Contagion spreading among the vaccinated

[Fanatical Meat]

We should let people die in poverty in the richest country in the world because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

you should make a new thread about poverty in America. It is a worthy topic of discussion.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Any rational human being will want to get the best price for any given product, so I assume this is not where the objection is at. What do you feel is a misdirection here?

The misdirection is "how many xxx could we do instead", "think of the people is xxx country", "what about xxx". Doesn't matter what the xxx is, it's meant as a misdirection to the topic at hand. Unvaccinated spreading disease.

 

[ch33zw1z]

you should make a new thread about poverty in America. It is a worthy topic of discussion.

Is that what were on now? It was just Africa, and then diabetes, now it's poverty stricken Americans.

All of which are topic worthy, but in this thread are only thrown about as misdirection.

 

[cytg111]

The misdirection is "how many xxx could we do instead", "think of the people is xxx country", "what about xxx". Doesn't matter what the xxx is, it's meant as a misdirection to the topic at hand. Unvaccinated spreading disease.

Well to be fair, that little thread detour was about the flu, not covid.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Well to be fair, that little thread detour was about the flu, not covid.

Which one? 😉

 

[fskimospy]

You are correct that given our reluctance to vaccinate that this will never go away entirely, however that doesn't mean that we will constantly have hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. The more people we get vaccinated the less suffering and death our nation will endure.

That being said, there are many problems with your arguments.

1) You are assuming natural infection provides superior protection compared to the vaccine. While there is considerable uncertainty in this area, most studies have found the vaccine to offer superior protection.

2) You are assuming a variant will come around that the vaccines will be ineffective against, but this is pure conjecture, particularly considering the possibility of booster shots.

3) You continue to ignore the primary purpose of masks; to prevent an infected person from spreading the disease, not to protect the wearer. And cloth masks can be highly effective at this as long as they are triple layer. A colleague of mine did an outreach activity demonstrating exactly how this works (you can try this at home to!). Put on a single layer cloth mask, and you can easily blow out a candle. On the other hand, put on a triple layer cloth mask, and it becomes virtually impossible to blow the candle out. This is because the triple layer cloth mask (the standard for cloth masks for Covid), does not allow the aerosol to easily transport.

4) You continue to assume that an exponential growth curve that is dependent on person to person infection events will remain exponential if the probability of infection were cut by 90%. This is not the case. You don't just multiply the the previous curve by 0.1 to get the new curve. When you cut infection rates by 90%, you no longer get exponential growth, you get decline (assuming 100% vaccination rate). This is because you cut off propagation events that are what lead to exponential growth. Exponential growth occurs when each event leads to a larger number of events. So for example, consider with no vaccine an infected person passes the virus on to two other people. With the vaccine, 90% of those transmissions no longer happen. This brings the average transmission below 1 person, leading to decline instead of growth. This is why even without the vaccine we would see flare ups with exponential growth which would then decline once the virus was contained.

Most experts no longer think we will achieve herd immunity not because a 90% effective vaccine is insufficient, but because it appears we won't be able to get a large enough portion of the population vaccinated.

Thank you for making my point better than I did. Hopefully he’s able to swallow his pride but that seems increasingly unlikely.

 

[nakedfrog]

We should let people die in poverty in the richest country in the world because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why are we talking about Luxembourg suddenly?

 

[cytg111]

4) You continue to assume that an exponential growth curve that is dependent on person to person infection events will remain exponential if the probability of infection were cut by 90%. This is not the case. You don't just multiply the the previous curve by 0.1 to get the new curve. When you cut infection rates by 90%, you no longer get exponential growth, you get decline (assuming 100% vaccination rate). This is because you cut off propagation events that are what lead to exponential growth. Exponential growth occurs when each event leads to a larger number of events. So for example, consider with no vaccine an infected person passes the virus on to two other people. With the vaccine, 90% of those transmissions no longer happen. This brings the average transmission below 1 person, leading to decline instead of growth. This is why even without the vaccine we would see flare ups with exponential growth which would then decline once the virus was contained.

Was trying to put something like this into words but gave up, thanks.

