Latest: Help. My neighbor I look after just came to me, "I've been exposed to Covid, can you ...

[Ms. Toad]

207. You don't have to choose.

The numbers represent different (but related) facts.

The problem is that far too many people are using them interchangeably - which gives people a false sense of security about how good the vaccines are.

They are extremely effective. But they are not perfect. And the nature of vaccine effectiveness is that as cases in the unvaccinated grow, the casese in the vaccinated also grow because the ratio stays the same (roughly 94%) For every 100,000 people who aren't vaccinated who get a serious enough case of COVID to be hospitalized, in a similar sized population of vaccinated individuals with the same exposure there will be 4000 people who get breakthrough cases serious enough to be hospitalized (because that's what a 94% effectiveness means).

That is not the same as saying for every 100,000 people who are vaccinated only 1 will get a serious enough case of COVID to be hospitalized.

As the cases go up, Dr. Fauci's numbers will stay (roughly) the same - 96% effectiveness in keeping vaccinated individuals out of the hospital means that as there are more unvaccinated cases there will also be more vaccinated cases.

The same is not true of Dr. Gupta's numbers - as cases go up (see what Dr. Fauci's number means as cases go up), more vaccinated people will get breakthrough cases which will cause the number of breakthough cases relative to vaccinated individuals will grow because there will be more cases - AND - the denominator (# vaccinated) will remain relatively stable.

This has nothing to do with being right - it has to do with trying desperately to make sure that people understand the risks so they can take appropriate steps. A 4/100 chance of being hospitalized with COVID (relative to unvaccinated individuals) feels (and is) significanty different than when someone falsely asserts that your chances of getting COVID are .001% (or 1/100,000). The latter is a measure of how many people HAVE gotten COVID - not a prediction of how many will have breakthrough cases. Breakthrough cases are rare right now largely because until very recently the COVID caseload was low overall. To assume the breakthrough rate, relative to # vaccinated, will remain static is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the data means - leading to a false sense of security - further increasing the number of breakthrough cases.