Corona virus, China major city lockdowns, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Your political preferences have already been removed from the equation.

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My preferences have nothing to do with it. Globalism is ending, U.S. citizens have stopped supporting it. That's just reality.

I don't see why taxpayers should keep footing the bill rewarding Big Pharma... without even a direct benefit to themselves in exchange. If they are going to be forced to buy doses of vaccines to give away to 3rd worlders that's fine, but they ought to at least get them at a price much closer to cost.

Globalists are all the same though: muddy-thinking agents of the multinational corporations. At least their infancy is over and they can start working for a living as they are weaned off the teat. They'll cry and kick, but they can be ignored by the adults in the room who understand the game now, much like parents after their second child.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

I have to wonder why should it always be an excuse and not an acceptance.
But I respect your opinion. I won't be posting more of these issues, I saw one just now but it makes me feel down and I don't want that.

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When it comes to one-off issues with no clear cause and effect, the burden of proof has to be higher. There is no clear reason why something that triggers the immune system to react to a respiratory virus should have a side effect that has nothing clearly related to any of that. It's not impossible that there is a relationship, since it's all one body, so all pieces are at least a little related, but there's no clear relationship.

At that point, it's just superstition. Don't know if you have anything like this over there, but in the US, baseball players are notorious for superstitions (probably other sports, as well, but baseball seems to have a whole lot of it). They had a good game....so they keep wearing that shirt, or don't shave, or add some other kind of ritual that the associated with that good game.

That reminds me of a story. A friend of mine had a kid who got a really rare and very difficult illness. She was terribly sick and hospitalized for several days, but recovered almost fully (she might have some hearing impairment as a result of the illness...or maybe not as a result of it, I'm not sure, as she was young enough she might have already had some hearing impairment that hadn't been noticed before the illness).

Her mother, who is not any organized religion, said that she thought that all the thoughts and prayers of those around her had helped her daughter pull through. The girl really was sick enough that it seemed like a near thing. The mother also told me about two friends of hers from elsewhere in the country, who had had dreams about the girl getting terribly sick just before she did get sick.

There are a couple problems I have with that.
1) The illness has a very high survival rate for those diagnosed early enough, and the illness is VERY rare. So the miracle wasn't that she recovered, as she had a very high probability of recovery given the early diagnosis, the miracle was that she got sick in the first place, since THAT was far more unlikely than her recovery.

2) The good wishes and prayers were credited with helping the recovery (the likely outcome), while the dreams about the illness were not credited with CAUSING the illness (the unlikely event).

That seems wrong, to me. If you are going to believe in magic, that wishes and prayers can nudge the dial in a good direction, then don't you also have to believe that other things can nudge the dial in a bad direction? Since there is no clear mechanism by which a prayer can heal, wouldn't it be possible that a dream could do it? And if it could, then couldn't it harm just as easily as heal?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

My preferences have nothing to do with it. Globalism is ending, U.S. citizens have stopped supporting it. That's just reality.

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No, only a portion have stopped. Most never really cared...or even knew what impact it had on their lives. If they start seeing prices increase, they'll care. If they see their jobs go away, they'll care. Other than that, they likely won't care at all, and if either of those things happen, they'll likely listen to whoever spins the most entertaining story as to whether globalism had a hand in it, or not.

Quote:

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I don't see why taxpayers should keep footing the bill rewarding Big Pharma... without even a direct benefit to themselves in exchange. If they are going to be forced to buy doses of vaccines to give away to 3rd worlders that's fine, but they ought to at least get them at a price much closer to cost.

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They do. The last figures I saw showed that the price for a shot for us is roughly three times the cost for a shot in the developing world. That's why a third shot to the US is FAR more lucrative than giving shots to the developing world.

Ahh don't get me started about superstitions in Greece. I think we top everyone!
As the vaccines goes, they are not conducting necropsies on vaccine deaths, you have to have a court order. I believe after the fuss on the dead boy they will do a necropsie, just hope they don't explain the death to superstition.

