The Delta variant

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616349#Comment_117616349

95% from Wuhan strain that arrived in europe 18 months ago. It had R rate of 2.5.

Alpha strain 4.5. Delta strain 7.5. Original vaccines produced for wuhan strain will become less effective at stopping infection in new variants, but will still be effective at stopping severe disease.

The whole reason covid is dangerous is its novelty to peoples immune system that are not 100%. The old and the less healthy.

When you vaccinate these people, for the most part, covid is now a normal cold or flu to these people. But old and sick people still die of the flu.

Just not in the severe numbers of covid in last year or so.

Thats why these same people get flu jabs.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616438#Comment_117616438

People who get flu jab each year die of the flu.

The reason to get it from individual perspective:

An unlucky/unhealthy person who gets severe covid/long covid, a vaccine will help protect them from the worst covid can do.

From a community perspective:

Less likely to spread covid to your near and dear who might not deal with covid as well as you.

Helping to reduce covid spread in your community.

Less likely to go hospital with covid and therefore reducing burden on hospitals.

Irish population are well informed and have good trust levels in vaccines, hence demand still outstripping supply in Ireland.

Other parts of the world not so much for variety of reasons.

Romanians distrust their goverment due to soviet era.

Southern states of USA, deeply entrenched views, poor education, distrust of government etc.

Alot of distrust in vaccines is essentially distrust in your government.

Look around the world and see the people who are not taking the vaccine, the poor, the marginalised, the uneducated because they dont trust the government.

I dont trust the government blindly at all.

I think they have got loads of things wrong in this pandemic.

I do trust the people that made the vaccines and I understand why thy are less likely to stop infection now.

Actually their goal was always from the start to try and stop severe disease.

They have done this really well.

Hence tens of thousand of infections per day and only a few deaths.

The 95% infection reduction was never the over riding goal.

It was all about harm reduction and reducing burden in hospitals.

The mortality rate of covid in europe is heading toward flu mortality rate.

0 deaths of covid in europe in the short/ medium term is not going to happen.

Your expectations are quite something to behold you want vaccines to stop 95% of infections and 100% of deaths.

That is not something vaccine makers ever set out to accomplish in 2020.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616471#Comment_117616471

The vaccines are supposed to stop significant amount of severe disease in people.

That was their goal from day 1.

Mortality rate of covid in UK has fallen from 2% to 0.2% in last six months.

Flu kills thousands in UK every year.

A vaccine will not stop every single person from dying of covid.

Deeper Blue

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616142#Comment_117616142

They're preventing cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

Unless you expected them to give people superpowers then they're working exactly as intended.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616349#Comment_117616349

So much cluelessness on display it actually hurts to read it

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616775#Comment_117616775

Which vaccine?

Sounds horrible in fairness.

I can understand your distrust of vaccines given your experience.

Nothing about covid or the vaccines are fair.

Stheno

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616829#Comment_117616829

You do know that 1 in 20 people here catching Covid recently are vaccinated?

Not 1 in 2? And 1 out of 200 who ended up in ICU since May was fully vaccinated?

You need to stop spouting nonsense

PintOfView

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616349#Comment_117616349

You need to be careful you don't mislead yourself with those numbers.

If you look at the trial data it's very clear that the vaccine worked to dramatically reduce symptomatic Covid, and severe Covid. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745181/

You say 47% of new cases in the UK are in vaccinated people. There are 35m (52%) UK citizens fully vaccinated, and 46m (70%) with one jab. I don't have time to check your numbers, but even if 47% of new cases were in vaccinated that's still a good bit lower than the 70% you would expect if the vaccines had no effect.

The other question is how many people are getting severe Covid, or are dying now, vs if they weren't vaccinated? You can't make claims about vaccine effectiveness unless you can answer that question objectively. Looking at the vaccine trial data it seems clear they improve the situation, so you need to provide some rational if you are saying vaccines don't work!!

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616829#Comment_117616829

Covid is a novel disease that in general affects your immune system more adversely as you get older.

Its like getting measles in your 20's or 30's.

I remember getting measles when I was possibly 4 or 5.

I enjoyed the time off school and it was all good.

If I had been 24 it might not have been as much fun.

Covid is no longer novel to your body, so when you eventually meet it (which you probably will), your body is ready for it and will deal with it better than

if it was novel.

