Its effectiveness at preventing the person who receives it from dying doesn't prove it also substantially reduces the probability of transmission, which is what the parent is talking about.
It makes it less likely for you to catch it in the first place a necessary prerequisite for transmission. Also your bodies ability to fight the virus is liable to reduce your viral load and ergo chance of transmission.
It beggars belief to imagine that your body is both more adept at fighting it and also somehow just as good at transmitting it.
COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths by Vaccination Status
February 02, 2022
> 5 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 12-34 year- olds.
This can mean that the risk of hospitalization goes from 0.01% to 0.05%, which isn't something most people would care about. With statistics like that we need absolute numbers, not relative. Your post is basically an example of "how to scare people with meaningless stats".
Actually great grandparent post was asserting that vaccines didn't decrease transmission. In order to counter that assertion the relative numbers are exactly what is appropriate.
But what do I know, I'm not a guy trained to Trust the Scientific Authority, just a lowly pleb with a degree who does math and statistics for a living.
Hospital ICU COVID patients are almost entirely the unvaccinated. This is not in disupte except by conspiracists. What’s the alternative statistical explanation of why unvaxxed are ~90% of covid ICU?
> What's with all the whiney low-effort replies, dude? You're going to have to put a hell of a lot more effort and evidence into your replies, since you've chosen to put up an ideological defense and carry the water for Anti-Vax Science Deniers.
So what was your scientific argument for mandating vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in the age of the Omicron variant again?
I think you read much more into this than I wrote, in fact I have no idea what exactly in my comment you find terrifying.
Banning access to airplanes is already being done in cases where the airline decides a passenger isn't worth the trouble, just like a restaurant owner can ban people. Using a no-fly list is too much, and wouldn't do more than that either way.
Anti-vaxxers/Covid deniers have physically assaulted and sometimes even killed bystanders and it's not far-fetched to assume they don't take safety of other community members as seriously. Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
> Anti-vaxxers/Covid deniers have physically assaulted and sometimes even killed bystanders
Some extremists that are also supposedly unvaccinated have done that.
Lumping everyone together under one insulting label and then judging them by the worst apples leaves you with a skewed image.
> and it's not far-fetched to assume they don't take safety of other community members as seriously. Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
I would say it is extremely far-fetched. Of the unvaccinated people that I know, nobody is aggressive or violent or would ever engage in behavior that is risking the safety of other passengers.
Punishing them for what some extremists have done is neither fair nor lawful.
> Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
Would you prefer to share your plane with a psychopath who happens to be vaccinated or a lovely person that happens to be unvaccinated?
The comment above me, which I was replying to, is not about flights but is instead claiming that the vaccine does not help prevent hospitalization, which I pointed out is patently false.
US data simply doesn't match figures reported by other comparable countries around the world and is likely to be distorted in some way. For example, here's a story from the UK in October/November last year saying that the majority
of Covid ICU patients were vaccinated.
But we're not debating whether the stat is misleading or not - I think pretty much every stat about COVID vaccines is misleading in various different subtle ways. The original claim in dispute was a factual statement about particular numbers along with a claim that only "conspiracists" could disagree this. But the claim has been wrong in the UK in the recent past, and this is not a matter of "conspiracies" but of published fact, therefore the claim is wrong and people should stop making it.
Re: out of date. I'll take your word for it on the UK data now, but it hardly matters. Here's one from today showing the same thing for Israel:
"Professor Yaakov Jerris, the Director of a coronavirus ward in an Israeli hospital, has said between 70% and 80% of the serious cases in his hospital are vaccinated and that the vaccine has “no significance regarding severe illness”. Israel National News has the story."
Are Israeli hospitals really overloaded with unvaccinated COVID patients? According to Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of Ichilov Hospital’s coronavirus ward, the situation is completely opposite.
“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” Jerris told Channel 13 News. “They had at least three injections. Between seventy and eighty percent of the serious cases are vaccinated. So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just twenty to twenty-five percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”
I am asking what is the alternative explanation why the US covid ICU hospitalizations are dominated (upwards of 90%) by unvaccinated people. If the vaccine were ineffective against hospitalization --as you claimed-- wouldn't the ICU unvaxxed percentage be 50%? I'm legitimately interested to hear if there's an alternative explanation (besides "All the hospitals in the US are lying").
The people doing the research had a foregone conclusion - "vaccines are crucial in our anti-Covid effort" - and then went out of their way to massage the data to prove their point.
Other countries had different foregone conclusions, and demonstrate entirely different results.
So what is it to you then if someone is vaccinated if you are protected? Did you before throw a fit COVID that the person sitting next to you didn't show you a vaccine card?