 

[Paratus]

Effectiveness will most certainly go down, and at some point there will be a variant against which the vaccines offer virtually 0% protection. I will even go further, ON RECORD BTW, that there is a big chance that we will get variants against which natural infection DOES provide immunity but the vaccine doesn't, and there's even a smaller chance of one the other way around. The actual immune response between vaccine and natural infection is measurably different, in a few ways that are fascinating.

As far as masks go: of course any time you put something in the path of something else, it's going to affect it. In the case of Covid aerosols, the difference can be anywhere from 0% (mask on the chin) to some number based on how you define "work". If you're talking a quick visit to a well ventilated big store, you could get close to 99% prevention of a sick person infecting someone else. When you're talking cloth masks, homemade stuff, at a small Starbucks, you're gonna be way lower. When I saw some of my colleagues (musicians) in a small studio for 6 hours together with mask on, I would say you're in the single digits.

Just to show you guys I'm not crazy, I've had arguments with a friend in Holland FOR masks, because there the infection rate had been SO low, that trying to buy time to get everybody who wants vaccinated, WAS worth it. And in the end, so far that has panned out. In my opinion, the best way to estimate infection rates in a country, assuming it delivers trustworthy numbers, is to look at deaths per million. Los Angeles has 2.6x the deaths that Holland does.

The bottom line is, masks can work on flattening a curve, if everybody would wear N95, properly put on and off, it could be quite effective. What we did in LA was NOT effective; we wore masks for 17 months and more than 2/3 got infected anyway. This is what people mean when they say "masks don't work".

And one more time, a flattened curve representing exponential growth will STILL get to 100% just a little later. If we needed time to vaccinate more people, you might have a point, but in my opinion it's time to get over it.

You keep saying a flattened curve still goes exponential. The math you are missing here is the curve does not only have to go exponential.

If R0 drops 1 it’s a linear - 1 new infection per infection


Delta has something like an R0 of 4-8 in people not vaccinated or masked. If all the people are vaccinated with a 90% effective vaccine then I believe that R0 drops to 0.4-0.8 meaning the infection burns itself out.

So yes if everyone was vaccinated we could end this pandemic.

Personally even though I’ve had an mRNA vaccine I’ll continue wearing my mask since I know it protects me and provides some protection to others but then again I buy expensive masks.

Edit: what @mect said

 

[Zorba]

Comparing measles with corona has already disqualified you my friend. If measles mutated as easily and readily as Corona or Influenza, you'd have a point.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....

Measels mutates faster than COVID, so again, you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Measels mutates faster than COVID, so again, you don't know what you are talking about.

Okay so my earlier post is incorrect by what I remembered.
Measles doesn’t hide in your body like coronation viruses do correct?
See here:

Page 5 - Contagion spreading among the vaccinated

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forums.anandtech.com

 

[cytg111]

Measels mutates faster than COVID, so again, you don't know what you are talking about.

Then how can two shots give a lifetime of protection? My info bad?

 

[Zorba]

Wrong how? I already said even at 90% effectiveness, and I promise you that number will go down with future variants, the suggestion that we can eradicate this virus is foolish at best and disingenuous at worst. That's BEEN my one and only point and I haven't heard a single argument that would disprove that.

Even if we can't eliminate the virus. We can't very much reduce it's burden if people just got the free and available shot.

 

[Zorba]

Then how can two shots give a lifetime of protection? My info bad?

Measels isn't novel, it mutate all the time, but they are generally neutral mutations that don't over come immunity, because anything that would over immunity would also made it less infectionous.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Then how can two shots give a lifetime of protection? My info bad?

As I said earlier I am no expert. Corona viruses are different from most viruses in how they hide or sort of hijack your body to multiple. I believe measles and most other viruses don’t do that which allows you immune system to react

 

[fskimospy]

Measels isn't novel, it mutate all the time, but they are generally neutral mutations that don't over come immunity, because anything that would over immunity would also made it less infectionous.

I can't remember where I read this exactly but if I remember right also the mutations COVID-19 has undergone to become more infectious were identified as probable mutation candidates early on so they appear to be the low hanging fruit on the mutation tree.

