I started saying during Covid that it felt like "just a test". A test to weaken everyone's trust of the govt. just in time for something REALLY bad and deadly to come along in a few years and wipe out everyone. Sheesh...
Have they though? I know that CFR data "proves" they have but let's not dismiss how that data is based on far milder variants. Alpha and Delta were evidentially deadly, but the vaccines were only distributed when Lambda and Omicron were the dominant strains. I really do wonder what today's CFR would be if no vaccine existed.
That isn’t true. Delta didn’t arrive until most people that were going to get vaccinated already had been. The vaccines same a lot of lives in the delta surge.
It's hard to know what's true or not, as I implied. But Delta was listed as the dominant variant 6/2021, and although 300m shots had been administered by then just one month later, following a death spike, CDC pushed for boosters. So were people actually vaccinated? Per CDC, no. Did CFR actually decrease until L/O became dominant variants? no.
Death rate from Delta was ~16x lower if you had your primary series of shots. But that's just a raw rate, but since older, more at risk individuals were disproportionately more likely to be vaccinated the risk reduction was much higher. That report shows >65 year olds had a ~11x reduction in risk of death with the primary series but ~61x reduction with the booster during the Delta surge...
You could extrapolate if you want. IFR was ~8% in the >65 unvaccinated group, but ~3% in the primary series and ~2.7% with the booster. But that also gets compounded by the drop in the infection rate, which was 5x lower with the primary series and 22x lower with the booster. So total risk of death was reduced some 93%, at least in that time window.
The primary series saved A LOT of lives, and boosters do have their place in the elderly who apparently struggle to generate lasting protection. (And this is not inconsistent with prior knowledge of immune system aging. Like our brains, our immune system is better at learning new things when we're young.)
No, it's not easy to know, and for every academic paper claiming one thing there are others that claim the other. Hence the mess.
The irrefutable fact is that covid ceased to be something to be deathly afraid of (spring 2022) once the L/O variants became dominant (Jan 2022) . One, like you, could argue that was because of vaccines, but like I said in my original reply: who knows, could just be that L/O aren't all that dangerous.
"for every academic paper claiming one thing there are others that claim the other."
That's not true for the primary series of shots. I don't really care to site 15 papers showing you are wrong, but you are free to do your own research. Papers on the boosters, on the other hand, are bit like what you say, particularly if they don't do a good job stratifying by age. Ie you'll see boosters are great for 18+, but then in an other study, it will show near zero effect in 18-49, but then strong effect in 50+, etc.
I'm with you on Omicron being more mild, but that has been hard to nail down because so many people are vaccinated or had prior infection, many times undocumented, and it's been hard to detangle that prior immunity from changes to the virus itself.
Distrust in institutions is a recurring theme in recent CS posts - cf Liz Truss, transgenderism, universities and Today’s. I fear all this will end somewhere really not good. No easy solution obvious.
I don't know about that - this last one did a pretty good job of only killing ignorant, anti-science people after the vaccines came out.
And a more deadly disease will come down the pike. It is inevitable.
I started saying during Covid that it felt like "just a test". A test to weaken everyone's trust of the govt. just in time for something REALLY bad and deadly to come along in a few years and wipe out everyone. Sheesh...
"Vaccines have saved countless lives"
Have they though? I know that CFR data "proves" they have but let's not dismiss how that data is based on far milder variants. Alpha and Delta were evidentially deadly, but the vaccines were only distributed when Lambda and Omicron were the dominant strains. I really do wonder what today's CFR would be if no vaccine existed.
That isn’t true. Delta didn’t arrive until most people that were going to get vaccinated already had been. The vaccines same a lot of lives in the delta surge.
It's hard to know what's true or not, as I implied. But Delta was listed as the dominant variant 6/2021, and although 300m shots had been administered by then just one month later, following a death spike, CDC pushed for boosters. So were people actually vaccinated? Per CDC, no. Did CFR actually decrease until L/O became dominant variants? no.
https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html
https://covid.cdc.gov/COVID-data-tracker/#vaccination-trends
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00
No, it's pretty easy to know. CDC reports show it, but so do plenty of academic papers:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e2.htm
Death rate from Delta was ~16x lower if you had your primary series of shots. But that's just a raw rate, but since older, more at risk individuals were disproportionately more likely to be vaccinated the risk reduction was much higher. That report shows >65 year olds had a ~11x reduction in risk of death with the primary series but ~61x reduction with the booster during the Delta surge...
You could extrapolate if you want. IFR was ~8% in the >65 unvaccinated group, but ~3% in the primary series and ~2.7% with the booster. But that also gets compounded by the drop in the infection rate, which was 5x lower with the primary series and 22x lower with the booster. So total risk of death was reduced some 93%, at least in that time window.
The primary series saved A LOT of lives, and boosters do have their place in the elderly who apparently struggle to generate lasting protection. (And this is not inconsistent with prior knowledge of immune system aging. Like our brains, our immune system is better at learning new things when we're young.)
No, it's not easy to know, and for every academic paper claiming one thing there are others that claim the other. Hence the mess.
The irrefutable fact is that covid ceased to be something to be deathly afraid of (spring 2022) once the L/O variants became dominant (Jan 2022) . One, like you, could argue that was because of vaccines, but like I said in my original reply: who knows, could just be that L/O aren't all that dangerous.
"for every academic paper claiming one thing there are others that claim the other."
That's not true for the primary series of shots. I don't really care to site 15 papers showing you are wrong, but you are free to do your own research. Papers on the boosters, on the other hand, are bit like what you say, particularly if they don't do a good job stratifying by age. Ie you'll see boosters are great for 18+, but then in an other study, it will show near zero effect in 18-49, but then strong effect in 50+, etc.
I'm with you on Omicron being more mild, but that has been hard to nail down because so many people are vaccinated or had prior infection, many times undocumented, and it's been hard to detangle that prior immunity from changes to the virus itself.
I agree, and I think they probably have too. But I do still wonder how different the outcome would have been without them. Millions? maybe.
Credibility squandered is far more difficult to revive than anyone in that or any other agency realizes.
Distrust in institutions is a recurring theme in recent CS posts - cf Liz Truss, transgenderism, universities and Today’s. I fear all this will end somewhere really not good. No easy solution obvious.
I think it’s because many institutions have abandoned common sense.