[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.

[meheleventyone]

> Iceland's data doesn't support that.

You do you but that isn’t actually correct.