In Germany, 52,000,000 out of 80-some million are double vaccinated. If these vaccines were effective at producing a sort of herd immunity, we would be beginning to see the result. So why aren't we?
Secondly, in this article we see "cases skyrocketing". But what does that really mean? If I am sick in hospital and tested every day, is each positive test considered a case? Likewise, if I was in a car accident and tested positive for COVID-19, despite being asymptomatic, is that considered a case as well? Or if I'm double vaccinated and have a breakthrough infection (which is increasingly common), is that also a case? 18 months into this, the word "cases" has lost significance for me.
I'm going to get blasted for this, but I just can't help seeing a connection between articles like these and the machinations of states to enact further restrictions, mandate booster shots, and largely close off society to the "unvaccinated", which, in my experience is people who've recovered from COVID and have natural immunity. My authoritarian government refuses to recognize natural immunity as a thing, with the guidance being to get vaccinated _anyway_, and heck, trust the science and get 3 shots, even though research on this is slim-to-none.
The most vulnerable to COVID-19 are old, obese, and infirm. Not young adults or kids. And yet state governments are treating this as a "black death" scenario for everyone.
> we see "cases skyrocketing". But what does that really mean?
How about more people dying? You can't die twice. Take Germany for example. In August there were about 15 deaths per day, now it's more than 200. Another big country, Poland: over the summer there were less than 10 deathy daily, now it's about 300. Hungary is smaller, but while in the summer there were consistently less than 5 deaths daily, now it's almost 150. If this is not skyrocketing, then what is?
Covid is dangerous. Media hyperbole is also dangerous. Western Europe countries are experiencing a covid wave, hopefully it will peter out in a couple of months. Though we will never hear "cases falling through the floor" in the media, they'll just shift the attention to the next hotspot. Austria, which is a bit ahead of the curve, is seeing deaths plateauing at 5/day/M. Hopefully they already crested the peak.
Be wary of "skyrocketing" claims from questionable sources.
Precedents:
* Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
* Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
RKI status report for last week[1], translated via Google:
> The rising trend of 7-day incidences observed since the end of September 2021 has in the last weeks significantly accelerated. The current number of cases is already higher than all so far at the peaks of the previous waves of disease. This high Infection pressure in the population increasingly affects vulnerable groups as well as especially vulnerable people in the older age groups. This also leads to a significant increase in Severe disease courses and deaths and the occurrence of vaccination are more likely to rupture.
It is called a "covid wave". Cases go up, then go down. Some people, mostly with frail systems, will sadly falter, not dissimilar to how flu operates. It's pretty clear that we are going to have at least one of these waves every year, no matter what the authorities do or not do. What it is not clear yet is whether it's going to be one wave, or several. I hope one. We'll know by May.
Scientific advisors have been sounding the alarms on the incoming wave here for months and have strongly demanded preventative measures be taken, in particular vaccination (calls which have mostly been ignored by the government).
So the scientific majority opinion seems to be that you are not at all helpless against those waves.
> cases go up then go down
Yes, the wave will end eventually, probably around easter if going by the previous waves. Question is how much death and damage it will cause until then. That's something that can very much be influenced.
Vaccines definitely have a positive effect. However, at this point most of it has been already accounted for by vaccinating the elderly populations at risk. Most Western world has elderly vaccination rates over 90-95%, including supposedly anti-vax regions, e.g. Florida [1]. The marginal effect of vaccinating young healthy populations with marginal covid risk is likely to be marginal. Realistically speaking, there aren't that many effective levers the authorities can wield. My hope is that the pattern we've seen in US southern states and BG/RO, i.e. steep short delta waves, will replicate elsewhere.
To keep things in perspective, covid mortality in Germany was 1.2/k since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 10/k annual death rate from all causes. Hopefully the vaccines will help keeping this number even lower. Further confounding the issue, the death certificate cause of death for infectious diseases often times masks other systemic issues, for instance people with cancer are more susceptible to die of influenza or pneumonia [2]. What I suspect is happening is that covid replaced influenza and pneumonia as the Grim Reaper of choice. Remember that flu "paused" last year [3].
We will keep seeing graphs that go up and down until this pandemic somehow ends. Looking at a graph where the cases keep oscillating every few months is really demoralizing.
> * Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
> * Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
And...if the graph keeps looking like it has, we will have spikes followed by drops followed by spikes again, wash, rinse, and repeat. Florida has a different cycle (maybe AC related as people get cold inside during the hot summer, and the fall comes along and weather is nice, and then a cold snap might happen in January).
Can you explain what exactly is the difference between those definitions?
And yes. Covid vaccines don't prevent the virus from spreading, as much as we had hoped they do. This has been communicated extensively.
What they still do is reduce probability of spreading and reduce probability of a hospitalisation.
The former means there are still chances at obtaining herd immunity, it just raises the bar for it. The latter means that vaccines are still important to keep hospitals from being overrun.
All the change in definition did was acknowledge that no vaccine is 100% certain of preventing infection. The previous definition could be interpreted as claiming that.
There is no chance of obtaining herd immunity through vaccination. Everyone will be exposed eventually. Fortunately the vaccines are pretty effective at preventing deaths.
Not a virologist, but I'm still hoping the virus can be cornered after a few more rounds of mutation/vaccine cat-and-mouse - the spike protein cannot mutate arbitrarily as it still has to be able to perform its primary function, i.e. breaking into cells.
> OK. So why are governments going to mandate these "vaccines"? Remember the CDC had to change the definition of vaccine to account for these not preventing illness.
Keeping people out of hospitals and ICUs so that they can be used for other sick people is good enough to keep mandating the vaccines.
> Remember the CDC had to change the definition of vaccine to account for these not preventing illness.
No, almost all vaccines have prevents rates that are well below 100%. The flu vaccine, for example, is only about 60% effective, and it doesn't take the bite off anyone who actually gets the flu (one reason it probably isn't mandated). The CDC probably changes language because there are lots of people out there that interpret language differently from other people. They want precise meaning on vaccine precise results, whereas vaccines have never provided precise results. Such literalists are really becoming the bane of society these days.
Regarding Germany, as the article mentions “only 68 percent of people fully vaccinated”. That leaves a large population among which the virus can circulate. 68% is not a high enough immunity rate to fully block infections. Almost all of the people admitted to the hospital for COVID were not vaccinated.
No, you testing positive for multiple tests does not increase the number of infections. You are only one person.
Yes, if you are in a car wreck and are tested and found positive, you will be counted as an infection. The car wreck is irrelevant. What matters is the infection.
I agree that a previous, verified COVID infection maybe should be counted as offering some level of protection. You may still want to get a booster as natural immunity has not been shown to be as durable as vaccine induced immunity.
If the unvaccinated were to get a vaccine, we would be able to drop the restrictions that you and everyone dislikes. Failure to get vaccinated just drags this out longer.
Ireland is 94% vaccinated (among adults); we still have such high case numbers that lockdown over Christmas seems imminent.
Gibraltar is 100% vaccinated, and under lockdown.
Yes, being in a car wreck matters. More broadly, the fact that efforts haven't been made to distinguish between dying from a 90mph impact and dying from Corona has been used to scare the wits out of people.
Natural immunity has been shown to be 6-14x as effective as full vaccination.
The fact that fully vaccinated people have the same viral load with Delta invalidates a huge amount of your (and the Irish government's) reasoning behind demonizing the unvaccinated.
It's been pretty shocking seeing people accept the use of unvaccinated people as a scapegoat for lack of investment in ICU beds, nurses, air quality standards, and antigen testing etc. It helps you feel smug and superior, but doesn't actually help convince anyone.
... I suggest you look into all of this a bit more before trying to speak with authority on these issues.
> Natural immunity has been shown to be 6-14x as effective as full vaccination.
> The fact that fully vaccinated people have the same viral load with Delta invalidates a huge amount of your (and the Irish government's) reasoning behind demonizing the unvaccinated.
Do you have sources for either of these claims? Everything I've seen seems to indicate the opposite.
Israel study shows that previous infection provides higher immunity. I haven't seen any other studies showing the opposite but not many of them are done. Most studies compare previously infected unvaccinated with previously infected vaccinated to show that vaccine provides additional immunity.
The second is fast developing situation therefore not many studies are done. I had statistics from hospital admittance in Latvia. It was interesting to see that about 13% of deaths are in vaccinated and 30% of hospitalized were vaccinated too. At this time Latvia had about 60% vaccinated almost the same in all age groups. It shows that vaccine has some effectiveness but vaccinated still spread infection considerably. The main benefit is that it reduces risk of death about 10 times but risk reduction in getting infected or sick is not that good.
