Unrepresentative big surveys significantly overestimated US vaccine uptake | Hacker News Reader

Unrepresentative big surveys significantly overestimated US vaccine uptake

nature.com

57 pointsTomte51 comments

Looks like these were more or less voluntary surveys; my guess is the results were biased because those who chose not to get the vaccine are way more likely to just ignore all discussion around it.

Anecdotally, a lot of the non-vax people around me have the “Two years later and I’m still not dead; I’m done with this” attitude towards Covid. The vaxxed people correlate more with those who still care, and are more likely to take a survey on the subject.

> “Two years later and I’m still not dead; I’m done with this”

You need to remind these people that it was not for their benefit that they were vaccinated. It was for the benefit of the old and infirm people that they came into contact with.

Many of these people already had COVID before vaccines were available. It is probably true that getting a vaccine after having COVID gives an immunity boost. It is probably also true that the boost is temporary. These days it is clear that our current vaccines are not very effective at preventing spread.

I think it makes sense for a COVID-naive person to get vaccinated. But someone who has had COVID already is in a very different boat.

Neither the vaccines nor being infected offer lasting protection. If you want to decrease (but still not eliminate) the risk you'll pass covid to others accidentally, you have to either get a booster every six months or get infected every six months. I know people have gotten intentionally infected but I know no one who "updates" their infections regularly - oh, I know other people who's second Covid was much worse.

And, no, boosters aren't fun either. We're looking at a public health failing.

And I'm currently working as a care giver and voluntarily test myself once a week. If I could afford it, I'd be testing daily (the tests are no harder than brushing your teeth). So there you are.

I got infected January 2021 and got blood tests and letter from Dr. saying I had it and recovered. No vax. On a whim, I got another blood test in June 2022 and I still have the antibodies. Do you think my antibodies don't provide protection?

Depends on what the antibodies were specific to.

> Do you think my antibodies don't provide protection?

Your adaptive immunity will probably provide a lot of protection from severe disease and hospitalization but it’s far less likely to prevent infection now. There’s been a lot of antigenic drift in the circulating variants since January 2021 and it’s ongoing. Due to this your circulating antibodies probably won’t provide sterilizing immunity anymore but of course that’s true for the vaccinated too. Worrying about vaccination status to stop the spread stopped being worthwhile months ago. If the Omicron boosters work well then it’ll reoccur, until then we can probably all chill out and it won’t change a thing.

Do you think my antibodies don't provide protection?

I don't know, it seems your doctor doesn't know and I know people who lost their sense of smell and taste on their second go with Covid - now "everything tastes like dirt". Do you want to risk that to prove some kind of point?

I do take risks myself - I meet with friends unmasked and do group activities that can only be done unmasked. But I don't take unnecessary risks, I get regular boosters and I go masked to the grocery store and similar things.

I guarantee you, those people have had no shortage of every news organization, public health entity, government leader, billboard, grocery store sign, employer, and Facebook friend reminding them of that mantra. For some reason, they don’t trust it.

My guess is it has something to do with all those organizations burning their credibility with “two weeks” becoming “two years, and wear a mask whether you got the jab or not”.

My guess is it has something to do with all those organizations burning their credibility with “two weeks” becoming “two years, and wear a mask whether you got the jab or not”.

Mainstream health organizations did not communicate well or consistently. However, any discussion of the situation in the US has to also mention highly publicized covid denial from a variety of also mainstream organizations (Fox News, The US President, other US officials). Moreover, a self-serving cynicism concerning any need for public safety or the preservation of life also propagated through a variety of channels.

New poster with a name like E675347734 and tired rhetoric

We live in a time where having "incorrect" thoughts can have very severe consequences. Pollsters and survey conductors are going to have to get used to an ever increasingly number of people lying to them because they don't want to risk some offended mob coming after them for wrongthink. In the US, when it came to vaccines, there was one, and only one, acceptable thought: inject me as soon as possible. All other thoughts were verboten and most views that stray too far from that line still are unacceptable. Given the potential consequences, pollsters claiming answers will be held in strict confidence aren't going to make much headway against the cultural norms that offer personal destruction. It also doesn't help that many of these surveys are either conducted or sponsored by entities with strong political affinities.

I received a call yesterday from what I believe is a legitimate polling organization. They knew my name and wanted to ask me some questions.

There is zero chance I will ever answer polling questions under non-anonymous conditions. Even a small risk of a leak makes it not worthwhile. There's also no way to confirm that it's a legit survey.

