Apparently it’s not!
From the linked article: This is a study with participants with the delta variant. While it doesn’t say 50-60% effectiveness overall, I don’t think it says 90% effectiveness either.
It was 90% effective in the initial weeks and months after vaccination - with earlier variants. Vaccines are not 90% effective against the Delta variant, which is by far the dominant strain - 95% of US infections.
I’m guessing the majority of people are making the same exact incorrect assumption about vaccine efficacy - and they’re wrong. We’re seeing 2/3 of fully vaccinated people in clusters come down with infection, and that probably doesn’t happen (over and over again) with a vaccine that’s 90% effective as touted.
And they’re going to end up getting sick and possibly hospitalized because of that assumption. Employers are going to make their employees sick because of that assumption. People with underlying conditions may die because of it.
Yes, far more than seat belts, which are legally required.
And COVID vaccines are saving far more lives than legally required childhood jabs. Consider chickenpox:
But that’s enough for Mississippi to require that jab with no religious exemption.
As an on and off reader of medical journals, I know that these vaccines are excellent. But those who don’t have much knowledge of statistics have to rely on what people around them say and do.
The implicit message of moral suasion, without legal compulsion, is that it maybe the evidence is mixed.
P.S. No jail! Fines would do.
P.P.S. I stole some of this from Peter Singer.
If you think he’s wrong, then provide evidence he is wrong. Calling something propaganda without proving it is exactly what the anti-vax side does.
@asahi has been reporting on actual studies this entire time. Yes, his interpretation of them is pessimistic, but he’s not engaging in propaganda. He’s looking at the evidence and finds it alarming.
It’s also not like saying the vaccine decreases in effectiveness over time to 60% is a reason not to get the vaccine. It’s a reason to push for boosters. It still encourages those who have not gotten vaccinated to get one.
I’ve actually seen the exact opposite: people saying that the vaccines are so effective that those of us who are vaccinated have no right to try and get everyone else vaccinated. They use it to undermine the ideas of vaccine passports, companies requiring vaccination, and targeted restrictions on the unvaccinated.
The fact that those of us are vaccinated still have significant skin in the game is actually an important part of the need to get everyone vaccinated.
I do suspect that the numbers aren’t as low as @asahi says. But I have no problem with someone pointing out the worst case scenarios to counter the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” nonsense. Vaccinated people do get sick and die. That’s why we need boosters and vaccines against the variants.
We are in a time crunch, and we need to act like it.
@asahi himself says that the CDC’s figure is 90%, and says that that figure is wrong based on studies that aren’t actually about vaccine effectiveness. If you’re not going to accept the CDC’s numbers, then who will you accept?
And no, 90% is not the number for the original strain. That number was over 99%. The vaccines are, indeed, less effective against the delta strain, but they’re still really, really effective.
Yes, we should be taking other measures in addition to vaccines. But vaccines are still, by far, the most effective measure available. Discouraging vaccine use, as @asahi is doing, in order to encourage use of other measures is thus counterproductive.
Please show me where I discouraged vaccine use in order to encourage other measures. I’ll wait.
To be clear, I have both of my vaccines and am damn glad that I got jabbed. You’re reading my posts as anti-vax, which is the opposite. I’ve actually considered breaking the law and lying to get my third vaccine this weekend. I probably won’t because I’m seeing more and more signs that there will be recommendations for boosters pronto.
But no, I am in no way arguing against vaccines, and I’ve stated clearly that vaccines are still effective at preventing the worst outcomes - that still holds up in all of the data that have been collected across the globe. So in that sense, yes, I agree that vaccines still do their job.
I’m pointing out that we need to be a lot more vigilant at preventing the spread because the vaccines have taken a hit in terms of their effectiveness at preventing symptomatic infection – and this is where you are simply incorrect. The data you’re referring to is pre-Delta and pre-Lambda data.
Here’s an article on the data from Israel:
I’ve been on record as stating that I find Israel’s 39% efficacy figure a bit on the low end. Conversely, I find Public Health England’s data on the high end, particularly as it pertains to the U.S. Pfizer data, as the U.S. followed a vaccine process similar to that of Israel and different from the UK. The US vaccine recipients, like Israelis, waited three weeks between the first and second shot; in the UK, they waited longer, and this might have increased their efficacy. Their were/are holes or potential threats to validity in all studies, including the Israeli and PHE studies, which is why I suspect that the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is probably somewhere in between 40 and 88%, putting it right in the neighborhood of 50-60% effectiveness at stopping transmission.
