> What is stopping infections and deaths? The vaccine.

Vaccinated people still get and spread infections - They simply dont get much symptoms from it.

This kind of comment is exactly why people don't understand what the "vaccines" actually do.

You need to believe vaccines stop infections to be able to blame the unvaccinated for the continuation of the pandemic.

I don’t blame the unvaccinated for the continuation of the pandemic, but they can clearly be blamed for overflowing hospitals. The vaccine sharply reduces severe symptoms and long term symptoms.

which overflowed hospitals?

You need to believe that vaccines stop an adequate proportion of the infections between vaccinated individuals to believe full vaccination would end the pandemic[1].

But you don't even have to believe that when it comes to the relevance of the pandemic. Looking at the number of people who are vaccinated (or bellow vaccination age) and go to hospital or die in my country it would be a severe but acceptable flu season. Does every severe flu season need a pandemic response?

(1- Within the round of first infections. You can actually believe that it is insufficient on contagion but ends viable mutation and will end the pandemic by using delta as a booster.)

Ah, the old ‘vaccinations will prevent mutations’ fantasy.

Even if you believe it is possible to vaccinate the entire human population world wide and that vaccinations prevent infections, covid spreads through animal reservoirs. Are you suggesting we can vaccinate all animals?

Mutation in animals typically lower it's viability in humans. So the question is if I have been vaccinated and there aren't enough unvaccinated people to jam hospitals, why do I continue to care about viruses in animal populations that are just like any other virus that might pop up the next time someone licks a bat?

If I'm willing to take any sort of vaccine for it when it becomes viable again in humans, then I'm safer once it is purely in animals than I was before it was present in humans.

> Mutation in animals typically lower it's viability in humans.

What is that based on? The Marseille IV mutation of COVID19 came from an animal reservoir and had no issue to cross species and it was one of the deadliest variants.

I don’t know why you continue to care. All I see are people clinging to their precious mask mandates and pushing for vaccine booster shots, with the ‘hospitals are filling up’ and ‘the unvaccinated cause mutations’ excuses. But as has been known from at least a year ago, hospitals are filling up with the vulnerable population so that would leave no reason for vaccine mandates on the not vulnerable population, like young people, and vaccinations do not prevent mutations.

There are breakdown for hospitalized in Switzerland:

https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/vaccination/breakthrough

Switzerland runs with a much higher infection rate and faster economy than Germany because it has many more beds per million. These beds are being occupied by more 20 somethings without than 80 somethings with vaccination.

I'm annoyed by the slowness of things in Switzerland, I'm impacted by the even more absurd slowness of things in Germany. And all of this is from people who voted down pesticide regulations and water regulations so they don't care what ends up in my body.

The west behaving this way on public health while viewing libertarian ideals as justified whenever they are economically good and accidentally hurt people is the kind of insult to morals that I think correlates to western decline.

Cumulative numbers for the entire length of the pandemic:

  Hospitalizations for 0-9: 199
  Hospitalizations for 10-19: 85
  Hospitalizations for 80+: 2142

Breakthrough hospitalizations:

  60-69: 47
  70-79: 73
  80+: 107

I’m not sure what you’re seeing in this data. Perhaps if you pick and choose age groups you can make it look like more young people end up in hospitals than old vaccinated people. But you’d have be really selective.

20-29 is twenty something, already they need more beds than the 80%+ of 80+ year olds that vaccinated and those 20 somethings aren't the ones who know they had a medical problem unless they were seven orders of stupid and still didn't vaccinate.

Looking at the older working age groups we have more than 50% vaccinated in most and something like 100X less chance the vaccinated go to hospital. So if you hate restrictions then get vaccinated so we don't have to come up with creative ways to protect a hospital bed from you.

*Those numbers are not since the pandemic began but since the vaccination began. The oldest age group and people with health issues were vaccinated first so comparisons should be biased against the vaccinated, but it is too effective to see that bias.

You do know it is possible for people to be vaccinated and still be against vaccination mandates?

Anyway as you insist on calling people stupid and just want to force your opinion on others I’m through discussing you.

To be clear I'm saying the only way I know to make:

> hospitals are filling up with the vulnerable population

From the Swiss numbers is to really assume the worst in people.

>Vaccinated people still get and spread infections

With a better immune response, infected people are also less contagious. So technically, yes, vaccines stop the infections.

> infected people are also less contagious.

