Masks

[yoyo]

@magillaG

I think it’s similar to saying, “not wearing a seatbelt is reckless”. is it really? well, the vast majority of the time you will still be fine. but i do think it’s still reckless, since the severity is large, and the cost of risk reduction low, the context of the statement, and own risk tolerance, shapes that. these things are hard to communicate in a forum like this.

Can take off my seatbelt, can’t undo the inoculation. And I suspect that we have different views on the cost of risk reduction being low re: inoculations.

@magillaG

this is to my earlier point, that it goes to the broader context of how i read these public statements about risk. it’s hard to communicate about that.

that’s fair

[meep]

@dr_t_non-fan

@meep : how was the winter of 2021? Is there a breakdown of vaccinated vs unvaccinated?

This is the CDC page on vaccine effectiveness:

COVID Data Tracker

Scroll down to the table headed:

Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) Estimates

That looks pretty useful for a variety of outcomes, not just death.

Death certs don’t have vaccine info on them, as far as I can tell. So I can’t really compare.

People have tried using proxies for vaccinated v. unvaccinated, but there are loads of confounding factors.

[meep]

I know this thread is purportedly about masks and not vaccines, but I went looking for good data:

https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/disease-illness/covid-19/data/vaccination

and there is some interesting stuff in that dashboard (it’s King County, Washington – Seattle area). It has nothing about effectiveness, deaths, etc. But it does have % take-up by age, race, etc.

The % by age is exactly what I’ve expected, and the pattern I’ve seen elsewhere.

Scroll down to look at the vaccine doses administered, which usually peaks with availability.

It’s a rather nice dashboard.

[yoyo]

@meep

This is the CDC page on vaccine effectiveness:

We just don’t have good data in the US for this stuff. There’s no universal tracking of who got which shots when. “Unvaccinated” the default category when actual status is unknown. Categorized as unvaccinated for up to 6 weeks after first injection. The whole of/with business. All the financial incentives to record hospitalizations and deaths as Covid. Failure of US govt & health agencies to release source data for independent review. It’s a GIGO problem.

[meep]

@yoyo

We just don’t have good data in the US for this stuff

Do you have another country with good data on this stuff?

This is not a sarcastic question, because I’m trying to find other countries’ data, and I’m not finding good data sets there, either.

When I get there, the data is not much better than U.S. datasets.

[yoyo]

Not that you haven’t already considered it, but I’d look to the nations with universal care. I guess the existence of private care in those nations potentially dirties the data though. UK? Israel? Nordic countries?

[dr_t_non-fan]

@yoyo

We just don’t have good data in the US for this stuff, so I can just post whatever I want.

Fixed, for the data we do have.
(poke)

[The_President]

Financial incentives to have covid patients in hospitals seems at odds with the idea of vaccinating against covid, since that leads to fewer people in the hospital with covid. The same general group of people seemed to be promoting both.

I guess I am wondering how that works. I assume “why not both $$$”?

Binary vaccine data becomes contaminated with actual infections over time, so trying to determine the actual usefulness of a booster is pretty hopeless. Directionally, there is pretty clear evidence that if you know nothing other than vaccine status, the risk factor for severe covid is higher for “unvaccinated”.

[yoyo]

Yes, many ways to game it and make bank.

[yoyo]

@yoyo

We just don’t have good data in the US for this stuff, so I can just post whatever I want.

Oh, yes, plenty of that coming at us since 2020

[The_President]

I think the part that is hard to explain might be where the theory falls apart?

[yoyo]

Not sure I understand which theory you’re talking about. People get paid to give shots and to classify patients as Covid patients/deaths.

[The_President]

One of those things leads to a reduced demand of the other, with both seemingly controlled by the “healthcare” industry.

Kinda seems self destructive if motive is profit.

[YankeeTripper]

Is your contention that he excess mortality was not due to COVID?

[yoyo]

Multiple parties involved, both institutional and individual, all competing for the $$$, not all under some monolithic control.

[yoyo]

No. There are excess deaths bc of the disease. Is it your contention that all excess deaths are due to Covid?

[YankeeTripper]

No not all, but most of them were directly or indirectly related. At least early on.

[The_President]

Reminder of two things:

1. Based on official counts, excess mortality from the period exceeded what has been officially attributed to covid, and this can be observed at comparable rates before and after vaccines became available.
2. The states with the highest excess mortality generally had the lowest vaccination rates along with the fewest covid restrictions.

[Lucy]

And if you remove the initial deaths in NY and other areas that were hit early, before vaccines became available, the difference in excess mortality tracks even better with % vaccinated. Places with higher vaccination rates had fewer deaths.

[Lucy]

@yoyo

Not that you haven’t already considered it, but I’d look to the nations with universal care. I guess the existence of private care in those nations potentially dirties the data though. UK? Israel? Nordic countries?

A lot of the better studies came out of Israel (which cut a deal with Pfizer to get early access to vaccines in exchange for data from their healthcare system), the UK, and Denmark. In the US, there were good studies published by VA medical system and Kaiser.