Not mistaken, but also not useful. In particular, it is hard to tease out folks that did have a common cold from those that had reduced covid. The vast majority of the covid positive folks I knew post vaccine were asymptomatic. Almost apologetic that they tested positive for it, but not at all sick or scared. Even my kids, when they tested positive, were more upset about implications than they were physically ill. (Indeed, for our kids, when they finally tested positive, we didn't see any symptoms from them at all...)
What is reduced covid? The ifr for a 30 something was .06%
before vaccines according to the study below.
If my math is correct, thats one 30-something dying for every 1667 infected before vaccines. I don't have hospitalization data handy, but I think "reduced covid" is just what most people had, vaccinated or not. That's not to discount the ones that did get it bad of course, and my condolences for any losses you suffered.
Of course it can still be true that the deaths happened more often in unvaccinated people (did that continue to be true the whole time?), while your individual risk of death was low (the .06 above in my case, and I had a pretty standard cold both times thankfully).
Just look up the hospitalization and death rates for folks vaccinated and not. It is stark in difference.
I had what was probably covid early on. Was like the time I got pneumonia. Asthma attacks in my youth were comparable, if much shorter lived. Getting a positive test case later was something that gave me a fever for a few hours. Scary, due to circumstances. But I was back up and moving in basically no time.
Correpondence published in NEJM regarding the landmark study that found that the first booster dose reduced Covid-related mortality by 90%. It turns out that it also reduced non-Covid-related mortality by a similar amount. So either the booster short is a magic elixir that reduces all deaths, or the boosted, as a group, were healthier at the outset.
In the response of the original authors they mention that
> However, boosters were generally not administered to hospitalized patients who were at high risk for death from any cause.
I think you can guess how it affected the hospitalization and death rates of the boosted vs. the unboosted. For some reason, this was not mentioned in the original study.
And the main point mentioned by the original authors in their response:
> However, a strong, unexplained association between the use of the booster and lower mortality not related to Covid-19 remains.
> During the B.1.617.2 (delta) wave in the United States, similar associations were observed between the use of mRNA vaccines and lower mortality not related to Covid-19 and mortality from any cause.
> Just look up the hospitalization and death rates for folks vaccinated and not. It is stark in difference.
Are those rates an argument against the claim that most people didn't have a bad case, vaccinated or not?
> I had what was probably covid early on. Was like the time I got pneumonia. Asthma attacks in my youth were comparable, if much shorter lived. Getting a positive test case later was something that gave me a fever for a few hours. Scary, due to circumstances. But I was back up and moving in basically no time.
How do you know that your possible second case's low severity is due to the vaccine and not the immunity you would have developed in the first case, or weakening of variants (or some mix of all 3), or even just random chance?
It's hard to ignore personal experience, but it only tells us so much. Like me with my 2 unvaccinated cases having an easy time, I'd be remiss if I generalized that to everyone.
What are you driving at? The rates for vaccinated versus not are a clear indicator that the vaccines helped. Hard to see any other way of interpreting that data.
You are correct that, if I did, in fact, have an early case of covid, I cannot be sure that the vaccine helped me with the later case. So, as far as that goes, my "evidence" is anecdotal at best and can't be taken fully as proof of anything.
You will have a hard time arguing against vaccines with the aggregate evidence above, though.
Sorry, let me clarify. I'm not trying to argue against vaccines.
I entered the thread at
> getting the vaccine basically led to people not getting symptomatic covid. Folks got what they thought of as a bad cold.
I asked for clarity there because it didn't line up with what I understood to be symptomatic covid (have covid and have any symptoms). It sounded like you were really saying the vaccine led to people in your circle not having severe covid.
I believe it is true that the vaccine reduced instances of severe covid. But my point in this thread is that most people already weren't going to have severe covid (based on ifr rates pre vaccine, though hospitalization data would be more useful here).
In other words, "The rates for vaccinated versus not are a clear indicator that the vaccines helped" is true as I understand it, and not something I'm arguing against. It does not contradict "most cases of covid were not severe, vaccinated or not" though.
Ah, fair. I am definitely playing loose in that area.
For specifics in my circle, I really only have my immediate family and some coworkers as direct evidence. Among those, I don't know anyone that got symptomatic anything if they were vaccinated. We had plenty of colds, but only tested positive during a time when that wasn't going through the family. (We only tested due to kid's having contacts that got covid.)
So, to that end, only vaccinated person in the family that ever had symptoms was me. And, as I said, it was super quick. Such that I can't say for sure the kids didn't have symptoms overnight that we just didn't see.
Pulling it back to "most cases overall were not severe," is tough, though. If that is somehow indicative that the vaccines didn't help me, that would also imply that they didn't help the population at large. And the data just doesn't agree with that.
Is that where you are asking? Or did I avoid the question?
I'm just trying to make the point that the vaccines helped at a population level (going from .06% to .0006% or whatever IFR is real numbers when you're talking about the whole world), but I think people overestimate the impact it had on them individually.
And it's easy to see why they would! Given the environment at the time (daily press conferences, scary news articles, demonization of the unvaccinated, mandates) I think it's easy to believe that the vaccine saved you from a death sentence if you get vaccinated and then have an easy case.
It's easy to not notice that in a room of 1667 infected unvaccinated 30 year olds (I don't know how old you are, just using that as an example), maybe over a thousand of them would have had a similar case that you did, and only one of them would have died.
On that, I think I'm in violent agreement with you. In particular, I actually was annoyed with how much stress folks put pre-teens through regarding vaccination. I had friends that were terrified of doing anything with their toddlers before they got vaccinated, despite the odds still being higher for the parents with a vaccine than the kids without. It was truly baffling.
For my part, I suspect it helped me. Childhood asthma and general obesity being what they are. I was almost certainly in elevated risks for my age group. To your point, my age group was still moderate risks, all told.
