While I strongly believe in vaccines, I note that the Dallas, Texas (USA) area has seen similar improvements, and we’re hardly a high-vaccination area. Vaccines surely help, but there seems to be an additional force beyond 1. vaccination rates and 2. natural immunity that could be inferred based on data-informed infection rates. Almost every pandemic measure has been eliminated in Texas the past two months, and the fatality, positivity, and hospitalization rates have kept going down. (The state has prevented local jurisdictions from extending measures.)
My guess is that asymptomatic infection rates may have been far higher than what the professionals believe or herd immunity happens at considerably lower levels than believed. I don’t know how else to explain this.
For backup, here’s various plots I’m making from official state data. The hospitalizations are probably the most reliable metric, and like the other metrics, they are just falling off a cliff. https://www.arencambre.com/covid-19-stats-for-dallas-and-tex...
There is actually more interesting things going on here then the title suggests.
They split this small city into 4 and offered each section vaccines at a different time to get a better real-world test of the exact herd immunity point.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04747821
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-pandemic-ser...
Is this surprising? That’s right in line with the expected herd immunity threshold for the sars-cov2.
Epidemiology works.
Pretty impressive result for a vaccine that's been shown to barely have the 50% efficacy threshold to make the cut (and with doubts about its results due to no releasing of trial data). Shows high promise for countries using mRNA vaccines.
The article doesn’t mention how much natural immunity exists in the community, which is presumably high given the large outbreaks in Brazil.
Is there a study which has calculated a more precise herd immunity threshold, taking this effect into account?
This seems like good news for a country like Bahrain. It’s unfortunate that the Chinese vaccine isn’t as effective as the competition (such that the current ~50% deployment isn’t enough), but getting to 75% is a realistic goal still.
Let's hope to see more studies like this. Here in Hong Kong there is a prevailing public view of the vaccines being too new and created too quickly esp the mRNA ones. Public don't understand that mRNA was decades in the making and is engineered which is why available so quickly. The cultivated traditional vaccines took a little longer due to process. But maybe now people will understand the importance of herd immunity because until that is achieved world wide then this pandemic will stay with us. I worry it will be like tuberculosis and hang around amongst the poor and dense populations, further reducing their chances for good quality of life in places with large populations,high density, and prevailing poverty.
I could make same headline about Czechia - COVID deaths plunge after less than 40% adults vaccinated and warm weather came
from 200+ deaths per day we are at <20 deaths
In 2021 are we supposed to be surprised to learn vaccines actually work?
I am _shocked_.
COVID deaths are plunging across the northern hemisphere, because of seasonality effects.
For example Ukraine has vaccinated only 2.3% of its population with at least one dose, but COVID cases are down 81% from peak and are continuing to decline.
This is a Chinese vaccine, probably looking for good western PR. Since the dates where omitted one can safely assume they timed the 2nd jab with the end if a flu season. A quick google shows this is March - April. Covid deaths spike during the flu season. They should realistically compare to average deaths for that time period, rather than comparing flu season deaths to non flu season deaths.
> Serrana, with 45,000 inhabitants
20 deaths in March/2021 to 6 in April/2021. When you go to see the stats since April/2020, you'll notice that there were full months with 0 or 1 death. [0]
Too soon, too small sample to draw such conclusions.
[0] For ex., search for "Serrana" in this site: https://especiais.gazetadopovo.com.br/coronavirus/casos-no-b...
edit: typo, should be "april/2020"