[EForEndeavour]

> San Francisco now has more cases each day in the vaxed than the unvaxed

That's a common but meaningless way to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated case rates. It's a problem of class imbalance: 77% of SF residents are fully vaccinated (https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-vaccinations). Vaccinated people outnumber unvaccinated, so comparing absolute counts of new infections among these groups mixes the effect of vaccination with the effect of being the majority class.

Sticking to rate per capita within each group, positive tests are twice as common among unvaccinated than vaxxed. (Severe outcomes and deaths will be even more different.)

[Lifelarper]

The UK has far more vaccinated people testing positive even when normalised for population and based on per 100k rates.

See the latest Covid-19 vaccination surveillance report. Table 6, page 23.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-...

[EForEndeavour]

It's misleading at best to state that difference without specifying that it's a difference in unadjusted crude rates, and without the caveats to drawing conclusions about vaccine efficacy from them. From the footnote on page 24 of your source:

Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is summarised on pages 5 to 8 in this report. The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For example: • people who are fully vaccinated may be more health conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19 and so more likely to be identified as a case (based on the data provided by the NHS Test and Trace) • many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation, their family circumstances or because of underlying health issues • people who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels of exposure to COVID-19 • people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks

[gojomo]

I made that same point about rates in my post, before also pointing out the absolute number disparity. (So what’s the point in repeating it as if it were a refutation, or new contribution?)

Vaccinations only cutting infections by half is pretty lackluster. (It's nice the still reduce severity, but leaving half the vaxed with transmissable infections is far from enough for ‘herd immunity’.)

And, at population level, the absolute number disparity is still relevant - & I’d even say of paramount importance - in refuting those who think we can ‘eradicate’ COVID with vaccinations. Even with 100% vaccination, there would be, in absolute terms, enough continuing transmission to keep COVID endemic indefinitely. Large absolute numbers of vaxed breakthroughs guarantee that, no matter the reduction in severity risk.