Thank you for this analysis Gato. I think the issue here is that the general public has the prevailing mindset that the vaccines are supposed to prevent people from becoming infected, experiencing moderate symptoms, and spreading the virus to others. I think people are finally starting to realize this is not the case...but rather than admit the vaccines aren't as useful as they were told, they are doubling down and blaming the unvaccinated for spreading the virus around to those who are vaccinated.
I think it's pretty obvious that this is not true. Based on the numbers we are seeing with this most recent rise in positive tests among symptomatic vaccinated individuals, it's becoming more clear that these vaccines do not prevent infection or contagion across the general population. I agree with your analysis that in the more vulnerable, and older cohorts, they seem to be showing effectiveness. However, I just don't see much benefit here across the generally healthy population. The recent data showing significant outperformance in natural immunity vs the vaccine makes it abundantly clear that the vaccines are mostly worthless in the healthy cohort.
Fair analysis. People tend to miss that the first rule is to make sure your compared populations are actually comparable. This also BTW strongly contradicts the claims, unsupported by any data but just by media trumpeting of Fauci and CDC, that 99.xx% of deaths are in the unvaccinated. Highly implausible.
Great article and I must add we really miss you on "that other" site. The one thing that really strikes me (you touch on this without really emphasizing it) is how far NONVAXXED patient and death numbers have fallen in Israel. Thus while a high at risk cohort may give lie to the contention that the Pfizer vaccine--the one Israel uses--is failing, I do think the absolute drop in all serious covid cases is a useful tool in a mapping our final exit from this shitshow whether due to herd immunity, better clinical treatment or the presence of other factors. Also, absolute numbers of 'bad cases' dropping seems to augur against leaning so hard on vaccination whatever their real rate of protection. BTW we see the same thing in the US--though case numbers are going up, the rate of deaths is basically flat even after allowing for a two week lag.
Agreed. But how does this compare with how we were promised that if we took one of these vaccines, we have a nearly zero chance of transmitting COVID or ending up in the hospital? Also, why is Pfizer suggesting a third shot?
worth keeping in mind is that the mRNA vaccines were tested mostly in the younger and the healthy and during as time of low seasonal disease prevalence. all this will tend to overstate efficacy vs what happens when you vaccinate the high risk and immunocompromised populations and expose them to seasonal surge.
dropping overall efficacy does not prove it will work less well on you as a young, healthy person. it means the risk strata underlying the aggregates changes.
the data is just not good enough to get too deeply into that without GIGO issues.
there are all kinds of non-linear issues and massive heterogeneity in social graphs, number of connections, risk levels, etc and this interact in complex ways that we really cannot model.
SIR adjusts for this poorly or fails to account for it entirely. if you flip the right few superconncected nodes from spreader to blocker, you get wildly disproportionate effects etc.
we don't even have a good map of naturally generated immunity or any idea how many people have really been exposed. with an R this high, it's gotta be extremely high. this also makes assessing vaccine efficacy really difficult. there is so much acquired resistance and vax crossover with it.
the data her has been an utter mess and is hard to compare across regions and temporally.
this has rendered a lot of the sophisticated tools difficult to apply in any meaningful way.
I've heard that vaccinating into a pandemic is problematic. Particularly in this case because the virus will mutate to stay alive and since mRNA does not keep people from getting the virus, it can actually speed up the rate of mutation. Any truth to this? Will we have different challenges down the road as a result?
Yes Geert van den Bosch is an expert and has talked about this. We might be through vaccines and lockdowns pushing the creation and spread of these variants
Excellent analysis Gato, even by your high standards!
This is the kind of empirical work people in public health ought to be doing. Instead they leave it to you, and to other talented outsiders on Twitter or Substack to do it.
There is a poster on Twitter who had graphs about Israel that included a category for unvaccinated but recovered from Covid, and the numbers of reinfection in that group were very low. (I tried to find the information so I could be more specific, but I couldn't find it.) The graphs weren't broken down by age and didn't show whether one group or the other was being more heavily tested, however.
I saw that too. The Israeli rate of reinfection in recovered was zero. As I believe it was in that big Cleveland Clinic employee survey. So natural immunity is looking pretty useful.
My question is what will the rate of reinfection be in the vaccinated who experience breakthrough symptomatic infection? (Symptomatic because even with a positive PCR, without symptoms you cannot assume it wasn't a false positive) Will the vaxx affect development of a robust immune response, as in unvaxxed?
Are vaccines really a rash move? Vaccines in general are known to work reasonably well aren't they? Lockdowns, masks etc I agree have caused more harm imo.
Well we have used vaccines before with reasonable success. And according Gato's own articles and references they appear to be working well for covid also. So I wouldn't call it unknown benefit. Also--not sure if it's in this article or another one--Gato mentions x300 risk of side effects for young folks vs risk against bad covid. Is that what you are referring to by risk? If so, in absolute terms what is the risk of bad side effects from vaccine? Could it still be miniscule enough and yet yield good protection for community as a whole which also consists of the weak and vulnerable? I don't have an answer. I am just asking if Gato et al have a take on it.
Excellent article. This is the first time I have read a good explanation for why hospitalization rates for CV19 have more vaxed people than expected by simple calculation
Thank you for this analysis Gato. I think the issue here is that the general public has the prevailing mindset that the vaccines are supposed to prevent people from becoming infected, experiencing moderate symptoms, and spreading the virus to others. I think people are finally starting to realize this is not the case...but rather than admit the vaccines aren't as useful as they were told, they are doubling down and blaming the unvaccinated for spreading the virus around to those who are vaccinated.
