Whoa. Smashed through the vaccines. 74% of a vaxxed+tested 117 person holiday party got Omicron from a single person who visited South Africa and tested negative multiple times.
Yeah it is pretty dire news really. Recent experience in Australia demonstrates that vaccines, especially when fresh, work really well to control the spread of Delta. But it looks like Omicron just cuts straight through that protection.
A silver lining here is that none of 70 odd people infected were hospitalised. It is plausible the vaccines provided protection from hospitalisation here, but there are better ways that will be measured in coming days/weeks.
Omicron looks like it might have changed the nature of the infection from a lower respiratory infection to an upper respiratory one leading to less serious infections. Let’s hope they are right.
As Noah Smith wrote: [0]
> it’s easy to delude ourselves into unreasoning optimism in the face of an onrushing threat. It will still be weeks or even months before we know for sure whether Omicron is a step in the hoped-for transformation of Covid into yet another common cold virus, or whether it’s just another deadly super-variant. But interestingly, there is now some research showing a possible mechanism by which Omicron might be both more contagious and less harmful. A new study from the University of Hong Kong shows that Omicron replicates much more quickly than Delta in the upper airways, but much less quickly in the lungs, where Covid does its real damage.
Indeed. Unfortunately theres a 2 week delay between a peak in infections, and the peak in hospitalisations. So we'll find out the effect of todays caseload in 2 weeks, unfortunately omicron has a doubling time of between 1.5 and 3 days, so 2 weeks from now its gonna be much worse.
I really hope the info about lower hospitalisation rates is correct (across all age groups), or hospitals or gonna be smashed with cases.
it could actually be even worse : because of the large number of vaccinated people, it could be very possible that the variant actually spreads more on vaccinated people than non-vaccinated ones (saw a stats on that, but the numbers were too low to prove anything). ADE is still a very possible scenario.
How does ADE come into this when it's just about transmission? From what I understood, ADE is mostly about severity of illness, and the severity looks to be down across the board.
i could be using the wrong term. Saw a researcher's work on that (aka : vaccine inducing easier spread of omikron) and thought it was the same as ADE, but i could be wrong.
Even more of a silver lining, according to South African data (and the median age <40yo at this party), it is likely there would be no hospitalisations regardless of vaccination status…
No, stay calm. Here in South Africa the spread is higher than in any other wave and we also have very low percentages of vaccinations. But even so hospitalizations and deaths have been negligible.
When hospitalized it's usually only for a quick stay, and deaths are basically at the same levels as for flu.
The hope now is that it really spreads and becomes even milder, while protecting against the more deadly strains by displacing them.
1 in a 100 people hospitalised is not the common cold. Those are still worse numbers than the flu. Sure, it probably won't make you very sick, but at a population level omicron is still a disaster.
The Health Minister reported that South Africa saw 1.7% hospitalisation in the second week of the omicron wave vs. 19% hospitalisation in the same week of the delta wave [1]. Hoping the trend towards milder disease continues to pan out.
This should be a surprise to no one. The vaccines are designed to prevent serious disease, hospitalization, and death.
Unfortunately the media has harmfully claimed that the vaccines are “less effective against Omicron” because of the reduction of prevention against any symptomatic disease… which they were never designed to prevent.
TLDR: an interesting discussion of a superspreader event:
117 people, 107 of whom were fully vaccinated, attended a party for 4.5 hours after checking themselves with a rapid antigen test.
66 of them were confirmed to have omicron less than 3 weeks later, the vast majority developing symptoms within 5 days. 15 others had covid that was not confirmed to be omicron.
Based on what evidence you making that statement. For myself living in Sweden I can say that almost everyone does a self test when they have even the slightest of symptoms. Also I would argue of all places in the world, Scandinavia is probably the place where one would find the lowest propability of lying about a test.
No, false negatives: you're tested as negative but you, in fact, have the virus. This is common for rapid antigen tests, and especially so if self administered.
False positives are not tipically a problem for this kind of tests. It's like the pregnancy test: if you see the stripe, you're very, very likely pregnant. If you don't see it, you can't rule it out with the same certainty.
Note that one of the issues with rapid tests is that they only work reliably once you become symptomatic - however, you may already be infectious about two days before that...
As long as we don't know that the infected people isolated for three weeks, we do have a pretty high margin of error here. Also, we would have to seperete the infected into unvaccinated and vaccinated patients.
So far evidence indicates, and I'm hoping this is true, that it's about 1/3rd as severe as Delta. South Africa (25% vaccinated?) reports much fewer people going on ventilators or even going to the hospital.
Not sure what a booster shot is going to do for you unless you're particularly vulnerable.
Just to add far less people have been vaccinated in South Africa. I have heard figures between 25% and 40% at the most optimistic. Booster shots only recently approved. Omicron impact seems way less severe than in the first 3 waves we had. Government hasn't instituted any new restrictions. We still ware masks everywhere but that's about it. It is still early days but some anecdotal articles from front-line care workers indicate it is milder [0].
Before Omicron, South Africa had COVID under control with very little measures and a low vaccination rate. The only reasonable explanation is that a large fraction of the population has already been infected and acquired immunity that way. This means that data from South Africa is probably not a good measure for how dangerous Omicron is for people without prior immunity.
Yes you are right. Figures of as many as 80%[1] of the population probably has had Covid have the quoted for a while now. So guess the question the SA government has to ask themselves is do they go ahead with the booster shots. For now Covid restrictions are at their lowest since the initial lock down in 2020. I suppose we will know in another month or two when there is enough data.
In late December 2019, my family and myself, in California, caught a really bad respiratory illness. I isolated as soon as I got symptoms, but everyone else got it anyway. It was tested to not be influenza. One of us spent a day in the hospital. And I wonder if it was in fact COVID.
Most papers suggest it hadn’t made it to the US yet. But here we are with a variant that caused outbreaks on other continents a week after first detection, and testing is everywhere. With all our supposed defenses and travel bans, this is the best we can do?
Anyway, no way to know for sure now. We’ve all had three doses so we would have a strong immune response.
That hasn't stopped Germany announcing new restrictions on visitors from the UK from tonight. Notably tests in the UK are free and the public are encouraged to do 2-3 tests per week, versus Germany where tests were up until recently chargeable, and there is a shortage of test kits. Makes you wonder whether the difference in cases between the two is really that stark.
I’m sure in a few weeks we will discover there was already widespread domestic transmission of Omicron, in Germany.
When Omicron was initially discovered, the United Kingdom promptly closed its borders to several African countries—but oddly not whiter infected countries like The Netherlands.
This was of course pointless politicking, and did nothing to stop the spread of Omicron in the UK, which was already established.
If only the UK had instead chosen to implement decent sick pay, or immediately ramp up the booster program, or implement work from hone guidance. Instead the UK let it rip fir three weeks, before suddenly panicking.
This is not really true. Tests taken by professional test centers have only been chargeable for sth like 2-4 weeks in November for unvaccinated people - this attempt to let unvaccinated people pay for their play did not work out very well, so tests are free for all again. There also is no shortage in test kits, you can buy them by the hundreds in regular supermarkets.
I live there and there was a shortage where I was up until recently, and prices for home kits are higher than they used to be. Free tests are free but you must go to a testing center, potentially having to book beforehand. In the UK you get a set of 7 free tests via mail if you ask, and you can ask once per day, so effectively you can test every two waking hours if you feel inclined. There's definitely a difference in testing going on between the two countries.
Where are you? I’ve been to 7 cities in the past month and I could get a professional test every day with 10-30min waiting time, and supermarkets were stocked with hundreds of tests everywhere. If you live in Bavaria, maybe some crony CSU politicians created an artificial shortage of supply in order to extort higher kickbacks? :)
Niedersachsen, but I think you're missing my main point: the mental and physical effort for doing a test is much lower in the UK. As I said, you can order a set of 7 lateral flow tests for next day delivery to your door. The free tests in Germany involve either booking a slot, or at least risking to turn up and wait for a slot, at a test center. The home kits cost money and, as I pointed out, are often out of stock (though apparently this is a highly localised phenomenon).
It should also be noted the free test kits in the UK say the user must submit their result whether positive or negative. This surely pushes up the number of positive tests included in UK figures. In fact, I suspect the UK's high case rates since the summer - part of the reason why Germany has had it on its list of high risk areas since July - are simply an artefact of huge rates of testing going on and not because it's "plague island" as some like to brand it.