A necropsy would be a good thing (and you don't even NEED to tell me where THAT word came from). There probably need to be a whole lot more than there currently are. We have a LOT to learn about this virus. After all, it attaches to one specific protein, and that protein is plentiful in lung tissue...but it's also found in a lot of other places, too.

Still, maybe those necropsies could be done somewhere with lower numbers of deaths. I think the US is overwhelmed, at the moment. That may be just because Idaho is overwhelmed, but we aren't the ONLY ones.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

A necropsy would be a good thing (and you don't even NEED to tell me where THAT word came from).

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Oh but I do, I doooo :p

Necros (dead) and opsi (sight,view). There, got it out of my system.

About superstitions. I will not go on translate that but just some of them is in the article. Just count the dots!

https://www.kalamatatimes.gr/mythoi-...oy-21oy-aiona/

Ok just one to get the idea. You don't carry olive oil at night as is considered bad luck. Nuff said!

While I think vaccination is important and effective, I remain convinced that there are other (perhaps greater) factors we haven't been told about.

Compare these two maps:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...min-rate-total

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...r100klast7days

They just don't correlate very well. But then that doesn't take other things into account either, like masking and distancing and isolation behaviors.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

Oh but I do, I doooo :p

Necros (dead) and opsi (sight,view). There, got it out of my system.

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Okay, I didn't know about the opsi part, so you did a good deed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

While I think vaccination is important and effective, I remain convinced that there are other (perhaps greater) factors we haven't been told about.

Compare these two maps:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...min-rate-total

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...r100klast7days

They just don't correlate very well. But then that doesn't take other things into account either, like masking and distancing and isolation behaviors.

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Yeah, they don't correlate very well. There may be still other factors that aren't being addressed. There could be super spreader events that are more likely in some places than in others. For example, the Sturgis bike rally brings a whole lot of people close together...mostly outdoors, I think, so it may not be so bad, but Sturgis happens in only ONE place, and it's big enough to register if there was a large outbreak associated with it.

Not saying that's a reason, my point is that there could be some very incidental factors involved. Frankly, there's no particular reason that Idaho is being hit so hard. Yeah, we're one of the least vaccinated states in the country, so that would be a factor, but we're also seriously rural, which might reduce spread. Furthermore, the places that got hit the hardest, the fastest, in this state were not the few cities we have, but some very rural parts of the state.

Just to be a troublemaker (What? Moi?) I can think of two other maps I'd like to see for starters:

State by state travel inward directly from the U.K. I suspect they've acted as The Crossroad of COVID for most of the pandemic.

State by state practice of organized religion. Those people who gather indoors weekly to spew their hot, moist breath at each other in great volume.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

State by state travel inward directly from the U.K. I suspect they've acted as The Crossroad of COVID for most of the pandemic.

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Not a chance!! At least, not a chance where it comes to the Idaho outbreak that is currently going on. Half this state probably couldn't find the UK, and the UK probably couldn't find this state...and if they did, they wouldn't come here.

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State by state practice of organized religion. Those people who gather indoors weekly to spew their hot, moist breath at each other in great volume.

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That one is a very good point. The part of Idaho that first went bad is also the part where some of the most vehement religious based anti-everything are located. I hadn't thought about that aspect, but now that you have mentioned it, I think you may have hit on a significant factor. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to say that's really worth investigating. No other factor that I have ever heard of seems quite as likely as that one...unless smoke inhalation, and the impact that has on respiratory systems, has some contributing effect. Smoke does seem kind of correlated in this state, but religion may be even more so.

I hadn't thought about the smoke, but its impact here has been minor though visible from time to time. But it might also figure into things a lot out west.

I think not.
In Greece they banned all religious ceremonies for 1,5 year and still the numbers kept going.
In fact all these shows my "do nothing" post is not far of reality but let's not jump back again.

IF you look here https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths .

Seems like only US has it worse. .
Look at only US. The death rate on March 2020 is almost identical with the death rate of September 2021. You are at 55% vaccinated so what is going on?
An outer observer could say that your numbers are "odd" to say the least.
In fact if you add US and Israel you can see that they follow the same mortality path.
I should also urge you to compare the chart of US to Sweden that "did nothing", the conclusions are yours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

I think not.
In Greece they banned all religious ceremonies for 1,5 year and still the numbers kept going.
In fact all these shows my "do nothing" post is not far of reality but let's not jump back again.

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I wouldn't say that all religions are equal, in this regard. Idaho has some odd ones.

Quote:

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Look at only US. The death rate on March 2020 is almost identical with the death rate of September 2021. You are at 55% vaccinated so what is going on?

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It's not an evenly distributed 55%. Idaho has a rate of about 40%, and even that is a skewed value, because it is probably higher in the Boise area than in the hinterlands. We have most of the population in just two counties of a large state. The places that really got hammered had a vaccination rate down around 30%. That's barely vaccinated.

Well then you are doing better , worse? Do they even know how are you doing over there? If the 30% gone to the higher ages then it's high enough to at least change the diagrams a little but the charts are showing a stalemate.

If your religion is what shown on tv. People doing alalalalaou then , yes that is completely different. :D

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Look at only US. The death rate on March 2020 is almost identical with the death rate of September 2021. You are at 55% vaccinated so what is going on?

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What came a long was an even more highly contagious variant called Delta and it hit right when all the country was loosening mask, dining and various other restrictions. In July we were down to @ 300 deaths a day. Now we're back up to @ 1,200. This new surge in COVID deaths is driven by the unvaccinated, very few deaths among the vaccinated.

Quote:

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That one is a very good point. The part of Idaho that first went bad is also the part where some of the most vehement religious based anti-everything are located. I hadn't thought about that aspect, but now that you have mentioned it, I think you may have hit on a significant factor. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to say that's really worth investigating

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I saw a report yesterday that showed that the evangelical demographic had the highest unvaccinated rate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wes4dbt

What came a long was an even more highly contagious variant called Delta and it hit right when all the country was loosening mask, dining and various other restrictions. In July we were down to @ 300 deaths a day. Now we're back up to @ 1,200. This new surge in COVID deaths is driven by the unvaccinated, very few deaths among the vaccinated.




I saw a report yesterday that showed that the evangelical demographic had the highest unvaccinated rate.

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Even so, the charts are way off with other countries that had the same behavior. So I'm not arguing or something just saying that it seems odd how US has that fluctuation. The country that we can see behaving the same is Israel that they are 70% or more vaccinated so i don't think it's the vaccine. I really can't explain this, it's odd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwPKnOhJRYg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

If your religion is what shown on tv. People doing alalalalaou then , yes that is completely different. :D

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What is shown on TV is likely a sanitized version of the truth...at least when it comes to the practices in Idaho.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by digitalShaman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwPKnOhJRYg

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Nice link.
Glad to see my own conclusions (just applying simple logic) confirmed by an expert in the field.

I'm (as him) not against vaccinations.
But it's "the way they are carried out" currently, which makes absolutely no sense to me as well (bordering on the insane).

If you really *have to* vaccinate in the midst of a pandemic,
then you have to at least make sure, that the vaccinated are quarantined for a longer period.

What happens instead is, that the vaccinated get "green status" and are then outright encouraged,
to cause new "super-spreader-events" (now distributing higher resistant strains among themselves and - in the end, the unvacced).

That all this is accompanied by "public shaming" of the unvaccinated,
(who - for the most part - *know* that they are less protected - and therefore "isolate themselves better") -
is just the icing on the cake.

Olaf

Don't tinkle the web, you will wake the vaxbie spiders.:lol:
No one will quarantine the vaccinated because it would be like admitting that they where wrong. They are never wrong. :rolleyes:

And on that note. Fake people pretending they have covid where media actors . How nice.They are some talks that they do that here also but they just choose and pay people out from the street so we won't recognize them
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/ep...covid/13529112

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

That all this is accompanied by "public shaming" of the unvaccinated,
(who - for the most part - *know* that they are less protected - and therefore "isolate themselves better") -
is just the icing on the cake.

