We were talking about this recently at an HHD gathering (outside, masked, and limited to vaccinated people).
One difference between Israel and the US is that anti-vaxxers in the US tend to be scattered throughout the general population, so while they are not exactly protected by herd immunity, because there are not enough vaccinated people to reach herd immunity, there are not many pockets of epidemics within the pandemic.
Meanwhile, in Israel, there are very few anti-vaxxers among people who are generally comparable to the typical population in the US that produces anti-vaxxers-- which is actually very broad, and you can find some anti-vaxxers anywhere. In Israel, the anti-vaxxers are clustered among various flavors of Orthodox, who tend to live in physically close communities, and non-Jews, who ditto live close.
So, in Israel, you get these mini-epidemics.
Basically, in Israel, a randomly selected unvaccinated person has a much greater chance of being exposed to COVID than in the US.
This is what we were speculating, and we were all pretty well-read on the subject, as well as either people who had been to Israel, or people who were actually Israeli.
Thanks for the info. So it looks like the following:
Pockets of anti-vaxxer populations or those with less access. These people more likely to live in closely-knit communities with high population density.
Relatively younger population who are not vaccinated.
Some vaccine waning causing more breakthrough infections, compared to US that have more recent vaccinations and UK/Canada who delayed second vaccination. However, vaccine is still highly effective against hospitalization and death.
If you only compare Israel to itself (previous outbreaks), its cases are higher than it has ever been. However, the hospital and death rates are about 25% of what they would have been in the past with a similar case load. (Just eye-balling the graphs).
“providing booster shots alone does not dramatically change the course or trajectory of transmission at a country level. Because the majority of transmission is still occurring from people who are unvaccinated.”
Among Israelis 60 and older who received a booster, the risk of infection fell 11-fold in August and the risk of severe disease 20-fold compared with their twice-vaccinated peers,
At the meeting, Ron Milo, a systems biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, presented data showing that during August, the virus’ ability to spread—its so-called reproduction number—[fell by 30%],
“Why is it that if your [reproduction number] went below one … you’re at your highest [new case] rates right now?” she asked at the meeting.
The paradox reflects social realities…“The combination of [unvaccinated] children meeting in school followed up by large family gatherings is the recipe for mass dissemination of the disease,” he told Science.
Israel’s case count likely reflects a third factor, too—extensive testing…children must get tested if there was a confirmed case in their class
I’m not fond of statistics like this. If the risk of infection went from 1 in 2 to 1 in 40, that’d be huge. But if it went from 1 in a million to 1 in 20 million, that’d be almost no difference.