As you know the vaccines don’t work 100%. If 100% of the population is vaccinated, 100% of the infected are vaccinated people. When 80% is vaccinated, and it works for 75% of them, there’s not just parity in theory, the vaccinated are in reality less careful, test less often, and often don’t even notice they are sick. Which makes corona passports or lockdowns for only unvaccinated a very bad idea (need to test for access). Vaccination does not equal immunity and vaccination does not end infections. Both are required for herd immunity.
A recent study in the UK determined someone living with an infected person has 38% chance to get infected if unvaccinated and 25% if vaccinated. The difference is not so large as we’d want because of the frequent contact, similar to living in a densely populated area during a surge, or going to a nightclub with ironically only vaccinated people.
While it spreads faster amongst unvaccinated, it seems they are merely a catalyst for an otherwise inevitable surge. Once enough people are infected, it will find its way to that portion of the population that is vaccinated but not successfully protected (which varies by vaccine, age, how long ago they got the shot etc). That still vulnerable portion is larger than the unvaccinated portion of the entire population in areas with high vax rates. Eventually more vaccinated getting infected than unvaccinated was expected.
And I hear you on numbers getting old fast in this matter. The latest I’ve seen on hospitalizations over october shows 55% was vaccinated and 44% was not. So we almost reached parity with hospitalizations a month ago. In absolute numbers that is. Relatively, out of 15% unvaccinated, more people ended up in a hospital due to corona than out of the 85% of the population that is fully vaccinated. I don’t have a similar graph (vaccination status isn’t always know until the infected gets really sick or dies), but there is no unambiguous difference between municipalities with low and high vax rates here.
To reach parity in hospitalizations, given the fact vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalized, there have to be more, many more, vaccinated people who got infected than unvaccinated.
This is Portugal, touted as the champion of vaccination in europe, with almost no adult left to vaccinate and over 10% of the population was previously infected. The number of cases today is closing in on what it was when they had only 50% fully vaccinated. Other countries with high vax rates such as the UK show similar results.
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So the general consensus is swiftly turning into get vaxxed and booster to prepare yourself for
when you get infect. If not this season, then next, or the next after…