I get your main point, but I do not agree. Pointing out that you are wrong with the spare facts is just easier than arguing about wether professional tests or DIY are better suited to slow down the pandemic. Since there’s no one stopping you from faking the DIY test result, while there’s at least one other person involved in forging an official test, I personally think it’s very reasonable to not include DIY tests into „2G+“.
"John Dee" has access to NHS data for a region of England and recently posted this: [1]. Take with a pinch of salt given the anonymity but it shows a much larger spike in respiratory illness admissions to hospital in December 2019 compared to March 2020 when cases shot up in the UK.
We should definitely treat this with skepticism, given the source anonymity.
Such statistical data is freely available under Freedom of Information law in the UK. (Privacy laws obviously protect individuals, but not public bodies.)
The data in question is anonymised patient data. I believe this is not available publicly, only statistics.
Apparently this person is a retired NHS manager of some sort, probably got the data via an old colleague. If the data were public this argument could be definitively proved or disproved, but until then we need the pinch of salt that I noted in my comment.
Events like these make the ethics of using vaccine passes (for e.g. entering stores or restaurants) a more interesting question. If the vaccine doesn't significantly stop the spread of the disease but does reduce the risk of hospitalization, then the true purpose of vaccine passes seems to be as a device for socially pressuring individuals into taking the vaccine to reduce the burden on the healthcare system, rather than a measure to control the spread of the disease.
Not even true in the frame you're attempting to talk about it: the vaccines were touted to stop transmission up until August 2021 or so, when people realized they didn't and started backsliding into touting the protection of the healthcare system. Also, what a bizarre sidestep of the actual issue being talked about: vaccine passes.
This is late stage narrative from 2021. In 2020 they were still questioning whether "breakthrough infections" were real. The narrative shifts over time, but if you know how to use a search engine you'll see it clear as day.
Delta and Omicron changed things a bit, didn't they?
As you argueing against vacvine mandates, lock downs, vaccine passports and geberal restrictions, what would be your counter proposal? No restrictions and let the Pandemic run its natural course? We all sae how that would look like in Italy, Spain, Brazil, New York...
I didn't say that vaccines were supposed to transmission pre-Delta, did I? Just that overall vaccines were, and are, more effective against Alpha and whatnot. And even then it wasn't really expected to stop transmissions to 100%.
Still the question remains to be answered: What are our alternatives, assuming we don't want overloaded health systems? Because just doing nothing wpuld be disaster.
I'm appalled by Biden's careless statement. But I can't find the Fauci quote in that article (likely hampered by pop-ups). I do agree that authorities have been pretty reckless in their promises.
Fauci and the CDC were a little more careful, but they insinuated effectively the same thing with vaccination induced herd immunity. Of course, we now know the vaccines do nothing for herd immunity, and it seems only infection actually does anything in this regard. I don't have the time to dig up everything every time I need to make an argument, and I wish there was a proper repository of information for this stuff - and that again, is a failing of the government.
> and it seems only infection actually does anything in this regard
Infection doesn't either. The effect of infection is stronger wrt to spread for a few weeks or months but that difference isn't a long term thing. That's not how you reach herd immunity, it's how you reach seasonality.
Do we have any proof of people getting re-infected at a population level, or even any proper studies of individual re-infection? Because a lack of re-infections is what I think would constitute a basis for building herd immunity.
That basis is gone, no study required. Reinfections have long ceased to be noteworthy events. But yeah, there are also studies. None as elaborate and big as, say, a vaccine phase 3, because there aren't really any decisions swiftly based on the exact value of reinfection probabilities, but enough to show that there's no reason to assume that there will be less reinfections than with any other endemic cold.
> The effect of infection is stronger wrt to spread for a few weeks or months but that difference isn't a long term thing. That's not how you reach herd immunity, it's how you reach seasonality.
The authors of that study said:
> Community immunity to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic can be reached with the acquired immunity due to either previous infection or vaccination.
I haven't seen anything yet that says protection after infection wanes all that much. I see a lot of "we don't know how long it will last", but it seems to last as long as we have data for so far.
Do you have a source? The big clinical trials all tested risk of hospitalization and risk of death. The original Pfizer and Moderna trials did not test risk of infection or transmission. Participants weren’t even tested unless symptomatic.
The end goal of any measure, including vaccine passes, has always been the same: preventing a large number of deaths. Vacccines still prevent a large number of deaths, both directly (strongly reduced risk of death from Covid) and indirectly (reduced strain on the healthcare system). These hold true even if vaccines only effect outcomes after getting Covid and have zero effect on transmission rates at all, they're not up for discussion. As such there really isn't much of an ethical dillema here. There is plenty of data available on all of these points. Whether someone somewhere incorrectly touted vaccines as stopping transmission at any point isn't worth discussion, it's just another one to add to the list of "uninformed statements made about vaccines" which is billions of lines long at this point.
The goal of vaccine passes is to allow business to open for some that would not be allowed to open for anyone otherwise. The nudge is merely a minor but welcome side-effect.
That's what you believe, but GP was talking about intent and for that only the thoughts of the people doing all the "intending" count. People that believe that not closing is a good idea are usually not the ones proposing vaccination pass schemes (but some of them might still gladly accept them as a compromise)
Of course vaccines are about harm reduction. How can that be "not true" in any frame? What is even the logical alternative? Are we trying to reduce the infection count because smaller numbers are aesthetically more pleasing?
I'm not sidestepping the issue. There is no difficult ethical dilemma here, and nothing changed with the new variant.
If there was a mistake regarding the vaccines, it was to discuss vaccination as optional opposed to the clear ethical obligation that it is. Just like no one is entitled to store unstable explosives in candlelight in a shed next to their neighbour's house.
Vaccines did stop transmission before delta. That's why many countries weren't big on vaccine passes, we just needed to get higher than the herd immunity threshold and it was fine, a few antivax wouldn't have changed the equation that much.
Now, herd immunity is just a dream, we can't count on the vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated anymore. So, plan B, and as it turns out, the key of plan B is also vaccines, but now we need 100% vaccinated, not 60%, so, vaccine passes.
Maybe it will change if we get better treatment, or if the virus mutates to be less lethal to those with no immunity. But for now, get vaccinated or stay at home.
This is the issue with discussions like this. Arguments about any medical intervention is always about statistics, there are essentially no 100% measures, but you and others always frame this as either or questions that's either completely naive or dishonest. So yes vaccination was also stopping the spread, but nobody thought it would 100% prevent a vaccinated person from getting infected. However it does significantly reduce infection rates and severity of the illness. The hope/assumption was that if sufficient people get vaccinated and the infection rate for vaccinated people drops enough it will stop spreading of covid. AFAIK It's unclear yet if that we haven't stopped the spread is due to insufficient vaccination rates or insufficient drop of infection rates for vaccinated people. This analysis is further complicated by the advent of new variants like omikron.
No, no it doesn’t. Google search the lancet study. It found infection in vaccinated produced similar viral loads as unvaccinated AND easily infected other vaccinated.
It might reduce the risk of transmission, but only a negligible amount.
I'm not arguing it's wrong, just that it's a more difficult ethical question. During the past year, I've seen many ads from the authorities here to get vaccinated to protect others from being infected by you, so I disagree with the notion that preventing the spread wasn't a goal in itself, but I realize that this may be different depending on where you live.
I consider myself to have a moral obligation to get vaccinated to reduce my own burden on the health care system, but forcing others to do it is a different story. Surely you must agree that requiring people to take a vaccine just to enter a store is a severe measure that should only be undertaken if it's absolutely necessary?
> If the vaccine doesn't significantly stop the spread of the disease
Multiple studies show that vaccinated people have significantly lower transmission than unvaccinated.
> In studies conducted before the emergence of the Delta variant, data from multiple studies in different countries suggested that people vaccinated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines who develop COVID-19 generally have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(157, 165-169) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(170) Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) For the Delta variant, early data indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with Delta have similar levels of viral RNA and culturable virus detected, indicating that some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus to others.(163, 164, 177-180) However, other studies have shown a more rapid decline in viral RNA and culturable virus in fully vaccinated people (96, 177, 180-182). One study observed that Delta infection in fully vaccinated persons was associated with significantly less transmission to contacts than persons who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.(181) Together, these studies suggest that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta have potential to be less infectious than infected unvaccinated people.
