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by makomk 1782 days ago
There's actually a really robust-looking study just out in the UK sampling the population to find how much less likely vaccinated people are to be positive for Covid than non-vaccinated people: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/latest-react-1-study-...

Apparently the answer is that they're a third as likely to have it as the unvaccinated. Which certainly isn't nothing, and it's definitely better than the flu vaccine managed, but it does suggest that there's probably no way we're going to stop the spread of the Delta variant through any level of vaccination no matter what the US media claims. It also means that any hope of avoiding selective pressure for vaccine escape by just vaccinating people quickly enough is likely to prove futile. We also don't really have any special exemptions or privileges for vaccinated people yet outside of laxer requirements for international travel, so that wouldn't explain why the gap is so small.

(Incidentally, the "quick peak and decline in countries with high levels of vaccination" like the UK almost certainly isn't simply a result of vaccines working, despite the CJR article's attempt to spin it that way. All our experts over here seem to be in agreement that not only are the vaccines not effective enough to explain that, it just doesn't make sense to have such a sudden peak and decline as a result of our vaccination program - which has actually been slowing down as it runs out of willing recipients - or from natural immunity in combination with it. They reckon it must be caused in part by people's behaviour, and if we return to normal or autumn hits cases will go up again.)

1 comments

>they're a third as likely to have it as the unvaccinated

In the week ending 07/31 MA was getting about 600/day, 200 of them are vaccinated. The number of vaccinated are 4.2M out of 7.1M. Thus according to that data the probability for a vaccinated is just under 40% of unvaccinated.

Giving that Delta is several times more virulent the current situation can be thought that way - the vaccinated facing Delta today is like unvaccinated facing original year ago (year ago totally unvaccinated MA had 400-500/day, and if MA was totally vaccinated today, 7.1M instead of 4.2M, it would as result be 350cases/day instead of the 200). I.e. these numbers also suggest that there is no good way to stop the spread until Delta capable vaccine comes.

That also highlights the propaganda spin of "just 125K breakthroughs out of 160M vaccinated since January", the widely tweeted 0.08% (especially giving that CDC hasn't been counting non-hospitalizations breakthroughs since May, and that number seems definitely incorrect as MA having 2.5% of vaccinated has 7K total breakthroughs - almost 6% of 125K) - the Delta is pretty recent and the total number isn't the point, the point is the current infection rate of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.