 

[pmv]

You are correct that given our reluctance to vaccinate that this will never go away entirely, however that doesn't mean that we will constantly have hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. The more people we get vaccinated the less suffering and death our nation will endure.

That being said, there are many problems with your arguments.

1) You are assuming natural infection provides superior protection compared to the vaccine. While there is considerable uncertainty in this area, most studies have found the vaccine to offer superior protection.

2) You are assuming a variant will come around that the vaccines will be ineffective against, but this is pure conjecture, particularly considering the possibility of booster shots.

3) You continue to ignore the primary purpose of masks; to prevent an infected person from spreading the disease, not to protect the wearer. And cloth masks can be highly effective at this as long as they are triple layer. A colleague of mine did an outreach activity demonstrating exactly how this works (you can try this at home to!). Put on a single layer cloth mask, and you can easily blow out a candle. On the other hand, put on a triple layer cloth mask, and it becomes virtually impossible to blow the candle out. This is because the triple layer cloth mask (the standard for cloth masks for Covid), does not allow the aerosol to easily transport.

4) You continue to assume that an exponential growth curve that is dependent on person to person infection events will remain exponential if the probability of infection were cut by 90%. This is not the case. You don't just multiply the the previous curve by 0.1 to get the new curve. When you cut infection rates by 90%, you no longer get exponential growth, you get decline (assuming 100% vaccination rate). This is because you cut off propagation events that are what lead to exponential growth. Exponential growth occurs when each event leads to a larger number of events. So for example, consider with no vaccine an infected person passes the virus on to two other people. With the vaccine, 90% of those transmissions no longer happen. This brings the average transmission below 1 person, leading to decline instead of growth. This is why even without the vaccine we would see flare ups with exponential growth which would then decline once the virus was contained.

Most experts no longer think we will achieve herd immunity not because a 90% effective vaccine is insufficient, but because it appears we won't be able to get a large enough portion of the population vaccinated.

Is there any chance eikelbijter will directly address these points? Because, really, I'm still at a loss as to what this thread is actually _about_, and my strong suspicion is eikelbijter is just arguing for the sake of arguing, out of pure pride. No idea what actual _point_ he is trying to make in all the quibbling.

In particular he seems to have constantly evaded addressing point (3) here. And as far as I can make out, he has a wonky idea of how the maths of exponential growth works, i.e (4). Reducing transmission by 90% means reducing the _exponant_ by 90%, which will totally change the shape of the curve, not merely rescale it.

As I understand it, the more transmissible the virus is, the higher the proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

I don't really know about (2) - to me, with no expert knowledge, it certainly seems _possible_ a variant could emerge that might evade the vaccine protection. I assume the vaccine developers can respond to that, though?

 

[repoman0]

You keep saying a flattened curve still goes exponential. The math you are missing here is the curve does not only have to go exponential.

If R0 drops 1 it’s a linear - 1 new infection per infection


Delta has something like an R0 of 4-8 in people not vaccinated or masked. If all the people are vaccinated with a 90% effective vaccine then I believe that R0 drops to 0.4-0.8 meaning the infection burns itself out.

So yes if everyone was vaccinated we could end this pandemic.

Personally even though I’ve had an mRNA vaccine I’ll continue wearing my mask since I know it protects me and provides some protection to others but then again I buy expensive masks.

Edit: what @mect said

Thank you for finally bringing this up. Guess that poster’s supposed fancy science education wasn’t really worth that much if he missed this basic fact.

 

[fskimospy]

Is there any chance eikelbijter will directly address these points? Because, really, I'm still at a loss as to what this thread is actually _about_, and my strong suspicion is eikelbijter is just arguing for the sake of arguing, out of pure pride. No idea what actual _point_ he is trying to make in all the quibbling.

In particular he seems to have constantly evaded addressing point (3) here. And as far as I can make out, he has a wonky idea of how the maths of exponential growth works, i.e (4). Reducing transmission by 90% means reducing the _exponant_ by 90%, which will totally change the shape of the curve, not merely rescale it.