There's a lot of 'indicates' and 'suggests' and 'potential' there rather than clinical outcomes. Given how the unvaccinated are mostly locked out of things at present, current case trajectories and hospitalisations 'suggest' the overall vaccine outcome is not one that solves the problem in any meaningful way.
Last time I checked, invaccinated patients were vastly over repredented in hospitalization and ICU occupation. No indication, but hard facts.
If vaccines prevent serious cases and hospitalization for a large percentage of people, and they do, we would be all good if vaccination rates reach sufficient levels. Until they do, the very limited ICU capacity will be taken up overpropertionally unvaccinated. And we will continue to have problems.
What's a sufficient level then? It was once 70%, then 80, then 90. Now we have places pushing 95 and that's still not enough? Perhaps we should be paying a bit closer attention to what the vaccines aren't doing.
What a sufficient level is also depends on the goal: Eradicting Covid would require higher rates then just turning into a less serious endemic virus. Personally I think eradication is impossible by now.
No idea what a sufficient level is, Delta, Omicron and all that considered. Also, I am not into pandemic modelling. Since I don't necessarily care where the level right now is, peiple can always look up the latest papers and studies in that topic.
100% would be ideal. It seems to impossible to achieve herd immunity against COVID (whether by vaccination or by immunity due to infection), so everyone will get it eventually. The more are vaccinated, the lower the load on the healthcare system will be.
100% is only an ideal if we don't really believe anything less will work...
Don't we want some sort of control group to remain for these vaccines that don't formally conclude their trials for a couple of years yet? Or is everyone just 100% convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point? That would be proper scientific diligence.
This is about a medical intervention, not about a scientific study. Vaccine adverse events are usually evaluated by comparing with background rates from previous studies. Control groups are used in randomized control trials and are probably mostly worthless without randomization.
Except the trials are still underway, so yes, it is about scientific study. And proper diligence and reporting is critical for such a significant experiment, wouldn't you think?
> Or is everyone just 100% convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point
What would be an example of something going wrong? Are you thinking that a sub-optimal outcome might occur ("the pandemic lasted 4 months longer than it had to") or that 80% of the people vaccinated drop dead in 2025?
The first case would be an unfortunate case of the best attempt of a decision made on uncertain data turning out to be incorrect in retrospect.
In the latter case, civilization is still protected as many people chose not to get vaccinated.
We don't know do we. That's the fact. And how would we know if the control group is just removed (as Pfizer did in their phase 3 trials anyway...)?
I guess hopefully we don't find out, because the only way it'll ever be clearly distinguished is if it goes very badly across the board. Anything less can quite simply be explained away. Isn't it nice for Pfizer/Moderna to be able to run the long-term study with immunity in a manner that is very hard to understand clinical outcomes (except the huge side-effect profile readily dismissed as 'acceptable' because some deaths are more important than others).
Not sure if this is the kind of reply you're hoping for, but I've been super encouraged by the defensive stance that Scandinavian authorities took with regards to the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines once observations of rare side effects became available.
These decisions were mired in a whole lot of suspicious and unnecessary controversy. Rare and specific blood clots on the order of 1 per 20,000 vaccinations turned the ethical consideration of the vaccines from "obviously good" to "obviously bad" overnight, and they were removed from the program immediately. A single-digit number of unnecessary deaths were caused, but the buck stopped there.
I'm not as encouraged by the international response to this research and operative decision. It could be argued at the time that the Scandinavian decisions were made in the light of populations that had sufficiently low mortality from covid that the ethical consideration was different than in Europe at large.
But to my eyes, the European decision to keep using the AZ and J&J vaccines had an air of "let's not look too closely, or maybe we'll see something bad". Norwegian case studies indicated that the rare blood clots were pretty frickin' hard to distinguish from conditions caused by common lifestyle diseases. Two cases were specifically diagnosed only because they happened in doctors who ran themselves through a battery of expensive tests few normal patients would have qualified for. My qualified guess: There are rare but deadly and persistent side effects with these vaccines, that won't be discovered in healthcare environments that aren't finely tuned.
I suppose my point is that if there (God forbid) happen to exist bad but rare and non-obvious side effects of the new RNA vaccines, the truth can be uncovered. I'm not sure that a deliberate control group would be any good regardless; the AZ/J&J side effects were rare enough not to be seen in the control group. But they were still bad enough to disqualify the vaccines.
The whole thing is a super interesting subject, and it's obviously so political and subject to propaganda that you'd need a very critical eye to navigate it. Unless again, heaven forbid, the effect is so bad that it's obvious. Different health authorities do have different degrees of honesty and principled handling of these questions. There are control groups available; the large population of people who decide skip vaccination.
You will never hit 100% vaccinated. A big part of public health is “compliance”. Compliance rates with cancer are low 90% and these are people that die without treatment.
Delta and Omicron are just so much "faster" than what we encountered before. Thankfully the general working principle of the brakes (vaccines) seems to be mostly unaffected by them, but we have to press them harder.
What the vaccines are not doing: make it 2019 again.
This will eventually blow over. People getting infected with a variant that the vaccine does not prevent infection against, will still develop their immune reaction for that variant. At some point in the future there will once again be a balance between the collective immune response and the transmissability of the virus. The vaccines available right now are still obviously the best measure we have to make getting to that point less painful, as they reduce hospitalizations dramatically.
It's pretty obvious that e.g. if a 50% vaccination rate leaves the ICU at 10x capacity during an unmitigated outbreak, a 90% vaccination rate would be preferable even if it doesn't prevent the need for quarantine measures. This means that contact-reducing measures don't have to be as severe while the outbreak is happening.
But people are still dying. It's not that the vaccines haven't prevented death, it's that we seem to be past the peak of what they can solve and yet keep putting all our eggs in that basket. Recent to Omicron, there were more cases and hospitalisations than the same time last year when vaccination was low and Delta was the main variant still.
The message is constantly that it's the unvaccinated causing it, but why is that so when they form such a small proportion of the population, there's been plenty of prior exposure and seasonality seems to show a greater effect than the vaccines? Not to mention the risk to under 40's has been extremely low throughout. How do the unvaccinated keep 'filling up' hospitals if vaccines reduce spread and there's 80-90%+ double-dose coverage?
But that 2% of 10% are not standing in a line all holding hands. It's clear the vaccinated are readily spreading the disease around and yet the reward is greater freedom for them to spread it? Why do we not still care for the unvaccinated regardless of their reasons or situations for being so?
The vaccine is clearly not protecting that group (the original reason for mandates), and 'preventing deaths' vs the unknowns around long term vaccine outcomes (we're all just assuming nothing serious at present) and the increases in stresses and illnesses driven from lockdown, restrictions and mandates are creating a toll that we seem happy to assume is always less than the direct covid toll and therefore acceptable.
> It's clear the vaccinated are readily spreading the disease around and yet the reward is greater freedom for them to spread it? Why do we not still care for the unvaccinated regardless of their reasons or situations for being so?
Because they chose not to be vaccinated. Why should I limit myself when I have a very small risk after vaccination to protect someone who chose not to be vaccinated, for whatever reason?
> The vaccine is clearly not protecting that group
And that is their choice. What more is there to discuss?
> Should I decide all those in religious minorities deserve whatever comes to them because they choose not to follow the major religion?
In what way is this related to "other people shouldn't be inconvenienced to protect you from the choices you have made"?
> Should I decide obese people deserve no support or care because they 'choose' an unhealthy diet?
All these examples are so irrelevant that it feels like you're doing it in bad faith. We're not talking about what unvaccinated people should do. We're talking about what vaccinated people should do, and vaccinated people are under no obligation to limit themselves to protect unvaccinated people.
If you want to be unvaccinated, fine. I'm not going to go into lockdown so you don't die, though. Risking it is your choice.
> In what way is this related to "other people shouldn't be inconvenienced to protect you from the choices you have made"?
Who is inconvenienced? And should I feel 'inconvenienced' by those going to hospital because of vaccine adverse events? For instance, just for Pfizer in the EU, there are 640K events reported as of now [1], with ~70K of those for Blood & lymphatic system or cardiac disorders. Now these may not all be specific to Covid and not all hospitalisations, but there's certainly some 'inconvenience' to others here, no? Or is there some lower limit of 'inconvenience?'
