A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

[MisterNiceKitty]

Last edited Tue Aug 24, 2021, 04:56 PM - Edit history (2)

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta

By Meredith Wadman Aug. 16, 2021 , 6:55 PM

“Now is a critical time,” Israeli Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz said as the 56-year-old got a COVID-19 booster shot on 13 August, the day his country became the first nation to offer a third dose of vaccine to people as young as age 50. “We’re in a race against the pandemic.”

His message was meant for his fellow Israelis, but it is a warning to the world. Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID-19, with 78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. More than half are in fully vaccinated people, underscoring the extraordinary transmissibility of the Delta variant and stoking concerns that the benefits of vaccination ebb over time.

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"What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. “There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. “One of the big stories from Israel [is]: ‘Vaccines work, but not well enough.’”

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"Yet boosters are unlikely to tame a Delta surge on their own, says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at Technion. In Israel, the current surge is so steep that “even if you get two-thirds of those 60-plus [boosted], it’s just gonna give us another week, maybe 2 weeks until our hospitals are flooded.” He says it’s also critical to vaccinate those who still haven’t received their first or second doses, and to return to the masking and social distancing Israel thought it had left behind—but has begun to reinstate.

Aran’s message for the United States and other wealthier nations considering boosters is stark: “Do not think that the boosters are the solution.”

[Effete Snob]

1. Notice this:

"78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated"

"More than half are in fully vaccinated people"

I'm going to bet that "more than half" is substantially less than 78%.

[agingdem]

2. this isn't a surprise...

the jab is a vaccine not an immunization like polio, measles, mumps, rubella, small pox...as for the chicken box vaccine..my grandson was vaccinated as a baby and year later he still contracted chicken pox but it was mild...a flu shot is vaccine...new flu variants pop up every year..scientists change the "recipe" to accommodate the variants but that doesn't stop the contagion...like the flu vaccine the covid booster will be adjusted accordingly but this dreck is with us forever...

[roamer65]

3. With Delta, it's mitigation, not prevention at this point.

We are not going to stop it completely, but we can mitigate its impact.

Vaccination keeps a vast majority out of the hospitals, exactly what we need right now.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

4. Lock it down, back to virtual classrooms, boosters for hospital, frontline, over 65, at risk people

Do it NOW!

Get ahead of the curve, only 66% effectiveness in new study of fully vaccinated hospital workers!

[MisterNiceKitty]

5. Yes! every day we wait this problem just gets worse

[Duppers]

6. K & R

[Vinca]

7. That was my concern about the booster. Unless it's reformulated to address the variants,

like the flu shot is every year, it doesn't seem especially helpful if you're still susceptible after getting it.