Edit. While googling around on this topic, I stumbled upon a decent comparison between the Israeli study and a CDC study that claims the opposite, specifically that covid recovered are five times more likely to be hospitalized for covid than the vaccinated.
Contrast with vaccines. Contrast with the rhetoric. This shit is bananas.
For the second line, again, the CDC have said it themselves, albeit with caveats:
> For people infected with the Delta variant, similar amounts of viral genetic material have been found among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people
Think about how wild it is that with all our communication capabilities you need to hear this from a random dude on HN. There is very sophisticated and coordinated fear-mongering at play.
The virus can still circulate among people who are fully vaccinated. The vaccines are pretty good at preventing deaths, however they only slightly reduce the risk of infection and transmission.
The age-related effects of Covid most definitely are significant. If we've decided Covid is worth curtailing the essential liberties of select groups of people, surely it would be much more effective to target those most at risk?
100× is definitely too optimistic. Even the original studies with alpha variant and shortly after vaccination was less than 95% effective, i.e., only 20 times.
Despite the illogical nature of your assertion “they only slightly reduce the risk of infection and transmission”, actually studies show that circulation rate and infectiousness ARE reduced by the vaccine.
> But what does that really mean? If I am sick in hospital and tested every day, is each positive test considered a case?
Why should anyone do this? The goal is to either track cases of infection with SARS-CoV-2 or symptoms, hospitalisation or death caused by it. This goal is often not attainable in practice, which leads to approximate measures such as counting deaths in which a SARS-CoV-2 infection might, with high likelihood, have contributed or something like that.
You can certainly criticize details, but counting each test as a new case is obvious nonsense.
> Likewise, if I was in a car accident and tested positive for COVID-19, despite being asymptomatic, is that considered a case as well?
Again, what do you want to count? If you want to count infections, yes, this would be a case. If you're counting deaths, why should anyone count this as it's obvious that covid doesn't cause car accidents?
Or if I'm double vaccinated and have a breakthrough infection (which is increasingly common), is that also a case?
Why should this not be counted as a case?
> the "unvaccinated", which, in my experience is people who've recovered from COVID and have natural immunity. My authoritarian government refuses to recognize natural immunity as a thing
Maybe in Turkey, I can't say that. At least in Germany, recovered individuals are tracked separately and are treated equivalent to vaccinated. However, like with vaccines, natural immunity weakens with time, which is why booster shots are recommend for those as well.
To my knowledge, there are various studies describing how immunity acquired through different means weakens.
In Slovenia doctors warned today that the system is so stretched any mass casualty event (highway pileup etc.) would be a problem to handle.
But in reality the scariest part is the daily "we found the extra 20 intensive beds [aka staff, which is the main constraint] we needed but now we're at capacity.
But then the same story repeats the next day.
Lots of people have started taking this a proof that there is no problem.
But the doctors have said publicly what is happening: they keep lowering standards.
I suspect that an acute collapse is unlikely due to this. But my heart bleeds for those who are hospitalised under such conditions.
But what worries me most is that society will learn nothing from this. An acute collapse would be a lesson that would prevent such suffering. But as its going now its just proving to society in general that unrestricted individualism works.
Are there any experts here that can explain why rates are dropping in Japan, India, and a few other countries? Is it different flu seasons, different treatments, a new strain that is causing delta to self destruct, other? I have read theories but am legit curious.
50 comments
[ 7.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadSecondly, in this article we see "cases skyrocketing". But what does that really mean? If I am sick in hospital and tested every day, is each positive test considered a case? Likewise, if I was in a car accident and tested positive for COVID-19, despite being asymptomatic, is that considered a case as well? Or if I'm double vaccinated and have a breakthrough infection (which is increasingly common), is that also a case? 18 months into this, the word "cases" has lost significance for me.
I'm going to get blasted for this, but I just can't help seeing a connection between articles like these and the machinations of states to enact further restrictions, mandate booster shots, and largely close off society to the "unvaccinated", which, in my experience is people who've recovered from COVID and have natural immunity. My authoritarian government refuses to recognize natural immunity as a thing, with the guidance being to get vaccinated _anyway_, and heck, trust the science and get 3 shots, even though research on this is slim-to-none.