The post that you replied to is about the spread of the virus.
Your reply is about "hospitalization and severe side effects, including death".
It is common knowledge by now, January 2022, that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
A tripple-vaccinated person can infect other people.
I was infected by a tripple-vaccinated person and I was vaccinated as well.
We both still live, so maybe the vaccines did something to prevent hospitalization and severe side effects, including death.
How is preventing hospitalization and severe side effects, including death relevant from an airline perspective?
Obviously they need to do their best to prevent spreading of the virus, but if they start mandating things that have almost no impact on that, such as the vaccines, they are overstepping boundaries.
Vaccines have never "prevented" transmission absolutely, so 100%.
They have always "prevented" transmission in some cases, so reducing transmission. At slightly lower rates than preventing severe outcomes.
Delta was 2x more transmissible than the first strain of Covid. Omicron appears to be around 4x more transmissible than delta, so 8x more transmissible than the original variant.
Even if the vaccines had been 90% effective at reducing transmission and was just as effective against Omicron, we would expect Omicron to spread in a fully vaccinated/boostered population just as quickly as the original variant spread in a completely unvaccinated population.
However, the vaccines were not 90% effective at preventing transmission of the original variant, more like 60-80% IIRC. And Omicron has mutated significantly, so effectiveness is further reduced. And of course there is a significant percentage of unvaccinated (partly due to "the vaccines don't work misinformation, sigh!), and the virus has a much easier time going from unvaccinated → vaccinated or vaccinated → unvaccinated than it does going from vaccinated → vaccinated.
So seeing high(er) transmission rates right now in no way "proves" that the "vaccines don't work at preventing transmission". Neither do anecdotes that do not contradict the actual evidence. Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
> However, the vaccines were not 90% effective at preventing transmission of the original variant, more like 60-80% IIRC. And Omicron has mutated significantly, so effectiveness is further reduced. And of course there is a significant percentage of unvaccinated (partly due to "the vaccines don't work misinformation, sigh!), and the virus has a much easier time going from unvaccinated → vaccinated or vaccinated → unvaccinated than it does going from vaccinated → vaccinated.
Now Omicron is dominant and these earlier strains are not relevant anymore.
It is reasonable to expect that the virus will mutate more and faster, maybe even with many different strains that are relevant at the same time.
> And of course there is a significant percentage of unvaccinated (partly due to "the vaccines don't work misinformation, sigh!)
Most of Africa is unvaccinated, because they don't have the vaccine, while some countries are trying to enforce the third injection.
> Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
That is not an argument for mandating vaccines when they only prevent the spread of the currently dominant strains with a very low probability or maybe even not at all. Actually I haven't heard of any good argument for that yet.
> Now Omicron is dominant and these earlier strains are not relevant anymore.
Yes they are, when explaining why "it's spreading quickly now" does not imply that the vaccines aren't effective.
They are.
>> It is common knowledge by now, January 2022, that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
And when you stop spreading misinformation like this, I will stop correcting you.
> Most of Africa is unvaccinated
What relevance does this have to your false claim that the "vaccines do not prevent transmission"?
> > Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
> That is not an argument for mandating vaccines
You are right that it is not. Fortunately, that is not the reasoning for vaccine mandates, but just a rebuttal of your misinformation, such as:
> they only prevent the spread of the currently dominant strains with a very low probability or maybe even not at all.
No, they do not prevent spread at "very low" probability. Omicron is just much, much more contagious, so even with pretty high probability of prevention the rate of spread is high. This is why comparing with older variants is helpful with understanding the current situation.
You are also making the mistake of thinking of the effectiveness as a completely independent variable. But it is not. Overall effectiveness rises as the vaccination rates increase, because vaccinated → vaccinated has a lower probability of transmission than vaccinated → unvaccinated or unvaccinated → vaccinated.
And since Omicron is so much more transmissible than Delta, never mind Alpha, getting to a higher vaccination rate is more important than ever in achieving the desired societal outcomes.
Furthermore, every sick person puts a stress on the health system. With Omicron being so incredibly contagious, the risk of overwhelming the health system rises, meaning that other people suffer when you become sick, even if you don't infect anyone.
> Actually I haven't heard of any good argument for that yet.
Because they still prevent transmission, as they have done since the start and as was known from the start. They still prevent transmission in less than 100% of cases, just like they did from the start and was was known from the start and just like they do with severe outcomes.
Claiming that they do not prevent transmission is misinformation.
Claiming that there has been some sort of change in this knowledge is misinformation.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated...
