Look at the anti-vaxxer press!

So, I know that the press loves bombastic headlines, print copies being sold and clicks on websites so they won't waste a good opportunity to make some splash.

Look at this bombastic headline saying that "more than 100" (actually, 102) fully vaccinated people contracted Covid-19 in Washington State! You see the headline, and you think the vaccine is useless, so how bother, right? Well, if you read the piece then you'll find out that it represents less than 0.01% of the vaccinated people... something they conveniently don't think of including in the headline. Great. So the vaccines are actually MORE effective than anticipated but you wouldn't know that, from the headline.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/over-100-fully-vaccinated-people-115339262.html

 

The vaccine is said to not prevent one from getting the virus just lowers the chance of it being lethal, right? With that in mind, the headline doesn't seem alarming. I think most rational people will frame it in context.

 

It does prevent one from getting the virus in most cases, when people make a good titer of neutralizing antibodies. But not in all cases. For those cases that still get it the odds of getting hospitalized and dying are extremely small. Seems like two cases in 1.2 million in this report (and still they highlight that these were very old people, above 80 and with other medical conditions). So the odds of getting into real trouble drop to almost zero.

Sure, most rational people will frame it in context... but then, most rational people are probably already vaccinated or getting an appointment to be vaccinated as they become eligible.

I worry about the irrational people... and with the small attention span these days, someone may just read the headline, and conclude "see, it's useless; I shouldn't bother" without ever realizing that the headline only applies to less than 0.01% of the people. That's my point.

These days with Twitter having 240 characters a lot of people don't bother reading anything. They say TLDR ("too long didn't read"). I know I'm kind of verbose but I get this a lot... so I do my best to diffuse important info and some people just go, TLDR. That's the crowd that will read this headline and conclude that the vaccine is useless.

 

Unless they've been regularly testing all the vaccinated people, this seems like an unwarranted conclusion.

My odds of "getting into real trouble" from coronavirus were already "almost zero".

 

Yep, that's the sort of thing designed to get knee-jerk reactions and lots of shares on social media.

Who needs foreign disinformation with domestic fake news like this?

 

Not unwarranted at all. We gauge efficacy precisely by looking at how many vaccinated people get an "event" as opposed to the incidence in the general population.

That's what you think, since you likely ignore the sequelae of an infection with the SARS-CoV-2. Deny it all you want; it's a dangerous virus.

 

The problem is that without comprehensive testing of vaccinated people, we don't know how many vaccinated people get an "event". It's the '0.01% out of 1.2 million' that I'm taking issue with. We know of 102 COVID infections among vaccinated people, but we haven't tested all of the rest of them, so we don't know how common it is.

 

That is a good point but most people these days get tested when they get symptomatic. We gauge vaccine efficacy by symptomatic infections. If the vaccines allow some people to catch the virus but they don't develop any symptom, that is, they have an infection but don't have the clinical disease, the vaccine is doing its job. And it is a question of order of magnitude. You don't go from 0.01% to 5 or 10%. Meaning, if you are missing some symptomatic infections, you are not missing as many as 5% to 10% (which were the numbers in clinical trials for efficacy of 90% to 95%) if you are only catching as many as to account for 0.01%; it's just not credible that you'd miss that many if they were indeed happening, so this is indeed a better real-life performance than anticipated.

 

Agreed that it's unlikely to be as high as 5% or 10%. We just don't know that #. As a sidebar, what's your understanding of asymptomatic transmission? Can infected people (with or without the vaccine) who have COVID but aren't manifesting any symptoms infect others?

 

So if you agree with me that it isn't 5% to 10% then you agree with what I said, that the data from Washington State is indicating that the vaccine is performing better than anticipated (clinical trials were showing efficacy of 91.3% to 95% and the efficacy in this set of data seems higher - you are right that we don't know exactly how higher, but higher it is).

Asymptomatic transmission, can infected people etc., ?

Yes, they can. There's been numerous papers published on it in scientific journals. This is one among various examples:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707

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Another detail about "missed infections." It was a common argument for those who kept denying the seriousness of the virus, to make the point that all that we know is the case-fatality rate (currently sitting at 2.18% worldwide, with some locations being less than that and others, more), but the infection-fatality rate was necessarily smaller, to account for missed cases. While this is true (CFR will always be bigger than IFR), the order of magnitude of this effect is looking smaller and smaller, now that in many places testing is so prevalent.

Look at the United States: we have performed to date 405 million tests. Sure, some people have been tested more than once, and some people have been tested outside of the period when they were actually likely to be positive... but is it still credible, like some postulated in the past, that we are missing ten times more cases than we are diagnosing?

No, it isn't. We can tell we aren't missing that many, just by looking at the huge number of tests we've performed, which is almost double of our adult population, and by looking at the confirmed cases. We've had 31 million confirmed cases... if we were missing ten times more, we would have a situation of 341 million Americans infected with the SARS-CoV-2 which is again above our total population and utterly unrealistic. If we had that many people infected, we'd have reached herd immunity long ago and we'd be seeing virtually no daily new cases.

I said this from the beginning... yes, the virus is dangerous and does have a significant death toll, which is not ten times smaller than the Case-Fatality Rate because we aren't missing ten times the number of cases we're diagnosing... and not many believed in what I was saying. But now, if you look at our 405 million tests and our 31 million confirmed cases, it is becoming evident that I'm right.

 

McConnell urges fellow Republicans to get COVID-19 vaccines

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his fellow Republicans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 during a visit to a hospital in western Kentucky

LOUISVILLE, Ky -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his fellow Republicans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 during a visit to a western Kentucky hospital Thursday.

“As a Republican man, I wasn’t reluctant to get it when I was eligible and I would encourage everybody to do that,” he said. "The sooner we can get to 75%, to herd immunity, and get our economy up and open, the better."

...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireS...fellow-republicans-covid-19-vaccines-76817356​

McConnell has spoken. Debate over. Get your vaccinations.

 

It would be easier to take you somewhat seriously if you accepted everything spoken by McConnell in a similar fashion. IIRC, you don't generally just go along with whatever McConnell says.

 

You'd take me more seriously if I mindlessly agreed with everything McConnell says?

Oh my.

 

I'd take you more seriously if you didn't show such blatant hypocrisy: relentlessly criticizing McConnell for virtually everything he does until one day deciding to throw all that out and go with "McConnell has spoken. Debate over." Please try to maintain the slightest shred of intellectual consistency here.

 

Which is why the wearing of masks is being recommended to be continued long after most people get vaccinated to reduce even further the transmission of the disease. Unfortunately, many say they won't wear their masks any longer because of herd immunity. No one knows for sure what that will be nor if herd immunity is even possible. Ironically, the ones saying they won't keep wearing a mask are the same ones not getting vaccinated. There very well may be an IQ jump in the US as a result.

 

And considering that participation in the VAERS system is completely voluntary, we really don't know just how many adverse events there have been.

I know of one friend who did have a cardiac event from the shots, was knocked to the floor by the event, did go to the hospital, but was likely not entered into the data base.

 

I know. Darwin Awards all over the place. And yes, herd immunity is theoretical with a virus as infectious as the SARS-CoV-2 that has variants capable of re-infecting people. While it is possible that it will be achieved, I find it relatively unlikely due to the high rate of vaccine refusal we have in this country.

 

According to Dr. Mike Yeadon, herd immunity has been a factor for a long time in England. Probably the same or more here in the US.

The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic. Dr. Mike Yeadon - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

His analysis is far more persuasive than claims made by the resident pharma poster.