If you have more robust information though I’d like to know of it.
Edit: please note this was published in dec 29 2021, with data up to that point, and therefore also incorporates omicron.
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
Why?
Actual studies that look at evidence and test hypotheses seem to suggest that mRNA vaccines are effective.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that do it, so please stop doing it.
The vaccine efficacy (how well it teaches the body) and the body's own anti-body efficacy (how effective the anti-bodies are against the virus) also have a role to play.
Thus, a vaccinated person can still be infected, and can even spread the virus around. The sooner the virus is dealt with within their body, the sooner they no longer have a virus to spread. Isolation helps sooner, too. It is therefore possible for a triple vaccinated person to still get infected and to test positive for the infection.
Among various benefits of being vaccinated are the lowered load on hospital staff. The number of hospital beds and even oxygen cylinders does not matter as much as the availability of hospital staff. This pandemic helped highlight that around the world, there are already only a limited number of doctors and nurses, and that both of them are already over-worked. For e.g., I did not know that 30-hour shifts are considered normal. It got me thinking that I wouldn't want to risk receiving care from an over-worked and tired medical care giver whose judgement might have been impaired from sheer exhaustion.
Many of us vaccinated people are now able to safely isolate at home when we are infected with the Covid virus. We rush to hospitals only when the anti-bodies that we create are unable to deal with the Covid 19 virus. Over-worked hospital staff thus focus on a far lesser number of patients. There are now more beds available for those who need them. These included those vaccinated but ill enough to require external medical care, not-yet vaccinated, vaccine-hesitant, those who can't be vaccinated, those who won't be vaccinated.
Really, this pandemic won't truly end until we isolate and end the spread of the virus. Being vaccinated planet-wide and reducing the load on the hospital is our next best bet to ensure that those who need the medical care have less-overworked staff and beds and oxygen cylinders.
The various successful track record of anti-vaxx conspiracies, the true stories of the greed of medical companies/hospitals, the CIA messing with the polio vaccine in Pakistan + Afghanistan, the might-is-right approach by which some countries grab vaccines and waste them while other countries do not receive even a single dose, the hiding of data to save "face" and reputation, the political attacks based on data, politicians speaking up instead of scientists, scientists not knowing how to speak to media, media irresponsibly reporting news - all of these contribute to a general decline in the acceptance of vaccines.
In my lifetime, polio was almost-eradicated. Smallpox was eradicated even earlier. I am hopeful that in time, we'll all pull up our socks and eradicate Covid-19 as well.
This is just false and if you believe in the science, you believe in the scientific method, the scientific method shows that this is false. See this https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc211927
Plenty of people are going to the hospital with omicron so it isn't mild for everyone. It's milder than previous strains and it's especially mild for vaccinated people.
Ahhh never mind. You didn’t actually read the data. You just scanned through it. If you look look more thoroughly it doesn’t address omicron at all. The last data I could see was from December 14. Omicron was not prevalent at that point, delta was. The vaccine offered some, but not much, protection against infection from delta.
If you look at vaccine doses per person over time, and graph of cases per person over time, in one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, you see not only no effect, but the worst effect happening at the most-vaxxed time. If they stop transmission the effect at this point is miniscule. If you didn't label the first graph, you might be tempted to blame it for the second graph.
(nota bene, vaccines show a clear effect in reduction in death.)
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Actually Denmark has even more vaccines, and an even greater case uptick: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Among those infected with Omicron, hospitalization and intensive care rates are much higher in unvaccinated...
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...
If South Africa ended up fairing far better than a country with similar demographics and higher vaccination rates, it would be relevant, but there's not data to make that comparison, because other countries are much earlier in the Omicron wave.
Just pointing out that JAMA says SA has a vaccination rate of 44.3% as of Dec 2021; if you're gonna attack statistics it's a good idea to have the right numbers.
However this is again a casual Google for a single state. If you have more information that says otherwise please let me know. Thank you!
Bullshit. Stop spreading misinformation.
The unvaccinated are banned as means to put social and financial pressure on individuals to get the vaccine. It is an unfortunate misconception that any of the currently-approved intramuscular vaccines reduce transmission to a meaningful degree.
This social and financial pressure is placed on individuals because urban hospitals do not have the money or resources to deal with the rate at which they're admitting patients for severe Covid-19, and most of the patients they're admitting are unvaccinated.
Vaccination reduces the infection rate. [0] You can't transmit the virus if you aren't infected in the first place. Other studies have shown that people with breakthrough infections have a shorter period in which they can transmit.
[0] BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Mass Vaccination Setting https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2101765
This is another misconception. Our best evidence is that they're extremely effective. The problem is they're not quite effective enough to just go back to life as before since newer variants are extremely virulent.
Vaccines absolutely do reduce transmission from the vaccinated outward.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/22...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-l...
Even given the typical bias of the media it’s still astonishing that Biden got a complete and utter free pass from the media for propagating this idea by basically giving everyone - vaccinated or not - a “mandate” that they no longer needed to wear a mask this past spring / late summer, all for PR points to make it look like the virus had been defeated.