The most vulnerable to COVID-19 are old, obese, and infirm. Not young adults or kids. And yet state governments are treating this as a "black death" scenario for everyone.
How about more people dying? You can't die twice. Take Germany for example. In August there were about 15 deaths per day, now it's more than 200. Another big country, Poland: over the summer there were less than 10 deathy daily, now it's about 300. Hungary is smaller, but while in the summer there were consistently less than 5 deaths daily, now it's almost 150. If this is not skyrocketing, then what is?
Be wary of "skyrocketing" claims from questionable sources.
Precedents:
* Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
* Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
> The rising trend of 7-day incidences observed since the end of September 2021 has in the last weeks significantly accelerated. The current number of cases is already higher than all so far at the peaks of the previous waves of disease. This high Infection pressure in the population increasingly affects vulnerable groups as well as especially vulnerable people in the older age groups. This also leads to a significant increase in Severe disease courses and deaths and the occurrence of vaccination are more likely to rupture.
Sounds a lot like "skyrocketing" to me.
[1] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
So the scientific majority opinion seems to be that you are not at all helpless against those waves.
> cases go up then go down
Yes, the wave will end eventually, probably around easter if going by the previous waves. Question is how much death and damage it will cause until then. That's something that can very much be influenced.
To keep things in perspective, covid mortality in Germany was 1.2/k since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 10/k annual death rate from all causes. Hopefully the vaccines will help keeping this number even lower. Further confounding the issue, the death certificate cause of death for infectious diseases often times masks other systemic issues, for instance people with cancer are more susceptible to die of influenza or pneumonia [2]. What I suspect is happening is that covid replaced influenza and pneumonia as the Grim Reaper of choice. Remember that flu "paused" last year [3].
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33107375
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/08/flu-season-...
> * Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
> * Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
And...if the graph keeps looking like it has, we will have spikes followed by drops followed by spikes again, wash, rinse, and repeat. Florida has a different cycle (maybe AC related as people get cold inside during the hot summer, and the fall comes along and weather is nice, and then a cold snap might happen in January).
Loss of digits, reduced lung capacity, loss of smell, and the death is not a graceful one...
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
And yes. Covid vaccines don't prevent the virus from spreading, as much as we had hoped they do. This has been communicated extensively.
What they still do is reduce probability of spreading and reduce probability of a hospitalisation.
The former means there are still chances at obtaining herd immunity, it just raises the bar for it. The latter means that vaccines are still important to keep hospitals from being overrun.
"Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected."
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
Not a virologist, but I'm still hoping the virus can be cornered after a few more rounds of mutation/vaccine cat-and-mouse - the spike protein cannot mutate arbitrarily as it still has to be able to perform its primary function, i.e. breaking into cells.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
Keeping people out of hospitals and ICUs so that they can be used for other sick people is good enough to keep mandating the vaccines.
> Remember the CDC had to change the definition of vaccine to account for these not preventing illness.
No, almost all vaccines have prevents rates that are well below 100%. The flu vaccine, for example, is only about 60% effective, and it doesn't take the bite off anyone who actually gets the flu (one reason it probably isn't mandated). The CDC probably changes language because there are lots of people out there that interpret language differently from other people. They want precise meaning on vaccine precise results, whereas vaccines have never provided precise results. Such literalists are really becoming the bane of society these days.
No, you testing positive for multiple tests does not increase the number of infections. You are only one person.
Yes, if you are in a car wreck and are tested and found positive, you will be counted as an infection. The car wreck is irrelevant. What matters is the infection.
I agree that a previous, verified COVID infection maybe should be counted as offering some level of protection. You may still want to get a booster as natural immunity has not been shown to be as durable as vaccine induced immunity.
If the unvaccinated were to get a vaccine, we would be able to drop the restrictions that you and everyone dislikes. Failure to get vaccinated just drags this out longer.
Gibraltar is 100% vaccinated, and under lockdown.
Yes, being in a car wreck matters. More broadly, the fact that efforts haven't been made to distinguish between dying from a 90mph impact and dying from Corona has been used to scare the wits out of people.
Natural immunity has been shown to be 6-14x as effective as full vaccination.
The fact that fully vaccinated people have the same viral load with Delta invalidates a huge amount of your (and the Irish government's) reasoning behind demonizing the unvaccinated.