As I understand it, the more transmissible the virus is, the higher the proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

I don't really know about (2) - to me, with no expert knowledge, it certainly seems _possible_ a variant could emerge that might evade the vaccine protection. I assume the vaccine developers can respond to that, though?

No joke, Moderna made its vaccine in two days. Literally. We are very familiar with these viruses. All the rest was approval, which I (think) for a modestly tweaked vaccine would be much faster?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

No joke, Moderna made its vaccine in two days. Literally. We are very familiar with these viruses. All the rest was approval, which I (think) for a modestly tweaked vaccine would be much faster?

Yeah, I know some moderna employees and they are both very confident the vaccine can easily be tweaked to protect vs new variations nearly immediately if it was a crisis but I forgot the exact wording. All the time waiting is for approval and to ramp up production. Now that it is being produced it can be changed quicker.

 

[Torn Mind]

It depends on what exactly the anger is based on and what it is directed towards.

Angry about mask mandates being reimposed? Sorry, that is not justified even in a 100% vaccinated population.

If the anger is drawn from common false inference regarding what the vaccine actually can and cannot do, that is not justified anger.

If the huge wave of unvaccinated are flooding up hospitals, anger is justified there.

Mad that maybe an unvaccinated would cause a vaccinated to not get personally affected but possibly damage her father, anger is justified there.

 

[kitkat22]

You know what really sucks? Watching people die from COVID. Imagine drowning. That's what we in the health field have seen and continue to see. Then I get to call family and tell them what happened.

While some here are quibbling over COVID and how it's not a "big" deal and we are all just "crisis actors," COVID rages on. There is a problem this time around. We do not have enough health resources. Those nurses and doctors who went through the insanity of COVID last fall and winter? Yeah, them. You know the ones that kept patients alive, who had to deal with tracheostomies and g tubes because of fulminant respiratory failure? Do you remember them? A lot of them have moved on. Many of them have either developed long COVID, developed PTSD, or other health issues that have pushed them away from inpatient medicine. They got sick and tired of it and who can blame them. We are currently at capacity at numerous hospitals across the country because people failed to take care of themselves. We don't have enough staff this time around to handle another surge.

50% of the country is vaccinated. Roughly 10% have had COVID. That leaves 40% of our country left waiting to either get the delta variant or the vaccine. We almost broke the last time with those 10% during a surge. Now we are dealing with the remnants. Sadly, there remains a lot of remnant.

I am mad. Because people continue to be stupid and like to think this only affects them. 1 in 500 people have died because of this in the US. It will not take much more effort to get to 1 in 300.

You can laugh at me, call me a crisis actor, tell me COVID isn't real, physically assault me and my staff and I will continue using every tool at my disposal to keep you alive.

We are still here and fighting. Every single day. Watching people come in and we ask "we're you vaccinated?" Most say no. I don't get on a soap box because it doesn't do any good. I could say "told you so." But it won't help. If you still don't believe after all we have gone through then I cannot help you. You have chosen your bed and you get to sleep in it.

At this point in my career, I have seen hundreds of covid patients. I hate COVID! I hate it because it is dividing us. I hate it because it is killing us. I hate it because it is destroying lives. I hate it because there are far too my times I feel helpless in treating it because there are very few effective treatments. So, go ahead, play Russian roulette. I will still be here when the bullet strikes and do my damn best to keep you alive.

 

[eikelbijter]

You are correct that given our reluctance to vaccinate that this will never go away entirely, however that doesn't mean that we will constantly have hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. The more people we get vaccinated the less suffering and death our nation will endure.

That being said, there are many problems with your arguments.

1) You are assuming natural infection provides superior protection compared to the vaccine. While there is considerable uncertainty in this area, most studies have found the vaccine to offer superior protection.

2) You are assuming a variant will come around that the vaccines will be ineffective against, but this is pure conjecture, particularly considering the possibility of booster shots.