Olaf

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That may be the case over there, but I don't think it's the case in the US. The majority of our unvaccinated don't seem to believe in COVID, one way or another. Some believe it doesn't exist at all (it's a hoax), some believe it's just the flu (I'm fine with that view), and some believe that the vaccines CAUSE the disease (some evangelicals, apparently).

So, our unvaccinated tend not to know they are less protected, and have consistently isolated themselves worse, not better.

I think it is less of an issue with individuals here than certain rabble-rousing groups try to make it to gather in new dupes to control.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

The majority of our vaccinated don't seem to believe in COVID, one way or another.

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Careful there, you don't want to get attacked by your fellow vaxbie spiders....Ffffssss.....pfpfpfpfpfpfpfpfp!!

I even see one guy on YouTube using his anti-vax rhetoric to sell his line of branded nutritional supplements and exercise gadgets and videos. The old "Get healthy for invulnerability" schtick.

That is common here. Wherever opportunity strikes...
A man was arrested pretending to be a doctor, stopping cancer treatments to patience and giving them his own thus killing a lot of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

Nice link.
Glad to see my own conclusions (just applying simple logic) confirmed by an expert in the field.

I'm (as him) not against vaccinations.
But it's "the way they are carried out" currently, which makes absolutely no sense to me as well (bordering on the insane).

If you really *have to* vaccinate in the midst of a pandemic,
then you have to at least make sure, that the vaccinated are quarantined for a longer period.

What happens instead is, that the vaccinated get "green status" and are then outright encouraged,
to cause new "super-spreader-events" (now distributing higher resistant strains among themselves and - in the end, the unvacced).

That all this is accompanied by "public shaming" of the unvaccinated,
(who - for the most part - *know* that they are less protected - and therefore "isolate themselves better") -
is just the icing on the cake.

Olaf

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There are so many scientists around the globe that say what is going on is totally irrational and against everything that was tought in the past decades. so sad they don't get heard.

from the very start of the pandemic so many things where against my personal logic and what i call common sense that it was fishy to the moon.
i am sure the preassure on youtube is immense to take this video down and i must say that YT must be honored to let this and other stuff online. give the videos you find worth it a thumb up and help spreading it. thats the way we vote these days.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by digitalShaman

There are so many scientists around the globe that say what is going on is totally irrational and against everything that was tought in the past decades. so sad they don't get heard.

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If they weren't a tiny minority, they WOULD get heard.

I've spent much of my career dealing with practical evolution, and I'm not sure whether I agree with the idea that I think Olaf is talking about.

Antibiotic resistance is a different mechanism to vaccines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

If they weren't a tiny minority, they WOULD get heard.
.

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I can speak for Greece and say that this is wrong. What we hear here is media doctors (even a plastic surgeon, go figure) praising the vaccines. Lately they decided that young people are all gonna die by covid so they should vaccinate. The other view is not heard. At the beginning they where inviting scientists that they thought they will go on the vaccine for all opinion, as soon as they did not, well, they never got invited again. It think this is an intermediate between the democracy thread and the covid thread but I'm glad we revived this one so we can fight...Fight!Fight!Fight!

Quote:

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My preferences have nothing to do with it. Globalism is ending, U.S. citizens have stopped supporting it. That's just reality.

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The virus doesn't care what US citizens support.

Quote:

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They just don't correlate very well.

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Yes they do. They're an almost perfect inverse correlation which is what you'd expect. Have I misunderstood something here?

The US passed the death count from the 1918 Spanish flu. That didn't need to happen and the daily death count is approaching the peak from last year. And still there are people, even some here, railing against masks and vaccines. Too bad :o

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

Careful there, you don't want to get attacked by your fellow vaxbie spiders....Ffffssss.....pfpfpfpfpfpfpfpfp!!

