What I find interesting is the split in beliefs about these issues along political lines. If it is actually “science” related, why would that be?
Much scientific understanding tends to split along political lines, but it’s disengenous to conclude that that means both views are not science-based.
New Jersey has a running vaccination status graph for infection, hospitalization, and death on its Covid dashboard.
If this doesn’t open up to the specific graphs, go to the main dashboard, then the “Case and Mortality” tab, then the subtab below that for “Vaccination Status”.
The updates lag by about a month, but they have continued to show up. I assume it takes more time to gather that info.
Thanks for that - and for writing how to get to the correct graph to show cases/hospitalizations/deaths up to Dec. At least in NJ, it seems to still be better to be vaccinated with boosters.
Anyone interested in the data compared to what @pablopaco wrote should look at NJ’s data (using the Case and Mortality tab, Vaccination status, etc).
You’re welcome! Even when I copy the exact page’s web address, it seems to default to the main page, so I figured I’d better aid navigation.
I’ve found the site overall to be consistently informative the entire pandemic.
I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it is a resource issue. These kind of data are not readily available and need to be collected fairly painstakingly from a variety of sources and then cleaned to compare apples to apples. Especially now that most cases are not reported (due to home testing) it would be almost impossible to determine vaccinated vs. unvaccinated cases & you would end up with all sorts of biases if you did try - in theory they could still collect on hospitalized cases (and deaths) but that would require already overwhelmed healthcare workers to gather & report those data and for states - who have lost staff like everyone else - to then put those data into shape for public consumption. I don’t think anyone is hiding anything or saying the data aren’t relevant - just it takes enormous resources to make them worthwhile and those are resources that are probably being directed elsewhere now.
I’m unvaxxed and had a mild case of Covid about 7 months ago. Up until that point I was pretty cautious. Since being infected I haven’t really taken any precautions. But I’d be more than happy to mask up or test if asked.
This Qatar study at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2203965 found that (with the Pfizer vaccine, which was apparently more common there) 3V+I > 3V, 2V+I, I > 2V in terms of protection against symptomatic BA.1 or BA.2 infection.
It also found that all such combinations were highly (>95%) protective against severe, critical, or fatal BA.1 infection, but that I and 2V alone were somewhat less protective (73-77%) against severe, critical, or fatal BA.2 infection while 3V+I, 3V, and 2V+I were highly (>95%) protective.
In other words, it is better to have 3V over 2V, regardless of whether one also has I.
@Mwfan1921. I believe the issue of vaccination is very nuanced and dependent upon where we are/were in the course of the disease and current actively transmitted variant. The fact is that the vast majority of the deaths have been in a specific population: elderly, obese, diabetic, immunocompromised. (But yet… we did not have have public health officials talk about weight loss or zinc supplementation in any meaningful way. Also interesting was the concept of “how to get these vaccines approved under Emergency Use Authorization”. ie. Have to get rid of and discredit any idea of alternative repurposed therapeutics.) So early in the course, vaccination of subgroups of the population entirely made sense and there was a reduction in death and serious illness with vaccination.
But it never made sense to immunize the healthy young unless there was to be a societal benefit of reduced transmission. No study every showed that. And we have since found that does not occur. In fact, by using an incompletely “sterilizing” vaccine in the middle of a pandemic on a highly mutating virus, we run the risk of resistant variants.
My thought is that we now have entered a different phase with interesting findings.
That Qatar study I noted had something like 1500 people get Omicron COVID and no deaths or ICU hospitalizations.
You yourself pointed out:
“About a third of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been estimated to be asymptomatic”
Anecdotally I can tell you that the vast majority of patients I see have been double-quadruple vaxed and have had breakthrough infections. Something like 80%. And a high percentage of them are very healthy people who report pretty significant symptoms during their infections. Not needing hospitalization but certainly not just a cold.
I will grant that there is probably a modest benefit to the bivalent vaccine for a couple months after the shot. I will also say that I see a lot of people with a breakthrough infection within that time frame. So that 20-30% effective rate is probably pretty accurate.
I think dodging the political aspect to this topic is a little bit disingenuous and dodgy. Personally I think our CDC, NIH, professional medical societies, social media censors all owe us an apology.
We won’t and the policy is very weak to begin with.
Finally, thank you all for the opporunity to express my thoughts. I’ll leave you now. I recognize that there are very firm opinions on the above. I will say that over the course of the last 3 years, my own opinions based on medical training and 30 years of experience have completely changed on vaccination. I’m not an anti vaxer but I do seriously question our current childhood vaccination schedule and the motives of so called experts.
You may prefer not to respond but I’m curious the context of how you’ve seen patients - as a provider, observer or whatever.
Healthy young people did get nasty cases of COVID-19 including medium/long COVID prior to vaccines becoming available. At least where I am, they (like other people) ran to the vaccine clinic as soon as they could.