You might also observe that a large number of adverse events are occurring in the 18-64 group, one that is of much lower risk of covid hospitalisation/death in the first place.
But wouldn't want to inconvenience you with lockdowns now would we! How frustrating! Better let you out so you can go give some unvaccinated people covid instead hmm? Sorry for the snark but what a selfish attitude.
Vaccinated people. I feel like you aren't following the debate.
> And should I feel 'inconvenienced' by those going to hospital because of vaccine adverse events?
No, why would you?
> Wouldn't want to inconvenience you with lockdowns now would we! How frustrating! Better let you out so you can go give some unvaccinated people covid instead hmm? Sorry for the snark but what a selfish attitude.
Yeah if you think "you better stay inside so I don't get COVID because I don't want to get vaccinated" is a reasonable stance, this won't go anywhere.
I even completely fail to fathom how "you should limit your own liberty to protect me from my choices" is remotely acceptable, let alone thinking that somebody not doing that is selfish.
You can either get vaccinated and go out, or not get vaccinated and stay in. How is it at all reasonable to tell me what to do because you don't want to get vaccinated? You're basically saying "everybody else needs to stop driving because I like walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, how selfish of you to still want to drive!".
> Vaccinated people. I feel like you aren't following the debate.
So what exactly is this inconvenience, caused specifically by unvaccinated people and not government policy?
> No, why would you?
Depends on your answer for the above.
> Yeah if you think "you better stay inside so I don't get COVID because I don't want to get vaccinated" is a reasonable stance, this won't go anywhere.
So who exactly are you protecting with vaccination then? Other vaxxed people who are also protected? And as I mentioned in another comment, why pretend to understand the motives of the unvaccinated to make them the 'enemy?'
> I even completely fail to fathom how "you should limit your own liberty to protect me from my choices" is remotely acceptable
But it's ok to limit the liberties of the unvaxed because 'risk?' Everyone has rights or no one has rights. This is fundamental. Are you ok to be called unvaccinated if they decide boosters should be monthly even if a newer variant is evading those vaccines again?
> You can either get vaccinated and go out, or not get vaccinated and stay in. How is it at all reasonable to tell me what to do because you don't want to get vaccinated? You're basically saying "everybody else needs to stop driving because I like walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, how selfish of you to still want to drive!".
But being vaccinated doesn't stop it spreading while you're out, which highlights the selfish motives for getting it. You don't care about not making people sick, you care that your freedoms aren't restricted. There's a lot of vaccinated people in hospital still, are they an inconvenience?
> Why do we not still care for the unvaccinated regardless of their reasons or situations for being so?
The inconvenience si "caring for the unvaccinated", at least that's how I interpreted your comment. If you meant something different please let me know.
> caused specifically by unvaccinated people and not government policy?
Government policy to protect unvaccinated people.
> So who exactly are you protecting with vaccination then?
Myself, obviously.
> why pretend to understand the motives of the unvaccinated to make them the 'enemy?'
I didn't make them "the enemy". They can do whatever I want, I just don't want any limitation on myself to protect them from their choices.
> But it's ok to limit the liberties of the unvaxed because 'risk?' Everyone has rights or no one has rights.
"But it's ok to limit the liberties of the drunk because 'risk?' Everyone can drive or no one can drive."
> But being vaccinated doesn't stop it spreading while you're out
This argument would make sense if curtailing the spread was the ultimate goal, but it's not. Preventing hospitalizations/deaths is the ultimate goal. If I go into a room with vaccinated people and give them all COVID but nobody is hospitalized, then that's fine. I don't think this is so hard to understand.
> You don't care about not making people sick, you care that your freedoms aren't restricted.
Everything is a tradeoff. If you're vaccinated, you're less of a risk than if you aren't. At some point, life has to go on. Or should we have been in perpetual lockdown for centuries so people didn't die of the flu as well?
No I mean having empathy and being considerate, not physically caring. And if I did mean physical caring, again how does those with adverse events not then qualify for being an 'inconvenience' to those who have to care for them. Though I believe you are only referring to government/business actions that impact you rather than the inconvenience of personal care?
> Government policy to protect unvaccinated people.
Government policy !== health. Protecting them by punishing them so you can be 'free?' Odd. Do you not see at all how the vaccine is not in this case forming a health solution (otherwise considering the vaccine still spreads covid there'd be continued lockdowns for all anyway to protect everyone...) but controls for their own sake?
> Myself, obviously
So why do you care what decision others make about it? Direct your frustration at those making policy calls, not those used as justification.
> "But it's ok to limit the liberties of the drunk because 'risk?' Everyone can drive or no one can drive."
You're free to choose not to drink or to drink. To correct the analogy, how about we restrict those that like a drink from being able to drive at all because risk?
> This argument would make sense if curtailing the spread was the ultimate goal, but it's not
Funny, it was earlier this year. Amazing how the narrative changes over time and people just follow it along, with the usual 'oh but they're learning about it all the time and making the best decisions they can.' Which obviously highlights they're making bad decisions, but not now?
> Everything is a tradeoff. If you're vaccinated, you're less of a risk than if you aren't
a) you're not near 0 risk though and b) Not if you're under 40 years old with no comorbidities. Especially for those under 20, the vaccine risk (by nature of risk of being impacted == 1.0 by getting jabbed vs risk of actually contracting covid, let along having a serious reaction or spreading it) is not clearly behind the covid risk. Now we head into the logic gymnastics where we are vaccinating the young to protect others, who have been vaccinated and protected, leaving only the unvaccinated for the young to protect, except we don't care about them because 'they made their choice.' So why again are we vaccinating the young, considering vaccination doesn't prevent spread and the young are the lowest risk group by a large distance? Also remembering that earlier in the year the young already didn't readily catch or spread covid, so why now?
Please stop abusing the EMA data to spread misinformation. The website very clearly states:
The information on this website relates to suspected side effects, i.e. medical events that have been observed following the administration of the COVID-19 vaccines, but which are not necessarily related to or caused by the vaccine.
Without knowledge of the expected background rate of such events, the data is impossible to interpret. In no way does it show that the vaccines are unsafe.
I noted that my reply, but sure, let's not take the cautious approach with vaccines and yet take the extremely cautious approach with covid (dying within 30 days of catching covid is counted as covid death in many countries).
Covids deaths are not acceptable, but deaths in younger demographics are acceptable because they're less?
I'm reading between the lines here but the index case seems to have been vaccinated given that everyone else at the party. They infected everyone^.
How much worse would this have been if an unvaccinated person had attended the venue? Realistically, if one person can infect 80, the vaccine is doing nothing to delay the spread.
^ Where today "everyone" is 70% of the partygoers.
But it did prevent the index patient from becoming seriously ill (i.e. hospitalised). It most likely reduced the initial dose of all that got infected by patient-0 [0]. And it most likely prevent _any_ of the invected to become hospitalised either.
Now you can make the argument (or at least attempt to make this argument), that it would have been _better_ for patient-0 not to be vaccinated, because then, maybe, patient-0 would already have been sick and not at that party. Unfortunately this is the main problem of Covid in the first place: A significant portion of the downstream infections are generated before the onset of symptoms.
So yes, the vaccine didn't prevent much of the spread [1], but it still reduces the amount of strain put on the health care system. Somewhere upthread there was the question: "How do the few unvaccinated overwhelm the hospital system?" The answer is: We can't deal with 1% of society being in the hospital. So getting 5% of all unvaccinated there and having 20% unvaccinated is already too much!
Last year we managed, because we radically cut down on all interactions and delayed the spread that way. We _can_ do that again. But then this Christmas party just wouldn't have happened at all!
[0] Note this is still somewhat a conjecture, as actually getting clean data for this is nigh impossible.
[1] I'd still take the 30% reduction, but it's an upper bound and can still decrease. So yeah, let's call this "doesn't help slow down the spread"
> ... but it still reduces the amount of strain put on the health care system
Sure, but the case for a vaccine mandate pretty much collapses at that point. I have some anti-vaxxers living across the road from me who earn a lot of money. They'd be paying an above-average amount of taxes.
