Addendum: For an even deeper analysis of the vaccine experience in Israel, see this page posted by the notorious Substacker, el gato malo (“the bad cat”).
A good indicator for the burden of an acute respiratory disease, or at least for the “severity” of such a disease, would be the weekly new admissions to intensive care units (ICU) per 100,000 population.
If a treatment is highly successful against a disease, then the disease burden/severity may drop to zero — even though lingering infections are still found. While the disease itself isn’t entirely eradicated by the treatment, the burden/severity of it is.
One candidate treatment for eradicating the severity of COVID-19 — as measured by weekly number admitted to ICU per 100,000 — would be the COVID shot. One published review estimated that COVID shots cut ICU admissions by 96%.
If COVID shots really do cut ICU admissions by 96%, and if the number of administered COVID shots approaches 200 for every 100 people in your nation — so that virtually every single person is fully vaccinated — then it would be expected that the weekly ICU admissions for the disease would drop all the way down to zero (though infections may still linger in people).
Here is the weekly rate of vaccine uptake in Israel. Notice how almost 14% of the entire Israeli population got jabbed during just one week in late January 2021.
The expected weekly ICU admissions could be overlayed on top of this chart, using a crude estimate that starts off somewhere around where the ICU admissions were already at in Israel right around the time when the vaccines rolled out, and then approaches zero as the cumulative doses administered approaches 200 doses for every 100 Israelis.
According to this crude estimation, COVID severity (ICU admissions) would be virtually eradicated before the end of January of 2022. Even though infections may still occur in February of 2022, at virtually 100% vaccine coverage (and assuming vaccines cut ICU admissions by 96%), the ICU admissions for the disease would not be able to rise.
Even if the crude estimation regarding the evolving weekly ICU admission rate were relaxed, so that it allowed for some modest COVID severity to remain through February of 2022— though virtually every single living person in Israel would be fully vaccinated by then— the general trend would still be the same, but it just wouldn’t bottom out at zero by February 2022.
You can visualize the same trend in your mind by lifting the orange ICU admissions line by one unit or two (one horizontal line or two at most). The shape is the same, but the lifted orange line would take longer to reach zero.
That covers what would be expected if the vaccine worked well. But there is also the possibility that the vaccine doesn’t work well. There is even the possibility that the vaccine could become counterproductive if COVID variants escape being neutralized by the antibodies created by vaccine, while temporary depression of immunity occurs.
In such a case, vaccines could ADD disease burden in the population, making disease burden levels track proportionally with vaccine uptake.
And, even worse, there could be vaccine-mediated enhancement of disease (VMED), where the vaccine isn’t merely doing nothing to help against severe disease, and isn’t just adding to background disease burden by temporarily depressing immune systems, but is actually magnifying the severity of the disease itself.
In such a case, vaccines could MULTIPLY disease burden in the population, making disease burden levels track multiplicatively (disproportionately) with vaccine uptake.
Let’s now look at the actual rate of ICU admissions overlayed on top of the rate of vaccine administered to the Israeli population — i.e., against the backdrop of surges and slow-downs in the rate of COVID vaccinations …
That is evidence for VMED. Notice how just getting 5% of the Israeli population jabbed in one week (blue peak at far right) led to the highest-ever rate of weekly new ICU admissions per 100,000.
When just a little extra vaccination leads to such a ramped-up spike in weekly ICU admissions, that is strong evidence of vaccine-mediated enhanced disease (VMED). Good vaccines cut disease severity, bad vaccines don’t, and ugly vaccines actively enhance disease severity.
COVID disease burden/severity evidence (ICU admissions/100k) in Israel is … “not pretty.”
Reference
Liu Q, Qin C, Liu M, Liu J. Effectiveness and safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in real-world studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Infect Dis Poverty. 2021 Nov 14;10(1):132. doi: 10.1186/s40249-021-00915-3. PMID: 34776011; PMCID: PMC8590867. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8590867/
OurWorldInData charts for vaccinations and ICU admissions available from the [ https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus ] hub page