> While I strongly believe in vaccines, I note that the Dallas, Texas (USA) area has seen similar improvements, and we’re hardly a high-vaccination area.
With 45%+ of adults with at least one dose and 35%+ fully vaccinated,
its not bad either (and most of TX, by population, seems to be innthe same neighborhood.) Given that almost everyplace has (through a combination of formal policy and swlf-selection) tended to prioritize people either at risk by age or health condition or in and occupation posing a high spread risk, and catching asymptomatic vases is pretty hit or miss because surveillance never got that good, you’d expect a lot of the gains in deaths and reported cases to be in that first third of adult vaccinations.
The Brazil study was done with a less effective vaccine than the ones distributed in Dallas. 75% of that might not be far from about half with an mRNA vaccine.
Look at the plots in my link above. The rates have been low or falling off a cliff for a long time. Again, not doubting efficacy of vaccines. I’m proud to be fully vaccinated. But there’s something else at play.
There's also a new issue which will make determining vaccine effectiveness in the USA very difficult. The CDC has changed how COVID cases are defined, but only for people who are vaccinated. Specifically, reports of 'vaccine breakthrough' i.e. someone who tests positive after being vaccinated, are now only being processed if they:
* Are positive with a CT < 25
and
* Result in hospitalization or death
People who aren't vaccinated on the other hand are counted as being "sick" with COVID if they test positive with a CT < ~40+ (exact values vary by lab) and don't need to be hospitalized or have any symptoms at all. PCR cycle thresholds are exponents. Each cycle doubles the quantity of what you're looking for. Thus a positive at a CT of 40 is drastically different to a positive at a CT of 25. You could inject people with water and using this standard, you would see an enormous effect. Clearly this sort of thing is not sound science and will result in time series that show the CDC what it very much wants to see, rather than what's actually happening.
This type of distortion keeps happening with COVID related research, and it's resulted in me no longer trusting it (see [1] for more examples of what I've seen). Not a single figure or data point about this disease can be taken for granted because so often when the details are investigated, there turns out to be some ridiculous catch or unscientific practice being deployed. It's also not just random incompetence because it always seems to be working towards the same end: making COVID seem more dangerous and getting more people to take vaccines.
"As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance."
With 45%+ of adults with at least one dose and 35%+ fully vaccinated, its not bad either (and most of TX, by population, seems to be innthe same neighborhood.) Given that almost everyplace has (through a combination of formal policy and swlf-selection) tended to prioritize people either at risk by age or health condition or in and occupation posing a high spread risk, and catching asymptomatic vases is pretty hit or miss because surveillance never got that good, you’d expect a lot of the gains in deaths and reported cases to be in that first third of adult vaccinations.