Complete bullshit. It has been demonstrated in several publications that the viral load among vaccinated people is just as high as unvaccinated people, and viral load in key areas like the nose is what spreads infections.

The vaccines are not stopping infections.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

Other studies show the vaccines provide between 40-70% reduction in COVID-19 Delta infections.[0]

Looking at your link, it looks like the comparisons they make are purely based on COVID case counts and vaccination percentages. There are other factors that need to be considered: counties with higher vaccination rates in the USA are also likely to have a higher rate of testing, due to the politics of COVID (people who are more afraid of COVID are both more likely to be vaccinated and more likely to get a test when sick). At the country scale, it seems like something similar may be going on: they compare Portugal and Israel with the poorer countries of South Africa and Vietnam and state their case rates are similar. But different countries are using different policies which may affect the infection rate there. For instance, Vietnam has used lockdowns and border closures in recent months to slow the spread of the virus,[1] while Portugal with its high vaccination rates has recently removed almost all COVID restrictions.[2]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/covid-protection-for-the-ful...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Vietnam#M...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/portugal-lift-most-rema...

There is currently no reduction in infections among double vaccinated people in Israel. Waning protection against infection means that any study giving a single number for reduction is a snapshot of a situation in the past, not a predictor. Perhaps staggered booster administration in 3 month intervals could achieve a constant reduction approaching 90%.

Many Israelis have received a booster shot. Comparing “double vaccinated” population there would need to take into account and adjust for the reasons why that segment of the population did not receive a booster. Otherwise you aren’t comparing like for like.

Using a country that had not given out boosters, like the USA or UK until recently, you’d get a better idea of the efficacy of the vaccine against Delta infections.

Moreover even in Israel the daily cases among double vaccinated are less than those among the unvaccinated. Look at the chart here https://www.ft.com/content/a1b2fd70-71b5-4e91-be0b-553b0e1e2... The line for “Two dose” cases per 100k among over 60 year olds is below unvaccinated since august 15 and continually remains less.

90%? No, that’s too high, but for instance data from public health England is saying the vaccines have around 15-45% efficacy (or 40-80% if doses 8+ weeks apart) against covid-19 infection after 25+ weeks, not 0%. https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1437890711139995...

I have commented about this load of crap elsewhere. In short: they add include complete nonsense - statistics from Africa and 3 specific outliers - Israel, Mongolia (both vaccinated very quickly) and Malaysia (got into large wave just before vaccination started to ramp up).

That high level overview doesn't really mean it isn't stopping infections. In a place with ~50% vaccination a larger portion of unvaccinated are taking additional isolation precautions either by intelligence or by force, but infection could primarily be from a minority of super spreaders to others, etc so this data doesn't indicate that the current transmission mode would be possible in a highly vaccinated population.

…but there are highly vaccinated populations with high infection rates, right? If the vaccines actually stopped infections, this should not be possible. There is a brief window (1-2 months) where the vaccines reduce infections by up to 95%, but that number drops quickly. After six months, there is virtually no reduction.

> …but there are highly vaccinated populations with high infection rates, right?

Israel is about the highest examined and it is not high enough to know how a control group of vaccinated verse unvaccinated individuals would fare in a place where any other individual was vaccinated or bellow 12.

95% was in a retail lock down environment. In the current environment I am having hundreds of interactions a week with the unvaccinated and if I were unvaccinated would have far fewer, obviously a test run in this environment should achieve less than 95% and may appear that vaccination causes COVID because the economy is running on acceptable risks.

The paper also examined individual counties in the US and found no correlation. There have been numerous outbreaks within fully vaccinated groups. You can speculate that these outbreaks would've been even bigger if these groups weren't vaccinated, but ultimately the virus spreads no matter what. The word "stop" to me implies an end to viral spread, not an indeterminate amount of reduction - that's a "slowdown".

> but ultimately the virus spreads no matter what.

No, the virus spreads as a function of what actions you take and society slows based on what actions you take. If no one is dieing or going to hospital you choose economy and cases go up but if you are highly vaccinated then the consequences are not enough to not open up further and you run with higher numbers of known cases.

A correlation study is irrelevant to how effective vaccination is, just as any other intervention might appear ineffective if it allows systems to remove stricter restrictions with higher societal impact or makes people feel safe enough to participate in additional activities.

Some unvaccinated people in my town feel safe enough to do things because more people are safe and are doing them than in a town with no vaccination and more conservative average behavior, that doesn't mean the vaccine didn't work.