Why Vaccinated People Are Getting 'Breakthrough' Infections

[hookaleft]

A wedding in Oklahoma leads to 15 vaccinated guests becoming infected with the coronavirus. Raucous Fourth of July celebrations disperse the virus from Provincetown, Mass., to dozens of places across the country, sometimes carried by fully vaccinated celebrants.

As the Delta variant surges across the nation, reports of infections in vaccinated people have become increasingly frequent — including, most recently, among at least six Texas Democrats, a White House aide and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The highly contagious variant, combined with a lagging vaccination campaign and the near absence of preventive restrictions, is fueling a rapid rise in cases in all states, and hospitalizations in nearly all of them. It now accounts for about 83 percent of infections diagnosed in the United States.

But as worrying as the trend may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts said, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/health/coronavirus-breakthrough-infections-delta.html

[Skittles]

1. keep masking, people

IT AIN'T OVER

[Liberal In Texas]

4. I just purchased more masks.

The ones we've been using for a year and a half are wearing out. I thought in late winter and early spring with things getting better we'd be done with masks pretty soon. But it is not happening.

[Skittles]

5. same

I ordered some KN95s

I think the CDC has really lost credibility with this issue.

[agingdem]

7. the CDC assumed the entire population would be

vaccinated by now...they never anticipated the attack of the FOX anti-vaxxers...as for breakthrough and the covid vaccine...the vaccine was never intended to be a preventative...no vaccine is...the flu/pneumonia/shingles vaccines don't guarantee no infection..but symptoms are minimal and manageable...and that's all we can expect..

[Skittles]

8. if they didn't anticipate the FOX anti-vaxxer component

they are stupid beyond belief

[agingdem]

9. exactly...

very Mary Poppins..

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Especially since a strong antivax campaign was already happening.

[Skittles]

14. I think they just counted on people doing the right thing

which is just utterly RIDICULOUS

[Crunchy Frog]

16. Especially given what the entire country had witnessed

over the course of the previous year.

[Skittles]

17. CORRECT

those people who stormed the Capitol, for example, really thought they would accomplish something!

[OhioChick]

24. This n/t

[Deminpenn]

2. Vaccines are working as shown in the clinical trials

Somewhere around 5% of vaccinated people will contract SARS-CoV2, but they will either be asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms. Only a very, very few will end up with sick enough to require hospitalization.

The "breakthrough" infections represent this 5 or so percent of vaccinated people.

[roamer65]

10. This.☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[Crunchy Frog]

15. That doesn't explain why entire, vaccinated family groups are getting it.

Like in this account.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/covid-delta-variant-risk-vaccinated-breakthrough-cases.html

Similar things have happened to people we know personally.

I think it's going to emerge that breakthrough infections with Delta are occurring at a much higher rate than what we're being told.

[Deminpenn]

18. Again, anecdotal evidence

The link is mostly speculation and what-ifs. Ironically, it confirms what we know that some people will get SARS-CoV2 despite being vaccinated.

AFAIK, Vaccine trial participants are still being regularly tracked. Additional data will come from that effort.

Further, the PCR tests used to determine if a person has SARS-CoV2 are so sensitive that a person can have a positive result even if they have dead virus cells or fragments of cells. The PCR tests cannot determine viral "load", just that virus DNA/RNA is detected.

[LisaL]

19. One is not going to have dead virus if that virus wasn't alive at some point.

I wouldn't blame it on PCR tests.

[LisaL]

20. I totally agree.

Delta appears to be breaking through vaccines at a higher rate than what we are being told.
We have groups of people being infected, despite being fully vaxxed, like TX democrats that flew to DC.
Six of them now have covid.
I would like to see more recent studies for June/July on what the numbers are. Don't start counting in December, almost nobody was vaccinated back then.

[DemocraticPatriot]

21. The breakthrough rate with that vaccinated group of Texas legislators

who flew to Washington is now 10%-- 6 out of 60.


Getting vaccinated should never have been presented as the "cure" for masks and social distancing.

[Celerity]

23. no vaccine has a 95% efficacy rate against Delta in terms of preventing infection

Somewhere around 5% of vaccinated people will contract SARS-CoV2

except (so far, I must emphasise this, there are other vaccines in multiple pipelines that may, hopefully, soon equal or pass it up) perhaps the extremely limited rolled-out (again, so far, that hopefully rapidly changes soon) experimental Moderna variant tweaked mRNA-1273.351 vax that my wife and I have been in a trial for since April/May (and the final numbers for it are not in yet, but they told us today at a blood draw that initial numbers looked to be very high versus Delta (as the original mRNA-1273 vax performed better against Delta than the other variants in terms of antibody titers, B cells, etc etc) and 96% or more efficacy versus Beta (the South African B.1.351 variant that it was designed to combat, as the original Moderna mRNA-1273 vax struggled against Beta more than any other variant) and also against Gamma (the Brasilian P.1 variant)

more detail here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15651839


AstraZeneca (60% up to 67% efficacy so far after 2 shots, 33% after one) and J&J (similar in architecture to the AstraZeneca vax, and because it is a single jab, an early, not yet peer-reviewed study is showing a similar efficacy rate v Delta rate as the AZ vax after one jab) are not stellar (although absolutely better than nothing, obviously, and do massively reduce death and severe cases), for instance, are nowhere near 95% in terms of prevention of infection

[uponit7771]

27. I don't think that was CDC's goal either it was hospitalizations and deaths the vax wasn't

... supposed to be inoculation and that's why the CDC isn't tracking breakthroughs for the vaxed just hospitalizations and deaths for the vaxed.

