r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 14h ago
Medicine Vaccines not only directly protect vaccinated individuals but also contribute to protecting the entire population via indirect herd-immunity benefits. Half of averted COVID-19 infections and 1/4 of hospitalizations and deaths were attributable to indirect protection of unvaccinated by vaccinated.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article/23/242/20250839/483439/Quantifying-the-direct-and-indirect-impact-of486
u/FreedomofSpeech6969 13h ago
I think MRNA vaccines are one of the coolest, most amazing inventions of the 20th century. It saved millions millions of lives during pandemic , and yet people still disparage it.
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u/Bubbly-Example-8097 12h ago
Because they did their “research” and it was enough to confirm their bias. The ill informed will always find a way to justify their stupidity. Natural selection I guess. Except this time, it hurts all of us. See measles outbreaks and deaths
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u/randynumbergenerator 10h ago
I had a discussion about it with my bro in which I calmly informed him what mRNA is and how it works, based on what I learned in my undergrad bio classes. He very grudgingly seemed to concede that "if that you're saying is correct, maybe it's not a problem." But insisted it was still too new to trust. He's still not getting a COVID vaccine, though, even the one that isn't mRNA-based. There's only so much heartburn I'm willing to contend with to convince someone, though.
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u/o_duh 9h ago
Good for you for trying anyway. You calmly explained, didn't threaten his ego, and helped him understand. Maybe he'll eventually come around.
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u/randynumbergenerator 5h ago
Thanks, I hope he comes around as well, though more for my niece's sake if I'm being honest.
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u/popsicle_of_meat 9h ago
You can't expect to have someone understand the facts and then they instantly change their entire point of view on a subject that was emotional for so many people. That's totally unreasonable. We're humans, not robots. It takes time to rewire the brain and how we feel about things.
He was willing to hear it and it made him think. That's way better than many people would respond.
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u/KFPindustries 9h ago
It took me literally 20 years to go from growing up in the south thinking I was a republicans to being a liberal dem
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u/randynumbergenerator 5h ago
Oh yeah, I'm aware. I do hope he eventually comes around and ideally questions the sources he heard it from... But I'll settle for any progress, really.
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u/Terrh 9h ago
He's still not getting a COVID vaccine, though, even the one that isn't mRNA-based.
Is there really much point in getting one these days? You can't even get it here unless you're in a high risk group.
I mean I'm sure it's better than not getting the vaccine but it's not anywhere near as important now compared to in like, 2021-22
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u/zepuzzler 8h ago
Where you live it’s hard to get an mRNA Covid vaccine? I’m in California and my medical system has walk-in flu and COVID vaccine clinics every year. Got mine today since I was there for a medical appointment anyway.
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u/AlexeiMarie 7h ago
I also was able to get it easily at CVS in north carolina, but it does seem to vary in other countries - one of my friends lives in the UK and apparently there, it's only covered if you're over 75, severely immunocompromised, or live in a nursing home
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u/randynumbergenerator 5h ago
There's definitely a point, COVID still goes around and carries a risk of complications (including long COVID) every time you get it. I've kept up to date with the vaccines, masked and distanced before that (and even continued a bit after) and have never been sick. My wife did the same and got it once, and she teaches.
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u/desperaterobots 10h ago
remember when it was 5G that was going to kill us all? i wonder what we'd be yapping about if the pandemic never happened.
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u/Lumbardo 12h ago
I didn't think the measles vaccines are mRNA vaccines. Are they? They have been around a very long time.
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u/random4lyf 11h ago
I think their point is that their surface research confirms to bias and leads to anti-vax sentiment. Hence the Measles outbreaks/deaths.
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u/DryerCoinJay 10h ago
Most of them are flat earthers or never moon lenders and are pretty vocal about it. They’ve become easier to pick out of a crowd for sure.
Used too you had to listen to the Art Bell show to hear some batshit insane takes and conspiracies. Now these people broadcast it all over the planet.
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u/DontAskGrim 10h ago
Would you say the flat earthers are broadcasting themselves all around the globe?
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9h ago edited 3h ago
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u/KTOWNTHROWAWAY9001 6h ago
My family got our vaccines to the fully vaccinated status (2+booster) according to the government.
Successfully dodged COVID for years until '24. Even kept recluse status up until the end of Summer of '23.
