General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 397

what is the total number of vaccinated people though? im having an extremely hard time finding the raw number of fully vaccinated people in the US, but my hunch is that 16k is a pretty small fraction of that total number.

 

I do think this potentially very bad because I'm worried that we're on the path to where the vaccines will not be enough on their own to get us out of this. They still are, of course, but things are headed in the wrong direction with both waning immunity and the possibility of new variant emerging with so much spread. Not necessarily that the current situation is very bad long-term (short-term it absolutely sucks that thousands of vaxxed people, as well as unvaxxed, are hospitalized and will likely die)

I do still have hope that this will be something of an "exit wave." But I'm getting nervous that we won't do what needs to be done to ensure that this is it. It's not politically possible of course, but imo we need to get as close to a lockdown for unvaxxed people as possible (while I think also putting mask mandates in place indoors and in crowded outdoor places for vaxxed people). But even more importantly, we need to get the rest of the world vaccinated at a much, much better rate. We're slowly moving towards accomplishing something like the forner, but still failing miserably on the latter. A drop from 95%/99% effectiveness for illness/hospitalizations to something like 50%/80% is tolerable, but I think it's reasonable to begin to worry what will happen if that trend continues. And that we should be aware of this trend to see if it does continue.

But, yes, we do absolutely have to keep emphasizing that vaccines remain a way out of this and that this wave would have been avoidable if we were able to get more than half the population vaccinated

 

There are nearly 190 million people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine in the US.

16k hospitalizations = 0.008% hospitalization rate.

 

thank you this is exactly what i thought it was lol

 

Sorry, I meant 1/10,000th (16,000/190,000,000)

 

i agree with what you're saying. my whole thing is, in addition to getting as many hesitant people vaxxed now as possible, its clear we're going to need booster shots and i dont want people who got their shot to start thinking, whats the point of the booster? if people keep pushing hospitalizations of vaccinated people as being something to be extremely concerned about thats gonna be a problem because, so far, it's not. when you look at total vaccinated people and the number of vaccinated hospitalizations, there is nothing to worry about, that is the message that needs to get out there so that people not only go out and get their vaccine but are still motivated to get their booster when the time comes.

 

1 in 11875 actually

 

I feel like part of the problem is that we (as a country) seem to be unclear on what the goal is. In my opinion, the goal is to 1) minimize deaths and 2) minimize unnecessary hospitalizations so you don't overwhelm the healthcare system.

Infections aren't going to go to zero - it's just not going to happen anytime soon. And as more people get vaccinated, the base rate of hospitalizations of vaccinated people will go up. If we can't effectively communicate the math around how that works, we're going to continue to see badly framed data from the media, which tends to focus on headline infection numbers.

 

Guys, we’re all gonna die.

 

The other thing worth saying here is that as the vaccinated rate goes up, the number of total transmissions will go down, because the unvaccinated catch it way faster.

 

right, and call me cynical, but my fear is that certain media outlets will have no issue pushing the more fear mongering framing of these things because when people are scared they read the news more. the media has a vested interest in pushing the worst case scenario and worst framing possible and that needs to be pushed back against every step of the way or we're never going to get out of this. at this point, as you rightly point out, we need to accept that covid is something we will live with. we live with the seasonal flu, and not to compare the two, but people die from the flu every year. people are going to die from covid every year. if we can get as many people vaccinated and keep people from overwhelming hospitals, that number will be minimized as much as possible which is what our goal ultimately should be. there will be no herd immunity, there will be no zero covid, its here to stay and as a society we need to figure out what that means and how we will move forward.

 

And in the opposite of helping get shots in arms we have this jackass

 

Everyone has to determine their own level of risk depending on where they live and how many vulnerable people are in their circle, unfortunately it seems likely that covid is gonna be endemic and we are gonna have to figure out what that means

 

Lol Mike Pence

 

Can I get boosters and wear masks and use it as an excuse to get out of social events I don’t wanna go to? That’s sorta all I got rn

 

The problem is that we have politicians going on national television saying that "if you're vaccinated, you won't get sick" as opposed to the more nuanced message that either we have to live with some level, hopefully low, of illness (some of which is severe) or take a COVID-zero approach (which obviously will never happen now in the US). It's only when we treat the vaccines as though they're perfect, making all-or-nothing arguments on an individual level that these problems emerge. Of course if we made all-or-nothing arguments on a collective level we would be accurate, since if everyone got vaccinated there would be no COVID. But appeals to collective benefit don't work in this country don't happen so we all lose

 

1/10000 hospitalized is not a good public health number

 

good thing thats not the number

 

I missed a zero forgive me, although I’m not even sure that’s the number tbh

 

Could be misremembering but I don’t think that 16K number is a total, rather its the total hospitalized today. That many hospitalized in one day doesnt seem like a lot but with a virus with an r0 of 6+ like delta, that means a lot more vaccinated people are gonna be put in the hospital by it. That’s a concern for any hopes of getting back to normal soon imo

 

Yeah, the 16k number came from me and it is just from today using the NY Times numbers. There are over 88k people hospitalized in the US today so if 18% are from breakthrough infections (the middle ground of what the NY Times article had: 12-24%), that would be almost exactly 16k. And of course rising every day, unfortunately. Of course, that means that there are 72k people who are unvaccinated in the hospital, but I still don't love those numbers and I think we all hoped that having half of the country vaccinated would keep us from approaching record hospitalizations

 

I guess my thing is that, we're not yet at guaranteed long-term COVID-pocolypse (meaning severe waves beyond this one), but I don't think we're erasing the possibility of that nearly as quickly and as strongly as we should be. And I think there's a whole host of actors that we should be blaming/holding accountable before we blame those investigating whether breakthroughs are increasing or efficacy is waning (pharmaceutical companies, politicians, social media misinformation, etc., etc.)

 

Eric Topol and Eric Ding, two people posted in here quite often that I feel their Twitter threads don't like to give the full picture and seem to incite more fear-mongering that vaccines aren't working nearly as well as we thought