stokesjokes wrote: ↑September 27th, 2021, 9:01 am
Yeah, they’d have to do random blood serum tests to get an idea of true case counts.
Now when you get into the asymptomatic cases side, this is where terminology has confused the issue. Yes, people who do not currently have symptoms can spread the virus. However, people not currently displaying symptoms can be separated into two clusters- presymptomatic and asymptomatic. Presymptomatic meaning that person will develop symptoms later on (incubation period up to 14 days before symptoms can show), while asymptomatic means symptoms do not develop. When this differentiation is made, we see very little evidence of asymptomatic spread (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/4/20-4576_article). The problem is, a lot of the reports have not made this distinction and have lumped in presymptomatic spread with asymptomatic spread under the umbrella of asymptomatic spread.
So even if vaccines are only turning cases milder and more asymptomatic, that should have a mitigating effect on spread, not to mention the individual health benefits of having a milder case.
Also, anecdotally, I don’t think it follows that vaccinated people would underreport cases. If anything, the people who have gotten the vaccine are more conscientious and careful.
That would be an interesting angle, but it looks like that study was based on all of 59 cases (where 13 of them were asymptomatic) from Feb-March of 2020. That seems to be a really small and early study to apply to the delta variant and asymptomatic cases that are asymptomatic because of a vax, at least in my mind. Maybe there's more data out there now, but this is why I'm no longer buying it. Every time I look at it from a purely data perspective (I admit, I haven't read a ton on this), it always seems to be a stretch or the stats are missing critical variables, sort of like the evidence for fat loss pills in an infomercial.
As far as your anecdote, I guess it's subjective. I'd say that people that get the vax are generally more likely to believe it works, that's why they got it. Someone who believes a vax works is not likely to immediately contradict that prior belief because they experience normal/mild cold symptoms. Especially early on, before there was this shift from the vax is 95% effective against the spread/inoculation of covid to it's 95% effective against serious disease and death (or whatever the % is).
This is my bird's eye view gut check: Delta is twice as contagious as the previous variant, granted. But, more than 50% of the population is vaxed. At the end of 2020, more than 1/3 of the entire country had a positive case (I couldn't find a YTD estimate for 2021 very easily, so I gave up). It's possible, but rare, to get covid twice. Add that all together and one does not land on 300% increase in new cases, Labor Day year over year, if the vax is even in the ball park of what we were hoping in terms of stopping the spread.