So the mandate argument to them is essentially "well, we're going to force you to do something, otherwise you'd be more likely than average to consume services that you pay for". Now that is a good argument for getting vaccinated, no doubt. But it is a terrible argument for banning people from public life as a vaccine mandate requires if it is going to be implemented.
It is also a bit questionable to be reaching out and forcing medical procedures on people based on being unwilling to expand the hospital system. If the unvaccinated were given an option to just pay for the extra capacity required (some form of insurance, dare I say) then they can get what they want and stay vulnerable at no cost to others.
That's true but the government data from the UK also showed that the vaccinated (age group above 30 years old) got infected more often than unvaccinated.
The reasons are unclear, maybe it is the testing issue or that vaccinated are less careful with socialization and pay less attention to their symptoms and can even spread covid even more. Even if the data is suspect, it is a strong indicator that the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated with regards to spreading of infection is not strong.
As with all studies, they are not always able to predict actual effects in the community. It very much depends when the study is done, what variants are currently circulating, behavioural changes which are very hard to control etc.
The theory that vaccinated people are less careful with socialization and pay less attention to symptoms is the exact same argument being made about masks. This makes agreeing or disagreeing with the theory a bit socially complex.
If we agree that protections like vaccinations and masks do effect people to behave more risky, then the benefit of masks need to be balanced towards that negative effect.
If we disagree that protections like vaccinations and masks do effect people to behave more risky, then the benefit of vaccinations need to be questioned.
Either way we are questioning the effectiveness of masks and vaccinations, two topics which is quite controversial to question.
Wow, that "people wearing masks will party like it's 2019" hypothesis is an interesting specimen: to me, almost two years into the pandemic it seems almost absurd, because when I put on a mask I'm immediately "pandemic me", with all the routine precautionary behavior patterns. I can only switch that off without a mask. But back in early 2020, those connections were not set up yet, it would have been quite likely that wearing a mask would have got the precaution box checked, leaving everything else "2019". At what point has it changed? Has it changed for everyone?
To me, putting on a mask is acknowledging of a high risk environment, like using a mass transportation during a pandemic. Airborne virus spread fast in crowded environment with limited ventilation, and if one has to be in such environment then doing anything to limit spread is good. The problem is when people started to use masks in order to allow themselves to be in an high risk environments.
For my perspective here in Sweden, not much has changed from last time during the holidays and this year. People still seem to want something to allow them go into high risk environment, like Christmas parties, weddings, mass transportation travel, and shopping during rush hours. To me it the same people who went to those last year with masks that goes to those things this year with vaccines. Thankfully vaccines is at least more effective and thus the outcome seem less worse this year for the health care system.
It's a rubbish assumption though. According to the UK data (which is age stratified), unvaccinated children get infected much more often. You could say that children have strong immune systems therefore they don't get sick but only infected. Maybe vaccination for children further improves their immunity that they don't get infected either (will see if it works for omicron though). As for other people, even vaccinated easily get infected but the severity of illness is reduced.
Seasonality is just one of many factors that affect the spread of COVID. Blindly comparing the situation now with one year ago really doesn't make any sense.
Vaccine efficacy against infection has been measured in a lot of studies, for example [1, 2, 3]. It has also been shown that being vaccinated reduces viral loads after infection, even with the delta variant [4, 5]. There are also a few studies on household transmission [5, 6] that show that transmission between vaccinated individuals is significantly less likely.
Last year had the original variant and this year delta. In addition last year most countries already were in lockdown since October while this year lockdowns just started mid December. In addition there are still less hospital space taken by covid patients conpared to last year, although the problem here is also mass resignation of medical staff.
Taking pressue off the healthcare system was the main goal of all restrictions, this was communicated right from the start at least in Germany. Because what happens when the healthcare system breaks down could be seen in various countries early in the pandemic.
Early as in "apparently that person has an infection building up, there's a small risk of it getting very bad, do we get out the rare, expensive early treatment pills full of side effects for this one?"
I've heard one tiny statement about that question, it sounded like strong focus on practicality. Like cases already in treatment/observation for unrelated reasons (but likely increased risks). Certainly no "oh, your test pinged positive? Here, have these for five days" anytime soon.
And this is irrational on a country wide scale, though understandable at the beginning. We should, I would think, be much better at modeling by this point factoring in vaccinations and recovery immunity to make predictions about specific municipal healthcare risks and move resources to meet them accordingly. Knee-jerk national restrictions based on accelerating cases seems foolish at this point without stringent data models that predict unacceptable levels of healthcare strain. Maybe such models are put forward in some places, but I haven’t seen it.
They won't stop spread, that much is true. Vaccine passes are not a device for stopping the virus. They are devices for allowing venues to do business by reducing harmful effects to a point that's considered acceptable. The "pressuring of individuals" is a side effect that many consider positive, but not the reason why they exist.
Most likely, the reason for vaccine passes is that the authorities believed that they will limit the spread of covid. When it didn't happen they could not backtrack and just continued with vague notions that it will help to improve vaccine uptake.
Omnicron is a blessing in disguise; the unvaccinated get it, more likely than not don't get hospitalized, but develop an immune response to it regardless. In other words, it effectively vaccinates the unvaccinated. I say let 'er rip, then let's all get on with our lives.
That would be the least bad outcome given an already miserable pandemic. How omicron pans out in reality will depend on the balance between increased rate of spread and decreased severity. Hospitals could still be overwhelmed if the balance tips in the wrong direction.
Hospital system collapse is the most pessimistic outcome. Hospitals have spent the past two years not bulking up their personnel and infrastructure, so I don't think even the medical industry earnestly considers that a serious threat. The most realistic worse case scenario is the unvaccinated get triaged out of the hospital system.
There's not convincing data that this is any better for vaccinated people than Delta.
They're just more likely to get it.
In neither case were vaccinated people highly likely to get hospitalized, ventilated, or die.
In no world should we be celebrating people getting sick. Omicron is resistant to previous infection. It will likely mutate into something resistant to previous infection to itself.
It's good vaccinated people aren't dying. We still shouldn't cheerlead them getting Covid.
I'm not cheer-leading vaccinated people getting it, I'm cheer-leading unvaccinated people getting it, conditional on it not being bad enough to hospitalize them.
Do you have good data for the claim, that unvaccinated people without a prior infection of corona have a significantly lower risk of hospitalization with omicron than with delta? The last I have heard is that data from South Africa has to be taken with precaution, because there are high rates of prior infections.
Do you have 'good data' that I should be afraid? I'm through with fear of the unknown and everything I've heard about Omnicron, including the outbreak this article talks about, suggests that I'm right about it.
No I don’t, but it’s not unlikely that omicrons risks for the individual could be similar to previous strains. Then there’s also high transmissibility. When following the precautionary principle we shouldn’t act expecting the best but the worst.
> Among the 81 cases, the most common symptoms were cough (83%), followed by runny/stuffy nose (78%), fatigue/lethargy (74%), sore throat (72%), headache (68%) and fever (54%)
Sounds like the symptoms of a typical cold. I guess most of us will get this one in the next year or two, oh well. Interesting case study, though- I find these analyses of outbreaks in common situations to be the most useful information about this stuff.
N is low; average age under 40; and probably fairly fit and healthy relative to wider population (it was a workplace party). Also, this was in Oslo, so potentially not tremendously ethnically diverse either. Seeing low hospitalisation in a setting like this might be expected whatever the covid variant - I think it's somewhat dangerous to try and learn about Omicron severity from a study like this.
What I don't get is how come almost 2 years into this pandemic and yet it seems that the data collection pipelines are still very localized at best.
It's been a few weeks and more than 100k cases of the new variant - How come we "still need more data" to have a high probability model of it's behavior?
Great point. Of course, part of the delay here is due to the time it takes for outcomes to manifest. Omicron has only been a variant of concern for four weeks. I think a high percentage of deaths from prior variants took at least four weeks.
That being said, data collection is fragmented and quality is inexcusably terrible across the board. I’m personally aware of multiple similar holiday superspreader stories in NYC. Two weeks after said events (an eternity in omicron terms) CDC was still reporting ~40 total cases of omicron nationally and there was no mention of these events in the press. Outcomes were very similar to those in the Norway event.
