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I'm starting to suspect this isn't because the vaccines are inherently particularly good, though. They're incredibly effective against one particular strain of
by makomk 5y ago
I'm starting to suspect this isn't because the vaccines are inherently particularly good, though. They're incredibly effective against one particular strain of Covid-19, and for a while that was pretty much the only thing in circulation, but as soon as more came along their effectiveness against those started to drop. Viruses less novel than Covid-19 presumably have a lot more genetic diversity, so being incredibly effective at one specific variant with one specific genome would achieve a lot less.
Honestly, I'm seriously starting to doubt whether it's even remotely feasible to achieve herd immunity with the current vaccines - the Delta variant is looking really worrying on that front.
- XorNot 5y agoThis is factually incorrect. Of the four known COVID strains in broad circulation, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have displayed efficacy against all of them. The Delta variant is more contagious, but has not demonstrated vaccine escape behavior against Pfizer and Moderna [1], and although efficacy was shown to be reduced by mutations in trials, both vaccines still successfully result in complete neutralization in of the virus by antibodies in test titres (in brief: you vaccinate people, then draw their blood and expose the antibodies to virus in vitro and see whether neutralization is effective - it was). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/15/the-covid-delta-variant-how-effective-are-the-vaccines https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/15/the-covid-delt...