There is some unrest in the Netherlands about vaccines, especially now that the infection rates are rising again. But many infected people have already been fully vaccinated. How is that possible? In the Dutch interpretation program ‘Op1’, immunologist Marjolein van Egmond explained how this is possible and how you can still get sick.
–
–
Door Redactie online, Metronieuws.nl
–
«In principle, the vaccines are very good,» says the immunologist at ‘Op1’. According to her, it does depend on the virus variant and the vaccine, but the protection is somewhere between 60 and 95 percent. “That’s to make sure you don’t get sick at all. All vaccines offer around 85 to 90 percent protection against serious illness or hospitalization.” And limiting hospital admissions, that’s what it’s all about in the end. But you can still get infected, even if you have been vaccinated. But how sick can you still get? “People often want a black and white answer, but that’s not how it works.”
Delta-variant
The Delta variant had already been circulated in England before, which led to a lot more hospital admissions. “It’s not that nobody comes to the hospital who is vaccinated at all, but in general it’s really the unvaccinated people,” says the immunologist. According to her, this is the largest group of corona patients in the hospital. There is another small group that has had one shot, and an even smaller group that has been fully vaccinated. The vaccines therefore lower the chance that you will end up in hospital, but it can still happen.
news value
According to Van Egmond, there is an ‘information bias’. «People who are vaccinated and do not get sick have absolutely no news value. So you don’t hear about that. You often hear about people who have been vaccinated and what happens to them afterwards.” But according to her, if you look at the large group, you see that especially unvaccinated people get sick from the virus.
