Do the vaccines work?
First question: do the vaccines work against death? This is easy enough to prove, and it’s easy to find a vaccine effect in the below graphs (note I do not show countries/regions like the Seychelles, Iceland, Vermont, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea, which never had real COVID waves, thus leaving behind lots of “dry tinder” for whom vaccines would always be hopeless -suffice it to say, with the minor exception of the Seychelles (where most cases and deaths were among those not fully vaccinated) their post-vaccination COVID waves were very small, both in terms of number of reported cases and deaths, and made barely any impact on excess mortality:
Guess when the vaccines were introduced. Note deaths now (with the Delta wave) are similar to those during the summer lull in 2020.
Guess when the vaccines were introduced. Britain is currently the sixth most boostered country on Earth. Britain (for reasons unclear) had a much harder summer lull than Massachusetts; I do not know its COVID policies, but they seem to have been more restrictive than those in the U.S.
Same deal. Other than Singapore and the UAE, Portugal has the highest percentage of fully vaccinated of any country in the world, and, therefore, had better outcomes than either Massachusetts or Britain. There seems to be a major difference in outcomes between countries like Czechia and Hungary (both around 60% of the population fully vaccinated) and countries like Portugal and Spain (87% and 80% of the population fully vaccinated, respectively), which either suggests the latter did a far better job at vaccinating the small proportion of the population that is responsible for so many bad COVID outcomes or that the vaccines still genuinely do work at reducing transmission (most plausibly by reducing the number of symptomatic cases). Since only 18% of COVID deaths in Britain are among the unvaccinated, and, yet, Britain (68.2% fully vaccinated) had .0265% of its population die of COVID between June 5 and December 5, 2021 while Portugal had .0146%, it’s clear that most of the difference between Britain and Portugal must be from vaccines reducing transmission, rather than Portugal vaccinating a greater share of the vulnerable population. Therefore, universal vaccine mandates are justified.
Here I tell you when the vaccines were introduced. Note the Dominican Republic had few effective COVID restrictions of any kind at any point in the pandemic, and had a record number of tourists in 2021, as well. The Dominican Republic did provide boosters to AstraZeneca and Sinovac recipients, but the country is neither unusually heavily vaccinated nor unusually heavily boostered. Its outcomes are thus very similar to Massachusetts and Britain, rather than (as with some other countries) being far superior to both of them.
Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina show the same pattern as the Dominican Republic. In contrast, sparsely vaccinated Bolivia is having a major outbreak.
Guess when the vaccines were introduced. Note that Chile used primarily less effective Chinese vaccines (2 doses Sinovac are roughly equal to one dose of Pfizer/Moderna) and had to deal with a more contagious variant than Alpha, so it took until vaccine doses per capita were nearly twice those in Massachusetts/Britain for the vaccines to have the same effect, and that was before any boosters. Chile is currently the most boostered country on Earth (AstraZeneca boosters given to Sinovac recipients -probably as effective as two doses of Pfizer), with Iceland (which had a zero COVID policy for a long time and is experiencing a very minor COVID wave right now) in second place. Boosters have certainly contributed to the vaccine effect in Chile and have helped blunt the effect of the Delta wave on deaths. Israel and Uruguay, which are not experiencing even minor COVID waves right now, are in third and fourth place, respectively.
Again, here I tell you when the vaccines were introduced. Note the lack of a Delta wave relative to many other countries (and the tendency of COVID cases to decline over time, rather than rise, as both the number of boosters and ordinary vaccinations grew, the latter to a truly dizzying height). The UAE is currently the fifth most boostered country on Earth. The UAE used Chinese vaccines, but to a lesser extent than Chile.
Again, here I tell you when the vaccines were introduced. As with the UAE, Uruguay also used Chinese vaccines, though to a lesser extent than Chile. Uruguay appears to have prevented the Delta wave using boosters, but its Gamma wave was suppressed using an ordinary high vaccination rate, before any boosters were issued.
San Marino had a fairly high excess mortality rate due to COVID, so it is interesting to see the (Sputnik V) vaccine effect in the time of Delta. As with the Western vaccines, Sputnik V was far less effective against Delta than against Alpha, particularly after November 14.
Israel seems to be the only real example of a country achieving a very high rate of two dose vaccination using Western vaccines, the vaccines partly failing against Delta (as they are failing now in much of Europe), and the country regaining victory against Delta using boosters.
Second question: is the vaccine effective against symptomatic cases? (asymptomatic cases are rarely tested, so cannot be counted -the only real way to figure out if vaccines prevent them is comparing COVID case and death rates among the vaccinated in regions with different vaccination rates)
The efficacy of two doses of Pfizer against symptomatic disease from Delta has variously been estimated as between 40% and 60%, with vaccination three months earlier reducing efficacy by maybe ten percent. I think it’s reasonable to think that the reduction in reported cases due to two doses of Pfizer is also around 40-60% when the entire population has been vaccinated (so it’s lower in reality). Relative to two doses, three doses have been shown to be 91% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, bringing the total efficacy against Delta of three doses relative to no vaccination to at least 95%. No wonder Israel has low COVID cases now, and, yes, Paul Offit was an idiot for being skeptical of boosters.
All in all (I do not show the graphs of cases; they’re all very low now), there seem to have been four countries on Earth which have suppressed Delta (i.e., unlike Massachusetts/Austria/Germany/Dominican Republic/San Marino) right now through vaccines (including, but not limited to, boosters): Cuba (three dose vaccine), Uruguay (extraordinary vaccination rate+large number of boosters), the United Arab Emirates (extraordinary vaccination rate), and Israel (large number of boosters). Who knows whether this will hold up against Omicron.
As for countries with low vaccination rates (such as South Africa, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Algeria, Bosnia, Kyrgyzia, and Bulgaria), they are well and truly fucked, to a far greater extent than Western Europe and the coastal American states are now.