four months into serious vaccination there should be better data.
Yes, and there clearly must be, including against the Indian variant regardlerss of how many of the subjects are anti-vacc, because the numbers are pretty big.
Generally the feedback on AZ is that 1st vacc you get a few hours of shivering (take paracetamol) and on the 2nd you get nothing.
Croatia is implementing sensible stuff – here
Ted wrote:
The efficiency against transmission appears quite low
It is not a very accurate number. The number for those with two doses [50%] is a conservative modelling assumption
It is also easily misinterpreted – in only applies to those with a symptomatic infection.
…those who do become infected 3 weeks after receiving one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccine were between 38% and 49% less likely to pass the virus on to their household contacts than those who were unvaccinated.
Protection was seen from around 14 days after vaccination, with similar levels of protection regardless of age of cases or contacts.
This protection is on top of the reduced risk of a vaccinated person developing symptomatic infection in the first place, which is around 60 to 65% – 4 weeks after one dose of either vaccine.
[source here, underlining added]
So vaccination reduces the replication rate by 80-85% within 4 weeks of the first dose. After a second dose it will be quite a bit higher. Looking at the steep decline of infection rates since vaccination started, this is quite plausible.
It is worth noting that the table in that paper Peter quotes is NOT an attempt to establish a comprehensively backed-up estimate for these numbers, but is used to provide reasonable estimates for scenario modeling. The model correctly uses that number (i.e., 50% of those infected pass it on, see section 3.7 / page 23 “that onward transmission from those infected but vaccinated may be reduced by around 50%” )
Interesting report on Pfizer yesterday
It was known for some time that AZ benefits from the 3 month delay but Pfizer were resistant to that, so it is surprising that this works for PF too.
This is good news too; today’s Times
Other news is that those going into hospital in the bits of the UK where the Indian variant is going (Bolton being the most “famous” as usual) are nearly all (a) eligible for vaccination and (b) unvaccinated. Go figure
It’s funny to see TV interviews with people in Bolton. You get 10 saying “I have no idea why we are having all this trouble” and then the 11th says, paraphrasing, “we are a very social lot, so we just get p1ssed down the pub and ignore all the restrictions”. Then you get the “religious” communities who tend to live an isolated existence, are heavily influenced by their “community leaders”, and thus far didn’t “get it” but reportedly are now getting scared and are queuing up for the vaccine.
My take on it is that if the UK can accelerate the vacc programme, especially get the very important 1st dose out to these “densely social” and “isolated” communities, it will beat it.
Cobalt wrote:
So vaccination reduces the replication rate by 80-85% within 4 weeks of the first dose. After a second dose it will be quite a bit higher. Looking at the steep decline of infection rates since vaccination started, this is quite plausible.
That is a helpful explanation, it underscores that a population of largely if not completely vaccinated persons have nothing to fear, as it is not likely to spread much at all. But on the other hand a population of largely unvaccinated persons aren’t really offered any real LASTING protection as it just takes one to seed the whole thing off again…
So nothing new really 
Peter wrote:
It’s funny to see TV interviews with people in Bolton.
Not just those interviews, but the studio discussions which skirt around the obvious population demographic of the areas having a surge in cases with “the Indian varient” and why it is a problem there and not elsewhere in the UK.
(And of course we are doing the same thing so as not to publicly offend)
Cobalt wrote:
It is worth noting that the table in that paper Peter quotes is NOT an attempt to establish a comprehensively backed-up estimate for these numbers, but is used to provide reasonable estimates for scenario modeling. The model correctly uses that number (i.e., 50% of those infected pass it on, see section 3.7 / page 23 “that onward transmission from those infected but vaccinated may be reduced by around 50%” )
Thanks for that explanation. Makes a lot of sense
I can’t reconcile the 90% numbers with the reality of real hospital numbers, especially when all the trials showed ~100% protection from hospitalisation.
I also think there is a lot of dodgy modelling going on, with worst-case scenarios leaked to the media (who love that, obviously), by “researchers” whose salaries will be paid in full even if the rest of the country is nuked.
9.7% of restaurants in the UK have gone bust.
I think it is much better than 90% protection. The hospital numbers are very low e.g.
That’s a population of, what, 1M or so? And they stopped updating that on 31st March, presumably because some “GDPR knob” decided they would identify individuals once they got into single digits (standard policy for all CV19 stats reporting).
This shows the penetration of the vaccination in the total population
Basically, the only people likely to end up in hospital due to the Indian strain will be
The 1st group needs to be addressed with urgency, as far as it possible, and after that you just have to leave them to get on with their lives (or not) but nobody is allowed to say that.
The 2nd group is too small to drive economic policy, but nobody is allowed to say that either.
Actually both groups are too small to drive economic policy, and nobody is allowed to say that, too.