I am very optimistic about Omicron, but I think we need a better categorization for non-hospitalized cases. My wife had COVID-19 in April 2020 and although she was not hospitalized, she stayed in bed for two weeks and had problems with her lungs for four more months. I really hope these cases are rare for Omicron, but I just want to point out that not being hospitalized is not necessarily the same as a mild cold and more data would be helpful.
166 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadA silver lining here is that none of 70 odd people infected were hospitalised. It is plausible the vaccines provided protection from hospitalisation here, but there are better ways that will be measured in coming days/weeks.
The study: https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-c...
[0]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/omicron-update-inflation-u...
Spreads less in the lung, much more in the nose.
Not: this is lab info ( = no human protection kicking in. The title is kinda sensational because of that)
https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-c...
I really hope the info about lower hospitalisation rates is correct (across all age groups), or hospitals or gonna be smashed with cases.
When hospitalized it's usually only for a quick stay, and deaths are basically at the same levels as for flu.
The hope now is that it really spreads and becomes even milder, while protecting against the more deadly strains by displacing them.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-...
Unfortunately the media has harmfully claimed that the vaccines are “less effective against Omicron” because of the reduction of prevention against any symptomatic disease… which they were never designed to prevent.
But that they did reasonably well for the previous variants, and we could greatly benefit from that
117 people, 107 of whom were fully vaccinated, attended a party for 4.5 hours after checking themselves with a rapid antigen test.
66 of them were confirmed to have omicron less than 3 weeks later, the vast majority developing symptoms within 5 days. 15 others had covid that was not confirmed to be omicron.
You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_rapid_antigen_test#Ne...
Few people have done any test like that in Scandinavia and willingness to lie about taking it is pretty high in my experience.
But then, Denmark has an average of 17 tests per person, the highest in the world by some margin.
Norway is 1.6 per person, Finland 1.5 and Sweden 1.4.
False positives are not tipically a problem for this kind of tests. It's like the pregnancy test: if you see the stripe, you're very, very likely pregnant. If you don't see it, you can't rule it out with the same certainty.
Only then can we reliably tell anything.
Can we estimate the severity of this variant on an unvaccinated population based on the symptoms seen in the vaccinated?
Not sure what a booster shot is going to do for you unless you're particularly vulnerable.
[0]https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/omicron-...
[1]https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news-fast-news/deaths-data-shows-...
Reasonable initial data [0] suggests that if you are over 60 then getting a Pfizer booster does appear to assist.
"The executive summary is that I did find some good evidence, and it has encouraged me to book a third dose."
[0] https://dailysceptic.org/measuring-vaccine-usefulness-withou...
I signed up exactly on the day for my booster. Happy to have it behind me.
By the way, scarcity of the doses is not really a problem -- my country has more than 20M doses in storage.
In late December 2019, my family and myself, in California, caught a really bad respiratory illness. I isolated as soon as I got symptoms, but everyone else got it anyway. It was tested to not be influenza. One of us spent a day in the hospital. And I wonder if it was in fact COVID.
Most papers suggest it hadn’t made it to the US yet. But here we are with a variant that caused outbreaks on other continents a week after first detection, and testing is everywhere. With all our supposed defenses and travel bans, this is the best we can do?
Anyway, no way to know for sure now. We’ve all had three doses so we would have a strong immune response.
When Omicron was initially discovered, the United Kingdom promptly closed its borders to several African countries—but oddly not whiter infected countries like The Netherlands.
This was of course pointless politicking, and did nothing to stop the spread of Omicron in the UK, which was already established.
If only the UK had instead chosen to implement decent sick pay, or immediately ramp up the booster program, or implement work from hone guidance. Instead the UK let it rip fir three weeks, before suddenly panicking.
It should also be noted the free test kits in the UK say the user must submit their result whether positive or negative. This surely pushes up the number of positive tests included in UK figures. In fact, I suspect the UK's high case rates since the summer - part of the reason why Germany has had it on its list of high risk areas since July - are simply an artefact of huge rates of testing going on and not because it's "plague island" as some like to brand it.
Which seems quite late to me as a layperson, almost a week after Omicron became predominant...
[1] https://jdee.substack.com/p/trend-in-emergency-admissions-re...
Such statistical data is freely available under Freedom of Information law in the UK. (Privacy laws obviously protect individuals, but not public bodies.)
Apparently this person is a retired NHS manager of some sort, probably got the data via an old colleague. If the data were public this argument could be definitively proved or disproved, but until then we need the pinch of salt that I noted in my comment.
Freedom of Information law provides for the publication of statistical information. It provides for the publication of patient-anonymised data.
A&E waiting times are periodically published, but anybody living anywhere can request other information held by a public body.
There is zero need for the public body to be anonymous.
What a bizarre strawman argument. Protecting the health care system was always express goal.
- Up until mid-2021 people still thought "transmission was exceptionally rare" in vaccinated individuals: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/yes-vacci...
- Biden said it would stop transmissions: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-if-vaccinated-wont-g...
- Fauci said it would stop transmissions: https://web.archive.org/web/20210604093134/https://www.medpa...
This is late stage narrative from 2021. In 2020 they were still questioning whether "breakthrough infections" were real. The narrative shifts over time, but if you know how to use a search engine you'll see it clear as day.
As you argueing against vacvine mandates, lock downs, vaccine passports and geberal restrictions, what would be your counter proposal? No restrictions and let the Pandemic run its natural course? We all sae how that would look like in Italy, Spain, Brazil, New York...
Bullshit.
Still the question remains to be answered: What are our alternatives, assuming we don't want overloaded health systems? Because just doing nothing wpuld be disaster.
Fauci and the CDC were a little more careful, but they insinuated effectively the same thing with vaccination induced herd immunity. Of course, we now know the vaccines do nothing for herd immunity, and it seems only infection actually does anything in this regard. I don't have the time to dig up everything every time I need to make an argument, and I wish there was a proper repository of information for this stuff - and that again, is a failing of the government.
Infection doesn't either. The effect of infection is stronger wrt to spread for a few weeks or months but that difference isn't a long term thing. That's not how you reach herd immunity, it's how you reach seasonality.
How long is long? This was published a little over a month ago:
Protective immunity after recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
> The effect of infection is stronger wrt to spread for a few weeks or months but that difference isn't a long term thing. That's not how you reach herd immunity, it's how you reach seasonality.
The authors of that study said:
> Community immunity to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic can be reached with the acquired immunity due to either previous infection or vaccination.
I haven't seen anything yet that says protection after infection wanes all that much. I see a lot of "we don't know how long it will last", but it seems to last as long as we have data for so far.
I'm not sidestepping the issue. There is no difficult ethical dilemma here, and nothing changed with the new variant.
If there was a mistake regarding the vaccines, it was to discuss vaccination as optional opposed to the clear ethical obligation that it is. Just like no one is entitled to store unstable explosives in candlelight in a shed next to their neighbour's house.
Now, herd immunity is just a dream, we can't count on the vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated anymore. So, plan B, and as it turns out, the key of plan B is also vaccines, but now we need 100% vaccinated, not 60%, so, vaccine passes.
Maybe it will change if we get better treatment, or if the virus mutates to be less lethal to those with no immunity. But for now, get vaccinated or stay at home.
It might reduce the risk of transmission, but only a negligible amount.
I consider myself to have a moral obligation to get vaccinated to reduce my own burden on the health care system, but forcing others to do it is a different story. Surely you must agree that requiring people to take a vaccine just to enter a store is a severe measure that should only be undertaken if it's absolutely necessary?
Multiple studies show that vaccinated people have significantly lower transmission than unvaccinated.
> In studies conducted before the emergence of the Delta variant, data from multiple studies in different countries suggested that people vaccinated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines who develop COVID-19 generally have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(157, 165-169) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(170) Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) For the Delta variant, early data indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with Delta have similar levels of viral RNA and culturable virus detected, indicating that some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus to others.(163, 164, 177-180) However, other studies have shown a more rapid decline in viral RNA and culturable virus in fully vaccinated people (96, 177, 180-182). One study observed that Delta infection in fully vaccinated persons was associated with significantly less transmission to contacts than persons who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.(181) Together, these studies suggest that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta have potential to be less infectious than infected unvaccinated people.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
If vaccines prevent serious cases and hospitalization for a large percentage of people, and they do, we would be all good if vaccination rates reach sufficient levels. Until they do, the very limited ICU capacity will be taken up overpropertionally unvaccinated. And we will continue to have problems.
