Data from highly vaccinated countries suggests strongly that the answer is yes; vaccinated people are at higher risk of infection from Omicron.
alexberenson.substack.com
Watershed moment for the "progressive era"...
Fun fact, there was a "progressive" era around the turn of the last century too...what happened to it? People realized it was not the kind of progress they wanted and it disappeared.
Geez, can't believe people are really falling for this kind of stuff.
Comparing raw number is misleading. There are several reasons. For one, a country / city that has a very high vaccination rate will likely have less restriction, because the healthcare system is not overwhelmed. As such, it is not unusual for high vaccination city to have more cases, even on a per-capita basis. It's really about how draconian you want to get. China has one of the toughest rules about what their citizens can do. In raw number or even on a per-capita basis, they are arguably the best in the world, by a wide margin. But you want to live there where ANY community infection can quickly lead to lockdown? Where everyone is tracked and there is no personal liberty or privacy? In Hong Kong, EVERYONE entering the city is required to have a 21-day quarantine. Is that what we want in the U.S.? You fly from Chicago to Vegas, but you have to be quarantined inside a designated location for 21 days before you can go anywhere?
Second, when a place has a high vaccination rate, the data will be very much skewed. Say for example, in a city of 10000 people, 95% are vaccinated, and 5% not. Among the 9500 vaccinated, 1% got sick and needed to go to the hospital, so 95 people. Among the 500 who are unvaccinated, 10% got seriously sick, so 50 people. By comparing raw number, almost twice as many people in the hospital are vaxed, but it is actually 10x as likely you become seriously sick if you are unvaxed.
Third, never trust a chart where you cannot see the y-axis. You can artificially make charts look any way you like by fooling around with the y-axis. This is kindergarten stuff when it comes to lying with statistics.
Fourth, read the source! The great Alex Berenson shows charts on a Danish study that suggested vaccine effectiveness is negative after 90 days, and so Berenson used it as evidence against vaccination. Yet, if one would just actually click on the source and read what the author of the study says,
"In light of the exponential rise in Omicron cases, these findings highlight the need for massive rollout of vaccinations and booster vaccinations."
The researchers have a totally different conclusion!!! So, shall we trust the scientists who actually did the research, or the idiot who finds one chart that fit his narrative, and then promotes it without even understanding what that chart means? The funny thing about the vaccine-hesitant is that they love the "I'll do my own research" excuse, which is really about researching (hmmm, googling) whether there is some article/chart/link that supports his "Vaccine is useless" narrative. But the chart that they cite comes from experts who ACTUALLY DO THE RESEARCH, and they were saying their findings show a need of MASSIVE ROLLOUT OF VACCINATIONS AND BOOSTER. SMH.
Look, it's idiotic to blame the vaccine for not able to handle Omicron. The vaccine was developed against the first version of Covid-19, before Delta and Omicron. The efficacy was high, like 95%. Imagine an alternative universe where there is zero vaccine skeptic, and everyone is vax'ed as soon as it is available, then may be we won't even have Delta or Omicron. But in this imperfect world with misinformation, because so many people refused to vax, then we have more and more variants, which makes the original vaccine less effective, and then the same vaccine-skeptic blame the vaccine, not realizing that it was all their own self-fulfilling prophecy. It would be like an insecure girlfriend who always thinks her boyfriend would cheat on her, and so she excessively nag him and check on him, which scares him away, and thus she can say, "I KNEW IT!" and not even aware it was all her own making.
As for Omicron, maybe it is a blessing in disguise. Its death rate is much lower, esp. to those who are boosted. Since it is now becoming the dominant strain and seemingly won the Hunger Games among Covid variants, then maybe, just maybe, we can get our normal life back at some point if we can get the death rate to just like seasonal flu. Let's just hope for that. We are actually on the same team here.
