shots

Re: shots

Wiley Horne

Hi Buck,

The most likely outcome for you—and for any of us—is that we will all eventually gain immunity. There are two ways to get immunity:

1. Vaccination, or

2. Incubate the virus, by catching it from someone.

It’s a choice we all make. The choice affects those close to us.

Wiley

And...

John in NM

Option #2 is generally a bit riskier than option #1. Its hard to say how much because so much depends on age, weight, and general health. Fatality rate for young to middle aged, healthy, trim people is something like 0.01% (I didn't look it up). For older people, unhealthy people, etc, it goes up a lot, into the single digit percentage at least.

Average all the people together and it comes out to 2% or so across the board.

Compare that to chances of complications of about one in a million or less with the shots. I'll take the shots any day.

agree with what wiley said...

David Weaver

In general, to you, it appears that your relative risk of dying goes up 15% if you get no shots (maybe somewhat more). That's generalized somewhat (I vaguely recall you saying you're about 80, and age counts for a lot here).

Your risk of morbidity (having a case and having it be disabling) is also relatively high compared to the general population.

If you get the shots, your relative risk probably drops by at least 10 times for the above, but potentially more. The more severe the outcome, the better the decrease in risk for getting the shots. Risk of getting covid at all drops to about 1/4th as likely, but so far, the people with the best long-term outlook are those who got both covid and the shots (so shots give you a greater chance of getting a mild case and having better immunity).

Hard to get straight case fatality rate for 75-85 age group (though I may just be unlucky so far), but would guess that if you get covid with out a shot and you're 80, your chance of death is around 7 or 8% - not great odds. And things can happen quickly.

#3

Mark Mandell - Gone Round in New Jersey

Not mentioned are

A. Your ability to catch and pass it to other unvaccinated people, like your grandchildren; and

B. Catch it and become the perfect host for the virus to mutate again before you pass it on like the Delta variant currently overloading hospitals and killing people all across the country.

Great options, eh?

I just got my 3rd shot (booster) to help me protect my grandkids.

Re: #3

Pete in Holland MI

I personally know of 4 people who brought the virus home, and killed an older family member. All 4 that brought the virus home were anti-vaccine people, and convinced their parents not to get it. The last one was 2 weeks ago. Something they will have to shoulder the rest of their lives.

Son's brother in law (unvaccinated) brought it home to his family a week ago. He tested positive. Wife is showing signs. Scared to death about their 5 month old daughter now.

Something closer to home......are you financially ready, if you get the virus, to be home for 2-5 weeks sick, and not have any income?

Get the shot.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: And...

TomD

The shots are nothing like 1/1000000, you are saying we are expecting only 350 people in all of the US have an effect. Even Fauci would laugh at that.

You have the individual risk not the 2% you quote, which includes all the people who died when there were no vaccines, and there were tons of old people who just got culled. The actual individual rate for healthy and under 60, 99.985 complete recovery. But there are a lot of people who are compromised. I would for sure have to take it if I didn't live in the bush.

Where I currently live, the total death toll for the whole province was 45 people, which is less than died in just one care home in the other community I live in which is outside Toronto. Actually the total pop of the county vs the province, are similar. So it is not impossible to survive wihtout vaccines, and to not have to shut down the economy, though they did. Also the province is one of the oldest in Canada, demographically. So they should have done worse.

Re: And...

TomD

In Israel, where they took a ton of Pfizer, the hospitals are fuller with vaccinated seriously ill, this year than this time last year when they were being pounded and had not vaccinated. Israel may have some odd circumstances, such as mostly only the P vaccine, not enough people got natural I; further down the path. One supposed the actual death rate will be lower.

Re: agree with what wiley said...

TomD

The problem with being 80 is that with the shots, you can have a much lower effectiveness,t like 45%. That is hugely better than nothing, and long term issue are not likely to be a problem. But what it isn't it time to bounce little Johnny on your knee after he spent his day in a classroom with a high PPM level of CO2/proxy.

Re: #3

TomD

Are you saying they should give the shot to their 5 year old daughter?

The CDC came out with a study that leaked in the "slide deck" and it showed COVID was as heavy in the nasal passages of vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected. There is the possibility some of that junk is dead in vaccinated people. (that is always the case with PCR test, along with the fact it may be something other than 19, or they cranked the machine too high. but so far they haven't worried about any of that). It is for sure, though, that people who are vaxxed can infect others. So where the problem lies is the "I am vaxxed, I can do no wrong people". No, they can replicate and create resistant variants; spread it; and if they think they are of no risk to others, they aren't exactly a smart bombs. As you say the old should have been vaccinated, unless it was not possible.

Saving the old people in their lives isn't as easy as it sounds.

If i was working, and had old people in the house, I would get vaccinated, and so should they. But that is not necessarily going to cut it. So what do you do? If it was a "Rambo" movie the hero would move heaven and earth to save his family. We see nothing like that kind of urgency with the old. A lot of the most violently pro vaccine crowd are pretty happy to see the old off.

