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by cmrdporcupine 1710 days ago
I only intimately know the numbers here in Ontario, and here I can see that the vaccines are extremely effective for the people who take them.

All through the last two months, case counts went up to 10, 11, 12 cases / 100k (high for us) for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated they stayed under 2 / 100k.

Even clearer for hospitalization and ICU admission. In the middle of September, 4.7/100k hospitalization rate for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated, 0.38/100k.

The issue isn't the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. It's the fact that there's still hundreds of thousands, millions, of people unvaccinated. And the virus ran like wildfire through them, despite the rest of us doing our part.

Herd immunity from natural exposure is dangerous and isn't going to happen. A year and a half on, only 4% of the population here has tested positive.

FWIW my parents in Alberta lost 4 friends/acquaintances to COVID just in the past month. Only 2 of them were over 65. All were unvaccinated, devoutly religious & conservative, and dogmatic about their antivax/anti-mask positions.

1 comments

"Herd immunity from natural exposure is dangerous and isn't going to happen. A year and a half on, only 4% of the population here has tested positive."

That's because a lot of people have had it, never felt too bad, and never got tested while the virus was actively replicating in their body. This has been proven in randomized serological tests in many jurisdictions now.

That would show up in test positivity rates, and it has not. At least not here. The only time when test positivity rate deviated significantly from daily counts was in the first wave spring 2020 when testing infrastructure wasn't there yet.

I can't say anything about places in the US where it spread like crazy through the population in the first wave. But I've seen no studies to back up what you're saying here in Canada. Also various cities have been doing testing of sewer water for the virus, and the values have matched, roughly (and in advance), what has been seen in testing rates.