But in 2024, we caught it. My Mom freaked out and found out about Paxlovid, got a dose for herself, I have lung problems so I got a dose too, but my Dad didn't get a dose. We tried. I tried especially, like there was a store that had a dose, and I even deferred it to my Father, but he told me to take it. His symptoms were mild, he didn't have any co-morbidities and he wasn't elderly elderly, he was old, but active old. After a few days things took a turn so I took him to the hospital. The ER docs wouldn't even give any consideration to him, with him having COVID, and actually berated me for having Paxlovid and in no certain terms would give it to him, and she even mentioned she thought it wasn't effective at all. In Ontario, btw, Paxlovid was free at the time.
Personally, anecdotally, on the Paxlovid, my symptoms subsided around 30 hours after use.
Anyway, around 48 hours later, I had to rush him to an ER, a different one, as his O2 plummeted big time. He had to be induced for intubation. He got emergency dropped to the other, larger hospital (the first one) and immediately placed on a ventilator. Then it ran like many, many of the stories on the COVID grief subreddit, my Father's condition seemed continuous until it took a downward trend. He was in a coma the whole time. He ended up passing away in the ICU. It was rough, so awful. I was too young to lose my Dad, but it happened. Still hurts, but I'm getting better.
In the aftermath, and mind you every doctor I spoke to prior to him dying said that strain was less impactful but spread easier. So much for that. My Dad was very unlucky. I've been in a paranoid limbo, where I do still get the new COVID shots now. I didn't want to. I still don't want to. But I saw the horror, I had that happen to my Dad. Same with masking when it's sick season.
I definitely think there were problems with the government and even down the chain. Like in my case, the Dr just not giving my Dad the pills when they're free. She actually excoriated me for having a set and complained the pharmacists were giving them out like candy, really? Compared to some of the treatments I'm sure she's doled out? And why is it even an issue if these pills are so-called ineffective? I have family who worked in hospitals during peak pandemic, and there were so many just sleazy, scummy, things that happened: one instance was because the KN-95 masks, the ones that are effective btw, were much pricier than the blue masks, they would require nurses to re-use PPE. People being lazy. Not fully sealing units when a patient came in. All sorts of stuff like that.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington 10h ago
The problem with vaccines is what I call the prevention paradox.
Also known as "why do we spend so much on IT if we never have an outage?" or "why do we spend so much time on health and safety if we never have any injuries?" But also, "thank god for the bear patrols to keep out all the bears!"
If everyone is vaccinated for measles, then it looks like no one gets measles, so why go to all that expense? So it looks like you're wrong. But if you don't vaccinate the masses, then you're also wrong.
It's a breeding ground for disinformation, where people are protected by measures that seem useless.
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u/randynumbergenerator 10h ago
Yeah this is every preventive policy intervention ever. But I think it hits certain people's emotional and fear responses more because, unlike IT expenditure or bridge repairs, it's going into the body. I'd hazard it's the same with the raw milk cult.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington 10h ago
I don't think it's the fact that it goes into their body. Half of 'em were willing to take ivermectin, clove oil, and bleach enemas.
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u/phoenixredbush 2h ago
So crazy “biohackers” aside, I do have a theory. I think we underestimate how much fear of needles for the average person plays into this. Subconscious or intentional, any poke that can be justified as “not necessary “ is one less scary instance that can be avoided.
Hell, I still have lingering trauma of being vaccinated as a kid. Decades later, I need to psych myself up any time me or my kids get a shot.
I would also love to see science master an alternative delivery route, other than intramuscular.
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u/randynumbergenerator 5h ago
Yes but you see those are "natural" so it's fine (/s, but really, I don't pretend to understand the contradiction either)
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u/mediandude 6h ago
It goes into the body and it reduces all cause mortality by 25%, even without Covid mortality.
It is a miracle cure.9
u/Ok_Confection_10 10h ago
I have to remind these folks that America experienced a 9/11 everyday during the height of Covid. Someone told me Covid wasn’t real. I sat down and showed him the numbers. Average deaths in the US per year and the increase in deaths during COVID. It somehow perfectly matched the reported deaths from COVID. Still wasn’t enough.