Don't we want some sort of control group to remain for these vaccines that don't formally conclude their trials for a couple of years yet? Or is everyone just 100% convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point? That would be proper scientific diligence.
What would be an example of something going wrong? Are you thinking that a sub-optimal outcome might occur ("the pandemic lasted 4 months longer than it had to") or that 80% of the people vaccinated drop dead in 2025?
The first case would be an unfortunate case of the best attempt of a decision made on uncertain data turning out to be incorrect in retrospect.
In the latter case, civilization is still protected as many people chose not to get vaccinated.
I guess hopefully we don't find out, because the only way it'll ever be clearly distinguished is if it goes very badly across the board. Anything less can quite simply be explained away. Isn't it nice for Pfizer/Moderna to be able to run the long-term study with immunity in a manner that is very hard to understand clinical outcomes (except the huge side-effect profile readily dismissed as 'acceptable' because some deaths are more important than others).
These decisions were mired in a whole lot of suspicious and unnecessary controversy. Rare and specific blood clots on the order of 1 per 20,000 vaccinations turned the ethical consideration of the vaccines from "obviously good" to "obviously bad" overnight, and they were removed from the program immediately. A single-digit number of unnecessary deaths were caused, but the buck stopped there.
I'm not as encouraged by the international response to this research and operative decision. It could be argued at the time that the Scandinavian decisions were made in the light of populations that had sufficiently low mortality from covid that the ethical consideration was different than in Europe at large.
But to my eyes, the European decision to keep using the AZ and J&J vaccines had an air of "let's not look too closely, or maybe we'll see something bad". Norwegian case studies indicated that the rare blood clots were pretty frickin' hard to distinguish from conditions caused by common lifestyle diseases. Two cases were specifically diagnosed only because they happened in doctors who ran themselves through a battery of expensive tests few normal patients would have qualified for. My qualified guess: There are rare but deadly and persistent side effects with these vaccines, that won't be discovered in healthcare environments that aren't finely tuned.
I suppose my point is that if there (God forbid) happen to exist bad but rare and non-obvious side effects of the new RNA vaccines, the truth can be uncovered. I'm not sure that a deliberate control group would be any good regardless; the AZ/J&J side effects were rare enough not to be seen in the control group. But they were still bad enough to disqualify the vaccines.
The whole thing is a super interesting subject, and it's obviously so political and subject to propaganda that you'd need a very critical eye to navigate it. Unless again, heaven forbid, the effect is so bad that it's obvious. Different health authorities do have different degrees of honesty and principled handling of these questions. There are control groups available; the large population of people who decide skip vaccination.
Hitting mid-80% is actually pretty impressive.
What the vaccines are not doing: make it 2019 again.
It's pretty obvious that e.g. if a 50% vaccination rate leaves the ICU at 10x capacity during an unmitigated outbreak, a 90% vaccination rate would be preferable even if it doesn't prevent the need for quarantine measures. This means that contact-reducing measures don't have to be as severe while the outbreak is happening.
Only if you think that "people not dying" isn't meaningful, anyway.
The message is constantly that it's the unvaccinated causing it, but why is that so when they form such a small proportion of the population, there's been plenty of prior exposure and seasonality seems to show a greater effect than the vaccines? Not to mention the risk to under 40's has been extremely low throughout. How do the unvaccinated keep 'filling up' hospitals if vaccines reduce spread and there's 80-90%+ double-dose coverage?
There's no peak to preventing a fixed percentage of deaths. It's fixed.
> and yet keep putting all our eggs in that basket.
As far as I'm aware, we haven't stopped all other research, so that would be false.
> How do the unvaccinated keep 'filling up' hospitals if vaccines reduce spread and there's 80-90%+ double-dose coverage?
Because 2% of 10% of an entire country is still a big number.
The vaccine is clearly not protecting that group (the original reason for mandates), and 'preventing deaths' vs the unknowns around long term vaccine outcomes (we're all just assuming nothing serious at present) and the increases in stresses and illnesses driven from lockdown, restrictions and mandates are creating a toll that we seem happy to assume is always less than the direct covid toll and therefore acceptable.
Because they chose not to be vaccinated. Why should I limit myself when I have a very small risk after vaccination to protect someone who chose not to be vaccinated, for whatever reason?
> The vaccine is clearly not protecting that group
And that is their choice. What more is there to discuss?
Should I decide all those in religious minorities deserve whatever comes to them because they choose not to follow the major religion?
Should I decide obese people deserve no support or care because they 'choose' an unhealthy diet?
Let's not turn into horrible human beings just because we feel righteous. Righteousness has a habit of causing horrendous suffering.
In what way is this related to "other people shouldn't be inconvenienced to protect you from the choices you have made"?
> Should I decide obese people deserve no support or care because they 'choose' an unhealthy diet?
All these examples are so irrelevant that it feels like you're doing it in bad faith. We're not talking about what unvaccinated people should do. We're talking about what vaccinated people should do, and vaccinated people are under no obligation to limit themselves to protect unvaccinated people.
If you want to be unvaccinated, fine. I'm not going to go into lockdown so you don't die, though. Risking it is your choice.
Who is inconvenienced? And should I feel 'inconvenienced' by those going to hospital because of vaccine adverse events? For instance, just for Pfizer in the EU, there are 640K events reported as of now [1], with ~70K of those for Blood & lymphatic system or cardiac disorders. Now these may not all be specific to Covid and not all hospitalisations, but there's certainly some 'inconvenience' to others here, no? Or is there some lower limit of 'inconvenience?'
You might also observe that a large number of adverse events are occurring in the 18-64 group, one that is of much lower risk of covid hospitalisation/death in the first place.
But wouldn't want to inconvenience you with lockdowns now would we! How frustrating! Better let you out so you can go give some unvaccinated people covid instead hmm? Sorry for the snark but what a selfish attitude.
[1] https://dap.ema.europa.eu/analytics/saw.dll?PortalPages
Vaccinated people. I feel like you aren't following the debate.
> And should I feel 'inconvenienced' by those going to hospital because of vaccine adverse events?
No, why would you?
> Wouldn't want to inconvenience you with lockdowns now would we! How frustrating! Better let you out so you can go give some unvaccinated people covid instead hmm? Sorry for the snark but what a selfish attitude.
Yeah if you think "you better stay inside so I don't get COVID because I don't want to get vaccinated" is a reasonable stance, this won't go anywhere.
I even completely fail to fathom how "you should limit your own liberty to protect me from my choices" is remotely acceptable, let alone thinking that somebody not doing that is selfish.
You can either get vaccinated and go out, or not get vaccinated and stay in. How is it at all reasonable to tell me what to do because you don't want to get vaccinated? You're basically saying "everybody else needs to stop driving because I like walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, how selfish of you to still want to drive!".
So what exactly is this inconvenience, caused specifically by unvaccinated people and not government policy?
> No, why would you?
Depends on your answer for the above.
> Yeah if you think "you better stay inside so I don't get COVID because I don't want to get vaccinated" is a reasonable stance, this won't go anywhere.
So who exactly are you protecting with vaccination then? Other vaxxed people who are also protected? And as I mentioned in another comment, why pretend to understand the motives of the unvaccinated to make them the 'enemy?'
> I even completely fail to fathom how "you should limit your own liberty to protect me from my choices" is remotely acceptable
But it's ok to limit the liberties of the unvaxed because 'risk?' Everyone has rights or no one has rights. This is fundamental. Are you ok to be called unvaccinated if they decide boosters should be monthly even if a newer variant is evading those vaccines again?
> You can either get vaccinated and go out, or not get vaccinated and stay in. How is it at all reasonable to tell me what to do because you don't want to get vaccinated? You're basically saying "everybody else needs to stop driving because I like walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, how selfish of you to still want to drive!".
But being vaccinated doesn't stop it spreading while you're out, which highlights the selfish motives for getting it. You don't care about not making people sick, you care that your freedoms aren't restricted. There's a lot of vaccinated people in hospital still, are they an inconvenience?
You said this:
> Why do we not still care for the unvaccinated regardless of their reasons or situations for being so?
The inconvenience si "caring for the unvaccinated", at least that's how I interpreted your comment. If you meant something different please let me know.