3) You continue to ignore the primary purpose of masks; to prevent an infected person from spreading the disease, not to protect the wearer. And cloth masks can be highly effective at this as long as they are triple layer. A colleague of mine did an outreach activity demonstrating exactly how this works (you can try this at home to!). Put on a single layer cloth mask, and you can easily blow out a candle. On the other hand, put on a triple layer cloth mask, and it becomes virtually impossible to blow the candle out. This is because the triple layer cloth mask (the standard for cloth masks for Covid), does not allow the aerosol to easily transport.

4) You continue to assume that an exponential growth curve that is dependent on person to person infection events will remain exponential if the probability of infection were cut by 90%. This is not the case. You don't just multiply the the previous curve by 0.1 to get the new curve. When you cut infection rates by 90%, you no longer get exponential growth, you get decline (assuming 100% vaccination rate). This is because you cut off propagation events that are what lead to exponential growth. Exponential growth occurs when each event leads to a larger number of events. So for example, consider with no vaccine an infected person passes the virus on to two other people. With the vaccine, 90% of those transmissions no longer happen. This brings the average transmission below 1 person, leading to decline instead of growth. This is why even without the vaccine we would see flare ups with exponential growth which would then decline once the virus was contained.

Most experts no longer think we will achieve herd immunity not because a 90% effective vaccine is insufficient, but because it appears we won't be able to get a large enough portion of the population vaccinated.

FINALLY someone with some good points. Number 4 especially makes a real argument and I completely agree with you. IF we cut cut infection rates by 90% AND the R0 is below 1 the virus could burn itself out. Everybody is throwing out numbers from his or her favorite study but the truth is we don't know exactly.

You guys keep coming back with hypotheticals though, and I'm talking about specific situations, like here where I live in LA. More than two thirds here have been infected, millions more vaccinated. The few that are naive (aka never infected) and not vaccinated is VERY low and the number of deaths coming up will prove that. It's time to end the horror show.

As far as number one goes, I never said better, I said DIFFERENT. There are some cases in which the vaccine might be better and the other way around. It's a fact that natural infection not only can result in antibodies against the S protein for instance but ALSO against the Nucleocapsid. To state that one is categorically better than the other is pure conjecture.

For number two, it's just about a given, don't you think? It's not if, but when. Of course we can make a NEW vaccine and we will.

As far as number three goes: we can endlessly discuss what CAN work, but the bottom line is hardly anybody is gonna do what you're talking about. Greater than 90% of people here have either some clothy BS or a disposable mask. You guys have to come back to reality, PLEASE.

 

[esquared]

As I understand it, the more transmissible the virus is, the higher the proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

That's a good yardstick to go by.
IIRC measles is the most transmissible virus that we know of.
The R0(naught) is 14-18, meaning one infected person can infect 14-18 other people.
Hence the herd immunity number for measles from what I remember is 95-98% vaccination rate.

Covid-19 original had/has an R0 of 1.5-2.0. Again IIRC.
I have no idea that Delta variant is but if its twice as transmissable from what I am reading
it would stand to reason that the R0 may be 3-4.
Again, nothing like the measles and another reason that the estimates for herd immunity are
70-85% vaccination rate.
This can be absolutely contained with increased vaccination rates.

 

[eikelbijter]

You keep saying a flattened curve still goes exponential. The math you are missing here is the curve does not only have to go exponential.

If R0 drops 1 it’s a linear - 1 new infection per infection


Delta has something like an R0 of 4-8 in people not vaccinated or masked. If all the people are vaccinated with a 90% effective vaccine then I believe that R0 drops to 0.4-0.8 meaning the infection burns itself out.

So yes if everyone was vaccinated we could end this pandemic.

Personally even though I’ve had an mRNA vaccine I’ll continue wearing my mask since I know it protects me and provides some protection to others but then again I buy expensive masks.

Edit: what @mect said

You are correct that one can flatten a curve enough to NOT make it rise to max anymore. I'm talking about an ACTUAL reality though, not theoretical possibilities. In my opinion the cat is out of the bag in LA and within 2 months this is completely over. I know TOO many people who were fully masked with N95s, gloves, careful as hell, who got Covid anyway.