Because vaccines are not a perfect solution especially not on an individual level. They are by far the best tool in our toolbox to get out of this mess, but it doesn’t mean that every person who gets the shot will not become sick.
For example, a friend has an elementary aged D. at some point her blood was checked and found that most of her childhood vaccines didn’t take. They don’t know why. But had they not checked, they would have had no idea she wasn’t protected. Fortunately most of those diseases are rare in the US.
Also consider the flu shot. It does not mean you won’t get the flu. Plenty of people do. But if you get it, it’s not near as bad as the full blown version.
IMO breakthrough cases are much more common than people think with delta. If you are vaccinated, but frequent bars, dance clubs, crowded indoor spaces with no other protection, you’re probably going to get sick. A portion of those will wind up very sick. On the flip side, if you are relatively young and health and vaxxed, wear masks and social distance, and only go out when needed, you’ll probably be fine. But most people fall in between these extremes and that’s where it gets murky.
CDC has acknowledged that vaccine effectiveness is lower for Delta - it’s one of the reasons why they were recommending universal re-masking indoors. I haven’t seen their number on this - they are going off the studies in other countries. They need to do their own analysis and/or publish their own data. In addition to lower VE, several studies now have confirmed that viral load is equivalent in the vaxed and unvaxed so infected vaxed people are very likely spreading it. If you are vaxed you are less likely to get it and you are more protected from the worst symptoms. But if you get it you are just as likely to spread it.
We have 162 million or so fully vaxed - so half the country - and aeren’t we up to 70% of 18+ now? Can’t recall the exact numbers. But weekly infection rates have increased nine-fold in the past six weeks. Death rates up to early July 2020 but infection rates are hitting November numbers.
But that’s what people were doing before the vaccines. Old and young. That’s the problem with the messaging now. It used to be get the vaccine and you can go back to a relatively normal routine. Now it’s get vaccinated but you still have to act as though you’re not because the vaccines don’t work that well against Delta (but they won’t admit it so it’s wrapped up in protecting the under 12s and the unvaccinated) as well as minimizing new variants (which are coming from outside the US…so once again if you’re not closing the borders the effect will be minimal to zero).
And the CDC is once again slow to respond. Boosters should be available to those who had the vaccines back in Dec-March if they want one.
I also have no sympathy that Dick Farrell died of COVID. In the article he said, “So, u think it wasn’t a SCAM DEMIC? NOT ONE ELECTED DEMOCRAT ever tested positive.”
I just don’t understand people like this (on so many levels). He was an ardent supporter of the former president. Mr. Farrell (not Creeekland who I like very much!) - your president was responsible for Operation Warp Speed (not the democrats), so I give big kudos to the administration. Your president got COVID, your president got the vaccine. So you believe the president about the election being stolen? Then why don’t you believe him about COVID??
I genuinely just don’t understand some people’s train of thought.
Yes IMO they jumped the gun on that. If almost everyone was vaccinated and delta wasn’t around, we would have been fine. We were relatively fine before delta got a big fat foot in the door.
And they should have stressed relatively normal. You can go out to eat. You can go to the store. Probably schools would have been ok with some other measures. But probably dance clubs, big parties, etc. would not be ok and they should have also had the big caveat that we would temporarily need to go back to masking if a surge passed through.
And they should have known that a large group of anti vaxxers would have dropped the masks even though they weren’t supposed to. That was key as well IMO.
@vpa2019 While I understand the frustration with “the messaging”…it would obviously be a lot more convenient/effective if the powers that be could have made one statement/recommendation and it held true indefinitely…I recognize they have the difficult task of figuring out a moving target.
We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. Some people like to focus on the failures/inconsistencies rather than the process of learning and adapting to changing data. I find that frustrating and disappointing.
And a quick Google search showed me the article that @Luckyjade2024 posted is extremely misleading if not outright wrong (can’t tell if it’s outright wrong due to the firewall).
" Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, explained the concept of base rate bias back in June after the Israeli health minister said that about half of infections were occurring in vaccinated people.