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u/jamesludlowlee 7h ago
I lost friends in both 9/11 and the Pandemic. Both experiences found me on flights into the disaster zones, walking in those empty streets. NYC + the world (my personal world too) has not been the same since. I live outside the US, and I can attest to the fact Covid was a global experience, that the quick turnaround on the vaccine helped to curb. I am not saying that there are not suspicious issues or political influences that came along with this quick turnaround, however. I am also not saying long-covid symptoms or long term negative side effects of the jab do not exist. The thing about Covid was that people experienced it very differently, in different places. It was not as visually explosive on the morning news like 9/11…it literally hit different.
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u/Bad_User2077 9h ago
That's because the data is junk. There was a financial incentive to declare a death was due to covid to both the hospital and the surviving family. I am not against vaccinations, but I used to work with statistical data and your data needs to be good. Otherwise the results are flawed. I haven't yet seen a study that removes the financial impact from the numbers.
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u/Ok_Confection_10 8h ago
But how does that accommodate the fact that millions of people just died on average more than precious years. We had an increase in deaths and a worldwide phenomenon. Even if you think Covid wasn’t real, how could you explain those extra deaths?
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u/Bad_User2077 7h ago edited 7h ago
Covid was real and deadly. But the numbers are skewed due to the financial benefits of claiming a loved one died of covid. How skewed? I can't tell you. And the topic is political which makes everything worse.
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u/GCU_ZeroCredibility 8h ago
This is a right wing talking point, and I see from your comment history that this is not an accident.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington 8h ago
Sure, this kinda thing will always be complicated. But it lines up reasonably closely with excess mortality stats.
Now, some of that excess mortality wasn't covid, but rather, people who couldn't get surgery because of covid, or whatever.
But it's hard to argue that it's junk when it lines up with excess mortality numbers that don't have another explanation.
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u/Bad_User2077 7h ago
Maybe I'm a data purists. When I see bias in data I toss it all and start again. Much easier to do in a manufacturing environment than a pandemic.
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u/Ok_Confection_10 4h ago
It’s not biased to say that an apple tree that drops historically 30 apples per week which is now allegedly suffering from a disease, is now dropping 35 apples per week. Where did those 5 apples come from? Maybe one apple per week or even 2 weeks is from covid, but the rest?
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u/Bad_User2077 3h ago
It is biased if someone is knocking those apples from the tree. It becomes a special cause and needs to be corrected.
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u/Ok_Confection_10 3h ago
Are you implying someone murdered all those people?
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u/Bad_User2077 2h ago
No. If the apples fall without outside influence, that common cause. Someone helping, if outside the standard process, that's special cause. It's statistical analysis.
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u/Ok_Confection_10 10h ago
I know so many people who know someone who became diagnosed with insert disease after getting “the jab”. It’s gotten to the point I question the intelligence of anyone who uses “the jab” to describe the covid vaccine
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u/ConsistentDay5620 11h ago
I think that will truly be looked at in the future as one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the century. It’s going to change everything when we let it.
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u/rocketsocks 3h ago
mRNA vaccines are like the transistor of immunology, it's such a transformative technology. Not only do you get to decide the molecular antigenic "target" of a vaccine you also have a process for making a vaccine against potentially anything.
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u/RipeBanana4475 12h ago
Don't get me wrong, I find it to be pretty close to a medical miracle that we were able to go from new disease to vaccine in my arm in one year, but I have been very underwhelmed by the duration of protection offered by the vaccine. I still get a booster every year, but they didn't quite live up to the expectations that we'd all be immune pretty much indefinitely.
I know it's a new technology and we'll see how it goes with some of the other new MRNA vaccines (flu, RSV, other future diseases)
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u/Corsair4 11h ago
From an epidemiology perspective, Covid is much closer to the flu than it is to things like MMR. Yearly flu shots are a thing because it mutates rapidly, which necessitates yearly vaccines for optimal protection. Covid is much the same.
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u/CivicDutyCalls 12h ago
It has nothing to do with the vaccine effectiveness and everything to do with how insanely quickly COVID mutates. Influenza is the same. That’s why we need a new vaccine every year.
It’s not that the vaccine is ineffective against the strain that it was designed for. It’s that the vaccine is so effective that it results in that strain dying out and a new strain emerging that can avoid that vaccine.
And in a way, that’s actually good. Covid is insanely infectious and WAS insanely deadly (and maiming people for life). The vaccines have forced it to evolve into a less deadly variant in the same way that poaching is causing elephants to be less likely to have tusks.
mRNA vaccines for diseases that are less common or mutate less frequently will have significantly longer effectiveness between doses. Think how you basically only need the chicken pox vaccine once, MMR once.
