The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that about half of adults infected in an outbreak of the delta variant in Israel were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
Is this intended as a counterpoint, or a point in support? People have been pretty loose with their "therefore" about this Israel snippet. After all, if 100% of Israel had been vaccinated with Pfizer, then 100% of adults infected with Delta would have been fully vaccinated. I'm sure the raw number of people infected with Delta is way down compared to what it would have been w/o vaccination though.
This is a frequent anti-vaxx talking point that well predates COVID-19. In most outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations, most of the cases will be in the vaccinated. We see this for measles and pertussis all the time. The rate will be much lower though.
Cool. Note that among adults, that rate would be higher. (For the apples-to-apples comparison with above.) Saw one headline that said 80% as of June 1st. If that's true, the original stat is basically equivalent to saying that 50% of the infections are among the 20% of the (unvaccinated) adult population.
Can I see a link? I'm not finding the same report. Instead I'm finding these [1] which point to the vaccine being highly effective at keeping you out of the hospital.
you conveniently miss the fact that if more people were vaccinated, delta wouldn't have spread this fast and perhaps wouldn't even come to be or would die out before it could spread.
How is that relevant? The question is: How effective are these vaccines really against that variant? In the real world, not in the lab.
If half the cases are in vaccinated individuals and only half the people are vaccinated, how can the vaccine be 80%-90% effective? That's a mathematical impossibility.
In the case of the deaths, it might be possible because the vaccinated are far older on average and likely over-counted.
for me, the question is: how can we prevent the virus from mutating enough to escape vaccine- and covid-based immunity with another variant? the answer is to stop the virus from infecting a host in which it can mutate freely and from which it can escape. we don't know these people, so we should aim to vaccinate as many as possible before it finds another person who walks around with the virus for multiple months with no symptoms, accelerating natural selection thousandfold.
> for me, the question is: how can we prevent the virus from mutating enough to escape vaccine
Probably not with a vaccine that is not quite strong enough to prevent spread, but simultaneously strong enough to put selection pressure on the virus.
> the answer is to stop the virus from infecting a host in which it can mutate freely and from which it can escape. we don't know these people, so we should aim to vaccinate as many as possible before it finds another person who walks around with the virus for multiple months with no symptoms, accelerating natural selection thousandfold.
The scenario you are describing is the immunocompromised person whose body can't quite kill the virus, but also puts selection pressure on it. Such cases have been described, but whatever mutation would come out of that is not necessarily going to be much more effective at overcoming the defenses of a normal immune system.
The Sars-CoV2 virus will almost certainly stick around and it will keep mutating, even with the best of vaccination efforts. Nature finds a way. We'll have to get used to it.
maybe. or maybe the thread is pointless and i'm just pointing it out.
> The scenario you are describing is the immunocompromised person whose body can't quite kill the virus, but also puts selection pressure on it. Such cases have been described, but whatever mutation would come out of that is not necessarily going to be much more effective at overcoming the defenses of a normal immune system.
i'd wager more than 99% of those mutations won't be more effective. i'm worried about the tail risk in the remaining 1%. i don't know how many mutations are needed for the virus to become sufficiently different for human immune system to stop being recognized and this scenario is the best way to find out.
> The Sars-CoV2 virus will almost certainly stick around and it will keep mutating, even with the best of vaccination efforts. Nature finds a way. We'll have to get used to it.
no disagreement about that. in the long run we're all dead anyway. my issue with just letting it run its course is timing and cost - the argument is that it gets much easier much quicker for all of us with the best vaccination effort compared to alternatives.