[Celerity]

32. I was replying to this, which was a statement about efficacy in terms of infections

Somewhere around 5% of vaccinated people will contract SARS-CoV2

and is not at all borne out by the data, due to different types of vaccines and their interactions with all the myriad numbers of variants and their subtypes. It would be true if the only vaccines out there were the 2 mRNA jabs and there were no real mutations from the origin strain, but that horse left the barn over a year ago.

[uponit7771]

26. THIS !!!! ☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾

[stillcool]

3. More than 97% are unvaccinated

that makes me feel better. In so many ways.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. I Can See Why

It's actually pretty remarkable efficacy!
But, accentuating the positive doesn't make a good headline.
Like the headline yesterday saying 45% of cases (in Massachusetts, I think) were breakthrough cases.
But, the state is about 70% vaxxed.
So, the breakthrough cases are still disproportionately low.

[agingdem]

11. breakthrough...I hate that word..

these aren't "breakthrough" infections...the vaccine was never intended to be a preventative...just like the flu/shingles/pneumonia vaccines..we're going to get the infection but when we do symptoms will be mild to manageable ... not sucking oxygen through a ventilator...and that's all we can expect

[ProfessorGAC]

13. I Buy That

No manufacturer ever said 100%, either.
It's not a miracle, just a most effective moderator of a deadly illness.
So, the fact that some people get infected is no surprise.

[uponit7771]

28. RIGHT !!! I don't know why "breakthrough" got into the conversation looking at the fact the vaxes

... weren't meant to be an inoculation against infection mostly hospitalizations and deaths.

[mucifer]

31. Breakthrough should be considered serious cases and deaths

[uponit7771]

38. Most vaccines save a few have breakthrough cases I don't know why covet cases are being treated diff

[womanofthehills]

22. But in 5 days, Mass reported an additional 1000 cases

5 days ago Mass was reporting 4,000 cases of vaxed getting Covid and today it’s over 5,100 with 80 dead and 272 hospitalized. Not good. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/more-than--breakthrough-covid-cases-reported-in-mass-at-least--have-died/ar-AAMnNfc

[uponit7771]

29. That tracks BETTER than what's expected, 5100 cases out of nearly 5 million vaccinated in 7 months

That's lower than .1%

Of course CDC isn't tracking breakthroughs but they're tracking deaths and hospitalizations and its sad to see the deaths but the vaxes are doing better than what was called for.

The vaxes weren't inoculations against the virus but mainly death and hospitaliation.

[LisaL]

25. Breakthrough infections are not a tiny percentage.

"In fact, during the month of June, 20% of all newly reported COVID infections in the county occurred among people who had been fully vaccinated. That was up from 11% in May and 5% in April. But Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the increase is normal given the continued rise in the number of people who are getting fully vaccinated."

https://abc7.com/breakthrough-cases-la-county-covid-update-los-angeles-coronavirus-rates/10904402/

[uponit7771]

30. CDC isn't tracking breakthrough in the US because vax wasn't intended to be a preventative IINM.

[LisaL]

33. That's just not true.

Ideally vaccinations would prevent infections.

[uponit7771]

34. Then the flu vaccine is worthless using that logic seeing its efficacy at prevention is only 50% on

... a good year.

No, these vaccines were never a preventative from the start the CDC's goals are still being meet even though the infection efficacy is lower with Delta

[LisaL]

35. Nobody sets up to create a vaccine that doesn't prevent infection.

NT

[uponit7771]

36. Of course not, that doesn't have to be the goal from the outset though and I never read CV vaxes ...

... were inoculations against CV-19 like Polio vaxes are.

Polio 99.9% from getting Polio at all, I don't see that as the goal for CV vaxes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2021/07/21/covid-vaccine-breakthrough-infections/

“Breakthrough infections are to be expected, even when you have highly effective vaccines,” said Roy M. Gulick, chief of infectious disease at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. To understand why is to understand what vaccines are, and are not, capable of.

[Crunchy Frog]

37. Flu vaccine is not comparable. It's well known to be hit or miss because

There are always multiple strains (as in, distinct viruses, not variants) in circulation, and they have to try to estimate which strains will be active ahead of time, which they often get wrong. When they predict accurately, the vaccines are extremely effective. This is less significant than it is for Covid, since flu has a vastly lower rate of morbidity and mortality.

The Covid vaccine is specifically engineered to protect against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and yes, it was always intended to prevent active, symptomatic infection, and studies soon demonstrated that it prevented infection period, in the vast majority of cases. This is increasingly proving not to be the case with Delta.