[leereeves]

It seems to me that the key phrase there is "diagnosis of infection". That's likely to be reduced by protecting against symptoms, because asymptomatic people are unlikely to be tested.

Is anyone doing regular tests on large groups of people to measure the rate of asymptomatic infections?

[meheleventyone]

I know the UK is: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Iceland has been as well you can see the breakdown on where infections came from here: https://www.covid.is/data

[leereeves]

Very interesting, thank you for those links.

According to the second link, 255k people have been vaccinated in Iceland, out of a population of 364k (according to Wikipedia). So about 70% of the population has been vaccinated.

And according to the chart "Number of vaccinated individuals among domestic infections", about 60% of infections are among fully vaccinated people.

That suggests vaccination may not reduce the chance of infection much. As does the recent spike (the largest to date) in the "14-day incidence per 100 000 inhabitants" despite 70% vaccination.

Vaccination is still worthwhile, of course, to protect against severe illness, but if neither vaccination nor previous illness will prevent infection, it seems like COVID is going to be an illness we'll experience many times in our lives (hopefully with less impact once our immune systems adapt).

[meheleventyone]

It’s actually much higher amongst adults (>16) the remaining 30% is almost all children under 16. You need to take that into account when trying to interpret the statistics otherwise you fall into your current trap. It’s still mostly adults getting infected.

I quoted the Chief Epidemiologist’s most recent statement on the facts of the matter in Iceland in the comment you initially replied to but will do so again:

> “Diagnosis of infection is three-times more likely in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated, the likelihood of hospital admission is some four-times higher, and the frequency of intensive care is five times more common in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated. So, we are seeing that vaccination is protecting against infection and especially against serious illness, which should be a spur to everyone to get vaccinated who has not been vaccinated so far,” Þórólfur said.”

Literally out of the mouth of the people gathering and using these statistics.

[leereeves]

I don't understand what you mean by "fall into your current trap". If I understand correctly, nearly the entire adult population of Iceland has been vaccinated, and yet since July Iceland is experiencing the most COVID cases it ever has. What am I missing?

That fact alone doesn't bode well for the hope of vaccination reducing the number of COVID infections.

Regarding the comparison between vaccination rates and infection rates: if the rates of infection are equal among children and adults, and vaccination doesn't affect the chance of infection, we'd expect about 30% of the cases to be among unvaccinated children, which isn't far from the current number. Unfortunately that page doesn't break down current infections by age, but that should be considered.

[meheleventyone]

We have far more lenient controls right now. Far more people are getting infected (by a more infectious variant) but our hospitals are not (yet) being overwhelmed. Having the vast majority of the adult population vaccinated allows for this because as well as reducing the rate of infection it also reduces the rate of hospitalisation and the rate of of serious hospitalisation. One of the news articles linked above is about how that might change as things progress. Which is where I pulled this quote from the Chief Epidemiologist here:

> “Diagnosis of infection is three-times more likely in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated, the likelihood of hospital admission is some four-times higher, and the frequency of intensive care is five times more common in the non-vaccinated than the vaccinated. So, we are seeing that vaccination is protecting against infection and especially against serious illness, which should be a spur to everyone to get vaccinated who has not been vaccinated so far,” Þórólfur said.

If you read further down in the statistics data there is a breakdown by population age. You need to take into account the COVID is less infectious for the young. Iceland is also going to expand vaccination for the 12-16 age group and give people who got the less effective vaccine a booster. Not coincidentally the population with the largest set of infections mixes the most and got the Jannsen vaccine, those 20-30.

[leereeves]

> Far more people are getting infected but our hospitals are not (yet) being overwhelmed.

That makes sense. I think it's clear that vaccination makes the infection less severe and reduces hospitalization rates. But there's also a hope, which is the basis for a lot of policy decisions, that vaccination will reduce the chance of being infected, perhaps even eliminate the illness, and Iceland's data doesn't support that.

> If you read further down in the statistics data there is a breakdown by population age.

Only for isolation and for cumulative cases, not for current cases.

> You need to take into account the COVID is less infectious for the young.

Source please. I haven't heard that before; though it is less severe for the young.