I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting,"
Claiming that the vaccine prevents spread is misinformation.
b) I doubt that it is true, though Omicron is a tough one.
c) The reason I doubt it is that this is a nonlinear effect, i.e. you cannot easily extrapolate from vaccine effectiveness at 65% vaccination rate to vaccine effectiveness at 91%, 99%, or 100%.
d) The more contagious the virus, the higher your vaccination rate needs to be, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
e) So, seemingly paradoxically, the more the vaccine seems to not be working (it actually still is, the virus is just mostly much more contagious), the better the case for vaccine mandates. We really, really need to starve the virus of hosts, particularly so we don't breed ever more variants.
f) Even if it were true that R would still be > 1 with a 100% vaccination rate, as long as the R rate is lower with the vaccines than it is without the vaccines, the vaccines are preventing (some) transmission.
> e) So, seemingly paradoxically, the more the vaccine seems to not be working (it actually still is, the virus is just mostly much more contagious), the better the case for vaccine mandates. We really, really need to starve the virus of hosts, particularly so we don't breed ever more variants.
This seems so unrealistic when most of the world's population is still unvaccinated and the virus can jump from and to animal hosts such as mice too, which seems to be the case with Omicron. So what is left? Mostly just the tyrannic aspect of vaccine mandates, besides of personal protection against severe diseaes for some of the few people who would not get vaccinated voluntarily and some prevention of transmission that does not provide any meaningful personal protection.
Under the current circumstances a more likely outcome is that everyone will be exposed to the virus, regardless of vaccination status and those who survive that (partially due to being vaccinated) will gain some natural immunity and this is what starves out the virus in the long run.
Especially when the vaccines do not prevent (most) transmission.
Why do you think that R would be below 1 with a 100% vaccination rate? In countries with 80-90% vaccination rate we still see massive spread. Handwaving about "nonlinear effects" doesn't cut it. Vaccine mandates are a very heavy tool, that needs very heavy justification.
There is no magical law of physics that ensures that a 100% vaccination rate gets R<1. It all depends on how transmissible Omicron is in vaccinated people.
The numbers are currently still in flux, but a reasonable current estimate is that two vaccinations are approximately 70% effective against hospitalisation with Omicron.
We also know that it is (much) less effective against transmission than it is against hospitalisation.
Even if it were 70% effective against transmission, that might still not be enough to get R<1 given the ease at which Omicron spreads.
Compare, say, with the measles, which has a natural R of about 10. With a 70% effective vaccine, it would still spread. Luckily we have a vaccine that is 99% effective against transmission, so it can be stopped. COVID vaccines are not nearly as good.
To give some indication from my country (the Netherlands) where 86.3% has been fully vaccinated, of the positive corona tests, approximately 66% fully vaccinated. We can see that this 66% is less than 86.3%, indicating that the vaccination is somewhat effective at stopping transmission, but that's still a heck of a lot of vaccinated people who can catch and transmit covid.
> Even if it were true that R would still be > 1 with a 100% vaccination rate, as long as the R rate is lower with the vaccines than it is without the vaccines, the vaccines are preventing (some) transmission.
Of course, but in the long run it would make little difference, because as long as R>1, then more and more people will continue to catch the disease, just over a longer period of time. Smearing out infections can be important if there is a shortage of hospital beds, but this can hardly be called "stopping transmission".
> The more contagious the virus, the higher your vaccination rate needs to be, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
Absolutely correct! And at a certain point, unless the vaccine is 100% effective against transmission, the vaccination rate would need to go above 100%, which is clearly not possible.
Secondly, many lifestyle choices affect the rate of transmission. The singular focus on the forcing people to inject something into their body against their will is unethical (note: I have personally been vaccinated). It is unethical not just because it violates bodily autonomy, but also because it is an easy way to abdicate from your responsibility to take care of your other lifestyle choices that affect the spread.
> We really, really need to starve the virus of hosts, particularly so we don't breed ever more variants.
Not going to happen. Even at a 100% vaccination rate it would still have many human hosts as the data I quote above show, but also because many wild animals now have COVID too. Unless they develop a new vaccine that is much more effective than the ones we currently have, there is no stopping it any more. We need to learn to live with it, like we do live with the flu. We are lucky that Omicron is so much milder than Delta. If you are fully vaccinated then the chances that you have serious illness are very very low. It for sure is terrible for old people and those with existing health problems, but we cannot realistically do anything about that, except for instituting Chinese level control. The response against COVID is at this point completely irrational and doing more damage than COVID itself. Not just economically (which directly translates into future deaths), but also because it is tearing societies apart.
They do reduce the chance of transmission. Vaccinated people have a lower viral load when infected.
And even if there was no difference it would still make sense to me. There's likely a large overlap between anti-vaxxers and people who don't like adhering to safety measures.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated... I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting,"