I wish it weren't this way, but... you realize that even in calling you, they already know everything about your life, right? Government, political parties, corporations, FAANG... they know all the pertinent details already about your beliefs, your buying habits, your lifestyle. Not answering their survey doesn't really change much.

Now how to change it to give people back their privacy... that's what I'm less sure about. Clearly there are things where your privacy matters because it can be used against you, and then there are other areas where it is less clear what the material harm might be.

Probably the most memorable recent example was the 2016 election polling. Republicans were enthusiastically lying to pollsters.

From a survey design perspective, can’t you deal with this sort of political trolling via control questions?

“Is Barack Obama a hippopotamus?” and drop all responses that answer “yes”.

It’s not trolling. I’m not telling somebody over the phone whether I’m voting for the “wrong” candidate. End of story.

>they don't want to risk some offended mob coming after them for wrongthink.

So where is this actually happening? I know lots of people claiming this is right around the corner since I’ve been born, but somehow the mind control police have failed to show up. Give me a case of someone being oppressed for a solicited opinion.

There are lots, but you only asked for one: Dorian Abbot at MIT.

(And another, since discussing MIT reminded me: Richard Stallman.)

I got news for you and everyone else on this thread.

This isn't new. The powerful always have and always will suppress opposing ideas.

Who claimed it was new?

>> "We show how a survey of 250,000 respondents can produce an estimate of the population mean that is no more accurate than an estimate from a simple random sample of size 10." <<

You can't gain useful population wide information from a platform paid to censor and spread propaganda like the Delphi-Facebook survey.

It would be analogous to assuming the results of a Fox News viewer survey are identical to the overall population.

This is an odd comment because Fox News Polling is actually one of the better ones in the industry (grade A):

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

Can’t directly link it but in the site you can filter for it and see their predictions vs the results.

Fox News Polling probably also polls people who don't watch Fox News.

Not that it matters much. Given how widespread Omicron was, even the most reluctant anti-vax got a natural vaccine by getting infected by this mild variant.

I think the paper is more about the "big data problem" and the fact that there was very narrow confidence intervals on data that was off by a lot. So the survey technique itself was flawed and shouldn't be relied upon in the future.

“Natural vaccine” AKA natural immunity.

Omicron doesn't seem to confer much immunity to re-infection. Tons of people are infected with Omicron multiple times. It is nasty.

maybe not immunity, but how about protection from severe disease?

You don't get that with re-infections either, although on the bright side, Omicron itself is less severe than Delta.

tell that to me again: I need the encouragement.

I feel like absolute shit from this covid infection right now. ive avoided it since the beginning and im moderna vaxed and boosted.

Omicron-specific boosters were supposedly going to be released this month. I haven't followed recent updates if there are any. But I've been waiting for that before getting 2nd booster.

tradeoffs. boost now or in the fall when covid may surge

> Omicron doesn't seem to confer much immunity to re-infection.

Claims without evidence are as solid as intentional misinformation.

Reinfection stories from reputable outlets have been all over the news for weeks. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1110804098/omicron-ba5-varian...

I wish I could agree that npr was still reputable. I miss the old npr.

NPR was significantly biased even in the late 90s, when they went all-in on Greenspan's idea that we shouldn't reduce, but increase our national debit. Day after day they pushed this narrative with absolutely zero opposing economic viewpoints.

The same pattern happened in the 2000s, with the Iraq war of choice. The drumbeat was ever present, hour after hour with no opposing discussion.

NPR has been an echo chamber for some time now. Which "old NPR" do you miss? Were they different in the 80s or 70s ?

yeah - Iraq war coverage was like "National Pentagon Radio" .. it was startling

Try this https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00438-3

news != source

Academically, it is, just not a very strong one. Ideally you want primary sources where available.

Doesn't matter much?! Just in the US there were hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths from not taking the vaccine.

Its mildness was offset by its prevalence. In many US states with higher vaccination rates deaths/capita was actually higher during Omicron than during any prior wave.

In states with lower vaccination rates deaths/capita tended to be higher during Delta, but not by much.

This is from December 2021.

Perhaps their survey was easier to access digitally and this caught on a bias of their sample population?

It amazes me that we need surveys to try to figure this out, instead of, you know, having records of all vaccines made, distributed, and administered. Even if we don't have names, we should know how many were shipped, how many were subsequently thrown away, etc.

You clearly didn't read the article, but just by reading the title here, how do you think they knew that these surveys overestimated uptake?

I'll just answer that for you: it's because they compared the numbers from the surveys to the official numbers from the CDC.

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