Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 5/11/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
In related non-news, mask use is at a pandemic all-time low. In the past, there was an average one-month lag between changes in the new case rate, and changes in mask use. But mask use has always been driven primarily by peer pressure. So I’m betting that mask use does not recover until this winter’s wave. Not because that makes any sense, but because we don’t associate nice spring weather with spread of disease, but we do associate winter weather with colds and flu. Masking up only for the winter wave is not rational, but to most it will feel more normal. And so, I’m betting that’s what we do.
Source: Carnegie-Mellon COVIDcast.
Hospitalizations are up, some. The CDC COVID data tracker website currently shows 2500 admissions per day. Doesn’t sound like much, except that at an average cost of around $25K per admission, that represents about $60M/day (or $22B per year) in additional health care spending. Because the U.S. doesn’t spend enough on health care already.
Deaths are still not up. I attribute that to the waning of immunity of the vaccinated population, and the resulting shift in infections such that a greater fraction of those with any infection are vaccinated.
How safe are you if you have gotten a booster?
Caveat: In terms of timely data on vaccine effectiveness, out of CDC, all we have is observational data. That is, all they can do is observe the rates of infection, hospitalization, and death among the populations that chose to get a booster or not. The resulting “real-world” or “bottom-line” numbers will reflect not only the effectiveness of vaccine booster, but also the characteristics and behavior of those who chose to get the vaccine or not.
It’s all we have to go by, for better or worse.
That said, as of February, the CDC showed that risk of dying from COVID-19, for the vaccinated and boostered was about 5% of that for the un-vaccinated. (Shown as “20X” on the graph below):
The same chart shows that, by February 2022, boosters didn’t appear to do much to stop any infection. (Hence the mere 2.0X for the risk of testing positive.)
The only national information from CDC that’s more timely than that is for risk of hospitalization. Here, I’m focused on those who got a booster shot, so I am only looking at the 65+ population (because, as I recall, they were the only ones who had carte blanche to get a booster in the U.S. For all others, the only eligible populations were high-risk population).
Here’s how that looks. As of February/March 2022, the risk of hospitalization for the boostered, relative to the unvaccinated, is around 10%. So the booster remains roughly 90% effective against hospitalization from COVID-19. (Among the elderly, at least.)
Source: Calculated from CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 5/11/2022.
The level shown above for boostered people — in February, they were about 10% as likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 as the un-vaccinated — is a pretty good match to the CDC mortality estimate (that they were only about 5% as likely to die from COVID-19). The result is a consistent story about booster effectiveness. After a few months, the booster does almost nothing to prevent a mild case of COVID-19 (50% reduction, relative to unvaccinated). It does a pretty good job of preventing a case severe enough to require hospitalization (90% reduction, relative to unvaccinated). And it does a slightly better job of preventing a case so severe it kills you (95% reduction, relative to unvaccinated).
But, as the data clearly seem to show, immunity wanes over time. In this case, for the boostered population, effectiveness at preventing hospitalization appears to wane at about 2.5 percentage points per month. (The start date of the curve corresponds to the peak week of booster shot delivery, so despite the fact that it took a couple of months to deliver all the booster shots, that’s still a pretty good estimate for the speed at which immunity wanes for any one boostered individual).
The upshot is that, as of now, regarding getting a case of COVID severe enough to land you in the hospital:
- Vaccination reduces your risk by about 75%
- Vaccine and a well-aged booster reduces your risk by about 90%
- Vaccination and a fresh (second) booster arguably reduces your risk by about 97%.
Make up something that’s wrong, pretend that it’s true, then complain when reality fails to match your imagination.
As far as I can tell, this is just standard operating procedure for some classes of individuals. If you don’t have any solid argument grounded in reality, just make something up, and use that as if it were true. So that you can complain about something.
I first noticed this when reading newspaper article comments about climate change. My favorite crazy comment being that this topic used to be called “global warming”, then the United Nations IPCC had to rename it “climate change”, because the earth isn’t warming. Not realizing that the IPCC has been around for four decades. And that the CC in IPCC doesn’t stand for carbon copy.
But what I really marvel at is the constancy and pervasiveness of this tactic. For the decades that I have been tracking reporting on climate change, as the earth’s mean surface temperature has continued to rise, completely in line with predictions made three decades ago, I still get to read that “scientists said such-and-such, and that never happened, so climate change is nonsense”. Where the “such-and-such” is inevitably something completely fictional.
So the world divides into two types of people. For people like me, when the preponderance of evidence suggests that something is true, I am forced to accept it as true, whatever my preconceptions. But, unfortunately, a whole lot of people live by Adam Savage’s dictum: I reject your reality and substitute my own. Because, for a lot of people, it’s just easier to make up “facts” than to change their minds.
If you read comments on news articles regarding a second COVID booster, the stupider portion of the American public seems dumbfounded that boosters are required to keep up immunity.
Apparently much of right-wing American has forgotten getting a tetanus booster as a kid, or getting a flu shot each year. Or they’ve never had kids, and so don’t realize that most vaccines against childhood diseases are given in multiple doses.
In fact, if you just glance at the CDC’s schedule of recommended vaccines for children, you’d be hard-pressed to find any vaccine that only requires one dose. Even among these highly-effective vaccines against the formerly-deadly diseases of childhood.
Source: Adapted from CDC.
If you think that all vaccines should only require one shot, should last a lifetime, and be 100% effective, the problem isn’t with the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s with your understanding of vaccines in general. Few fit that model. Most don’t.
In any case, it is what it is. You want the additional immunity, you get another shot. That’s the deal. If you are surprised by that, then the fault is in your understanding of reality, not in reality itself.
Although, to be clear, I wish reality were different in this case. But it’s not. So I deal with it.
To me, the sole question is whether the benefit is worth the cost and risk. Most of the harm reduction you are ever going to get from COVID-19 vaccination, you already got from being fully vaccinated. Boosters are gravy.
But in my case, the vaccine is free and harmless. I get a sore shoulder for a day or so, that’s all the adverse reaction I’ve every had.
I got my second booster yesterday, as did my wife. It seemed like the rational thing to do.
Two weeks from now, we’re going to be in a lot of crowds at our daughter’s college graduation. I want to spend the least amount of time possible thinking about COVID-19. Hence, second booster now, rather than waiting for the likely winter 2022-23 winter wave of COVID.
