11 ms·

You've had the vaccine for longer then almost anyone, what's happening?

whatever1 5y ago
The states with the low vaccination rates are now paying the price of their politics.
orbifold 5y ago
The vaccine does unfortunately not work as well as hoped for in the case of the delta variant + a lot of people are still unvaccinated and delta is much more infectious. Cases and hospitalisations are also up in Israel https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/israel/ https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m.... Here is a corresponding news item in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-.... It also suggests that the protection against hospitalisation of the vaccine is not as good as it was hoped for among older people. From the publicly available data for Israel you can estimate the vaccine efficacy against hospitalisations to be ~59% (relative risk reduction).
- ithkuil 5y ago
  Statistics are hard to interpret correctly. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
  - orbifold 5y ago
    Well it is easy to work it out yourself. Israelis >12 years are 78/22 vaccinated/not vaccinated. Among the hospitalised 59/41 are vaccinated/not vaccinated. So you have 59/78 = 0.756 and 41/22 = 1.864. Therefore the ratio of risks is 0.756/1.864 = 0.41. Which gives you 0.59 as I mentioned. I believe that is the same way the original efficacy of the vaccine was calculated in the first place. Admittedly I have a PhD in Physics not statistics, so I might be missing something :).
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      It seems like lately there's been a big push for people to respond to the disappointing outcomes for the vaccines in places like Israel and Iceland with "Simpson's paradox!" or "base rate fallacy!" as a way of ignoring what the actual data is saying. The other day NPR had a segment about Iceland where they said "67% of cases being in vaccinated people might sound like a disappointing number, but you have to remember that 71% of the country is vaccinated" which still seems pretty underwhelming?
      - orbifold 5y ago
        What ultimately matters is if the hospitals can handle the load, delta is problematic because it produces new cases more quickly even among vaccinated and a sufficiently large number ends up in the hospital for it to become problematic. Both of these are demonstrated in Israel without invoking any kind of statistical analysis. Qualitatively the vaccine alone does not work well enough to lead to an R0 < 1, even when the most susceptible people are almost all vaccinated. I think that is super disappointing and at the same time I think it is really worrying that some politicians have not got that message in Germany / other places.
        AndrewBissell 5y ago
        Good thing we've had over 18 months since the start of this pandemic to add a significant number of hospital beds and nursing staff to help handle these spikes ...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        swiley 5y ago
        They've been firing staff and closing beds.
        swader999 5y ago
- twooster 5y ago
  Expanding on a sibling comment's reference to Simpson's paradox is the following analysis of the data: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... Basically, Israel is doing quite well even still. Yes, there's a reduction in efficacy, and yes there's breakthrough infections, but your risk of serious outcomes is still reduced by ~80%+, even in older populations _when correctly compared to unvaccinated older populations_.
  - orbifold 5y ago
    Isn't what you ultimately care about in terms of policy the effectiveness on a population level? Of course you hit diminishing returns, when you start vaccinating people that were not at risk in the first place. I'm not arguing against getting the vaccine btw., I'm vaccinated myself. It is just disappointing that it alone won't solve the problem.

The states with the low vaccination rates are now paying the price of their politics.

The vaccine does unfortunately not work as well as hoped for in the case of the delta variant + a lot of people are still unvaccinated and delta is much more infectious. Cases and hospitalisations are also up in Israel https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/israel/ https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m.... Here is a corresponding news item in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-.... It also suggests that the protection against hospitalisation of the vaccine is not as good as it was hoped for among older people. From the publicly available data for Israel you can estimate the vaccine efficacy against hospitalisations to be ~59% (relative risk reduction).

ithkuil 5y ago
Statistics are hard to interpret correctly. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
- orbifold 5y ago
  Well it is easy to work it out yourself. Israelis >12 years are 78/22 vaccinated/not vaccinated. Among the hospitalised 59/41 are vaccinated/not vaccinated. So you have 59/78 = 0.756 and 41/22 = 1.864. Therefore the ratio of risks is 0.756/1.864 = 0.41. Which gives you 0.59 as I mentioned. I believe that is the same way the original efficacy of the vaccine was calculated in the first place. Admittedly I have a PhD in Physics not statistics, so I might be missing something :).
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    It seems like lately there's been a big push for people to respond to the disappointing outcomes for the vaccines in places like Israel and Iceland with "Simpson's paradox!" or "base rate fallacy!" as a way of ignoring what the actual data is saying. The other day NPR had a segment about Iceland where they said "67% of cases being in vaccinated people might sound like a disappointing number, but you have to remember that 71% of the country is vaccinated" which still seems pretty underwhelming?
    - orbifold 5y ago
      What ultimately matters is if the hospitals can handle the load, delta is problematic because it produces new cases more quickly even among vaccinated and a sufficiently large number ends up in the hospital for it to become problematic. Both of these are demonstrated in Israel without invoking any kind of statistical analysis. Qualitatively the vaccine alone does not work well enough to lead to an R0 < 1, even when the most susceptible people are almost all vaccinated. I think that is super disappointing and at the same time I think it is really worrying that some politicians have not got that message in Germany / other places.
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        Good thing we've had over 18 months since the start of this pandemic to add a significant number of hospital beds and nursing staff to help handle these spikes ...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        swiley 5y ago
        They've been firing staff and closing beds.
        swader999 5y ago
twooster 5y ago
Expanding on a sibling comment's reference to Simpson's paradox is the following analysis of the data: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... Basically, Israel is doing quite well even still. Yes, there's a reduction in efficacy, and yes there's breakthrough infections, but your risk of serious outcomes is still reduced by ~80%+, even in older populations _when correctly compared to unvaccinated older populations_.
- orbifold 5y ago
  Isn't what you ultimately care about in terms of policy the effectiveness on a population level? Of course you hit diminishing returns, when you start vaccinating people that were not at risk in the first place. I'm not arguing against getting the vaccine btw., I'm vaccinated myself. It is just disappointing that it alone won't solve the problem.