducing hospitalizations & deaths from Covid but that's a separate question from whether and how much they reduce transmission.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by prawn on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:04PM (#28753474)
I know your entry to the conversation was about transmission, but the broader context here seems to be about hospital staffing, which would make hospitalisation vs cases the more useful question.
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by AndrewBissell on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @09:25AM (#28759090)
Not sure I understand your point? Are you saying that the capacity gains from preventing the marginal addition to ICU occupancy of unvaccinated nurses who become sick and need hospitalization will outweigh the capacity impacts of firing them all?
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by beerandt on Monday October 04, 2021 @07:55PM (#28753907)
No- it's about whether a 4% reduction (or 40%, or whatever marginal rate) in transmission is cause for termination, when we know that "compliant” employees, in a near 100% vaccinated population will still transmit the virus.

More so if the argument is that the hospital patient population is especially vulnerable.

We don't even know if the likelihood of transmission is reduced enough to affect over number of transmissions.

Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by tomlockwood on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:56PM (#28753382)
Re:New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvacc... by AndrewBissell on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @09:24AM (#28759067)
The vaccinated and unvaccinated are tested at very different rates, this is comparing apples and oranges.