The vaccine doesn’t stop you from carrying or transmitting COVID, it just lessens the severity the symptoms you suffer personally.

The people who don’t mask up, regardless of having taken the vaccine or not, are actually the biggest problem. I wouldn’t call them selfish because it is their ignorance of how disease works that is to blame. I wouldn’t even blame most of them in light of all the propaganda and confused public servants that say otherwise. I would reserve the selfish tag for the people who know they are carriers and continue to go maskless anyway.

It reduces transmission.

The R number has never been that high, where did you get it from? If it were "2-3 people", every variant, except maybe the latest, would have infected every person on earth by now.

The R number depends on social practices as well. It was higher before lockdowns, but with masks and the eventual vaccine it got reduced to the 1-2 range, and later below 1. Or at least danced around that number depending on whether the lockdown was suspended temporarily or not.

1. Covid shots do not prevent infection or transmission.

2. Since Delta, both vaxxed and unvaxxed cases have the same viral load.

3. Since December at least, boosted and vaxxed have higher RATE per 100k of covid infections.

So whatever benefit one gets is individual benefit only and not getting others sick in any different way as the vaxxed folks do.

> 1. Covid shots do not prevent infection or transmission.

It does look like there's about a 20-30% reduction of infection from random surveys of the population and from nucleocapsid seroprevalence assays; transmission-once-infected is very difficult to measure, but it would be surprising if it did not have some effect.

> 2. Since Delta, both vaxxed and unvaxxed cases have the same viral load.

There's a key fallacy here: we're looking at a population of cases detected by similar means and then found that they have similar viral loads. Not too surprising of a finding (survivorship bias, basically).

There's some data indicating that viral copy assays are not good proxies for finding true infectious shedding -- and that vaccinated individuals can be much better in this regard despite having higher loads. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01816-0

> 3. Since December at least, boosted and vaxxed have higher RATE per 100k of covid infections.

This is absolutely and completely untrue. There's been a couple of times where the vaxxed have been higher in the data series, but the overwhelming trend in the data has been the opposite. e.g. right now in Santa Clara County, where I am, the unvaccinated case rate is approximately 268 per 100,000 per week; the fully vaccinated case rate is about 46 per 100,000.

Of course, people who elect vaccination don't behave exactly the same as those who don't... and so many people in S.C.C. are vaccinated that the exact number of unvaccinated has some uncertainty (but it's not off by a factor of 5).

> It does look like there's about a 20-30% reduction of infection from random surveys of the population and from nucleocapsid seroprevalence assays; transmission-once-infected is very difficult to measure, but it would be surprising if it did not have some effect.

You are responding to a practical concern with a theoretical counter. But practically speaking the vaccine doesn't change the picture at all. The situation pre-vaccine was COVID was going to spread like wildfire after any lockdown attempt ended and everyone was going to be exposed to it. The situation post-vaccine, even with that reduction in infection rates, was the same.

Ditto speed, since this is an exponential process that reduction won't have an especially material effect on when everyone gets COVID.

We ran a natural experiment on this in Australia [0] - having a highly vaccinated population didn't appear to have any impact at all on COVID transmission rate or reach in who gets infected. The numbers are not convincing that the vaccine did anything for transmissions. The effect of personal protection seems to explain all the benefits of the vaccine.

[0] https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_NSW.html

1. That was only true before Delta. When Delta came, the viral load became the same between vaxxed and unvaxxed folks and combined with waning immunity of 3-6 months, most people were basically "unvaxxed" with respect to transmission by fall. Omicron took it even further where since December, in Ontario, boosted and vaxxed folks have had higher rate per 100k of covid infections.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

3. It is true and the government admits that boosted and vaxxed have higher rates. Ontario source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220228051509/http://covid-19.o...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220331081902/http://covid-19.o...

Here's how it looks:

https://imgur.com/a/H4ErmyC

> 1. That was only true before Delta.

Posting a disputed study that I criticized to try and refute me, when I posted important 2022 followup data to viral shedding based on actual infectivity rather than just RNA copies indicates you either didn't read my comment or didn't understand it.

> 3. It is true and the government admits that boosted and vaxxed have higher rates. Ontario source:

I just knew you were going to point to the Ontario data from Mar-Apr. This is why I said in a couple places they popped above for a couple data points. Are you deliberately being obtuse?

Compare to basically any other data series from any other time; e.g. my locale:

https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-case-rates-vaccination-...

How’s that study disputed?

That study is not alone either. NEJM has similar studies too.

Your link seems to be an outlier. Denmark, UK, Scotland, and other provinces in Canada also show the same higher rates in boosted and fully vaxxed than unvaxxed. Walgreens data for US also shows this. Look at page 3 of:

https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.j...

