#16,111
Given the sheer volume of COVID virus and vaccine misinformation surging through social media - and the rabid, unwavering position of many who distrust vaccines and anything produced by `Big Pharma' - I doubt that another review published in a respected medical journal on the effectiveness of COVID vaccines is going to change very many minds.
Granted, some of this distrust has been rightfully earned (see When Scientists Behave Badly), and governments don't always have the best track record in dispensing the truth. Healthy scepticism isn't necessarily a bad thing.We live in a world where `facts' are often only accepted as true if they support one's preconceptions, otherwise they are dismissed out-of-hand as biased and produced by an evil or corrupt ________ (you can fill in the blank with your favorite boogieman).
Sometimes science can frustratingly only offer partial answers during an evolving crisis (see J. Risk Research: Communicating About Uncertainty & Evolving Science During The H1N1 Pandemic). Science, admittedly, doesn't always get things right. Often science can only provide their best `guess', until more data can be gathered and evaluated.Last year I wrote several times about some of the unknowns that came with the rapid development of a new coronavirus vaccine (see `Forward Looking' & `Aspirational' Vaccine Press Releases), but as vaccine trials progressed, and positive results were announced, my early concerns were assuaged.
For some, this lack of definitive answers – or immutable truths – renders science useless . . . or at least highly suspect. Since it isn’t always perfect, and our understandings are subject to change, they place science into the realm of guesswork or speculation.Twelve years ago, in Public Health’s Biggest Pandemic Challenge, I wrote about the groundswell of anti-vaccine rhetoric - which looking back, pales in comparison to what we are seeing today - during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
I can only assume, since thousands of vaccine related deaths weren't reported, nefarious forces must have successfully covered it all up. At the time I wrote:The H1N1 vaccine was `rushed', and untested, according to critics. It was `poison', and would `kill tens of thousands of people' (see A Battle For The Hearts And Minds . . .).
Politics, religion, and pseudo-science are driving the agenda here, and the level of fear, vitriol, and misinformation flowing from the Internet, and even from some print journalism, is truly astounding.Vaccines - like all drugs and medications - aren't 100% safe or benign, and rare serious side effects can occur. Just as some medications can induce Stevens-Johnson syndrome, or NSAIDs can raise your cardiovascular risk (see BMJ Research: NSAIDs & The Risk Of Heart Failure), the decision to take a vaccine involves a risk-reward calculation.Given the forces lined up against it, of all of the challenges that face public health officials this fall and winter (and those are considerable), it may well be that winning the hearts and minds of the public on the safety and wisdom of vaccination will prove to be the toughest.
Even when the vaccine doesn't perfectly protect against infection - as we've seen increasingly with the Delta variant - it dramatically reduce one's risk of severe illness, hospitalization, or dying. And while there are no guarantees - the hope is - vaccines can help reduce the creation of new, potentially more dangerous, variants (see UK Sage: International Vaccination: Potential impact on Viral Evolution and UK).Based on everything we've seen, the COVID vaccine is a far safer alternative to getting the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
While I recognize that I am probably preaching to the choir, and those who are against vaccination will dismiss this report as `more propaganda' by globalists, or Big Pharma, some people still on the fence may find it convincing enough to motivate them to get vaccinated.
I've posted the link, and a few excerpts, but you'll ant to follow the link to read it in its entirety.
Feature
Covid-19: How effective are vaccines against the delta variant?
BMJ 2021; 374 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1960 (Published 09 August 2021)Cite this as: BMJ 2021;374:n1960
chrisbaraniuk@gmail.com
The delta variant is now the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK and many other countries. Chris Baraniuk asks how effective the leading vaccines are against this new threat
“Two days after my first symptoms, I began to feel seriously ill,” wrote BBC TV presenter Andrew Marr.1 He described how he had previously felt invulnerable having received both of his covid vaccine doses. Nonetheless, he became infected with the virus, which he suspects he caught at the G7 summit in Cornwall.
Marr recovered but some have not. Data from Public Health England (PHE) reveal that of all the people who died within 28 days of testing positive for the delta variant between 1 February and 19 July, 49% (224) had had two vaccine doses. Almost all of these people, 220, were aged 50 or older.2
As the statistician David Spiegelhalter notes, in a population where less-than-perfect vaccines have been distributed widely, one would expect to see deaths occurring among vaccinated people as the virus spreads. And so far, in contrast to the winter when far fewer people had received vaccines, the rate of hospital admissions and deaths in the UK is not rising as sharply as cases.
Although uncertainty remains, there is reason to be confident about the protection offered by current covid vaccines, says Eleanor Riley, professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh. Referring to Marr, who had a major stroke in 2013, she says: “A man over 60 with significant prior health problems got a mild, flu-like illness and was back at work in a week.”
Warning signs
Data up to 4 August from Imperial College London’s React study found that people who said they had received two vaccine doses were half as likely to test positive for covid-19, adjusting for other factors such as age and whether or not they had symptoms.3 The researchers estimated a 50-60% lower risk of infection from the delta variant if a person was double vaccinated.
The picture emerging from various countries does, however, suggest that vaccinated people are more likely to experience symptoms after catching the delta variant compared with earlier forms of the virus.
Data published by the Israeli government suggest that the Pfizer BioNTech jab’s efficacy against symptomatic infection fell from 94% to 64% after the delta variant began spreading in the country.4
Figures from Public Health Scotland published in the Lancet also show a drop in protection against symptomatic illness,5 from 92% against the alpha variant, which was first detected in the UK, to 79% against delta among people with two doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. For the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, the reduction was from 73% to 60%. Data from Canada, yet to be peer reviewed, also show a drop in efficacy.6
It’s difficult to compare data from multiple countries because they all have different protocols determining when people become eligible for a covid-19 test, for example. And symptomatic infection can take many forms, from very mild to severe illness.
But Riley points out that the PHE data to date are consistent with estimates that suggest—despite these drops in efficacy—vaccines in use in the UK (Pfizer BioNtech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna) all reduce the risk of death by more than 85%, regardless of variant.
