If there have been 5800 covid cases after vaccination, then is likely it is actually at least double?

Speculation isn’t helpful or productive. Measuring is both.

Somehow I was notified of a study in my county and I joined. They plan to test 14,000 people for Covid antibodies. They can tell the difference between “natural” antibodies and vaccine responses.

I joined after my first vaccine shot. My test was negative for antibodies.

@Call_Me_Jay The antibodies is different than my question, but it’s still interesting that you didn’t have any. Maybe you will after the second shot.

Covid vaccines do not guarantee that people won’t catch the virus. They only guarantee that 80% or 90% (or whatever the efficacy percentages are) will emerge unscathed when the get covid. That is why it is important to still maintain social distancing and other things we’ve been doing, even after getting vaccinated. We can still get it and still pass it on to family members who haven’t been vaccinated. We just have more chances of coming out of it in better shape than those who aren’t vaccinated.

@AK It does matter if a certain age group is much more likely than others to have breakthrough cases. If it’s over 95% effective in all age groups no one should need to distance or wear masks when they are with other fully vaccinated people, except maybe extremely high risk people, but they probably shouldn’t be catching anything. Even if the virus was in a room it should not jump to more than one person if everyone is vaccinated, but more likely zero.

If efficacy is only 70–80% in older adults then that equation changes in a room full of older people. Wasn’t J&J only 60–70% on average all ages combined? It’s like hospitalizations and death rates of covid, it really matters how old you are. Your chance of dying as a child is something like .0001%, while people over 70 it’s more like 10%! I semi made up those numbers, but it is that drastic.

I don’t trust how the effective rates were calculated. At the same time, I’m mostly back to normal where I live, because so many people are vaccinated here.

When they switched from measles being one shot to two, we got rid of measles for years in the US. The two shot is around 97% effective I think.

@JLeslie What you said is a bit worrying friend. No one can predict how a virus can mutate. Since, we’re still in the early life cycle of this virus, the mutations are very fast. Only after a few years will the virus mature and drastically reduce its mutation cycle. That is why other vaccines are different from covid vaccines. Others had enough time to study the pattern of mutations in mature viruses and were able to create vaccines that eradicated that menace altogether. Here with covid, they don’t have the luxury of time. I’m not sure if you’re aware or not but now, one of the mutant virus is airborne. That is why it is spreading so fast in India. Airborne viruses, thankfully, are easier to control with complete shutdown and that is why the numbers in India are coming down instantly, with most of the country currently under lock down. But no one predicted airborne covid…and they still aren’t sure if the current vaccines are effective against this variant. So here, we’re being told to be ‘safe than sorry’. Vaccinated people are told to not take anything for granted and that is good advice for everyone….because we have no clue about the virus, despite the glut of information floating on the net.

@AK No, that’s not what vaccinated people are told. Even Fauci says with other vaccinated people the risk is extremely low, other health officials are going back into restaurants, all sorts of examples of medical experts feeling reasonably safe if everyone is vaccinated.

If people want to be very prudent I am completely fine with that. I barely went anywhere before I was vaccinated. My husband still doesn’t want to eat at restaurants, so I’ll just wait until he feels comfortable.

Cities that have high vaccination rates have very low or no cases now. The vaccines seems to be working.

The word airborne was thrown around and misused the entire time covid19 has been around, so I don’t know if the Indian variant is really so different, it does seem to be very contagious. I heard it is a double mutation. India has all sorts of challenges from densely populated cities and residential dwellings, to bad living conditions. They had HUGE crowds out celebrating not long ago, passing around the virus. Some sort of holiday.

@JLeslie The WHO (for whatever it is worth) has declared that one of the variants is airborne. Authorized Indian scientists have also declared that the dominant variant here is airborne. So, nothing trivial is being thrown around. Anyway, I’m happy that you’re all completely free of the problem there…and honestly, I really, really hope that I won’t have a moment in the future, where I look back at this thread and think to myself…‘I told you so….’

Who said completely free of the problem? Not at all to that point yet.

The most important point is that no one, anywhere, said the vaccine is 100% effective. The numbers I have seen are that Moderna and Pfizer where in the 93–94% range.

Six percent if a million people = 60,000 people who might get COVID.

How many people in the US have had the vaccine? 60 million?

Bottom line – I can easily believe that 5000 people have been vaccinated and still picked up COVID. Probably many more than that.

The more telling questions:

a) what is the trendline? Are total cases going down?

b) are fewer people dying?

