Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

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(Reuters) - Nearly a year after COVID vaccines became freely available in the U.S., one fourth of American adults remain unvaccinated, and a picture of the economic cost of vaccine hesitancy is emerging. It points to financial risk for individuals, companies and publicly funded programs.

Vaccine hesitancy likely already accounts for tens of billions of dollars in preventable U.S. hospitalization costs and up to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, say public health experts.

For individuals forgoing vaccination, the risks can include layoffs and ineligibility to collect unemployment, higher insurance premiums, growing out-of-pocket medical costs or loss of academic scholarships.

For employers, vaccine hesitancy can contribute to short-staffed workplaces. For taxpayers, it could mean a financial drain on programs such as Medicare, which provides healthcare for seniors.

Some employers are looking to pass along a risk premium to unvaccinated workers, not unlike how smokers can be required to pay higher health premiums. One airline said it will charge unvaccinated workers $200 extra a month in insurance.

“When the vaccines emerged it seemed like everyone wanted one and the big question was how long it would take to meet the demand,” said Kosali Simon, a professor of health economics at Indiana University. “It didn’t occur to me that, a year later, we’d be studying the cost of people not wanting the vaccines.”

Alicia Royce, a 38-year-old special education teacher in Coachella, California, opted out of getting the COVID vaccine or having her two vaccine-eligible children get it. Royce’s parents got the shots, but she has been concerned by issues including reports of adverse reactions.

The decision puts Royce in a delicate spot. Her school, like others in California, began a vaccine mandate for staff last year. For now, Royce has a religious exemption and gets tested for COVID twice a week before entering the classroom. The situation has prompted her family to plan a move to Alabama, where schools have not imposed mandates, after the school year.

“I’ll get paid less,” said Royce, who expects to take a $40,000-a-year pay cut. “But I’m moving for my own personal freedom to choose.”

PREVENTABLE CARE, BILLIONS IN COSTS

As the pandemic enters its third year, the number of U.S. patients hospitalized with COVID is near a 17-month low. Most Americans are vaccinated, and the country is regaining a semblance of normalcy, even as authorities predict a coming uptick in infections from the BA.2 sub-variant.

Yet as millions return to offices, public transportation and other social settings, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show nearly 25% of U.S. adults haven’t been fully vaccinated, and the latest data suggests many holdouts won’t be easily swayed: The number of people seeking a first COVID vaccine in the U.S. has fallen to 14-month lows.

Vaccines have proven to be a powerful tool against the virus. CDC figures from 2021’s Delta wave found that unvaccinated Americans had four times greater risk of being infected, and nearly 13 times higher risk of death from COVID. The disparities were even greater for those who received booster shots, who were 53 times less likely to die from COVID. Less than half of the country’s vaccinated population has so far received a booster.

In a December study, the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks U.S. health policy and outcomes, estimated that between June and November of 2021, unvaccinated American adults accounted for $13.8 billion in “preventable” COVID hospitalization costs nationwide.

Kaiser estimated that over that six-month period, which included the Delta wave, vaccinations could have averted 59% of COVID hospitalizations among U.S. adults. Kaiser tallied 690,000 vaccine-preventable hospitalizations, at an average cost of $20,000. And it estimated vaccinations could have prevented 163,000 U.S. deaths over the same period.

If vaccine hesitancy accounted for half of the more than 1 million new U.S. COVID hospitalizations since December, the added cost of preventable hospital stays could amount to another $10 billion, Reuters found.
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Omicron is trouncing the argument for “natural immunity” to COVID


So-called "natural immunity" against COVID-19 has always been a dodgy argument for avoiding vaccination during the pandemic. But amid omicron, natural immunity is clearly rubbish.

Unvaccinated people who recover from an omicron coronavirus variant infection are left with paltry levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron. They also have almost no neutralizing antibodies against any of five other coronavirus variants, including delta. People who were vaccinated before getting an omicron infection, however, have strong protection against all five variants, and they have some of the highest levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron.

That's all according to a new study surveying neutralizing antibody profiles in people who have all recovered from an omicron infection, with or without pre-existing immunity. The study was published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine by a team of Austrian researchers. The researchers were led by virologist Janine Kimpel of the Medical University of Innsbruck.

Overall, the findings highlight that omicron is "an extremely potent immune-escape variant that shows little cross-reactivity with the earlier variants," the authors conclude. As such, unvaccinated people who recovered from an omicron infection might not have protection from other variants. "For full protection, vaccination is warranted," they conclude.

The findings and conclusion are likely to rekindle discussion on the importance of "natural immunity," which is immune protection following an infection rather than vaccination.



FURTHER READING
No, your antibodies are not better than vaccination: An explainerPeople who oppose getting COVID-19 shots argue that their prior infections gave them equal—if not superior—immunity to the pandemic coronavirus compared with vaccination. However, experts repeatedly noted that, while past infection can offer protection, it is not always strong and can vary widely. Some people who recover from COVID-19 have weak defenses, particularly if they had mild infections. Vaccination, meanwhile, offers relatively consistent and high-level protection. Moreover, so-called hybrid immunity—getting vaccinated after an infection—offers some of the highest levels of protection.
Variants and vaccines
Still, the omicron wave has been the pandemic's golden age of confirmation bias for those who oppose vaccines. The ultratransmissible coronavirus variant is perceived as milder than earlier versions, and it can thwart defenses from vaccines, leading to more breakthrough infections. To some, this conflagration makes vaccines appear both less necessary and less useful.

But omicron is not a mild virus. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 146,000 people in the US have died of COVID-19 since January 1, when the omicron surge was well underway. By the end of January, the country saw a record high for hospitalizations, with a seven-day average of nearly 160,000 per day.

And vaccines have clearly been effective. People ages 12 and up who were vaccinated and boosted amid the omicron wave were 3.5 times less likely to test positive for COVID-19 and 21 times less likely to die of COVID-19.

The new study led by Kimpel adds further evidence for the usefulness of vaccines and their clear advantage over natural immunity. The researchers looked at neutralizing antibody levels in four groups of people who had recently recovered from an omicron infection: 15 vaccinated people; 18 unvaccinated people; 11 vaccinated people who had previously been infected (with wildtype, alpha, or delta variants); and 15 unvaccinated people who had been previously infected. The researchers looked at each person's neutralizing antibody levels against six variants: wildtype, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and omicron.


Enlarge / Neutralization Capacity of Serum Samples Obtained from Patients Who Recovered from Infection with the Omicron BA.1 Variant.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201607
The unvaccinated people fared the worst, producing a mean 50 percent neutralizing antibody titer of just 79.5 against omicron. The mean titer against omicron in vaccinated people was 680. Unvaccinated people also had low-to-negligible levels of neutralizing antibodies against the other five variants.

People who were in either the vaccinated group or the vaccinated-and-previously-infected group had the highest levels of protection against all six variants. People who were unvaccinated but had immunity from an infection prior to omicron had higher and broader protection than the unvaccinated group. However, antibody levels were more variable and lower overall than those seen in the vaccinated groups.

The study has limitations, such as the small group sizes. However, the data demonstrates that omicron infections do not provide broad immunity against coronavirus variants. It also bolsters earlier findings that past coronavirus infections don't provide the same consistent and high levels of protection as vaccination.
 
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newarkhiphop said:
:francis:
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i just stopped wearing my mask in public. :lupe:

infection rates are really low where i'm at so i'm gonna enjoy the mask free life while i can.
it's about 50/50 with the mask wearing from what i saw in the grocery store yesterday.
honestly, i'm torn about it. i'm triple vaxed btw.
 
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