But it ain’t 90% – you very likely don’t have clusters of fully-vaccinated people getting symptomatic infection with a vaccine that’s that kind of robust. I hedge a little only because the articles haven’t said exactly what these clusters were doing. I mean, if they were taking tours of COVID wards, okay, maybe they’re exceptional. But I don’t think that’s what they were doing. They were walking around in public places, most likely without masks, like so many people I see right now, and they thought they were protected – and 60-70% of individuals in these groups got the grim news later that they weren’t.
If people get scared out of a vaccine because of facts, I can’t help that, but I would rather pass along good information so that those of us who want to continue living in a world of facts can use facts to make informed decisions to protect their own health and the health of those that matter to them.
Hey, this is the breaking news thread. Can you take the argument over how effective the vaccines are against Delta to a different thread? One post to a new study is breaking news. This back and forth isn’t.
New thread already created here.
Hawaii reported 655 new cases today, a single-day record for the pandemic. Second highest was 452 on Sunday, so both of the two highest days so far occurred this week. Almost all the cases were among the unvaccinated. The lieutenant governor, himself an MD, flat-out stated, “You’re out of your heads if you don’t get vaccinated. It’s a big mistake.” Hawaii is now 60.5% fully vaccinated.
Thailand has surpassed 20,000 new cases a day for two days now. Vietnam has instituted a lockdown for the southern half of the country plus Hanoi. Their epicenter is Ho Chi Minh City. All of Southeast Asia is taking a hit now.
Interesting article that plays with the math of R0, Re and vaccination rates and effectiveness. It’s very simplified, but it helps with understanding why the delta variant is a game changer and how these factors are related.
The CDC estimates the R0 of the delta variant as between 6 and 9, so let’s see what happens to the calculation above if we use an R0 value of 8. We also need to consider how the delta variant affects the effectiveness of the vaccines. We don’t know for sure how effective our vaccines are against delta, but the best estimates we have range at about 85 to 88 percent. Using a value of 85 percent (with 53 percent of the population susceptible), we find that the current Re for the delta variant in the U.S. might be as high as 5.
You read that right—even after vaccinating half the population, we still expect that people infected with the delta variant will, on average, infect more people than they would have with original virus.
If you play with this equation, you’ll find that getting vaccines to unvaccinated people is pretty much always a better move than giving boosters to the already vaccinated, at least until we’ve gotten almost everyone vaccinated. So, let’s not get distracted by boosters and instead focus on encouraging and supporting vaccination efforts.
We can control it, but we likely won’t. I think Dr Scott Gottlieb is going to be proven right: the virus will churn its way through the population, and we’ll end up getting short-term herd immunity with a combination of infections and vaccines. It’s too late to stop the variant from doing its damage in most places, although some of the worst hit areas when the surge began about 4-5 weeks ago (Los Angeles, for instance) may actually be starting to level off.
I suspect that this will happen in a number of areas over the coming weeks. Delta variant surges in other countries have typically lasted 6-9 weeks. We will probably be a little closer to the long end of that estimate because of our lack of vaccination and a lack of concern among unvaccinated and already-vaccinated individuals. Masks should be worn by all individuals but a lot of people just aren’t.
I would love to spend some energy convincing the unvaccinated to get vaccinated. But all my friends and family are vaccinated. Months ago, i probably influenced three people to get vaccinated sooner than they otherwise would have. Now… I’m just now sure how i can help.
This is a great article. Thanks.
I think you are too nice for the job. I doubt you really understand how rabid anti-vaxers can be. You would try to convince them using facts and science because you are too honest to lie and make shit up. Being cursed at is the least bad outcome I’m envisioning.
Not wanting to clutter up the breaking news thread, i started a new one
That would seem to assume we can get the vaccines to actually be used. And, on a global scale, that’s probably true. We need to get the vaccine to those who are willing to take it. But, on a local scale, it would be much, much easier to get people to get boosters than to convince the people who are left. The only thing that seems to work to convince them is pure fear from seeing the virus significantly harm or kill those they care about.
I get the idea that we probably will make more progress shipping the vaccines to other nations, which then reduces the risk of a new variant. But, when the debate is between boosting people or dealing with those who refuse the vaccine, I’m not sure it’s so clear cut. Vaccines have expiration dates, after all. And politics is uncertain.
We now return you to our familiar irregular program:
202,430,584 total cases
4,290,728 dead
181,932,975 recovered
In the US:
36,447,123 total cases
632,641 dead
29,834,472 recovered
The AP just caught up to this thread and confirms: