It is not because unvaccinated would pose a threat to others but because they are at risk of catching the disease from a vaccinated, infected but asymptomatic guest
Haven't read your link yet but I'd expect a double vaccinated 65 year old is still waaaaay more vulnerable than an unvaccinated 18 year old.
The study found that effectiveness dropped to 80% for patients over the age of 65, while for younger patients, the vaccines were 95% effective.
Let that sink in for a moment...
The best way to boost overall vaccine effectiveness is to extend it lower risk groups - healthy children and young people - regardless of whether they really need it or not.
For the low risk groups it's a small absolute risk reduction of hospitalisation, and extremely small absolute risk reduction of death. But given that herd immunity is now impossible to achieve, the long term impact on the high risk groups will be limited.
I expect what could see is stubbornly elevated hospitalization and deaths in the high risk groups :( Bad for them but also bad because the way that politicians trying to drive health policy under mistaken assumptions will react.
The opposite view was a mainstream media narrative last year, in that a suggestion as such was very widely reported:
'The rapid waning of antibodies did not necessarily have implications for the efficacy of vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials, Imperial’s [Wendy] Barclay said.'
“A good vaccine may well be better than natural immunity,” she said.
The problem of Ivermectin trials based in Latin American countries is that community Ivermectin use is so widespread, it becomes a major confounder in trials because most of the 'placebo' group could be using it.
'Latin America’s embrace of an unproven COVID treatment is hindering drug trials'
Hopefully it would be noted in the limitations section of the trial paper, but the writers of media articles are often polarized or biased and just cherry pick.
ETA, personally I would prefer small well designed trials from researchers with historical expertise who provide plenty of accompanying information and are willing to discuss the results, eg Chaccour et al:
'The effect of early treatment with ivermectin on viral load, symptoms and humoral response in patients with non-severe COVID-19: A pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial'
I emailed dang and he kindly unflagged it on request, but it got flagged again soon after. Maybe he can permanently unflag it?
He also said:
'I've unkilled it so you can respond now. It's not really on topic for HN though. Too much of a provocative opinion piece and not enough significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). That guarantees a flamewar, which we're trying to avoid on HN.'
I thought it was worth posting because it was written back in August 2020, so was quite prescient.
Please, if there is any misinformation in the article, tell us where it is.
IMO a number of high profile politicians and corporate media are also guilty of misinformation.
Eg 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'. This seems to equate no immunity with naturally acquired immunity, and must surely be misinformation, but much of the media is blind to it.
He states that '4% seropositive having symptoms after 12 weeks', but omits to mention that 2% of seronegative have symptoms after 12 weeks too...
Also he doesn't mention the 9%/10% rate split at 4 weeks, or the symptoms:
Tiredness, Headache, Congested or runny nose, Stomachach, Sleep disturbances, Cough
So he's making the case for child vaccination on the basis of 2 extra seropositive children having one or more of the above symptoms.
And, BTW, the study authors themselves note the limitations as follows:
'Limitations include the relatively small number of seropositive children, possible misclassification of some false seropositive children, potential recall bias, parental report of child’s symptoms, and lack of information on symptom severity.'
The study authors concluded that:
'Seropositive children, all with a history of pauci-symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, did not report long COVID more frequently than seronegative children. This study suggests a very low prevalence of long COVID in a randomly selected population-based cohort of children followed over 6 months after serological testing.'