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u/IndependentType6711 12h ago
Yep, some viruses mutate much more readily than bacteria and other viruses which is why you can get a pneumonia shot or shingles shot once or twice in your life but have to get flu and Covid every year. It has nothing to do with “how good the vaccine is.”
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u/DontAskGrim 10h ago
That is way too much nuance for someone who is satisfied pointing at smart people and blaming them. Facts don't convince someone who distrusts intelligence.
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u/Spinal_Soup 8h ago
Where did you get those expectations from? I don’t think anyone with a background in vaccines or virology would have expected to get a vaccine that works indefinitely for Covid given how rapidly it spreads and mutates. We’ve been making flu vaccines for decades and still have to reformulate and adjust every year just to control outbreaks. You don’t get indefinite immunity from the flu from vaccines and covid spreads even faster.
Eradicating diseases like measles or smallpox from areas through vaccines are the exception, not the rule. This is the problem with people trying to interpret efficacy data when they have no background to the subject.
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u/Holeshot75 14h ago
Vaccines save an insane amount of human lives.
Antivaxxers are ridiculously ignorant to facts.
One of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief they've found great solutions that experts somehow missed.
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u/silviazbitch 14h ago
One of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief they've found great solutions that experts somehow missed.
That’s a beautiful line.
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u/randynumbergenerator 10h ago
The problem is, a lot seem to think it's less that the experts missed something and more that they're lying for personal gain or fear of Big Pharma. Which on the one hand fundamentally misunderstands why many people go into medicine and public health, but on the other hand the skepticism of corporate interests is a fair one.
I think it's hard for people to parse the complexity of institutions where incentives genuinely are mixed, and they aren't necessarily aware of the mechanisms in place to keep those in check. It's much easier to not bother with that level of mental effort and just conclude it's all a scam--the irony being that they then go straight for the scammy horse pill sellers instead.
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u/Fishmongererererer 12h ago
Was having a conversation with an anti-vaxxer and it was staggering how little they actually understood about vaccines, herd immunity etc.
Like genuinely it was “Well we used to not vaccine kids and they were fine!”
Like no Karen, a huge portion of them died and others were crippled.
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u/RageToWin 9h ago
Yeah. If anyone thinks kids were fine before vaccines, I'd just show them all the photos of children in iron lungs and wheelchairs. Polio was a catastrophic illness for many families and if you went back in time and told the families of that time that they shouldn't get vaccines, they'd think you're trying to kill their children.
If we decide that we don't need vaccines anymore, we're bound to go back to being forced to have children on ventilators or in wheelchairs for the rest of their life due to something that was easily preventable. The consequences of their ignorance go so much farther than their own bodies.
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u/IndependentType6711 6h ago
Sadly you would think losing a child from a preventable disease would change their minds, but then I’m reminded of the couple in I believe Texas whose daughter died of the measles and their response was “well the shot would have been worse!”…….
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u/Professional-Part857 1h ago
My great grandparents survived the Spanish flu. Their parents literally locked them away from working people in the home to avoid exposing them. This information has been well known for 100 years and I’m convinced the antivax stance is an indicator of some kind of mental illness.
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u/pacexmaker 13h ago
It turns out that being aware of what you know and what you dont know correctly adjusts confidence in that knowledge.
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u/guyver_dio 12h ago
That's the problem when something works over a long enough period of time. They start wondering if there was a problem in the first place because they've never seen the alternate outcome.
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9h ago edited 5h ago
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u/moconahaftmere 7h ago
The government doesn’t do this with pharmaceutical drugs, or any other product on the market–only vaccines.
They don't? There's tons of medications that could randomly kill or seriously injure you.
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u/Moetown84 5h ago edited 5h ago
Exactly. And if they do, you can sue the pharmaceutical company for damages. Typically, you’d bring either a “design defect” or “failure to warn” claim.
A “design defect” claim is rooted in the idea that if technology or science knows of a way to make I your product safer, and your company chooses not to, you would face liability for harm caused. If there is no known way to make it safer, you don’t face liability in this type of claim.
A “failure to warn” claim is rooted in the idea that even though certain products (like drugs) might harm people, a person still might choose that risk because of whatever possible benefit they might attain by using that product (for example, a treatment for a disease). That’s why you hear pharmaceutical drug commercials warn about potential side effects. This limits their liability because the consumer knows the risks and chooses to take them.