> caused specifically by unvaccinated people and not government policy?
Government policy to protect unvaccinated people.
> So who exactly are you protecting with vaccination then?
Myself, obviously.
> why pretend to understand the motives of the unvaccinated to make them the 'enemy?'
I didn't make them "the enemy". They can do whatever I want, I just don't want any limitation on myself to protect them from their choices.
> But it's ok to limit the liberties of the unvaxed because 'risk?' Everyone has rights or no one has rights.
"But it's ok to limit the liberties of the drunk because 'risk?' Everyone can drive or no one can drive."
> But being vaccinated doesn't stop it spreading while you're out
This argument would make sense if curtailing the spread was the ultimate goal, but it's not. Preventing hospitalizations/deaths is the ultimate goal. If I go into a room with vaccinated people and give them all COVID but nobody is hospitalized, then that's fine. I don't think this is so hard to understand.
> You don't care about not making people sick, you care that your freedoms aren't restricted.
Everything is a tradeoff. If you're vaccinated, you're less of a risk than if you aren't. At some point, life has to go on. Or should we have been in perpetual lockdown for centuries so people didn't die of the flu as well?
> Government policy to protect unvaccinated people.
Government policy !== health. Protecting them by punishing them so you can be 'free?' Odd. Do you not see at all how the vaccine is not in this case forming a health solution (otherwise considering the vaccine still spreads covid there'd be continued lockdowns for all anyway to protect everyone...) but controls for their own sake?
> Myself, obviously
So why do you care what decision others make about it? Direct your frustration at those making policy calls, not those used as justification.
> "But it's ok to limit the liberties of the drunk because 'risk?' Everyone can drive or no one can drive."
You're free to choose not to drink or to drink. To correct the analogy, how about we restrict those that like a drink from being able to drive at all because risk?
> This argument would make sense if curtailing the spread was the ultimate goal, but it's not
Funny, it was earlier this year. Amazing how the narrative changes over time and people just follow it along, with the usual 'oh but they're learning about it all the time and making the best decisions they can.' Which obviously highlights they're making bad decisions, but not now?
https://twitter.com/Sentinel2NO/status/1471886835152560130?s...
> Everything is a tradeoff. If you're vaccinated, you're less of a risk than if you aren't
a) you're not near 0 risk though and b) Not if you're under 40 years old with no comorbidities. Especially for those under 20, the vaccine risk (by nature of risk of being impacted == 1.0 by getting jabbed vs risk of actually contracting covid, let along having a serious reaction or spreading it) is not clearly behind the covid risk. Now we head into the logic gymnastics where we are vaccinating the young to protect others, who have been vaccinated and protected, leaving only the unvaccinated for the young to protect, except we don't care about them because 'they made their choice.' So why again are we vaccinating the young, considering vaccination doesn't prevent spread and the young are the lowest risk group by a large distance? Also remembering that earlier in the year the young already didn't readily catch or spread covid, so why now?
The information on this website relates to suspected side effects, i.e. medical events that have been observed following the administration of the COVID-19 vaccines, but which are not necessarily related to or caused by the vaccine.
Without knowledge of the expected background rate of such events, the data is impossible to interpret. In no way does it show that the vaccines are unsafe.
Covids deaths are not acceptable, but deaths in younger demographics are acceptable because they're less?
By that measure we might give up on food as well, what's it good for of people still eventually die?
> How do the unvaccinated keep 'filling up' hospitals if vaccines reduce spread and there's 80-90%+ double-dose coverage?
By getting infected and requiring medical assistance, that's how they do it.
It's an awful situation and there is absolutely no way it could be less awful without vaccines.
How much worse would this have been if an unvaccinated person had attended the venue? Realistically, if one person can infect 80, the vaccine is doing nothing to delay the spread.
^ Where today "everyone" is 70% of the partygoers.
Now you can make the argument (or at least attempt to make this argument), that it would have been _better_ for patient-0 not to be vaccinated, because then, maybe, patient-0 would already have been sick and not at that party. Unfortunately this is the main problem of Covid in the first place: A significant portion of the downstream infections are generated before the onset of symptoms.
So yes, the vaccine didn't prevent much of the spread [1], but it still reduces the amount of strain put on the health care system. Somewhere upthread there was the question: "How do the few unvaccinated overwhelm the hospital system?" The answer is: We can't deal with 1% of society being in the hospital. So getting 5% of all unvaccinated there and having 20% unvaccinated is already too much!
Last year we managed, because we radically cut down on all interactions and delayed the spread that way. We _can_ do that again. But then this Christmas party just wouldn't have happened at all!
[0] Note this is still somewhat a conjecture, as actually getting clean data for this is nigh impossible. [1] I'd still take the 30% reduction, but it's an upper bound and can still decrease. So yeah, let's call this "doesn't help slow down the spread"
Sure, but the case for a vaccine mandate pretty much collapses at that point. I have some anti-vaxxers living across the road from me who earn a lot of money. They'd be paying an above-average amount of taxes.
So the mandate argument to them is essentially "well, we're going to force you to do something, otherwise you'd be more likely than average to consume services that you pay for". Now that is a good argument for getting vaccinated, no doubt. But it is a terrible argument for banning people from public life as a vaccine mandate requires if it is going to be implemented.
It is also a bit questionable to be reaching out and forcing medical procedures on people based on being unwilling to expand the hospital system. If the unvaccinated were given an option to just pay for the extra capacity required (some form of insurance, dare I say) then they can get what they want and stay vulnerable at no cost to others.
The reasons are unclear, maybe it is the testing issue or that vaccinated are less careful with socialization and pay less attention to their symptoms and can even spread covid even more. Even if the data is suspect, it is a strong indicator that the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated with regards to spreading of infection is not strong.
As with all studies, they are not always able to predict actual effects in the community. It very much depends when the study is done, what variants are currently circulating, behavioural changes which are very hard to control etc.
If we agree that protections like vaccinations and masks do effect people to behave more risky, then the benefit of masks need to be balanced towards that negative effect.
If we disagree that protections like vaccinations and masks do effect people to behave more risky, then the benefit of vaccinations need to be questioned.
Either way we are questioning the effectiveness of masks and vaccinations, two topics which is quite controversial to question.
For my perspective here in Sweden, not much has changed from last time during the holidays and this year. People still seem to want something to allow them go into high risk environment, like Christmas parties, weddings, mass transportation travel, and shopping during rush hours. To me it the same people who went to those last year with masks that goes to those things this year with vaccines. Thankfully vaccines is at least more effective and thus the outcome seem less worse this year for the health care system.
Vaccine efficacy against infection has been measured in a lot of studies, for example [1, 2, 3]. It has also been shown that being vaccinated reduces viral loads after infection, even with the delta variant [4, 5]. There are also a few studies on household transmission [5, 6] that show that transmission between vaccinated individuals is significantly less likely.
[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2114228
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410
[3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620
[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4
[5] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
[6] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...
How is that not much better on all fronts?
I've heard one tiny statement about that question, it sounded like strong focus on practicality. Like cases already in treatment/observation for unrelated reasons (but likely increased risks). Certainly no "oh, your test pinged positive? Here, have these for five days" anytime soon.
They're just more likely to get it.
In neither case were vaccinated people highly likely to get hospitalized, ventilated, or die.
In no world should we be celebrating people getting sick. Omicron is resistant to previous infection. It will likely mutate into something resistant to previous infection to itself.
It's good vaccinated people aren't dying. We still shouldn't cheerlead them getting Covid.
Sounds like the symptoms of a typical cold. I guess most of us will get this one in the next year or two, oh well. Interesting case study, though- I find these analyses of outbreaks in common situations to be the most useful information about this stuff.
If Omicron is a fizzer and with Trump out of office what are the media going to do to keep bringing in all those precious views?
I'd at least wait until this cohort have recovered and have a confirmed average illness duration before drawing conclusions.
It's been a few weeks and more than 100k cases of the new variant - How come we "still need more data" to have a high probability model of it's behavior?
That being said, data collection is fragmented and quality is inexcusably terrible across the board. I’m personally aware of multiple similar holiday superspreader stories in NYC. Two weeks after said events (an eternity in omicron terms) CDC was still reporting ~40 total cases of omicron nationally and there was no mention of these events in the press. Outcomes were very similar to those in the Norway event.