You reach the opposite conclusion from Tomas Pueyo (who seems to be your primary reference):
“If you’re vaccinated, you’re mostly safe, especially with mRNA vaccines. Keep your guard up for now, avoid events that might become super-spreaders, but you don’t need to worry much more than that.”
Checking your math, I think your biggest error is equating long covid (at least one symptom still present after 28 days) with lifelong CFS. The vast majority seem to clear up in the next 8 weeks: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01292-y
I believe the 64% reduction in symptomatic infections is an outlier (compare with the UK data, e.g.), and if you’ve had an mRNA vaccine the number is much higher.
Finally, not accounting for age in your long covid statistics is a mistake. Young people are making up a large percentage of the infected because they are disproportionally unvaccinated. Those young and vaccinated are quite well protected from severe infection. And while some long covid comes from mild cases, it’s highly correlated with severe cases.
He also says: >Masks indoors and in crowds should be mandatory. Probably because: >If vaccinated people that end up having symptoms are as infectious as unvaccinated people with symptoms, you end up in a situation where even full vaccination won’t stop the epidemic, and you need a Delta-specific vaccine boost to stop it.
He recommends that for communities, which presumably include significant numbers of unvaccinated folks. Which, if targeted to N95 or better masks, and actually enforced, could have substantial effect!
But having members of the least infectious subpopulation voluntarily mask is pretty much useless.
As to your second point, there is strong evidence that is not the case: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34250518/ Vaccinated individuals who get infected have substantially lower viral loads, and thus are substantially less contagious.
The if long COVID usually clears up after eight weeks, that would definitely weaken my point (which would be good news!) I haven’t decided if it would change my overall stance on masking though
Even in a scenario where all unvaccinated people were infected with covid, I would expect none of the Georgetown undergraduates to die from covid or get covid longer than 12 weeks.
Here’s my fermi analysis:
in your 20s, covid CFR is .0001, compared to .01 for population as a whole.
covid longer than 12 weeks is .03 for covid population as a whole.
assume really long covid scales similarly to death and hospitalization
mRNA reduces these both by .9.
That gives us .03 x .01 x .1, for a case really long covid rate of .00003.
.00003 x 6532 = .2 really long covid
.00001 x 6532 = .07 deaths
And given that you are primarily interacting with other unvaccinated, young individuals, you are less likely to be infected than the average vaccinated person. So the real number is probably less than .1 person getting covid beyond 12 weeks.
Even if all the Georgetown undergraduates were somehow infected by Delta
and
mRNA reduces these both by .9.
mRNA vaccines don’t decrease hospitalisation by .9 given someone has become infected, they decrease it by .9 compared to an unvaccinated person given typical community exposure. So I think your calculation is more like “Even if all the Georgetown undergraduates were exposed to Delta in a way which would be sufficient to infect them if they were unvaccinated”.
I would estimate that to get back to your original scenario we probably have to multiply by 3-5 (depending on how much of the resistance to hospitalisation you think is purely resistance to getting infected in the first place).
Assume really long covid scales similarly to death and hospitalization
This doesn’t at all feel obvious to me? At least, I’d put a decent (>20%) chance that this is not true. Eg Long COVID isn’t that correlated with hospitalisation
I expect that resistance to long covid is somewhere between resistance to infection and resistance to hospitalisation. This might roughly double the expected numbers of deaths / long covid.
Even if that is true, you would still get a) a lot of sickness & suffering, and b) infect a lot of other people (who infect further). So some people would be seriously ill and some would die as a result of this experiment.
You reach the opposite conclusion from Tomas Pueyo (who seems to be your primary reference):
“If you’re vaccinated, you’re mostly safe, especially with mRNA vaccines. Keep your guard up for now, avoid events that might become super-spreaders, but you don’t need to worry much more than that.”
Checking your math, I think your biggest error is equating long covid (at least one symptom still present after 28 days) with lifelong CFS. The vast majority seem to clear up in the next 8 weeks: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01292-y
I believe the 64% reduction in symptomatic infections is an outlier (compare with the UK data, e.g.), and if you’ve had an mRNA vaccine the number is much higher.
Finally, not accounting for age in your long covid statistics is a mistake. Young people are making up a large percentage of the infected because they are disproportionally unvaccinated. Those young and vaccinated are quite well protected from severe infection. And while some long covid comes from mild cases, it’s highly correlated with severe cases.
He also says:
>Masks indoors and in crowds should be mandatory.
Probably because:
>If vaccinated people that end up having symptoms are as infectious as unvaccinated people with symptoms, you end up in a situation where even full vaccination won’t stop the epidemic, and you need a Delta-specific vaccine boost to stop it.
He recommends that for communities, which presumably include significant numbers of unvaccinated folks. Which, if targeted to N95 or better masks, and actually enforced, could have substantial effect!
But having members of the least infectious subpopulation voluntarily mask is pretty much useless.
As to your second point, there is strong evidence that is not the case: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34250518/ Vaccinated individuals who get infected have substantially lower viral loads, and thus are substantially less contagious.
The if long COVID usually clears up after eight weeks, that would definitely weaken my point (which would be good news!) I haven’t decided if it would change my overall stance on masking though
Even in a scenario where all unvaccinated people were infected with covid, I would expect none of the Georgetown undergraduates to die from covid or get covid longer than 12 weeks.
Here’s my fermi analysis:
in your 20s, covid CFR is .0001, compared to .01 for population as a whole.
covid longer than 12 weeks is .03 for covid population as a whole.
assume really long covid scales similarly to death and hospitalization
mRNA reduces these both by .9.
That gives us .03 x .01 x .1, for a case really long covid rate of .00003. .00003 x 6532 = .2 really long covid .00001 x 6532 = .07 deaths
And given that you are primarily interacting with other unvaccinated, young individuals, you are less likely to be infected than the average vaccinated person. So the real number is probably less than .1 person getting covid beyond 12 weeks.
Let me know if you see errors in my reasoning.
and
mRNA vaccines don’t decrease hospitalisation by .9 given someone has become infected, they decrease it by .9 compared to an unvaccinated person given typical community exposure. So I think your calculation is more like “Even if all the Georgetown undergraduates were exposed to Delta in a way which would be sufficient to infect them if they were unvaccinated”.
I would estimate that to get back to your original scenario we probably have to multiply by 3-5 (depending on how much of the resistance to hospitalisation you think is purely resistance to getting infected in the first place).
Good point! I’ll edit my fermi analysis to reflect that.
This doesn’t at all feel obvious to me? At least, I’d put a decent (>20%) chance that this is not true. Eg Long COVID isn’t that correlated with hospitalisation
Agreed.
I expect that resistance to long covid is somewhere between resistance to infection and resistance to hospitalisation. This might roughly double the expected numbers of deaths / long covid.
Even if that is true, you would still get a) a lot of sickness & suffering, and b) infect a lot of other people (who infect further). So some people would be seriously ill and some would die as a result of this experiment.
Came here to say exactly this, glad someone beat me to it.
Also, I can’t quite tell if the OP is recommending wearing masks or mandating wearing masks