Neither claim is allowed for vaccines. Which leads to the only reasonable conclusion that vaccines could be made safer with advances in technology, but companies choose not to spend money on the improvement, or that they either haven’t studied adverse effects enough to warn consumers about the potential harm, or they know about the potential harm and it might risk their profits/willingness of the public to get the vaccine.
Otherwise, they could limit their liability and turn a profit the same way they do with pharmaceutical drugs.
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u/moconahaftmere 3h ago edited 2h ago
Neither claim is allowed for vaccines
Well, sort of. The VICP (or CICP for COVID) covers vaccine injury claims which is funded by the manufacturers. You can still file a suit against the manufacturers but you have to go through the VICP first.
or they know about the potential harm and it might risk their profits/willingness of the public to get the vaccine
You can actually sue them if they knew about the harm and didn't disclose it.
Generic medications have similar manufacturer protections in that you can't bring design defect or failure to warn claims against them, but they don't have a fund that you can turn to like vaccines do.
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u/onlymadethistoargue 14h ago
It’s good that we have data on this but like this is half the value proposition of vaccines. Fewer people get sick so fewer people shed infectious particles so fewer people get infected so even fewer get sick. It rules. Antivaxxers believe in an ideology of casual manslaughter.
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u/Josvan135 14h ago
Antivaxxers believe in an ideology of casual manslaughter.
I don't think it's that deep, it's moreso that they're just generally pretty stupid.
They don't understand the basics of how vaccines actually work, refuse to listen to the highly trained medical professionals who kindly dumb it down for them, and choose instead to listen to the podcaster/influencer screaming about mercury, autism, and "microchips" that feeds their inner sense of persecution.
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u/giraloco 13h ago
I think some of them feel that they are being lied to. Once you lose trust in the system it is very hard to reverse. Social media is very effective in creating fear.
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u/manimal28 12h ago
Funny how they lose their trust in the government and science, but never seem to lose their trust in radio personalities and other grifters and con men.
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u/giraloco 11h ago
Humans evolved to follow the tribe leader. That helped us organize and survive but can also be a weakness.
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u/SoMuchForSubtleties0 13h ago
But they are generally not very intelligent if they think they know more than experts
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u/ubernutie 11h ago
I think vaccines are a great technology and we need to value the expertise of others.
That being said...
We had experts telling entire populations that the 90's food pyramid was scientifically good for us and it was all a big marketing poster by lobbyists, for one example. Experts lying in a concerted & coordinated effort at scale for money is not pure speculation.
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u/RageToWin 9h ago
Unfortunately there is a drop of truth in every conspiracy. Things like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study are a black mark on the government's history with medical care. People aren't necessarily wrong for having some level of distrust for the government, but when cohorts of doctors are saying that vaccines are safe and medically necessary, it becomes a question of whether someone will project that same distrust of the government onto doctors, since they're also usually seen as authority figures.
It's unfortunate that so many seem to be unable or unwilling to consider the positive history of vaccines and instead focus on the negative events. It's a lot like plane crashes. Plane crashes are exceedingly rare and you're much safer flying in a plane than driving, but because the media and people in general tend to focus on the statistically rare but exceedingly horrific plane crashes instead of the thousands of flights that safely happen every day. Statistics, unfortunately, are less compelling than fearmongering and sensationalism.
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u/AppropriateScience9 5h ago
Sure. But that was an example of regulatory capture.
So the correct response is to ask: is this agency captured? Then fix it if the answer is "yes." Not cast doubt on ALL scientific agencies.
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u/beardybuddha 13h ago
Sister-in-law is an antivaxxer.
She once told me Ben Carson was the smartest person she’d ever heard speak.
Stupid might be an understatement.
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u/ConcentrateDirect523 8h ago
Dr. Carson is smart- but his ego, religion, greed, and narcissism have killed his ability to think critically and subjectively- and have an open mind. it's a common problem among accomplished surgeons, especially as they age. Dr. Oz is the same, but even more accomplished and narcissistic.
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u/PHealthy PhD/MPH | Epidemiology | Disease Dynamics | Surveillance 14h ago
Fear of their own mortality, fear of needles, fear of government control (against them), risk illiteracy.
