And of course focusing on infection rates is really the wrong thing. We know antibody immunity declines over time, but protection against serious illness stays strong.
These social impacts, from countries opening up more due to high vaccination rates are very important factors as clearly they do and have controlled the spread throughout this pandemic and if you don't control for them you can't compare transmission. Even if you compared countries measures you would still end up with this behavioral change meaning people were more likely to spread and catch once vaccinated.
I’m sure there’s also plenty of Australians acting recklessly - but the ratios are probably very different country to country.
Reference?
For example. Not intended to be exhaustive.
It's still is an important insight though. The vaccines do not lead to herd immunity.
There isn't a viable herd immunity strategy yet, which implies very young, very old and immuno compromised individuals are still at risk.
It also means 'encouraging' people to take the vaccine won't help, except to keep those people out of the ICU, and if that's the intent it seems more 'freedomy' to me to just not treat unvaccinated covid patients when it peaks.
Because herd immunity is the argument used to defend mandatory vaccinations, and it appears to be a false argument.
What an abhorrent statement. Your definition of freedom is surely different than mine.
Because when you run out of ICU space, there is triage. There was triage last week. There is triage next week.
Who gets care first?
My point is that many people who are unvaccinated would prefer this, than to be forced to be vaccinated. (and they are effectively forced now in many places)
There were two arguments used to justify this imposition:
(a) - the herd immunity helps protect those can't protect themselves (too young, too old, immuno compromised)
(b) - it overwelms the health care infrastructure making it so that in certain places people can't get emergency care because the ICU's are full
Now the first argument (a) seems to be not true, and the second argument (b) seems to me like 'personal responsibility'. If you want to freedom to make these decisions for yourself (such as to get vaccinated), you are only accountable for the consequences of that for yourself.
The idea that you demand to not be vaccinated, but still get first-come-first-served emergency medical care at the expense of others, sounds to me entitled, spoiled and selfish.
City dwellers have increased incidence of cancer or whatever other ailment, so their choice to live in cities precludes them from medical services. Marijuana smokers have higher incidences of x so they don’t get treatment. Motorcycle, bicycle, and scooter drivers are risky actors so their choices preclude them from care. Where does it end?
Doesn’t seem like freedom to me.
When there are enough ICU nurses available to meet the demand.
>Doesn’t seem like freedom to me.
Again, can you give me a definition. It sounds like something 'empty' an American would say. Do you mean, Liberty? Like from the French Revolution?
This discussion doesn't matter in the US anyway, because you already have economic triage, where there is just no hospital near poor people. So in the US, the poor people are just 'free to die'.
Since the major vaccines have minimal known side effects, we should not now or later blame people for taking them.
I can't edit my comment any more (or else i would have added this).
It seems nobody even bothered to count and plot the thing that would actually inform us properly.
The article specifically mentions that that is not the case.
> the CDC reported an increase from 0.01 to 9% and 0 to 15.1% (between January to May 2021) in the rates of hospitalizations and deaths, respectively, amongst the fully vaccinated
> This report makes no attempt to control for lockdowns or other restrictions
Haven’t we seen previous reports that basically state that lockdowns and or massive restrictions seem to have a negligible effect on spread?
The citation they're using doesn't load for me. I'm looking at results like this: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... > The analysis showed that the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and death remained high at 90% for at least six months, even against the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
> Haven’t we seen previous reports that basically state that lockdowns and or massive restrictions seem to have a negligible effect on spread?
Those reports, even if they're completely valid which is questionable, only show that government-mandated lockdowns have similar effects to voluntary behavior changes in response to waves of COVID infection, which again the OP does not control for.
When you look at each continent separately, then there is clear pattern except in Africa. It is sad but expected. There are also 3 clear and explainable outliers: Israel, Mongolia and Malaysia. Take them out and Asia has also clear signal.