Canadian government seroprevalence data also shows that between December 2021 and May 2022, there were at least 17.5 million infections. This is in a population of 38 million. This was despite extremely high vax rates.

So, how exactly did the vaccine prevent infection and transmission? Vaxxed folks were allowed to enjoy services with a false sense of security and spread Covid to others while unvaxxed folks were denied from society.

Please don’t resolve to ad hominem attacks on hacker news.

I have taken more vaccines than vast majority of the population due to my immigration status. Just because someone is criticizing the pros and cons of a medicine doesn't make them anti-vax. You are engaging in an ad hominem attack without knowing anything about me.

You broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of how right they are or how wrong other people are or you feel they are. Following the site guidelines is more important, because the survival of the entire forum depends on that. We've also had to warn you repeatedly about this in the past, so it doesn't have just to do with this topic.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Threatening to ban the person trying to counter vaccine misinformation because he called someone anti-vax. A+ moderation.

I think you may have missed the point a little bit. Being right, or feeling right, doesn't make ok to abuse the site. It makes it more important to follow the site guidelines, not less.

The way to "counter" a wrong view, or a view you feel is wrong, is with thoughtful discussion and good information. Pouring fuel and setting it on fire is not that.

Btw I posted lots of moderation replies in this thread, to people on both sides of the argument who were posting abusively. The community strongly expects us to be even-handed about that, no doubt including the vast majority of the users who agree with your positions. This is a basic principle and should be obvious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You are consistently replying to my comments, calling me names and then getting mad at me in other comments for me replying back to you. You should read the hacker news guidelines.

It's common for people to feel like there must be brigading when downvotes etc. show up quickly, but a much simpler explanation is that this stuff happens all the time on divisive topics, with no coordination required.

It's also perfectly common for downvoted posts to get upvoted back to positive, as other readers come in. It's actually to be expected for unfairly downvoted posts, since readers will give corrective upvotes regardless of whether they agree or disagree.

If you break the site guidelines, though—which unfortunately you did in this thread, repeatedly—you're going to get downvoted and flagged regardless of whether people agree/disagree or your underlying view is right/wrong.

Of course it's very frustrating to see lots of wrong views, or views you feel are wrong, getting expressed in threads like this. But the site guidelines require all commenters to metabolize that frustration and to remain thoughtful and respectful and substantive in their comments, regardless of how right they are or feel you are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I know there's volatility in voting, but the tone of discussion and vote patterns early in these discussions do not look at all like what happens later. It seems to happen repeatedly on topics of vaccines: thoughtful pro-vax stuff gets downvoted/gray.

There's one thing I particularly disagree with: I do not think labelling a user that posts large piles of anti-vaccine content as "antivax" is ad-hom.

You missed the radio button on page 3 which lets you see the test positivity rates based on vax status too. There too, the vaxxed and boosted score worst:

https://i.imgur.com/m7qihub.png

Please explain why does your data seem to be an entire outlier from Ontario, Alberta, Scotland, UK and Denmark data?

You also haven't explained how that Lancet study for UK has been disputed.

Nor have you explained how a highly vaxxed country like Canada had 60% of the population infected in past 5 months and how that reduced infection and transmission?

> You missed the radio button on page 3 which lets you see the test positivity rates based on vax status too. There too, the vaxxed and boosted score worst:

Again, --- any high school statistics students should know why that rate can be, and is completely decoupled from the actual case rate (non-uniform selection bias-- which is obviously present because the size of the strata doesn't equal their base rates in the population).

We have looked at the actual entire United States data. You are cherry-picking and Gish-galloping. You completely ignore the mountain of evidence that contradicts your view, but endlessly want to talk about specific datapoints which do (most of which you don't even provide). You bury the other side in citations but refuse to look at theirs.

This is not a means to actually reach consensus or have an honest discussion.

> You also haven't explained how that Lancet study for UK has been disputed.

My earlier citation, BEFORE YOU POSTED IT, showed that while viral fragments in plasma is equivalent, the actual transmissibility from shed droplets appears to me lower. Your study's primary argument is the opposite. Further, it discussions transmission dynamics in a household, as if this somehow has import on national case rates which is the assertion you made and keep galloping away from.

It's so thoroughly bogus that it's difficult for me to even engage with. In response to April 2022 data indicating that it is likely that transmission is reduced despite earlier data that viral copy fragments are high... you sent me the earlier data that viral copy fragments are high... and then repeatedly demanded to hear why I thought that the conclusions of that earlier study were disputed. Hello? Hello?

Please don't stoop to flamewar or personal attack, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Flamewar comments like this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32139001 are definitely not ok. Not only is this against the site guidelines, it has the side effect of discrediting your position, which is really bad if you happen to be right.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html