> I will be what the vaccines (falsely) claimed they would make me: immune

This really isn't true — actual experts never claimed that you would be 100% immune to everything forever. The vaccines performed as advertised against earlier strains and even with Omicron's substantially greater immune evasion compared to those earlier strains they're still quite effective at keeping people from having severe cases, which is exactly as the scientists described them — and that still seems to be better than natural immunity.

The end game here is vaccination: the U.S. has a low rate and that means that we're seeing the same medical system overload as before. Vaccination mandates are what will keep that from happening so that's what we should be focusing on as the metric for relaxing safety measures.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on reports like [0] that lots of covid cases at hospitals are incidental (e.g 60% from these 2 US hospitals), and even the ones that are admitted for covid are not requiring intubation?

It seems a little late in the game to be banging the mandate drum.

[0] https://coloradosun.com/2022/01/12/colorado-covid-omicron-ho...

I generally like Ed Yong’s take on for versus with:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/01/for-covid...

> It seems a little late in the game to be banging the mandate drum.

I think it’s other way around: vaccines are what’s making it close to the end by reducing the severity of cases. Mandates avoid delays and reduce the collateral damage — once we get <5, that should be enough to keep the hospitals running smoothly.

I need to digest that article a little more, but on the mandates piece, what do you mean by < 5? R0?

If a mandate came out tomorrow in the US, and you got everyone their next shot that day, what do you think would happen?

It takes 2 weeks for the effectiveness to fully kick in, and I think I recall hearing that there may even be a potential little temporary dip in immunity directly after the shots. Omicron will likely have peaked in the States by then, and at best you end up with no better results. At worst you end up worse off because of the temporary dip (if that is a thing).

In any case, mandate + everyone jabbed tomorrow is beyond impossible anyway. Even if it was possible, there would be minimal benefit for a hefty cost (that I think a lot of people don't realize).

What it means is that people would stop getting as sick, and hospitals would be able to stay off of emergency status. Yes, it would have been better to do that last spring but it’s still important now: you can get COVID multiple times - as many are seeing now - and the longer we go with low vaccination rates, the better the odds are of an even worse variant arising. Lots of healthcare workers are getting burned out and it takes years to replace them.

Vaccination rates aren't the issue, it's how many immunonaive hosts you have. You can get it again, but I'm not aware of any evidence that reinfections are any more severe than breakthroughs.

Let's do some napkin math for the US and see how this works out.

Assumptions (all from worldometer and ourworldindata):

"Most estimates have put the number of undetected cases at several multiples of detected cases".

Roughly 43 million confirmed cases recovered so 120m if we use the smallest multiple for "several".

330m total population.

74.5% with at least one dose (245m)

The set of people who are likely to have an immune system primed enough to stave off severe illness (all else equal, many will have preexisting conditions that make them at risk anyway) should be (#dosed + #recovered) - #(dosed AND recovered).

(#dosed + #recovered) is 365m (using 3x cases underestimate factor).

#(dosed AND recovered) has an upper bound of 120m if all recovered got dosed, and a lower bound of 35m (not 0 because the whole equation has to add up to total population).

So (if my math is right, no promises) the US has between 245m and 330m immune primed people today. If its anywhere near the 330m end of the spectrum today, it will be there in the next 2 weeks/30 days as the confirmed case counts go over a million per day (thats only counting confirmed cases).

The best case for mandates out of this: if we had the max of 85m seronaive and you could jab them all at gunpoint tomorrow, a huge chunk of those people will have gotten omicron before the shots take effect. You might prevent some hospitalizations before omicron burns itself out. Good luck ever getting these people to vote for you again.

In the minimum seronaive case, you prevent very few hospital visits, you create a bunch of adverse effects, you waste doses that could have gone to undeveloped countries, and you still really hamstring yourself in future elections.

Everyone's immune system is going to be primed anyway. The mandates are only an expensive footgun at this point.

Vaccine were never meant to make people immune; they have been approved and evaluated based on their effectiveness to reduce severe cases and deaths. We have been lucky enough that they have also been effective to reduce the spread. Even now, they are still very effective with respect to their main goal: reducing the number of people getting into the hospital because of COVID. After ~1 year of vaccinations and ~2 of COVID, I hoped that would have been crystal clear for most people, or, at least, for most of HN users.

Wasn't sure which of these responses to shoot down, but prior to the definition change of what a vaccine was (which happened last year, well after the release of these "vaccines") that was precisely the definition. And all these claims now that no medical authority ever claimed the vaccines were going to make you immune... I understand that the "memory hole" is a real thing, but gosh, this is seriously not difficult to find:

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https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-herd-immu... > "If you have 75%–80% of the people get vaccinated, you create an umbrella of herd immunity — that even though there is virus around, it is really almost inconsequential because it has no place to go, because almost all of the people are protected," Fauci says.

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I mean they're even now just distorting the term "immunity" to mean something new, but still pushing it in relation to vaccines:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220111/Third-dose-of-mRN...

I know that it would be better not to reply in order to avoid losing points (and time), but HN users often forget that the world is not just the US. That is not a matter of "memory holes". FDA and EMA evaluated and approved vaccines based on their efficacy with reducing the severe cases and deaths. That is what has been reported and what mattered the most. They also reduced the spreading, by giving some level of immunity, but is a pleasing secondary effect, mostly. No agency gave a red or green light based on that. This is what I said. I agree with you that there has been a huge problem with communicating properly with the wide public, politicians making mistakes, doctors and professionals spending too much time on TV talking about their personal opinion, and too little time spent on the basics, what we know, to which degree, and what we do not know. That is a different matter from what the goals of the vaccines during their development (passing the FDA and EMA parameters) have been.

I respect that you are replying, (who cares about karma though? Internet brownie points are dumb). How is pushing vaccination under the auspices of achieving herd immunity NOT representing that these shots provide immunity? Goal post shifting by saying, "The US is not the whole world" does not answer that question.

I think that we have a misunderstanding, so I am going to stress what I replied to: "the vaccines (falsely) claimed they would make me: immune" -> they weren't supposed to, they were developed based on another criteria. This is a problem of miscommunication in my opinion, as people sold vaccines as a way to reach immunity or herd immunity. People took bets and made guesses on something hard to model and predict. We like to give people news as they are 100 % sure, making simplification, even for good reasons. Scientific research and understanding does not work like this. Reality and complex, and if we have had a better approach at explaining the current scientific consensus regarding the COVID pandemic, including confidence levels, and lack of understanding or to make reliable predictions and such, science as a whole would probably not have suffered in terms of popularity and general trust.

So because I said that "the vaccines" themselves made the claims at immunity, you are interpreting that as false, based on the notion that the approval was not contingent on them providing immunity. This does not seem like a misunderstanding to me. It sounds like the painfully obvious interpretation of "Authority figures representing scientific institutions, with credentials, promoted these vaccines, claiming they would grant immunity." I think the only way you don't interpret it that was is if you are trying to obfuscate things (perhaps to yourself because recognizing corruption in scientific institutions is a direct attack to some people's egos and identities).

That's right. There is no authority principle in science, and a representative of an institution/agency of US saying that something "should be strong enough to", does not mean that the "science" said "it is going to be like this", especially given the so many unknown variables that come into play. That is one of the common misunderstandings. People make mistakes, and we have plenty of people with credentials that made bad predictions. The vaccines worked as intended, thought. The criticism should be targeted elsewhere. My personal opinion is that in many countries there hasn't been a good communication, and being an expert on a field doesn't qualify someone to be good at explaining things to the wide public.

My understanding is that vaccines never claimed immunity. Ever.

They claimed milder symptoms, less complications, and less hospitalizations.