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That was a typo, I meant the UNvaccinated. I went back and corrected the original post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TysonLPrice

The US passed the death count from the 1918 Spanish flu. That didn't need to happen and the daily death count is approaching the peak from last year. And still there are people, even some here, railing against masks and vaccines. Too bad :o

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We passed our population from 1918 a LONG time ago, so the total death count isn't what should be compared, but the death count as a percentage of the total population. I haven't looked it up, so that may be what you are saying, but it should be clarified. Half a million dead is still half a million dead, but that would have been a much bigger percentage of the total population in 1918 than it is today, which means it would directly impact far more other lives.

Oh I know.
If it wasn't I would have gotten to the roof screaming Kakaaaa-Kakaaa! :)

An idiot government reporter said now that most people on emergency are kids from... ZERO to 18.
Ok, read what the ruffians are writing to you but at least put your tongue to your brain before spreading vaxbie stupidity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

Oh I know.
If it wasn't I would have gotten to the roof screaming Kakaaaa-Kakaaa! :)

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Well doggone it. Had I known THAT, I would have said it like I meant it.

Er, what???

https://youtu.be/GNwNQZ4TXLo

So I'm returning to the authentic thread not the wannabe one.
I'm a little confused with the UK government official covid report of 17 September.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...O0s1hoqemRS8RE

Page 19-20.

It shows that from all 2,542 death cases, 1616 vaccinated died, 722 unvaccinated died and 41 have not been specified yet.
I'm I reading something wrong here?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapator

It shows that from all 2,542 death cases, 1616 vaccinated died, 722 unvaccinated died and 41 have not been specified yet.
I'm I reading something wrong here?

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Binary thinking + (whatever the opposite of cherry picking is OR wilful ignorance) = what's wrong here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jpbro

Binary thinking + (whatever the opposite of cherry picking is OR wilful ignorance) = what's wrong here.

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I'm not sure here, who's cherry-picking though, since the hard numbers are as lined out in this document:
https://assets.publishing.service.go..._-_week_38.pdf
(Table 4 ... a and b)

Here is the hard data for one age-group out of Table 4 b (people >= 80):
- total amount of covid-deaths: 1745 (within the time-interval of [2021-08-23 to 2021-09-19])
- unvaccinated among them: 211
- already vaccinated with the second shot (>=14 days before death): 1472

As said, these numbers are just "hard, official data" over a quite recent 4-week-period -
and not interpreted in any way (yet).

So, can somebody who's not cherry-picking please explain these hard numbers to me
(I've picked the "age>=80" group deliberately, because this group is the one with the highest risk -
and is therefore also the group where I thought that vaccination-percentages were "higher than normal" ... at least > 50%).

Olaf

Another interesting table is the one that shows that Delta is 3 times lower on mortality than Alpha. Granted we don't have a yearly chart so we can see the evolution of Delta deaths over months, that would be real interesting, or I'm blind as usual an I don't see it in there.

@Olaf, the problem is that your comparing actual numbers of cases but not accounting for the populations of the examined groups. Over here the vast majority of people are vaccinated which inevitably pushes up the total number of cases in that group.

What you should be looking at is the rate of infections per 100,000 population (the last two columns in the table) which clearly shows you are roughly 3 times as likely to be infected if you are unvaccinated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

@Olaf, the problem is that your comparing actual numbers of cases
but not accounting for the populations of the examined groups.

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Yes, I was (without interpretation) just listing the currrent absolute numbers.

Which (IMO) at least contradicts the statement (how it is made currently in germany),
that "the intensive-care-units these days are nearly completely occupied by the unvaccinated".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

What you should be looking at is the rate of infections per 100,000 population...

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Yes, I'm aware of that - but looking into said columns in table 2 of the link I've posted,
there's another thing:

If you're over 40 and among the group of the unvaccinated,
the chance to get infected with covid in the UK is roughly 30%-50% less (compared to the group of vaccinated people).

This kind of contradicts the statement: "Vaccination will reduce your risk of infection".