I personally don't because I know about autoimmune diseases, but hey, you seem to be of that "crowd" who only talks in quotes because they don't understand much.
Let's not be willfully disingenuous here. Obviously, the types of "vaccine" injuries or potential long-term problems that many people are fearful about don't dissipate into the ether.
Interestingly, your comparison is relevant, but you are responding to an argument which I don't think is being made. The OP is _not_ arguing that vaccines shouldn't be mandatory because they aren't 100% effective.
On the contrary, the OP's argument is that since vaccines are relatively effective, one person's choice to not get vaccinated will not effect the others, and it should be up to them.
Your seatbelt example is relevant, in that the same "no-harm-to-others" argument can be made in that case too.
If you're not seriously doing your part, then you are actively supporting the virus and working against all the rest of the population that is either unable to get critical care or just tirelessly working in the healthcare sector treating all those avoidable critical patients.
But it will effect others:
> But here’s the thing. A crankish libertarian – I count myself as one – might understand that seatbelts save lives, and still object to being required to wear one, on personal freedom grounds. That’s perhaps tenable when it comes to seatbelt laws, since the only life in peril from not wearing one is your own.
> But vaccines not only make it less likely that you will be infected, suffer or die: They also make it less likely that you will infect others, to suffer and die – and infect still more people – in their turn. (And yes, despite what you might have heard, the evidence[1] is also clear[2] that vaccines reduce transmission rates.) This is hardly a theoretical concern, in the midst of a pandemic that has already claimed nearly 30,000 Canadian lives.
> So if anything the case for vaccine mandates is even stronger than it is for seatbelt laws. The cost to personal freedom – a jab in the arm – is slight. The risk of adverse side-effects is negligible. The savings in human lives is provably enormous. How on earth could so many otherwise sensible[3] people have persuaded themselves otherwise?
* https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-is-the-case-...
There is a "pragmatic libertarian" argument too, which goes like this: The mandatory jab is much less costly to civil liberties than lockdowns, and if the virus is not quelled, the political support for lockdowns will only increase.
There is a whole bunch of issues and trade-offs involved. [1] People have strong feelings on this [2], and discussion is often reduced to partisan "rallying cries".
[1]: e.g. see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759089
[2]: Which is somewhat understandable, some of us have lost loved ones, lost jobs, been down the dumps, felt like being in "house arrest", couldn't even hit the gym, witnessed all the paltering by the media etc.
In an incident, an un-seat-belted occupant can turn into a projectile and harm or kill others in the vehicle that might be wearing seatbelts.
I actually think the analogy is a relatively good one. Parallels also also run for the question of how much "paternalism" do we want (the limits of "for-your-own-good" argument). Interests of insurance providers (whether social or private) is also involved in both cases.
In the case of vaccines, immunocompromised people's health is also a consideration. And there is the issue of side-effects, especially for young people. And there is "bodily autonomy". And the stress on healthcare system, etc.
I think there could reasonable discussion about these issues. However, the sad reality is that things quickly get reduced to repeating trite "rallying cries".
That's the difference.
https://www.hrreporter.com/labour/news/fort-mcmurray-alta-tr...
>> No store would deny you entrance for that
You can’t really wear a seatbelt into a store but i can cite examples of being denied service for refusing to wear one (taxi, airplane, fun fair ride, etc.)
>> No government will deny basic services to you for that
You get fined by the government if you don’t wear a seatbelt.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/worl...
While I do agree that wearing a seatbelt is in most cases a good idea, there still do exist people who are opposed to the mandatory seatbelt laws (even decades after they were introduced).
A better example would be driving drunk, given that you are at an increased risk of injuring others.
Remember that a seatbelt also prevents your body from being a projectile that would be launched against other people in an accident, you're not just a danger to yourself when you don't wear one.
Let’s talk about heart disease! Let’s talk about racial and sex disparities in heart disease. Let’s talk about class disparities in heart disease. Let’s talk about why these disparities exist.
Public health is super fascinating and very complicated. We should be talking about it more!
Also you can take the seatbelt off when you get out of the car.
It's still nonsense (click it or ticket laws), but you gotta pick your battles. Though I'm ready to murder the people who invented/mandated "beep incessantly if the seatbelt is not clicked, even if the car is stationary".
Yes, intramuscular vaccines for sars-cov-2 work, for about 6 months, to significantly reduce the likelyhood of serious disease in the internal organs. They do this by getting your body to produce serum igG antibodies against the shape of the spike protein produced, or delivered, by whatever mechanism. They also train your T cells to recognize more broad coronavirus epitopes that hold up longer against changes in spike coding.
But the igG antibodies in the body serum produced by intramuscular vaccination do not appear in any useful quantity in the upper respiratory mucosa (a different immune compartment). And the T cells definitely do not get there. The upper respiratory mucosa is where respiratory viral diseases infect. Intramuscular vaccination does not protect against sars-cov-2 infection of the upper respiratory mucosa. It just means that your lungs, which have some serum igG antibodies seep in, are protected and your body organs are protected. You can and do still get infected and transmit the virus to others at the same rate as the un-intramuscularly vaccinated.
