= (risk of infection among unvaccinated) - (risk of infection among vaccinated
= ~20-40%
7/ If an unvaccinated person was 80% (an educated guess) likely to get COVID,
a vaccinated & bivalent-boosted person was ~40-60% likely to get COVID when BA.4/BA.5 were dominant.
These are nonsensical, and to the extent they have any sense, are probably wrong, and if they are not wrong, they do not support her recommendation to get the booster.
First, the nonsense: It’s meaningless to talk about someone’s chance of getting COVID without specifying over what time period—an 80% chance of getting COVID in the next day? I don’t think so. But then what does it mean? And it is also completely ridiculous to talk about absolute reduction in risk of infection (over whatever time period), when this risk obviously depends on other factors, such as how isolated the person is. You can tell it’s nonsense from the fact that the risk for a person who has little contact with others might be only 10% (over a month, say), and after subtracting 20-40%, you get a negative number. No, that can’t be right.
Second, it’s probably wrong: At least, I certainly hope that the vaccine is more effective than that.
Finally, if it’s really that ineffective (and also not effective at preventing serious illness, an issue not mentioned in the tweets quoted), then getting the booster seems ill-advised. There’s little benefit, and nobody actually knows whether getting repeated doses of an mRNA vaccine might have long-term side effects. (The cells of your body that the mRNA vaccine prompts your immune system to kill are not necessarily the same ones as for more traditional vaccines, for which there is better long-term safety data.)
You quote the following tweets by Celine Gounder:
6/ Absolute vaccine effectiveness
= (risk of infection among unvaccinated) - (risk of infection among vaccinated
= ~20-40%
7/ If an unvaccinated person was 80% (an educated guess) likely to get COVID,
a vaccinated & bivalent-boosted person was ~40-60% likely to get COVID when BA.4/BA.5 were dominant.
These are nonsensical, and to the extent they have any sense, are probably wrong, and if they are not wrong, they do not support her recommendation to get the booster.
First, the nonsense: It’s meaningless to talk about someone’s chance of getting COVID without specifying over what time period—an 80% chance of getting COVID in the next day? I don’t think so. But then what does it mean? And it is also completely ridiculous to talk about absolute reduction in risk of infection (over whatever time period), when this risk obviously depends on other factors, such as how isolated the person is. You can tell it’s nonsense from the fact that the risk for a person who has little contact with others might be only 10% (over a month, say), and after subtracting 20-40%, you get a negative number. No, that can’t be right.
Second, it’s probably wrong: At least, I certainly hope that the vaccine is more effective than that.
Finally, if it’s really that ineffective (and also not effective at preventing serious illness, an issue not mentioned in the tweets quoted), then getting the booster seems ill-advised. There’s little benefit, and nobody actually knows whether getting repeated doses of an mRNA vaccine might have long-term side effects. (The cells of your body that the mRNA vaccine prompts your immune system to kill are not necessarily the same ones as for more traditional vaccines, for which there is better long-term safety data.)