And it also strongly supports my thesis, that the virus is currently spread mainly by (and among) the vaccinated.
What we hear from the media (at least in germany) currently, is the opposite.

Olaf

Quote:

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Which (IMO) at least contradicts the statement (how it is made currently in germany),
that "the intensive-care-units these days are nearly completely occupied by the unvaccinated".

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That statement isn't being made though. At least, not in the UK where we have high vaccination rates. It may be being made elsewhere (I've certainly heard that from the US) but you really need to supply data from those countries if you want to make that argument.

Quote:

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If you're over 40 and among the group of the unvaccinated,
the chance to get infected with covid in the UK is roughly 30%-50% less (compared to the group of vaccinated people)

---

1. you've cherry picked a single datapoint and disregarded the rest of the data which tells a different story.
2. you cherry picked it from a table which carries the following caveat: "Interpretation of the case rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated population is particularly susceptible to changes in denominators and
should be interpreted with extra caution."
3. That table has no quantifier for the viral load - in other words, it says nothing about either the severity of the infection or the resultant transmissibility.

Quote:

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my thesis, that the virus is currently spread mainly by (and among) the vaccinated.

---

If that's true (and I really don't feel your data backs that up - you're not even using data relating to the country you're discussing) it's to do with the number of unvaccinated people, not the infectious risk they individually represent. In other words, we'd still be better served if the unvaccinated went and got their jab.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

That statement isn't being made though. At least, not in the UK where we have high vaccination rates. It may be being made elsewhere (I've certainly heard that from the US) but you really need to supply data from those countries if you want to make that argument.

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Yes, that statement is being made a LOT in the US, but our vaccination rates are highly variable. You hear that statement plenty in Idaho, but we have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. This spring, I think I predicted that we'd barely make it to 40%, which turned out to be optimistic. Rates have picked up a bit, but we're only a bit over 41%.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

1. you've cherry picked a single datapoint and disregarded the rest of the data which tells a different story.

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Nope, with my "over 40" statement I've covered already "5 out of 8" of the available age-groups
(which do represent a not insignificant part of the populace).

Only for the remaining 3 (30-39, 18-29, below 18), the factors point into the other direction:
1.2, 2, ~4 respectively.

My guess here is "significant undertesting of the vaccinated, the younger they are".
(because the dead-risk is still significantly higher in the "older groups").

I mean, you said it yourself:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

"Interpretation of the case rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated population is particularly susceptible to changes in denominators..."

---

In germany you don't have to test anymore, as soon as you're vaccinated -
not sure about the UK.

Olaf

Yes UK has 66 millions and the vaxbies are 50 millions roughly.
So in the next few week this "poem" of unvaxbies spreading and dying between each other will cease to exist as we will be talking about a fully vaxed nation.
I have patience. Currently I don't even have to skip systemic media to get the info. It's getting worse and worse for the vaccinated.
Delta mortality case claim of most of the people here that it is high or as high as alpha is gone. So strike one. The funny thing is that the vaccine was made for alpha but using it, the alpha mortality is over the top of delta. Or, by accident the vaccine covers more Delta cases than alpha, lol, I should be expecting to read that.

To be frank, I think medical companies don't give a rats a$$ right now about the covid rates. They have sold a vast amount, business as usual, so they will only pay up researches to show that they are not that lethal or cover up lethality. That is why many general reports slip by so easy but only a few will slip for vax deaths. I may be wrong on that of course but a little more patience and will see.

Now I'm furious! We haven't had any rain here from May! I'm forced to continue my vacations but at least I'm working full the week to come, putted on the schedule to work next week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

I'm not sure here, who's cherry-picking though, since the hard numbers are as lined out in this document:
https://assets.publishing.service.go..._-_week_38.pdf
(Table 4 ... a and b)

Here is the hard data for one age-group out of Table 4 b (people >= 80):
- total amount of covid-deaths: 1745 (within the time-interval of [2021-08-23 to 2021-09-19])
- unvaccinated among them: 211
- already vaccinated with the second shot (>=14 days before death): 1472

As said, these numbers are just "hard, official data" over a quite recent 4-week-period -
and not interpreted in any way (yet).