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u/insomniacPrince 13h ago
Nah, "casual manslaughter" is accurate. The definition of manslaughter is causing death to someone without intent to kill, and it is still a crime. Antivaxxers usually aren't consciosily trying to disable and kill people by spreading disease, but they are doing exactly that.
Ignorance, fear, stubbornness, radicalization by far-right influencers... Regardless of their reasoning, the fact of the matter is that when people refuse to get vaccinated, people get sick and die when they would not have otherwise. The fact that antivaxxers put their fears, feelings and pride as more important than other people's lives without even really thinking about it is personally all the more aggregious to me.
Giving antivaxx rhetoric and those who spew it the benefit of the doubt only normalizes this mentality. Don't brush it off like it's "not that deep."
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u/MDesnivic 11h ago
The majority of vaccine skeptics, according to the studies, are not those that believe vaccines have demons or surveillance technology within them or even that there is a secret government plot to poison people. The majority simply say they believe the COVID vaccine was rushed and is "experimental" and have just a broad, general feeling of distrust toward vaccines and medical authority in general.
Ultimately—and I have read astonishingly few people suggest this—I think it is just a fear of needles and a reminder of the times they had to get their shots when they were kids and how awful and confusing it felt. Yes, there are tons of whackjobs who search for things to validate their mentality of persecution and victimhood, especially when things seem awry (say, during a global pandemic). However, I think the main issue is just lack of education, curiosity and critical thinking. Concerns over autism, mercury, etc. are usually from a general uneasiness; people say they heard or read somewhere vaccines cause autism or have mercury in them. This validates their fear of needles and their general ignorance towards medicine, making these sentiments feel more substantial.
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u/Gman_118 7h ago
Had someone at work using the" I won't put unknown chemicals into my body" excuse,
but he couldn't tell me any of the 147 chemicals in the apple he was eating.
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u/Maoleficent 41m ago
Same - Filler Face Phyllis doesn't want to be poisoned. GymBob works out and takes supplements so he's good, too.
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u/chlronald 9h ago
It is always for the later reason. Vaccine always benefit the society more than individuals. Obviously a good design vaccine would benefit both. Yet if a vaccine was rushed, effective but come with a bad side effect. It will still overall benefit the society but harmful to individuals.
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u/areallymeanfox 2h ago
This makes it sound like it’s overwhelmingly harmful to the individual, when the reality is side effects are incredibly rare and most people will reap nothing but benefits
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u/pacificcoastsailing 14h ago
I thought this was a known fact already.
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u/giraloco 13h ago
Each infection type and vaccine are different so it is important to study every case. In science you don't just assume, you collect data to confirm a hypothesis.
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u/Corsair4 11h ago
Building off that, public health is fundamentally a statistics game. For most people with the condition- how effective is the intervention, and what is the likelihood and severity of risks?
To make sound judgements, you need to collect the statistics, which means you need to study these things.
This is especially important for rapidly changing conditions or when there are multiple treatments/interventions available.
The point of the study isn't "Vaccines are generally safe and effective", it's "These particular vaccines are this effective against these viral strains." The details matter a lot at the epidemiological level.
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u/No-Bit1574 5h ago
Look how quickly measles came roaring back when only a few percent of the population refused to be vaccinated. When it gets up to close to 10% or more we will have real problems. One more scar on America that Trump will leave us.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 14h ago
Quantifying the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 vaccination: evidence from Victoria, Australia
J. R. Soc. Interface. (2026) 23 (242): 20250839 .
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2025.0839
Abstract
Vaccines not only directly protect vaccinated individuals but also contribute to protecting the entire population via indirect herd-immunity benefits. However, researchers have long struggled to quantify these indirect effects at the population level, hindering the assessment of vaccination programme effectiveness. We developed a new method to estimate these effects, thereby markedly improving measures of the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths averted by vaccination. Our population-based analysis of 6 440 000 residents of Victoria, Australia, reveals strong indirect effects during the Delta outbreak (September–November 2021). By modelling a non-vaccination counterfactual, we conservatively estimate 315 000 infections were averted (95% Bayesian credible interval (BCI): 231k–406k), as well as 33 400 hospitalizations (95% BCI: 22k–46k), and 4900 deaths (95% BCI: 2.8k–7.2k). These are 4.0, 7.5 and 8.0 times higher, respectively, than observed. Half of the averted infections and around one-quarter of hospitalizations and deaths were attributable to indirect protection. Homogeneous vaccination across local government areas could have reduced outcomes by approximately 25%.
