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Another largely unvaccinated population that may be affecting Israel’s Covid rates, is the Palestinian workers that come into Israel proper daily from the West Bank. These workers and others living in the occupied territories have not had access to vaccine despite Israel’s responsibility to vaccine populations on land they occupy. This issue is largely ignored by the international public health community.

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Is there a settled-on incidence rate (hopefully that's the right metric term) for Covid for people who are unvaccinated? I'm looking at the new Lancet ID article on breakthrough infections that gives a percentage of breakthroughs among vaccinated people, but I wondered if there's a settled similar percentage among unvaccinated people to use for comparison...or is that constantly fluctuating? I want to be prepared with that information if asked, and I can't find it anywhere. Thank you!

This is the study I referenced: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext?fbclid=IwAR0YMupWCuLPXbe1oKP-C0vpnsVPQ2RoVDHaiHD8Vkgj3Z2j0zhUhwu6A-I

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Deaths in Israel are rising too, as far as I can tell. But there are still a lot of unvaccinated people in Israel, and I also assume that either they've eased restrictions, or that people are taking fewer precautions, as they feel safer. Overall, it's worrying.

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RE this question: " If vaccines protect against hospitalization and death, are they really needed?", it seems to me that you partially answered that in your discussion about transmissibility, and how that is reduced but not eliminated in vaccinated people. Since transmission of disease, whether symptomatic or not, is what allows for the virus to continue to mutate, it would seem ANYTHING we do to reduce transmission, regardless of CURRENT symptom expression, would be a good thing. On a related matter, now that we have UK and Israeli data to compare, has anybody worked the big numbers as to the best timing approach to the second shot? Yes, waiting allows more infections during the waiting period, but a second jab 3+ months later seems to provide better long-term protection, thus reducing overall infection, hospitalization and death rates. Does the epidemiological math support that conclusion?

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Somewhat frustrating since fir me, July was 5 months, August, 6, etc and kids due back to school next week. There needs to be 2 messages - one for scientifically proactive and one for skeptics 😒

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If the rate of severe disease among unvaccinated is only 2x the rate among vaccinated in Israel for those <60, this makes it seem like the vaccine is actually not that protective against hospitalization - that the vaccine is only cutting the risk of hospitalization by 50%. Or am I misunderstanding something? Is it because so many of the unvaccinated people are children and therefore less likely to go to the hospital even if not vaccinated?

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Is there data from Israel regarding children? What are their schools doing? Right now with two vaxxed kids and two unvaxxed the decision to whether to send them back next week's seems overwhelming. And like we're relying on a tornado of information, much of it based on alpha not Delta (like masked indoors except when eating in crowded cafeteria and during indoor strenuous exercise ??? ) Please help 🙏🙏🙏

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