It's been pretty shocking seeing people accept the use of unvaccinated people as a scapegoat for lack of investment in ICU beds, nurses, air quality standards, and antigen testing etc. It helps you feel smug and superior, but doesn't actually help convince anyone.
... I suggest you look into all of this a bit more before trying to speak with authority on these issues.
> The fact that fully vaccinated people have the same viral load with Delta invalidates a huge amount of your (and the Irish government's) reasoning behind demonizing the unvaccinated.
Do you have sources for either of these claims? Everything I've seen seems to indicate the opposite.
The second is fast developing situation therefore not many studies are done. I had statistics from hospital admittance in Latvia. It was interesting to see that about 13% of deaths are in vaccinated and 30% of hospitalized were vaccinated too. At this time Latvia had about 60% vaccinated almost the same in all age groups. It shows that vaccine has some effectiveness but vaccinated still spread infection considerably. The main benefit is that it reduces risk of death about 10 times but risk reduction in getting infected or sick is not that good.
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
Edit. While googling around on this topic, I stumbled upon a decent comparison between the Israeli study and a CDC study that claims the opposite, specifically that covid recovered are five times more likely to be hospitalized for covid than the vaccinated.
https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-...
But think about it - have you heard of even one single case of someone recovering from Covid and then spreading it? The CDC haven't - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29201823
Contrast with vaccines. Contrast with the rhetoric. This shit is bananas.
For the second line, again, the CDC have said it themselves, albeit with caveats:
> For people infected with the Delta variant, similar amounts of viral genetic material have been found among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people
- https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...
Think about how wild it is that with all our communication capabilities you need to hear this from a random dude on HN. There is very sophisticated and coordinated fear-mongering at play.
How much do you think vaccination reduces chances of infection?
(My impression is that it is about 100x, for at least some period. Looks like 3rd shots will last longer than 2nd too)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... (Table 6)
Yes, I am fully aware the table also shows that hospitalisations and death rates are lower amongst vaccinated people.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/delta-variant-vacc...
Also, I see you dismiss my speculation but stay mute on what you meant by "only slightly".
It seems that the current value is closer to 40% reduction in covid transmission: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-vaccines-covid-transm...
“The study showed that people living in the same household as people who were fully vaccinated were 71% less likely to be infected than household members of unvaccinated people.” https://www.rivm.nl/en/news/covid-19-vaccination-reduces-tra...
Why should anyone do this? The goal is to either track cases of infection with SARS-CoV-2 or symptoms, hospitalisation or death caused by it. This goal is often not attainable in practice, which leads to approximate measures such as counting deaths in which a SARS-CoV-2 infection might, with high likelihood, have contributed or something like that.
You can certainly criticize details, but counting each test as a new case is obvious nonsense.
> Likewise, if I was in a car accident and tested positive for COVID-19, despite being asymptomatic, is that considered a case as well?
Again, what do you want to count? If you want to count infections, yes, this would be a case. If you're counting deaths, why should anyone count this as it's obvious that covid doesn't cause car accidents?
Or if I'm double vaccinated and have a breakthrough infection (which is increasingly common), is that also a case?
Why should this not be counted as a case?
> the "unvaccinated", which, in my experience is people who've recovered from COVID and have natural immunity. My authoritarian government refuses to recognize natural immunity as a thing
Maybe in Turkey, I can't say that. At least in Germany, recovered individuals are tracked separately and are treated equivalent to vaccinated. However, like with vaccines, natural immunity weakens with time, which is why booster shots are recommend for those as well.
To my knowledge, there are various studies describing how immunity acquired through different means weakens.
> even though research on this is slim-to-none.
Is that so?
https://twitter.com/kparve/status/1462398425924780040
But in reality the scariest part is the daily "we found the extra 20 intensive beds [aka staff, which is the main constraint] we needed but now we're at capacity. But then the same story repeats the next day.
Lots of people have started taking this a proof that there is no problem. But the doctors have said publicly what is happening: they keep lowering standards.
I suspect that an acute collapse is unlikely due to this. But my heart bleeds for those who are hospitalised under such conditions.
But what worries me most is that society will learn nothing from this. An acute collapse would be a lesson that would prevent such suffering. But as its going now its just proving to society in general that unrestricted individualism works.