Re: #3

TomD

"B. Catch it and become the perfect host for the virus to mutate again before you pass it on like the Delta variant currently overloading hospitals and killing people all across the country."

That is not a thing, because vaccinated people get infected, replicate the virus, and infect others also, and when the virus is in their body, it either dies, or creates a vaccine resistant variety, those are the only novel choices.

In people who aren't vaccinated, it would be like monkeys typing Shakespeare for a virus to mutate to vaccine resistance. It is a million to one shot.

Why would a virus mutate to a form it does not need to assume in order to survive or spread in the body of an unvaccinated person. And how would it copy that key without something to copy form? What it needs to do it mutate to a less virulent form because if it kills the host it limits it's spread. It is not advantageous to the virus to kill people. It mainly kills large numbers because it jumped from another species, or in this case maybe because it was engineered to do that.

-----------------------------

The other thing is the vaccines suck. The Pfizer in particular is tapering off fast, so there is a period of low efficacy, and that is a great time for vaccine resistance and/or spread.

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With grandkids, who if normal have basically a zero risk from COVID, if they are under 12, the easiest way not to kill them is to leave them alone. Usually an option. If they are infected at that stage, it is probably a plus. At some point we may see a variant that kills young people, we are certainly breeding virus in terrible school conditions (up north where we don't have great ventilation) at a huge rate. There is nothing about COVID that says it will not up and kill kids at some point, except viruses tend to get gentler, but it doesn't have to happen. And this is not a normal virus.

Nah....

John in NM

One in a million figure was from the J & J blood clots. That may well be old info, but there are far fewer adverse reactions with the other vaccines - perhaps you are referring to the immune reaction? That is not adverse, its normal, almost everyone gets that - sore arm, fever for a day, etc.

Fatality rate in the US is currently 682k/42m = 1.6% Don't know the worldwide figure, its less informative than rates for individual countries because the circumstances for each are so variable.

Re: agree with what wiley said...

David Weaver

That's not something I've seen (45%). If it's the case, it's probably a suggestion that more should be tried.

The death rates disappeared almost entirely as soon as the shots were offered in WA state - including at later ages.

We'll see what comes of delta when more data is released, but through august 5th or so in the US, there were 2050 vaccinated deaths against 100 times that or more over the span where vaccinations started.

There could be some unfairness in counting that, but we can go to local info to poll and see if it seems reasonable. A few in the neighborhood here lost grandparents and parents due to covid. Not a lot, but some. Since vaccines, I haven't even met someone who has had a breakthrough case (I'm sure there are plenty - under age 50, they're 5% of the cases in the largest local health system, so there's probably dozens or hundreds who have been hospitalized). but I don't know of anyone, and those of us who have been "shot" twice are being pretty careless about where we go and what we do.

(I went and looked at the CDC data for older individuals - 76% effectiveness across the three for age 75+ - this is updated data including delta. 95% for moderna, 80% for pfizer and 60% for J&J to make up that total number).

Death rates suggested in recent state data sets 10 to 29 times less likely to have a death involving covid if vaccinated. This seems a little low, but who knows. Early data was about 100 to 1, but that assumes the data is accurate enough to differentiate 50 to 1 vs. 100 to 1 or whatever. Don't know for sure. The CDC does have sortable nominal data, but I don't have the time to take it and see if rates can be made from it (nothing is ever simple taking various statistics as there's no guarantee that all of the data is clear - e.g., if there is death information for patients dying from pneumonia, but they didn't get tested for covid - then what.....next step is to determine underlying expected pneumonia rates. Lots of busy work. I tend to rely on excess mortality as it's generally stable at a percent or two +/-.

variants...

David Weaver

..the variants seem to be originating from places that are mostly unvaccinated, at least at this point.

shot 1 and 2 data...

David Weaver

.is pretty clear. I've heard more doctors and rumblings of divide within the CDC about the right way forward past the first two shots, though.

Shot 1 and 2 and those deaths you mentioned don't happen.

Neighbor here didn't believe much about covid, mumbled something to me about the vaccine (I got it as soon as it was available, anyway - I can read the data myself). He ended up getting covid instead (before the vaccine was available) and I didn't know it as it was last year over winter and we weren't exactly visiting everyone.

Around February, we had a warm day, and he said he was down for 3 months (he's a little over 60 but far more fit than I am). His message was completely different! He could also beat me to ribbons, so when he was venting about the whole covid thing being an overreaction before all of this, I didn't say much - it put him out of work and I could understand why he was panicking).

Long story short, after he got covid, apparently around the holidays, he suddenly changed his tune to his relatives (according to him) and as soon as he was no longer symptomatic, they insisted on visiting. They all got it, and the MIL ended up in the hospital. They were lucky nobody died.

But 2-5 weeks is one thing - he was down for 3 months and there are few in their late 50s or early 60s as fit as he is. It took a big mental toll.

This kind of clarity (both anecdotal for nearly all of us locally - except the few where our local sample isn't big enough to match the larger data set) is why I tried to be clear in the thread below that I had no interest in comparing anything other than 2 shots or 3.

do you have a link?