So, can somebody who's not cherry-picking please explain these hard numbers to me
(I've picked the "age>=80" group deliberately, because this group is the one with the highest risk -
and is therefore also the group where I thought that vaccination-percentages were "higher than normal" ... at least > 50%).

Olaf

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I'll start by saying I'm not a virologist, scientist, or involved in any way with serious data analysis, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Here's my hunch. Of the people 80+ who died COVID+ most of them have comorbidities, and most of them are vaccinated. How many of them died of COVID vs. with COVID? Say there are 100,000 people of which 95% are vaccinated. So 1472 of 95,000 died. 5% aren't vaccinated (or 5,000 people) of which 211 died. That's ~1.5% vs. ~4.2% death rate, which I think is significant if my numbers and hunches are correct.

Where I live, the messaging has been that even if you are vaccinated, you can still get and transmit the virus. However, if you are vaccinated and you catch COVID, your symptoms will (in all likelihood) be milder than if you were to catch it unvaccinated. Regardless of vaccination status, we are still wearing masks indoors at stores, places of work, doctor's offices, etc... There are also restrictions on the number of people that can enter stores, and we are also maintaining social distancing of ~2metres in line-ups/queues, and in most social settings as much as possible. Of course, this is sometimes very difficult or impossible, but most people try to limit close contact. Most businesses where employees can work from home, are working from home.

In the province where I live (population ~15million), >80% of people eligible to get the vaccine have done so. Eligible population here is anyone age 12+. For the total population (incuding ineligible), >70% are fully vaccinated. So a pretty high vaccination rate overall. In my experience, people who are vaccinated are also those who are taking the rules about masks/social distancing/limited unnecessary contact the most seriously. It's the unvaccinated minority that is more likely to be anti-mask, anti-lockdown, anti-measures of any kind. They are a small but vocal group, but in my immediate neighbourhood I've been lucky enough to avoid them as almost everyone around here is committed to seeing this thing through as safely as possible.

That's not to say most of us aren't tired of the whole thing. I've definitely noticed increasing pandemic fatigue around here (myself included), but thankfully there are encouraging signs that our efforts and sacrifices are having a positive effect. Hospitalizations/ICU numbers are stable or dropping, even a few weeks after re-opening all shops & schools for indoor use. This is something that went very poorly last year without a vaccine around to help as ICU counts quickly shot that time.

Another province in my country has been much more anti-vax/anti-mask/anti-lockdown, and they are now seeing a surge in cases after throwing everything wide open in the summer. This province has about 1/3 the population of mine, but 2x the # of COVID cases. They have ~3x the number of COVID+ people in the hospital and ~1.5x the number of COVID+ people in the ICU.

Back to my province, the most recent stats for # of COVID+ cases for those aged 12+/100,000 population is 9.33 unvaccinated, 5.36 partially vaccinated, and 1.47 fully-vaccinated.

That tells me all I need to know. Getting vaccinated + maintaining as much social distancing as possible is the best way to bring this thing to an end. Once enough people are vaccinated, the social distancing won't be necessary. Sure, you may get/transmit COVID, but it probably won't be that bad (new variants not-withstanding). There won't be enough people hospitalized or in the ICU to break the health care system - something that would have knock-on effects that should concern everyone regardless of whether they are concerned about COVID specific health problems or not.

<50 can pretty much get await either way if they are healthy and not have additional issues and possibly through 65- 70.
I don't really need to do calculations since as I've said the data is getting out, slowly, but it's getting out. So I wait patiently.
Either way from what I see most of your countries are highly vaccinated, so don't worry you are pretty safe now, right?
(with the exception of US, frankly I'm so confused of what is going on over there so any speculation or examples are pointless)

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Originally Posted by sapator

(with the exception of US, frankly I'm so confused of what is going on over there so any speculation or examples are pointless)

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Yeah, no kidding. I live here and don't understand it.