“The more vaccinated a population, the more we’ll hear of the vaccinated getting infected,” Jetelina wrote, noting that 85% of Israeli adults were vaccinated at the time.
If there were four COVID cases out of 100 people, for example, with two occurring in vaccinated people and two occurring in unvaccinated people, that would be 50% of cases occurring in vaccinated people.
But the more important number to look at would be infection rates among the separate groups – which would be a 13% infection rate in the unvaccinated, and a much smaller infection rate of 2% in the vaccinated.
That would strongly indicate that vaccines are working."
I know several at least primary school teachers who are not vaccinated. And their students age 9 and below are not eligible for vaccinations.
My opinion is these unvaccinated teachers have the potential for getting Covid from asymptomatic small kids…and the unvaccinated adults have the potential for more serious Covid.
“Four of them were under the age of 35. All of them were healthy and the only thing they had in common was they were not vaccinated,” the pastor said."
I have seen several stories about young people dying of COVID and their family members say the same thing. Then you see a photo and the person is clearly morbidly obese. Some family are in denial about their loved ones’ comorbidities, or they are just unaware of them. That might be a factor here.
@Luckyjade2024 wrote - “It still doesn’t explain why vaccinated people are hospitalized at all”
None of these vaccines ever claimed to be 100% effective, not even against Alpha. I believe initial estimates indicated that (the most effective of all tested) vaccines prevented 96% of severe infection and death. That analysis was done during the vaccine trials. Taking those numbers as accurate and universal over time - and some vaccines had lower efficacy and efficacy does diminish somewhat over time - assuming 162 million in the US as vaccinated, we would expect that 4% of those would get severely ill and potentially die. That is 6.5 million vaccinated people who are statistically expected to get severely ill and/or die. Not surprising that some are in the hospital.
Having efficacy against severe illness or death of 96% does NOT mean 4% will get severely ill or die. That is not how the measurement of efficacy works.
Thanks @Mwfan1921 Clearly my post demonstrated my lack of statistical knowledge - I appreciate the link and apologize. Ultimately, though, while my point is inaccurate and clearly exaggerates the likelihood of severe disease and death, according to the article the risk to the US population of severe disease and/or death is slightly above 130,000 - which still answers @Luckyjade2024’s request for why any who are vaccinated are in the hospital.
CDC has recently been criticized across the board by their biggest supporters (ie most media outlets). Their communication has been a mess. First the vaccines are nearly 100% effective. Then suddenly they are not. The effect of Delta on vaccinated populations in other countries wasn’t exactly unknown to the CDC. And they likely have their own data that they are simply not releasing (yet).
They have the expertise to do a better job at this. They should either come clean with their own vaccine effectiveness data or undo the masking recommendations for the vaccinated because there’s not much to see here.
When a good deal of CDC’s internal emergency meeting consists of how to “message”, that’s not going to instill confidence that they are being up front and honest. Some of the American public might be feeling like they are being played with less-than-forthright information.
The Medpage article does a decent job and it’s relying on CDC numbers. There are two problems I see:
CDC has acknowledged that VE is lower with Delta (they haven’t yet provided their own estimates as to how much less effective). So that example of 2% vs. 13% for infection rates (essentially a 6-fold difference if you are vaxed) may no longer be correct; the re-worked example (if we had a better understanding of current VE) might show a higher vaxed infection percentage.
CDC’s guesstimate of 35,000 breakthrough cases per week, assuming an expected immunity of approximately 12 months (ie booster every year) is nearly 2,000,000 breakthrough infections per year out of 162 million currently vaccinated. That’s about a 1-1.5% breakthrough rate; in other words, almost 10x the number that the author estimates based on the MA breakthrough data (.18%). That’s a rather large order of magnitude difference and sheds more light on the indoor masking recommendation. A .18% chance probably isn’t enough to justify an indoor mask for me, but a 1-2%+ chance might be.
My daughter thinks that Nick Saban (and the rest of the SEC) threatening no football season until people are vaccinated is a foolproof strategy. There are some people like my parents who don’t care about sports, but a good chunk would do whatever they had to to ensure a normal football season.