Its our bodys over reaction to covid that causes alot of the problems due to it being novel.

All 4 other coronaviruses we have had prior infection and deal with it without much fuss.

This is what happens to most vaccinated people whether 24 or 84.

Hope you feel better soon.

For what its worth my right arm is sore three weeks after my second vaccine (mildly irritating).

I would never discount someones concerns re side effects of vaccines.

PintOfView

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616471#Comment_117616471

Where do you get that "UK death toll for the last year are running lower than the previous 5 years"?

See https://www.statista.com/statistics/1131428/excess-deaths-in-england-and-wales/

glen123

Below are the official UK stats up to mid of June 2021. While infection rates are higher in unvaccinated, deaths are pretty close, especially if one adds Fully vaccinated with those who had 1st dose (AZ, I think, claims 70% protection after the 1st dose?)

Also, in 35k unvaccinated infected, only 34 deaths, but in 4k vaccinated 26 deaths? Next few months will be interesting.

Page 12 in the below doc.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001359/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_16.pdf

brickster69

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117617208#Comment_117617208

Probably because most of the people over 40 are fully vaxed and 98% of deaths normally occur in people over 40.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117617260#Comment_117617260

UK uses 50 mark for vulnerability.

Delta mortality in UK under 50 0%

Delta mortality in UK over 50 1.9%

seatrump

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616277#Comment_117616277

Buttfan, either you have a shockingly poor understanding of numbers or you are deliberately trying to promote an anti-vax agenda. Since either way your posts are potentially dangerous to others who are number challenged let me see if I can explain it to you like a primary schooler, using only numbers presented in the article you reference.

The article states that on July 9, 14,959 people who have received at least one dose got the virus and 17,467 who were unvaccinated got the virus.

The article says that nearly 90% of adult Britons have received one dose. Later there is chart which says that 46,037,090 people have received at least one dose. If this represents 90% then this implies that the number of unvaccinated adults in the UK is 5,115,232.

Therefore the number of unvaccinated people on July 9th who got the virus is 5.1m divided by 17,467 or 1 out of every 292 unvaccinated people.

The number for those who have received at least one does is 46m/14,959 or 1 in every 3,077 of those with one dose.

So more than 10 times as many unvaccinated people as vaccinated people are catching the virus.

But there is more. There is a chart in the article that says that those who have received 2 doses have a positivity rate of just over 1% whereas those with only one dose have a positivity rate of closer to 4%. So we can estimate that of the 14,959 people who had at least one dose of the virus that caught Covid on July 9th, 4/5 of them had only one does and 1/5 of them had 2 doses. Therefore, approximately 2991 people with 2 doses caught the virus on July 9th.

Further in the article it says that 35,155,767 people in the UK have received 2 doses. Therefore the number of people with 2 doses who caught covid is 35m/2991 or 1 in 11,754 people.

So to recap, 1 in 295 unvaccinated people caught the virus on July 9th. 1 in 11,754 fully vaccinated people caught the virus. You are 40 times more likely to catch Covid if unvaccinated. This all just using the numbers you provided in the article you quoted.

Now, if you can't follow my logic, read it again. If you still can't follow it, accept that you don't have a grasp of basic statistics and stop spouting nonsense. If you do follow my logic but don't change your position then you have clearly demonstrated that you are simply out to cause harm.

Have a good evening.

funnydoggy

🖐🎤

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117617466#Comment_117617466

You forgot kids as they are included in those who caught Covid. When included it’s a 1 in 1,100 chance for unvaccinated compared to 1 in 11,000 for fully vaccinated. 90% reduction in infection. Even this is not a fair comparison as those most likely to have an ineffective vaccine are also those most likely to have been vaccinated already. I am pretty certain a representative sample across age groups comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated would in fact exceed 90% effectiveness.

Vaccinated30

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616920#Comment_117616920

Thos is what I keep trying to tell people. If you are vaccinated then do not worry about catching covid. Or at least worry about as much as you would worry about any cold and flu any other time of your life.

I'm fully vaccinated and I do not care if I catch covid. And for the most part I live my life as normal now. I could spread it to my unvaccinated children but vaxxed people have a lower viral load and are less likely to spread it.

Looking at breakthrough cases is useless. For us who have been vaccinated it's over.