David Weaver

I'd imagine there were shutdown measures.

I'm sure israel has a lot of hospitalizations and cases, but they also do have a strong cohort (Even if a minority) of vaccine avoiders (conscientious types).

Much of israel is different than our way of life, though. A local here became a rabbi and moved over there and described his living arrangements as traditional for the part of the culture he's in. two adults and 6 kids in a two room house. I don't know enough about why not the bigger house - I don't know the guy well enough to pepper him with questions.

OK...i went and pulled the numbers myself instead. 78% of the adult population is fully vaccinated. 59% of those hospitalized (not ICU, just hospitalized) are fully vaccinated. The bias will be generally that the more vulnerable groups are more highly vaccinated so this stat will understate the vaccine's effectiveness (it would need to be cohort adjusted).

without adjusting for cohort, the unvaccinated rate for the hospitalized folks is 2.46 times higher (barring me making an algebra error).

Cohort matters a lot and I wouldn't be surprised if it made the real number for an individual closer to 5 (which is around what the CDC estimates cohort neutral).

turning that stat around...

David Weaver

without adjusting for anything else, the stat suggests that with 100% vaccination rates, the hospitals would be 25% less full.

But with less viral load in the community, it would probably be a little more than that.

See wiley!!

David Weaver

my powers can be used for good!

postvax data from the state of PA

David Weaver

To the chagrin of many on here, I loves me some data.

Whether it's snapping bits of steel and recording visual data (comparative pictures of grain size) after trying thermal forge cycles or getting this kind of data.

Here's the bits from the beginning of 2021 through September (PA has a relatively high vaccination rate, which should actually make the numbers more in favor of the *non-vaccinated* as it puts more and more higher risk individuals into the pool of "vaxed".

Total Covid deaths in PA - 3% are from individuals with two vaccines. Individuals over 65 are fully vaccinated at a rate around 80% here. That figures out to making it so that the covid death rate for unvaccinated individuals is likely more than 100 times greater for unvaccinated than vaccinated (this ties in to data everywhere else).

Tying this into something else the CDC or another fed agency provided, the average life lost (this is now an older statistic from late last year or early this year) for each covid death is about 12 years (that is, without covid, the average person who died would've lived an additional 12 years. Of course in reality, this could be 1 or almost zero for some and 50 for others in rare cases.

95% of hospital admissions with covid as a primary cause were among individuals not fully vaccinated. More than half of the adult population here is fully vaccinated - the odds from this are closer to 25 to 1 - as in, you're about 25 times more likely to be admitted for covid if you're not vaccinated.

94% of covid cases (including non-hospital cases along with the hospital admissions) were for unvaccinated individuals.

Some of these statistics may be tempered back slightly to take into account the first couple of months where the at risk population may not have been fully vaxed. But not much.

https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Post-Vaccination-Data.aspx

(of course, to some extent, the data that makes it so clear why the vaccine is good policy if making a data driven decision makes it less clear what the emergency is for the booster, but I think I made that case below enough and won't ..well, I just kicked the stiff horse again, but only once).

Re: postvax data from the state of PA

TomD

Re: postvax data from the state of PA

TomD

That last slide is said to have had an effect on the 3rd shots, which doesn't mean it is important, just bad PR.

not vaccine-caused deaths..

David Weaver

VAERS requires physicians to report any deaths of vaccinated individuals, even if they're not suspected to be the cause.

So, what you see is what happens naturally - if you give vaccines to older folks in large quantities, some will not live to take advantage of them. The number given as "vax deaths" is falsely reported in various totals, 3k, 10k, whatever it may be.

Somewhere around 200 million people have received one or two vaccine doses. The death rate in the US is around 725 per 100k (per year). If you slice that into weeks, you'd expect 139 deaths per million people every two weeks (I picked two weeks - anyone who sees a death of a vaxed person within two weeks may conclude "it's the vax!!").

The reason it's not 139 instead of 17.73 is probably because people close to death aren't given the vax - there was a debate early on about that in nursing homes when vaxes were given to people who were expected to live a few days to a couple of weeks and they were getting side effects from the vax. Is it really worth it? And I think they decided that the individuals wouldn't live long enough to consider giving the vax and their life expectancy meant they would also be unlikely to contract and transmit covid.

So, no, VAERs deaths aren't deaths due to the vaccine. Some subset might be, and one looking at the general death rate would wonder why it's not higher than 17.73 considering all deaths (regardless of suspected cause) are to be reported.

Re: #3

johannaj

"A lot of the most violently pro vaccine crowd are pretty happy to see the old off."

Tom D, that was a terrible thing to say. I am 80 and pro vaccine. My partner is 87 and also pro vaccine. No younger people I know would ever, ever wish death on the elderly.

Re: shots

johannaj

Death from COVID is also one of the outcomes. Not one I would choose, so I got the vaccine as soon as it was available and will get a booster when necessary.