joed|rt wrote:
[quote]Harambe wrote:
Evidently, Harambe defines 39% efficacy as working Very Well:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-vaccine-39percent-effective-in-israel-prevents-severe-illness.htmlAlthough I will say that people getting an actual infection and not getting hospitalized / dying is a good thing, which the vaccines appear to do in the Israeli study, as an actual infection provides far superior long term immunity than vaccination. The main reason for this is the vaccines were designed around a single spike protein. The reality is that these variants have multiple protein markers, so the antibodies produced by one's body from an actual infection are far superior to prevent future infection than the vaccine antibodies that act on a single protein spike, which is why the observed break through infection rate in Israel is 13 times the reinfection rate.
What the 39% figure means on a broader sense is that the vaccinated are almost as likely to spread COVID as the unvaccinated if they are not distancing and are interacting with others normally and without masks. Ultimately the end of this pandemic will not be met solely through vaccination, but through a combination of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity, as the protection afforded by vaccination cannot keep up with the mutations.
You seem reasonable but are committed to spreading misinformation about the vaccine.
Why are you so desperate for the vaccines to fail? All evidence shows the vaccine is very strong against severe disease and still quite strong against infection. The Israeli number is a massive outlier. Here's a report from Israel just 10 days earlier looking at very similar data that found a VE against infection of 50-65% which seems more reasonable.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262423v1I know you love the cherry pick the most fearmongering studies but come on man, what about data ethics you were just bragging about?
There is also not a lot of evidence that Delta is particularly immune evasive. The lessened VE has more to do with waning of circulating Abs. If you were seeing immune evasion, you'd expect VE against severe disease to wane too, and it has not.
Immune evasion is HARD, especially without compromising infectivity. The spike protein has to mutate to avoid many diferent antibodies that bind to it, cellular immunity, and remain highly infective. Note that Delta, still the dominant strain, is not the most immune evasive! It's simply much more transmissible and infective than other strains so it wins.
Also obviously a combination of vaccination and acquired immunity is ending the pandemic. 40% or so of the US has been infected with COVID. The goal to avoid as many additional cases as possible.