In Idaho, what you are seeing is a state with very little vaccination that is trying to pretend that it is fully vaccinated. You might say this is the, "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach. We have pretty good health care, a small and largely spread out population, and near zero concessions to the virus, currently. Masking, social distancing, and most other measures just aren't happening. Some larger activities are being restricted in some ways, but most of the state doesn't have enough people to have gatherings large enough for anybody to notice.

Other parts of the country are dealing with things in other ways. That might be the key to the US: We're a patchwork, with states all largely free to do as they please, and cities often being allowed to also chart their own course even independent of the states.

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Yes, that statement is being made a LOT in the US

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... but not in the UK where the cited data is from. My point was that citing UK data does not support or oppose German (or US) messaging. That would require German (or US) data.

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In germany you don't have to test anymore, as soon as you're vaccinated -
not sure about the UK.

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We don't have to test at all. If you have symptoms you're expected to book a test but it's not enforced. The only area I'm aware of where testing has been enforced has been for travel and that's been patchy. There tends to be quite alot of voluntary testing e.g before people go into an office or go to a shared social event but that's all home tests and isn't recorded.

But again, the UK experience really has no bearing as we're not getting the messaging you're arguing against.

I'm not terribly worried about getting COVID myself now, especially since I am vaccinated. The biggest issue is what happens to the healthcare system if the unvaccinated become an overwhelming problem. For example, AFAIK we have an ICU capacity in the 300-400 people range in my province. There are ~180 people currrently in the ICU, so we still have some capacity. However, in a population of 15million, if 10% don't get vaccinated, that's 1.5 million people. If 1% of those get COVID, that's 15,000 cases. If 1% of those require ICU, then we are now at or over ICU capacity. According to the latest data I found for my province, unvaccinated are 38x more likely to be in the ICU compared to fully vaccinated (26.59 per million population unvaccinated in ICU vs. 0.69 per million vaccinated in ICU). If the unvaccinated were fully vaccinated, that would translate to about 4 people in ICU vs. 150. Maybe 1% is too high an estimate, but it illustrates the point that there will a largely unnecessary burden placed on the healthcare system by the unvaccinated. The last time this happened, elective surgeries were cancelled since they were too risky to perform in case of complications. This means people will suffer and/or die needlessly unrelated to COVID directly. The unvaccinated that end up with COVID aren't just hurting themselves.

By now just about everyone who can be convinced already has been vaccinated.

Short of herding the irresponsible into camps or chaining them in their homes we'll just have to live with the threat to public health they present.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

By now just about everyone who can be convinced already has been vaccinated.

Short of herding the irresponsible into camps or chaining them in their homes we'll just have to live with the threat to public health they present.

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Well then, they should just stay at home and let the rest of us get on and live our lives.

-tg

It seems like the same people are the least likely to stay home. They are probably vastly overrepresented in the groups that gather to spew at each other in close proximity as well.

I got to say that gathering together and spewing at each other, I just made a picture out of it and it's hilarious.
Other than that, you will get over it at some point.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

By now just about everyone who can be convinced already has been vaccinated.

Short of herding the irresponsible into camps or chaining them in their homes we'll just have to live with the threat to public health they present.

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That's what I would say, too, except that, at least in Idaho, the vaccination rate has been slowly increasing. We were following a curve that looked likely to plateau below 40%, but starting at the end of July, it inflected upwards, though only moderately. We gained about 5% of the population in two months. If that were to continue, we'd reach 70% in about 14 months...HA! Of course, we won't, as the curve is likely to bend back towards a flat line well before then.

Still, where are these people coming from? I could understand some group seeing the surge in delta cases in Idaho, or seeing the hospitals all go to emergency care protocols, but I would expect those things to cause a jump up, followed by a quick leveling off. Instead, it's a straight, if shallow, line with a higher slope than the line for the previous three months. Seems weird.

Perhaps what is happening is that a few people in the hesitant community went ahead and got the shots, then those around them realized that they didn't die, and that prompted a few more to do so, and so on.