The intramuscularly vaccinated should not be exempted from any mask requirements and people really, really have to become aware of this if we're going to stop the pandemic. It's either that or intranasal vaccination, the smart move, like India is pushing towards. Enough of the intramuscular boosters. We need intranasal to stop the spread.
Pretending intramuscular vaccination is some be all end all that stops spread is stupid and deadly. It is only the first partial step.
Enforcing everyone to take the jabs increases those subsidies (this enforcement is persistent in all countries submissive to USA). That's what makes sense.
However, don't assert altruism because there isn't any. The 'save lives' campaign is just a coating to make things easy for the general public to swallow.
1. It’s harder for the virus to enter your body 2. If it gets in, you will get less sick (lower chance of symptoms) 3. Your body will fight it off faster 4. The virus has a harder time replicating in your body
Due to 2, 3 and 4, the ability to transmit virus to others goes down.
Antivaxxers can be execrated for all I care - dumbest way to enforce your freedom
And yet, case counts have never been higher than now, a year into vaccines and infections.
Ah, but Omicron you may say. Well doesn’t that imply that the vaccine isn’t terribly effective against that strain? Yet the answer seem to be “just keep getting more injections of the same vaccine formulation.”
Perhaps one or more of our fundamental assumptions are wrong. Maybe the vaccines aren’t actually that effective (Israel is on dose number 4 within a calendar year…). Or maybe PCR tests cranked to an absurd number of cycles aren’t actually detecting what we think they are (an actual infection versus some dead cells in the nasal passage).
c'mon, you're at least a year behind the conspiracy theory state of the art, we're on vaccine infertility now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testin...?
I'm a bit confused by this article. AFAIK PCR tests are only reporting a positive at 35 cycles. The author of the article is correct that it is run for 40 cycles often, but this is only because a positive between 36-40 cycles indicates "unclear result" and the test is repeated with a different assay targeting a different component of the virus. Positive is only reported at 35 cycles max.
This should not pick up any "dead cells", it will pick up viral mRNA. There is a concern over picking up low loads, but the mRNA is still there.
Or maybe it saved yours and your girlfriend’s life.
It’s hard to say on a case-by-case basis which is why we depend on population-level data.
Vaccines reduce spread. Even if it doesn’t stop spread completely it’s still a significant factor.
There are a number of studies both identifying a mechanism for covid to have reduced spread due to vaccine and verifying that this occurs empirically. The difference is decreased with newer variants but:
1. Hybrid immunity is even stronger at reducing spread and only possible with prior vaccination
2. There is still non-negligible reduced spread which can be impactful.
In this case, they don't.
You're right that there's no definite answer to this, but the general consensus among doctors is that it doesn't prevent the virus from spreading.
“ In a November press conference, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said that the vaccines were 60 percent protective against spreading the virus prior to the arrival of the delta variant. That number has dropped to 40 percent post-Delta. Omicron may worsen the problem, if, as suspected, it is more transmissible and leads to many more breakthrough infections.”
OTOH, the measures that are being implemented for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated are out of proportion based on the evidence we have.
At some point, there is no realistic difference between R=10 and R=7. Everyone is getting this. Some of us have known that since March 2020.
If your theory includes "avoid being infected with coronavirus" and you live in a democratic country it is a flawed theory. Only full home isolation or hazmat suit rituals will suffice.
If you attempt to spread it out and succeed, you're at 100% capacity basically all of the time, plus 99% of people get to deal with the fact that coronavirus restrictions are utterly miserable.
Omicron has probably made all of this irrelevant anyway, it's so contagious that effectively everyone who goes outside is getting it this month. 1 in 15 in London right now and that's only the confirmed cases I believe.
"Everyone" is a significant stretch. Yeah its seriously contagious but you, an engineer, should know better than deal with such absolutes. Viruses burn out long before they infect everyone, even without vaccines and even if they're extremely contagious.
We're not far off 1 in 5 _confirmed_ in the UK and most of that was pre Omicron.
Based on the experience of my friendship group I believe that huge numbers of people have probably had it and not even noticed. I finally had a positive test and it was indistinguishable from the other 30 times I've woken up a bit tired in the morning over the past two years.
You have to remember that a lot of people aren't tuned in to the "omg test every time you move" stuff.
Unmitigated spread accelerates evolution. Mitigating the spread slows it down.
Vaccines work the same way car seat belts and airbags do: they improve the/your odds. They make you much less likely to be infected, and because less likely to be infected, less likely to pass it on.
> If seatbelt-wearers outnumber non-wearers by four to one, but account for roughly the same number of deaths, it suggests seatbelt-wearers are about one-fourth as likely to die in an accident as non-wearers. That shocking statistic turns out to be not so shocking as all that.
* https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-is-the-case-...
* https://archive.fo/ayjkf (for paywall)
"Unvaccinated 60 times more likely to end up in ICU with COVID-19, Ontario data shows"
* https://globalnews.ca/news/8230051/covid-vaccine-hospitaliza...
Very odd.