Credit: Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

Associate Professor Deepta Bhattacharya joined the University of Arizona status update on Monday, Oct 19, to highlight new vaccine research and discuss the controversial debate over booster shots.

Before the delta variant mutated from the original COVID-19, the coronavirus mRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had extremely high efficacy. Bhattacharya said the vaccines made people 20 times less likely to get infected than unvaccinated individuals. Delta lowered vaccine efficacy to where vaccinated individuals are now two to five times less likely to get COVID.

According to Bhattacharya, this is due to the delta’s high transmissibility. The delta variant is two to three times more transmissible than the original virus. Bhattacharya warned delta has completely changed the game for the unvaccinated.

“A year ago you might imagine that there were some scenarios if you’re careful if you mask, if you stay away from other people, you might be able to avoid the virus even if you hadn’t been vaccinated,” Bhattacharya said. “I don’t think with the transmissibility of delta as it is right now that is very likely, eventually, the virus will get you if you are not vaccinated.”

Pima County is still considered to be a highly transmissible area, according to the Pima County Health Department. Dr. Joe Gerald from the University of Arizona reported in his weekly COVID-19 update that as of Oct 3, the highest cases of infection are coming from the 15 to 24 age group. The lowest COVID cases are coming from the age group of 65 and older. This group has the highest rate of vaccination. 

New research is showing the vaccines are reducing transmission of the virus, including the delta variant. Bhattacharya said a contact tracing study revealed vaccinated individuals are two-thirds less likely than an unvaccinated person to transmit the virus to someone else. 

“If people are worried about rare side effects of the vaccine, the reality is that the virus is far more likely to cause problems than the vaccine,” Bhattacharya said.

As vaccine efficacy slips, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control are currently deciding on their recommendations for booster shots. The FDA formally recommended the Pfizer booster shots to people in high-risk categories on Sept 22. Six months after receiving both shots people 65 and older, people 18 and older at risk of severe COVID, or those with occupations who are exposed to COVID can receive a third booster shot.

Bhattacharya said the FDA and CDC met for advisory committees last week recommending Johnson & Johnson and Moderna booster doses for those high-risk categories. The FDA has not made a formal recommendation yet.

“As far as the boosters go we know the antibodies rise by a lot and that correlates reasonably well with the efficacy so your immune response revs up,” Bhattacharya said.

Mixed data on the boosters have made it difficult for the FDA to make a formal recommendation, however, they certainly reduce post-vaccination infections.

“The CDC director had a nice statement about this, ‘Walk, don’t run for that booster’,” Bhattacharya said.

This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2021.

9 replies on “UA health official: Unvaccinated ‘very likely,’ to get COVID, thanks to delta variant”

  1. Most unvaccinated are getting covid from the vaccinated.

    Fauci is soon to fall on his sword piercing this fraud.

  2. VACCINE LIES?

    Professor Bhattacharya sounds as if he works for the greedy pharmaceutical companies. He’s going to have trouble convincing thousands of unvaccinated in Tucson who don’t know a single person affected by COVID, or only a few who had mild symptoms. We’ve read about numbers of cases in our own zip codes & the different Arizona counties, but in my own & surrounding zip codes they seem connected to nursing homes & hospitals. With so many accepting the propaganda or mandated by employers, we now know enough vaccinated victims who have shown uncomfortable symptoms, not from COVID, but from the vaccines.

    Other countries have consistently blamed heavy smoking, obesity, or serious underlying conditions for COVID deaths. Our own media attribute those behaviors to ethnicity or low vaccination rates in certain counties … the same areas of the country that have high obesity or nicotine addiction numbers. (The pandemic has given the media an opportunity to claim racism where it doesn’t exist!)

    Maybe if I or any of my unvaccinated friends get COVID, I’ll feel ashamed enough to tolerate a few “I warned you”s or offer an apology with my tail between my legs, but until then I’ll support the vaccine skeptics & go on living my healthy & occasionally pointlessly masked life.

  3. “…unvaccinated… are…”very likely to get COVID”

    “…vaccinated individuals are now two to five times less likely to get COVID.”

    Let’s apply some simple math to assess the meaning of these sentences.

    Currently, about half the population is vaccinated and about 70,000 people are being infected on a daily basis since May.

    Let’s average the 2 to 5 times to get 3.5. So, on average, a vaccinated person is 3.5 times less likely to get infected.

    So, a little algebra:
    (3.5 times X times 165 million plus X times 165 million = 70,000 time 365

    (70,000 people a day being infected per day since April 1. )

    voila (1-X) , the probability of a vaccinated person not getting Covid in the next 12 months is 97%, that means that about 5 million vaccinated people will get infected in the next 12 months.

    the probability of an unvaccinated person not getting Covid in the next 12 months is 88%. Thus about 18 million unvaccinated people will get Covid in the next 12 months.

    88% not infected does not qualified as “…very likely to get infected…” by any definition of the words.

    Further, the math isn’t nearly that simple as they would have you believe. Natural immunity rears its beautiful head.

    They are comparing vax vs unvax without modeling natural immunity, which Israel studies shows is much more effective than VAX immunity but American studies, biased to say the least, are reporting differently.

    Even the grammar they use to describe the risk is poor. Someone isn’t “5 times less likely”, the other person is 5 times more likely.

    They also aren’t taking into account that the ground is shifting under their feet. The immunity from vaccines has changed from 20 times to 5 times since the appearance of the Delta variant. The Delta variant showed up in the U.S. at the end of May, that’s five months ago.

    So, the vaccines are losing effectiveness at a rate of about 15 percent per month.

    Model that on out.

    Then come back and tell us the truth about relative risk over the next year.

    These models exist, they are just lying to exert sadistic power over people who refuse to comply.

    Full disclosure: I am fully vaccinated and took a booster shot. I wear an N95 mask when I volunteer at school each day and when I go into the convenience store or grocery store. But, I fully stand with people who refuse vaccination.

    That’s their right.

  4. https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-woman-dies-from-blood-clots-after-getting-johnson-johnson-vaccine

    https://mynbc15.com/news/coronavirus/report-fully-vaccinated-58-year-old-man-with-no-comorbid-conditions-dies-of-covid-19

    https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/567402-fully-vaccinated-man-dies-of-covid-19-daughter

    https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/21-year-old-fully-vaccinated-uga-student-dies-covid-19-according-family/7JAQ6DX4BZFQLCFHU267QEUINI/

  5. “Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine…”

    “Israelis who had an infection were more protected against the Delta coronavirus variant than those who had a COVID-19 vaccine”

    The differences are huge, says Thlin,

    The vaccinated group had a 27 times as much chance of of symptomatic covid as the group with natural immunity.

    The vaccinated group had an 8 times as much chance of being hospitalized as the group with natural immunity.

    Nussenzweigs group has published data showing people who recover from a SARS-CoV-2 infection continue to develop increasing numbers and types of coronavirus-targeting antibodies for up to 1 year. By contrast, he says, twice-vaccinated people stop seeing increases in the potency or breadth of the overall memory antibody compartment a few months after their second dose.

    This last analysis is especially pertinent. The long-term consequences of being vaccinated are just beginning to unfold. These new type vaccines have very complex interactions with your immune system.

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