Thursday, August 19, 2021

Vaccine effectiveness 66% against Delta infection

"The COVID-19 vaccines are extremely effective at preventing serious illness, hospitalization, and death."

The article starts out with a hopeful tone. Then they go on to show that being vaccinated reduces your risk of hospitalization by 3.7x and risk of infection by 2.9x (no controls for differing behavior, of course). That's 73% effectiveness against hospitalization and 66% against infection. Historical data on the site show those numbers have been dropping.

I am very happy to have that level of protection, but it is nowhere near the 98-99% effectiveness repeated (without data) in other places. And it is no excuse for relaxing your behavior because you think your vaccine will protect you. We are in the biggest wave yet, everyone should be masking, social distancing, avoiding school as hard as we EVER have.

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/vaccine-status.htm