The healthy young people also probably did not want to be carriers to their grandparents, etc… Even though the vaccines were not fully sterilizing against Delta and Omicron like they almost were against ancestral and Alpha, they did have some effect in reducing infection and transmission.
Imagine if those same people got infected without vaccination…
Also, those who see health care providers when they have COVID-19 tend to be self-selected as those who had worse cases of COVID-19. People who get mild cold-like symptoms or no obvious symptoms are less likely to see health care providers, or even know that they have COVID-19 (versus common cold or whatever).
Not that it will matter much, since the US seems to be very good at breeding new COVID-19 variants like XBB.1.5. The PRC’s current policies seem to be basically similar to what has been going on in the US for some time (i.e. most people don’t care, and most organizations other than health care facilities don’t care or barely care). The main difference is that the US population probably now has about 70+% hybrid immunity, with most of the rest having already been infected or vaccinated, and with more effective vaccines than are commonly used in the PRC, so new infections (whether from domestic circulation or visitors from the PRC or anywhere) are less likely to be severe among the US population than the PRC population, as well as being somewhat slower to spread based on the prior immunity.
That seems reasonable and expected since those are the folks most likely to book a doctor visit for treatment.
I also think the term “breakthrough” infection was and is inaccurate. The COVID vaccines were not and still are not that effective (regardless of what we were told) as far as preventing infection (which would also explain why multi-vaxxed people are still contracting COVID) and we don’t say people get breakthrough flu infections. I take the COVID and flu vaccines in the hope of mitigating my risk of contracting the illness and lessening its severity if I do. There was a brief time when I optimistically believed the COVID vaccines would prevent transmission and herd immunity could happen but that’s long gone.
June 2021 was such a wonderful, hopeful time. The vaccines were 90% effective against infection, herd immunity seemed possible. Then came Delta. I’m still kinda depressed about it.
Agreed but why import a new variant we definitely know about just because China has finally decided its zero COVID policy is unsustainable? It feels like deja vu and we are importing the original virus again. At a minimum there should be a complete ban for a few weeks or so. Testing 48 hours before a flight is useless. Testing upon arrival would be much more helpful but unless there’s restricted movement associated with a positive result it’s just more data. I hope the new variant in China isn’t worse than any we are manufacturing here already.
Not really. Political discussions aren’t allowed in this thread, they are allowed in the politics subforum.
While we will likely never know, I wonder if the vaccines were ever 90% effective. The best option to study that back in June 2021 was the MLB - though the experts didn’t do that (disappointing me as medical experts have for decades).
The MLB was testing all players and staff once or twice a week, so they found the very mild and asymptomatic cases, including those amongst the vaccinated. There were some teams with “outbreaks”, with majority of positive tests in the vaccinated. That should have been a signal that, while the vaccines seem to prevent severe illness, they were not as effective as touted against transmission.
That is not exactly true. At the time the vaxes were approved they were showing 90% or better rates of avoiding infection. This was before delta and other more highly contagious strains. Had that stayed true, vaccinating all in hopes of avoiding further spread would have made perfect sense. Similar to how we didn’t really bring flu death rates down in the US until we started vaccinating kids - yes, very few kids get seriously ill from flu, but not having them act as vectors protects older adults who are more vulnerable - therefore bringing down death rates. Unfortunately, the more contagious strains of COVID appeared before sufficient numbers of the world population were vaccinated (here partially due to politics, but elsewhere in the world due to a scarcity of effective vaccines). At this point there probably are diminishing returns to additional boosters as you say. I agree fully we may have entered a new phase. Boosters do seem to reduce - at least slightly and possibly more than that - the chances of getting infected. They do seem to slightly and possibly more than that - reduce the risk of infecting someone else if infected. And they do seem to significantly reduce the risk of needing to be hospitalized or dying. As a physician you likely see those who are most ill; I know many (middle-aged) people who have had mild to very mild cases of COVID, who sought no medical attention and who were fine within a couple of days to a couple of weeks. These are folks who were mostly triple vaxed, though at least one or two had had the bi-valent as well. I only knew a few who were infected prior to any vaccinations at all, but they were definitely far sicker. Anecdotal yes, but in line with the evidence out there. Personally I would want to have a primary series and the bi-valent, just to hedge my bets (I personally had primary (MM) + booster (P), infection (very mild about 9 mos following booster) and bi-valent (P) a few months later. I’m probably good stopping there, at least until something new happens.).
Agree completely. My 90 year old mom, me, and my immunocompromised brother all were triple vaxxed when we got Covid. My mom and I had very mild symptoms lasting less then 72. Hrs. My brother had mild symptoms that lasted about 10 days. No medical intervention needed for any of us.
