To Go Or Not To Go?

Hoo Boy- the vax vs. unvaxed debate once again. Please don’t continue and escalate as the words and feelings only get ‘uglier’ to no avail.
 
Yes but not as sick as unvaxxed.

from the CDC on that point:

"There is some evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick"
There is some evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.” CDC

"There is some evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.”
 
Perhaps it is best to ask the doctors themselves. Why not settle this argument and phone Centre Hospitalier de Bruyn in Gustavia, ask to speak to the head doctor (not the receptionist, not the nurse -- the head doctor), and then inquire about what percentage of admitted patients suffering from COVID-19 are fully vaccinated vs. unvaccinated? If the statistics on the island mimic those in North America and Europe, the answer you will receive will be that 90%+ are unvaccinated and that of those needing ICU level attention, 97%+ are unvaccinated.

With over 50% of the eligible population on St. Barts fully vaccinated, the statistics will speak for themselves.
 
Garykool81, I've been looking for those numbers from solid data sources but not finding it easy to find. I'm not doubting the truth of it, but would love a pointer to a good study or report if you have one. The thing that makes it not easy to compare is if only older people in a community are vax'ed then they may actually hospitalized at a greater rate than unvaxed young people who pretty much have no problem with Covid anyway.

Didier, of course vaccinated people can be spreaders as well. All too often vaccinated people think they are invincible and drop all their social distancing behaviors. We could do the math and say if a vaxed person is 1/10th as likely to catch the virus but behave in a way that is 10X riskier than an unvaxed person then the two people are equally dangerous to the community. What we need is 3 months of vaxing AND social distancing. Or at this point I'd be ok with 3 months of hugs and kisses for all and get the herd immunity up at whatever cost. Either way we would have the numbers down by Christmas.
 
instructive to look at infections and deaths data for 2 locations that ran into India variant (Delta) before US: India and UK.
you can see how long surge lasted in both cases and death toll.
 
I live in Vermont which has the highest vaccination rate in the US (85% 18 and up, >99% 65 and up) and yet we are seeing a huge spike. The new infections are almost all in the 15% unvaccinated. That tells me herd immunity isn't really working for us as this virus (Delta) is going to find you unless you are protected.
 
Garykool81, I've been looking for those numbers from solid data sources but not finding it easy to find. I'm not doubting the truth of it, but would love a pointer to a good study or report if you have one. The thing that makes it not easy to compare is if only older people in a community are vax'ed then they may actually hospitalized at a greater rate than unvaxed young people who pretty much have no problem with Covid anyway.

Didier, of course vaccinated people can be spreaders as well. All too often vaccinated people think they are invincible and drop all their social distancing behaviors. We could do the math and say if a vaxed person is 1/10th as likely to catch the virus but behave in a way that is 10X riskier than an unvaxed person then the two people are equally dangerous to the community. What we need is 3 months of vaxing AND social distancing. Or at this point I'd be ok with 3 months of hugs and kisses for all and get the herd immunity up at whatever cost. Either way we would have the numbers down by Christmas.

Hi. I was reviewing this report from the Washington State Department of Health that was published this week. Here's a link to the report and a summary of the findings:COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths in Persons Who Are Not Fully Vaccinated (wa.gov)

Summary Findings At a glance
• 96.5% of COVID-19 cases from February 1, 2021 – July 24, 2021 were not fully vaccinated
• 96.0% of COVID-19 cases from February 1, 2021 – July 24, 2021 who were hospitalized were not fully vaccinated
• 94.6% of COVID-19 cases from February 1, 2021 – July 24, 2021 who died from COVID-19 were not fully vaccinated
 
Excellent detective work Jeanette, thank you, thank you.

I read through the report and HATE that they can't resist oversimplifying the data in ways that create opportunities for critique, but we can still pull some useful results from it. (Two problems I have is that first, they combine age groups in their summary, which distorts the data since different ages behave very differently with this disease, and second they combined 4 month of data even the vaccination rate was very different over those months. But whatever, we can persevere.)

So, taking a single age group, 50-64 (mine!)
Percent of age group vaccinated 60%
Percent of covid cases in that age group who were vaccinated 4% (if the vaccine didn't work you'd see a 60% here.)
Percent of covid hospitalizations in that age group who were vaccinated 2% (the 4% dropping to 2% shows the infected vaccinated get less sick.)
Percent of covid deaths in that age group who were vaccinated 1% (the 2% dropping to 1% shows the sick vaccinated get less dead.)

That is the general pattern we were expecting, the vaccinated are getting sick much less commonly than the unvaccinated (about 1/15th the rate) and beyond that, is that the sick vaccinated are going to the hospital at half the rate of the sick unvaccinated (meaning if you do get sick, you won't get as sick) and then the vaccinated hospitalized are dying at half the rate of an unvaccinated hospitalized patient. Or an unvaccinated 50-65 year old is about 60 times MORE likely to die from Covid than a vaccinated person. As mentioned above, the data isn't exactly pure (Why Washington State, Why??), so the exact benefit isn't exactly these numbers but they are in the ball park.

The vaccine benefit exists for every age group if we parse them each out separately.

Q.E.D.
 
Sanjay Gupta has said rather than categorize as vaccinated and unvaccinated, he now says vaccinated and infected. He has suggested that 100% of the unvaccinated will become infected with Delta but having previously had Covid should help with immunity and severity.
 
"(pessimistically thinking it would be February 2023). Now, with the current outbreaks 2023 doesn't look good and we are not sure we will ever step foot on the island again"

Wow. Feb 2023 (a year and a half from now) "not looking good" is indeed somewhat pessimistic. Never again is a whole other level...
I hope you do get back some day soon

For our thought process:

We need to book 11 months in advance. Ideally we would like to book a February visit therefore, we would need to secure a villa in March. I am not overly interested in the current hoops that we would need to jump through (my wife already doesn't like me on travel days). I was hoping we would not have any major spikes in infection rates this summer.... which would hopefully lead to some hoops being removed.... but here we are, in the midst of another large spike.

My wife and I are in our mid 40's and we were both stabbed twice. Personally, I am not concerned with getting sick. I just don't want to have the added stress of all of the additional hoops.

What are we doing in the meantime...... saving the money we would have spent for future return to the island. Hopefully we can add and extra day or two to our visit.
 
that is my prediction as well. 2 months from inflection point to peak of infections. then precipitous decline.

Capture d’écran 2021-10-08 à 7.47.35 AM.png
Capture d’écran 2021-10-08 à 7.47.04 AM.png
 
mais ce qui est plus interessant a observer est le calme de l'autre cote..... Entre temps le professeur de marseille a bien prouve ses découvertes..... ca aussi c'est un "je te l'avais dis"....
 
Check airfare for April 2022. Jet Blue
Direct Boston to SXM, 10/16, one way $375
4/16 Boston to SXM with a layover, $2,000

We went in May. Did what we had to do, it was great
Going next Saturday, assuming we have negative test result, it will be great.
If positive result, odds are very high we will be fine, and will go in the Spring.
Waiting 2 and 3 years makes no sense to me, especially with a 79 year old husband.
 
I look forward to many more happy days on SBH with my 79 year old husband. Life is good!

Ahhh, St Barths.
 
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