The way herd immunity works is over 80% vaccinated/immune we should be able to get down to zero cases. That means 0–20% are not immune at all. I realize people know this, it’s just worth restating because I don’t understand why some people continue to feel we need to be acting the same as 6 months ago when covid was moving through the population without restriction. Certainly, anyone who is very vulnerable should continue to be more careful.

@elbanditoroso I agree the trend matters the most, and that is why I am feeling so much better regarding risk in my city, trend is way way down, we have days with zero new cases, but usually there are a few just to annoy me. If there are three I assume there are actually more like 10. I don’t think everyone runs to get tested. I heard on the news cases are coming way down, but from what CHRISTMAS and SPRING BREAK? Ugh, we always need to actually look at what numbers they are using for their conclusions, and not just hear the words and feel good. Last I looked we still have 35,000 cases and 600 deaths a day in America. I just focus on my corner of the country, but we are about to go into summer when the entire country and world comes to where I live.

My guess is that it will easily double. Vaccinations have not been around very long. It took about a year to get that many people that had covid to get it again. My guess is by the end of the year we will see at least 5x that number.

@seawulf575 I meant at the time the 5800 was quoted. How many do you guess were actually out there at that time.

First, to answer the question. I cant rule it out, not everyone will be detected or tested – in particular asymtomatic cases. For the rest, medical research beyond my capabilities at the moment – i dont see many other extensive notes about such, so im not the only one.

In regard to the significance of such data, regardless of exact correct numbers, some notes

1. Some people are more sensitive to affected
2. A virus mutation is less affected by a vaccin (still affected, but less)
3. People get ill, but less severe – reported here in Dutch senior resorts
4. The goal is not to annihilate the disease, but to limit ithe affect on health and society
5. 5800 people out of about 77 million. Real % will be slighlyt different, but not much. 74 dead out of 77 million vaccinated.
6. Double this and you have 12000 people and 150 dead.
7. Compare this with infection, illness and fatality rate of not-vaccinated people
8. Do the math and wonder whether vaccination is worth your time.

@JLeslie The vaccines are only, at best, 95% effective. If there have been 77 million people vaccinated, then it stands to reason that there will be at least 3,850,000 people that can still get sick. And given that they will believe themselves protected, it is likely that they will become infected. And then go on to infect others. At the time that the number 5800 was used, it is likely that it was many more than doubled. according to what we know from Covid positive cases, 75% of people with Covid were asymptomatic. So if they have identified 5800 cases, it is likely (given the instances of asymptomatic issues) that it could be as high as 23,200. Well within the 3.85M we can assume. It also means there are a lot more opportunities for the virus to infect and spread.

The vaccines are only, at best, 95% effective. If there have been 77 million people vaccinated, then it stands to reason that there will be at least 3,850,000 people that can still get sick

You are correct that lots more vaccines will mean lots more failures. But the efficacy will increase.

95% was measured in the heights of the pandemic, after sending vaccinated people into the wild where nobody else was vaccinated. As vaccine numbers increase, we have fewer and fewer opportunities to get infected. The disease runs out of victims. Or at least the number shrinks and shrinks.

That is assuming new strains don’t bypass the vaccine. We don’t know about that. We have to keep learning and stay sharp.

@seawulf575 It is not likely they will all get infected if we have herd immunity. It is likely very few will get infected. The virus can’t travel far if most people are immune. Instead of one person infecting ten people at a party, they might infect zero or one. If the one person who was infected is only around immune people the next ten days, then the virus goes nowhere. I don’t understand how so many Republicans talked about wanting herd immunity “like Sweden” for so many months and they don’t actually understand how herd immunity works.

Since there will be places where immunity is very low, because a lot of people who won’t get vaccinated hang out with family and friends who won’t get vaccinated, we will probably still see outbreaks and surges of cases for a while.

Luckily, slowly but surely some of the hesitant people are getting vaccinated. I’m taking a friend Friday for hers. I hope Florida gets to at least 70% vaccinated. We deal with tourists all year who dilute the number. I feel confident Florida will go over 50% by the end of the summer.

@Call_Me_Jay The question was about the point when there were 5800 cases after vaccination, not looking forward.

@JLeslie I think you said ”@seawulf575 I meant at the time the 5800 was quoted. How many do you guess were actually out there at that time.” Now you are changing it to a potential future output. Which is it?

@seawulf575 My original Q was at the time the 5800 was mentioned in the news.

When I talked about herd immunity I meant once we have herd immunity the people still not immune are not likely to get infected. There might be small outbreaks, but the majority of the people not immune are protected by the herd. Unless you have huge pockets of people all in one community, then you can get superspreaders that take a while to burn out.