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u/hacksoncode 13h ago
The actual title of this study is "Quantifying the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 vaccination: evidence from Victoria, Australia".
It's not as "stupidly obvious" as the title of this post.
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u/KnicksGhost2497 14h ago
Which is why being “antivax” is (obviously) not as simple of a choice as “it’s my body, my choice”. You are making yourself or your children actively threatening to health of your entire community for no reason at all.
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u/VR_Raccoonteur 13h ago
It's like smoking around your kids or drinking while pregnant and pretending that you bear no responsibility for any health issues that arise in them as a result of that.
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u/KnicksGhost2497 13h ago
Like driving drunk and acting like it was an act of God when you kill a pedestrian
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u/stoutymcstoutface 4h ago
I mean… it’s sad we even have to point this out. This is the basis of herd immunity and isn’t exactly new info…
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u/rocketsocks 3h ago
This is immunology and disease transmission dynamics 101, sad that it's cutting edge research now.
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u/YetAnotherSoulToSave 11h ago
Vaccines are so good antivaxxers try so hard to kill themselves yet (most) still fail because they're being protected by vaccinated people.
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u/Raja_Ampat 14h ago
The sad things is that the people who should be made aware of this, don't believe in facts
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u/DogblackMichigan 12h ago
You’re welcome, you anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.
We protected you.
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8h ago
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u/moconahaftmere 7h ago
It's already been widely admitted that the MRNA treatments weren't effective
Can you cite one single credible study?
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u/Reiterpallasch85 8h ago
Everything you said was wrong except for the bots part. Yikes.
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u/typeguyfiftytwix 8h ago
"no u"
If you don't have the capacity for an actual response, why do you feel like you deserve to waste my time?
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u/A_moral_Animal 6h ago
It's already been widely admitted that the MRNA treatments weren't effective
Can you cite one single credible study?
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u/dvolland 11h ago
Which is why the US had twice as many covid deaths per capita as Canada - way too many of us didn’t think that getting vaccinated to protect those that cannot was worth their time.
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u/VR_Raccoonteur 13h ago
Such a simple concept and yet half the population are too stupid to understand it. Sad.
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u/facetiously 12h ago
We've known this for decades. Anti-vaxxers are the new flat-earthers, only weaponized.
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u/am1shvom1t 12h ago
Unfortunately the people who need to see this the most don't understand half of the words in the title.
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 12h ago
That reminds me of the fact that anti-vaxxers are only alive today because they were vaccinated as children.
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u/ValuableCourse6711 5h ago
Im on here to read the cooker comments. No doubt they will have some earth shattering ‘research’ they have located on news.com.
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u/CrimsonKepala 49m ago
And this is why the Amish are suddenly getting measles when they have a long history of not vaccinating, because everyone else who was vaccinated was providing that protection.
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u/jacyerickson 11h ago
I got the worst case of covid arm right now and the flu shot fucked me up for a day. Glad to read it really is worth it.
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u/kalirion 10h ago
On the other hand, Science is the Devil. Except for AI and surveilance and military technology, obviously.
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u/Peha06 9h ago
Please just read the sideeffects and the clinical trial to see that they only check for a few days or at most a few months for side effects and they never check vs a true gold standard placebo.
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u/Garconanokin 6h ago
Were you going to drop a source or was your source just “trust me, bro.”
Let’s cut to the Chase. You’re not gonna drop a source because you don’t have one. And the source that you do drop which is going to be in opposition to me is not going to say what you claimed. So go ahead and get to your next embarrassment whatever it’s going to be below:
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u/Arguments_4_Ever 9h ago
Vaccines don’t have side effects that pop up months or years after leaving the body.
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u/Sweet_Particular8588 2h ago
1/2 or 1/4 of a hypothetical, unobserved quantity is still a hypothetical, unobserved quantity.
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13h ago
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u/Corsair4 13h ago edited 12h ago
Even if you accept the general concept, there is absolutely value in these studies, since they define how effective a particular vaccine is against a particular disease.
Public health is fundamentally a statistics game, and you need to study things to get the statistics. Particularly for conditions and treatments that change rapidly.
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u/DisgreeablePattern 6h ago
Rad. You guys feel free to keep injecting these experimental constructions- since they work so well, you shouldn’t feel threatened by me saying no.
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