I think it's pretty obvious that this is not true. Based on the numbers we are seeing with this most recent rise in positive tests among symptomatic vaccinated individuals, it's becoming more clear that these vaccines do not prevent infection or contagion across the general population. I agree with your analysis that in the more vulnerable, and older cohorts, they seem to be showing effectiveness. However, I just don't see much benefit here across the generally healthy population. The recent data showing significant outperformance in natural immunity vs the vaccine makes it abundantly clear that the vaccines are mostly worthless in the healthy cohort.
Fair analysis. People tend to miss that the first rule is to make sure your compared populations are actually comparable. This also BTW strongly contradicts the claims, unsupported by any data but just by media trumpeting of Fauci and CDC, that 99.xx% of deaths are in the unvaccinated. Highly implausible.
very much agree. there is no way the US data is diverging that much from israeli and UK.
discussed here.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/npr-national-propaganda-readers
The true test of the vaccines will be this fall.
Great article and I must add we really miss you on "that other" site. The one thing that really strikes me (you touch on this without really emphasizing it) is how far NONVAXXED patient and death numbers have fallen in Israel. Thus while a high at risk cohort may give lie to the contention that the Pfizer vaccine--the one Israel uses--is failing, I do think the absolute drop in all serious covid cases is a useful tool in a mapping our final exit from this shitshow whether due to herd immunity, better clinical treatment or the presence of other factors. Also, absolute numbers of 'bad cases' dropping seems to augur against leaning so hard on vaccination whatever their real rate of protection. BTW we see the same thing in the US--though case numbers are going up, the rate of deaths is basically flat even after allowing for a two week lag.
Great piece. Excellent perspective. Everyone, no matter what they think, should read it.
Agreed. But how does this compare with how we were promised that if we took one of these vaccines, we have a nearly zero chance of transmitting COVID or ending up in the hospital? Also, why is Pfizer suggesting a third shot?
worth keeping in mind is that the mRNA vaccines were tested mostly in the younger and the healthy and during as time of low seasonal disease prevalence. all this will tend to overstate efficacy vs what happens when you vaccinate the high risk and immunocompromised populations and expose them to seasonal surge.
dropping overall efficacy does not prove it will work less well on you as a young, healthy person. it means the risk strata underlying the aggregates changes.
the data is just not good enough to get too deeply into that without GIGO issues.
there are all kinds of non-linear issues and massive heterogeneity in social graphs, number of connections, risk levels, etc and this interact in complex ways that we really cannot model.
SIR adjusts for this poorly or fails to account for it entirely. if you flip the right few superconncected nodes from spreader to blocker, you get wildly disproportionate effects etc.
we don't even have a good map of naturally generated immunity or any idea how many people have really been exposed. with an R this high, it's gotta be extremely high. this also makes assessing vaccine efficacy really difficult. there is so much acquired resistance and vax crossover with it.
the data her has been an utter mess and is hard to compare across regions and temporally.
this has rendered a lot of the sophisticated tools difficult to apply in any meaningful way.
I've heard that vaccinating into a pandemic is problematic. Particularly in this case because the virus will mutate to stay alive and since mRNA does not keep people from getting the virus, it can actually speed up the rate of mutation. Any truth to this? Will we have different challenges down the road as a result?
Yes Geert van den Bosch is an expert and has talked about this. We might be through vaccines and lockdowns pushing the creation and spread of these variants
there is this one study for example: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002198
Excellent analysis Gato, even by your high standards!
This is the kind of empirical work people in public health ought to be doing. Instead they leave it to you, and to other talented outsiders on Twitter or Substack to do it.
Thank you. 1000x thank you.
Excellent writeup
There is a poster on Twitter who had graphs about Israel that included a category for unvaccinated but recovered from Covid, and the numbers of reinfection in that group were very low. (I tried to find the information so I could be more specific, but I couldn't find it.) The graphs weren't broken down by age and didn't show whether one group or the other was being more heavily tested, however.
I saw that too. The Israeli rate of reinfection in recovered was zero. As I believe it was in that big Cleveland Clinic employee survey. So natural immunity is looking pretty useful.
My question is what will the rate of reinfection be in the vaccinated who experience breakthrough symptomatic infection? (Symptomatic because even with a positive PCR, without symptoms you cannot assume it wasn't a false positive) Will the vaxx affect development of a robust immune response, as in unvaxxed?
Good overall analysis -- thanks!
Thank you for this excellent post. You have a gift for clearly explaining complex scientific concepts.
If vaccines don't work well for immune compromised then doesn't the burden rest even more so on the healthy, unvaccinated to check th spread?
No, I did not and do not intend to because I think flu is a well known disease whereas covid is not. I was honestly asking. Please don't mock.
Precautionary principal must be utilized in an unknown situation. Mass vaccination seems like a precautionary measure.
And unfortunately in a pandemic risk can't always be discussed in terms of the individual.
the precautionary principle warns against taking rash and expensive actions when you have no idea if they work or what the outcome should be.
it's hardly precautionary to start shooting blindly into a dark room because you heard a noise.
it's a horrendously misused notion and has been abused badly around covid
Are vaccines really a rash move? Vaccines in general are known to work reasonably well aren't they? Lockdowns, masks etc I agree have caused more harm imo.
Well we have used vaccines before with reasonable success. And according Gato's own articles and references they appear to be working well for covid also. So I wouldn't call it unknown benefit. Also--not sure if it's in this article or another one--Gato mentions x300 risk of side effects for young folks vs risk against bad covid. Is that what you are referring to by risk? If so, in absolute terms what is the risk of bad side effects from vaccine? Could it still be miniscule enough and yet yield good protection for community as a whole which also consists of the weak and vulnerable? I don't have an answer. I am just asking if Gato et al have a take on it.
Excellent post. Thanks for putting in the time on it.
Excellent article. This is the first time I have read a good explanation for why hospitalization rates for CV19 have more vaxed people than expected by simple calculation