PintOfView

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117617208#Comment_117617208

From that page, there are about 10 times the number of unvaccinated attending A&E vs vaccinated!

Also, the deaths are "Total deaths in any setting (regardless of hospitalisation status) within 28 days of positive specimen date", which seems to suggest that deaths include non-Covid related deaths. The vaccinated will include all the older age groups, so will included those most likely to die for any reason.

It's hard to draw firm conclusions from that page, but is it saying that there are more unvaccinated younger people dying, than vaccinated older people?

JP Liz V1

https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/covid-delta-variant-real-life-story-treatment

brickster69

France starting now +194,45% in 7 days.

Amazing how well Germany are doing though with only 665 cases today.

TonyMaloney

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117629047#Comment_117629047

No idea of the details, but it may just simply be down to tighter restrictions

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616424#Comment_117616424

Actually they were touted as providing herd immunity by breaking the transmission train which doesn’t seem to be happening.

TefalBrain

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616772#Comment_117616772

Thought exactly the same. I can only presume it's a wind up so im ignoring it.

hmmm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117629491#Comment_117629491

If the vaccines don't prevent transmission, we don't get herd immunity. It was unexpected news when initial results showed that the vaccines did suppress transmission, but unfortunately Delta & other variants are causing people to get infected with the virus (but still providing excellent protection against disease). So things are not as good as they looked initially, but still we're in a reasonably good place.

The better commentators I've read are saying that Covid is going to become endemic, and we can all expect to get infected (perhaps several times) over our lifetimes. That doesn't mean we rush out and get rid of all precautions, but the idea that we can simply hide away and this goes away is now realistic. It will mean extra precautions in hospitals & nursing homes, and perhaps booster doses of vaccines for people working in those areas.

I can see this ending up like measles in terms of transmission, for most people it is a minor issue albeit one that continuously circulates, but occasionally we see clusters of cases (e.g. in a hospital or nursing home).

I think as a vaccinated person it's my responsibility to those who have not yet been vaccinated to do what I can to keep the spread low, but once everyone has been offered a chance to be fully vaccinated that draws my personal line under this.

Wolf359f

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117629491#Comment_117629491

That was never part of the trials. That was only discovered in the UK and Israel, that they reduced onward transmission, it was, for want of a better term, a bonus. I don't think there has been any papers relating to reduced transmission with the Delta variant in fully vaccinated people. I guess once that's worked out, we'll have an idea on what's needed for herd immunity. last I saw was a German report:

• 85% of all people aged 12-59
• as well as
• 90% of all people over 60

Back of fags calculation is 95% of our adult population, not inconceivable to achieve.

OwenM

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117629549#Comment_117629549

"If the vaccines don't prevent transmission, we don't get herd immunity."

We do eventually, either by infection and/or vaccination the rate of new infections will abate to endemic levels. Catching covid a second time doesn't seem to be an issue, god knows the media would be jumping up and down about it if it were, so endemic levels might be a smallish number.

It's been 16 months in Ireland since significant numbers of people first became infected - any more than a handful of these getting covid a second time would an orgy for the media.

Micky 32

I see that there was an interesting tv

conference with Boris , Sir Patrick Valance and

Whitty. Their claims are that overall as a

vaccinated person you could be 70-75% less likely to

be able infect someone else in any situation

when you factor in the lower chance of actually

getting the disease and then passing it on.

However the boards experts i'm sure will have

their own theories with actual evidence to

disprove Vallance.

I can see where they are

coming from by only letting vaccinated people

in to indoor settings until we have more people vaccinated.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117630255#Comment_117630255

Is that for Delta? I don't think we know the R0 value in the wild for Delta. In general you need R-1/R people immune to gain herd immunity. For the original variants we would be almost there now. Or there now.

amandstu

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117632950#Comment_117632950

So could you say what number would that be for an ideal population of 1,000,000 and a homogenized R(0) of ,say 0.9 ?

Wolf359f

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117632950#Comment_117632950

Yes it was based on the delta variant becoming dominant in Germany.

I can never figure out those immunity calculations. R of 5 would be 5-0.2 or is it (R-1)/R?

In regards to Delta wild R number, countries would achieve herd immunity before delta would get close to it's wild number. Things like masks on public transport, isolating when you're a close contact, these are small things which would help reduce the wild delta R number.