Quote (Goomshill @ 21 Dec 2021 15:13)
Well, all the states that have vaccine mandates and generally high compliance with them yet have no difference in outcomes compared to states that don't, while its spreading like wildfire everywhere. NYC is the best example, look at their rates right now, despite being one of the most vaccinated states. Minnesota and North Dakota getting the same waves despite being polar opposites on masks and vaccines. Its clear enough that the vaccinated are spreading covid-19 in huge numbers, we're well past the supposed herd immunity threshold and yet in the midst of the 3rd outbreak, even bigger than the first two. Its not to say that the unvaccinated are somehow less individually responsible, its to say that there are so few unvaccinated that they can't account for the number of infections in this pandemic anymore.
You cannot discount the seasonality factor. We correctly accepted seasonality as a reason why southern, red states saw surging case numbers during summer and early fall, so we must now, in December, also accept seasonality as an explanation for the surging case numbers in northern states like Michigan or Minnesota. NYC might be a special case since it seems to be the first place dominated by the new Omicron variant which is exhibiting significant immune escape.
Also, your last sentence is just plain wrong. The vax rates aren't particularly high in the U.S., not even in the states with the highest rates like NY (4th highest in the entire U.S.).
Search for "Percentage of fully-vaccinated residents, by age group" on the following site and you will find a table which gives a neat overview:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html11% of New York's retirees and 19% of its working-age population are still not fully vaccinated. Even without the Omicron thing, even if we were still just talking about Delta, I don't see how these rates should be sufficient to rule out the possibility that a majority of infections could come from the unvaccinated.
Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ 21 Dec 2021 16:21)
is there even good data on who spreads how much in the real world?
we both know that, as recently discovered, the numbers in germany were completely fake ----> all unknown cases were put in the unvaxxed category
The rate at which persons with unclear vaccination status refuse to tell it to the doctors treating them should skew heavily toward the unvaxxed. Yes, those rates reported in Bavaria or Hamburg that the unvaxxed have 14 times as high caseloads per capita than the vaxxed were bogus. But other federal states didn't use this way of counting and still ended up with unvaxxed being overrepresented by a factor of 3-6 among covid cases.
Also, keep in mind that Germany's braindead government failed to start a timely booster campaign, leaving a lot of our most vulnerable groups exposed with an already waned vaccination, making them prone for infections which are breakthrough infections on paper. This effect skews the statistic against the vaccines.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 21 2021 04:16pm