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>You are far less likely to get infected at all if you're fully vaccinated This is what I'm asking about, transmission. The data on this is woefully limited ho

by noobly 5y ago

>You are far less likely to get infected at all if you're fully vaccinated This is what I'm asking about, transmission. The data on this is woefully limited however. Here's another Fauci quote: So far, the available Covid-19 vaccines have not been judged primarily on their ability to prevent transmission – though this is now being evaluated as a secondary endpoint for many of them. Instead, their efficacy was assessed by whether they could prevent symptoms from developing. “This means that we set our targets kind of pragmatically,” says Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London. … There isn’t yet any conclusive evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can prevent people from being infected with the coronavirus – and therefore halt its spread. But there are some early signs that it might. When these were being released, no one knew it's effects on transmission, yet the sentiment was that they certainly did, and questioning this brought about frustration. >There's more and more data There's also data building to the contrary. Take a look at Israel's number of cases vs vaccination status, for example. We're not at a stage where data is conclusive either way, and in that case I'm fine with waiting things out. For example, this is what you're study says: >The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection This is not about reducing SARS-COV-2 transmission, but symptomatic COVID. These mistakes lead to misinformation spreading. Further, this is all your second study concludes: Among index patients, those who had been vaccinated were likely to be less severely symptomatic2 and might have been less infectious than those who were unvaccinated. As I'm sure you know, correlation does not imply causation, it's possible that vaccinated individuals were simply practicing better viral hygiene (especially given that they were vaccinated back in Jan/Feb, when there was less social pressure and more risk).

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
> This is what I'm asking about, transmission. The data on this is woefully limited however. The most effective way to not transmit is to not get infected in the first place. The vaccines drastically reduce chance of infection. > For example, this is what you're study says: >> The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection The very next sentence states, > Vaccination is associated with faster decline in viral RNA load and a robust serological response. This means that infections in vaccinated people are typically much shorter-lived than infections in unvaccinated people. The time during which you have high viral load is drastically reduced. > it's possible that vaccinated individuals were simply practicing better viral hygiene Reducing infections of family members by 40-50% is a massive effect, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people in this study had only even received their first dose. There's an obvious explanation that fits with everything else we know about vaccination (e.g., that vaccinated people who get infected are far less symptomatic and that the time during which they have high viral load is much shorter). Most vaccines do not confer sterilizing immunity. Nevertheless, many of them still produce herd immunity. Immunity is not an all-or-nothing thing. You're far less likely to get infected if you're vaccinated, and if you do get infected, you're far less likely to transmit the virus. Even if you don't care about dramatically reducing your own risk of getting seriously ill or dying, the vaccine significantly reduces your chance of ever transmitting the virus to others.
- noobly 5y ago
  >Reducing infections of family members by 40-50% is a massive effect The point is that you're attributing this to vaccine effectiveness, when it may have been viral hygiene. The authors of the study did not attribute this reduction to the vaccine directly as you are.
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    Vaccination is the most likely explanation, and there's a very good biological reason to expect it to be the reason: viral load decreases much more rapidly in vaccinated people, meaning they're likely infectious for a much shorter time window. There's more more and more research that strongly points to transmission by vaccinated people who get infected (which, remember, is much less likely) being substantially lower than transmission by unvaccinated people. This study [1] came out just last week, for example: > Our study showed that the COVID-19 vaccines not only protect the vaccinee against SARS-CoV-2 infection, but also offer protection against transmission to close contacts after completing the full schedule. This study finds an even stronger reduction (70%) in transmission by fully vaccinated people. The first study that I posted primarily studied partially vaccinated people. 1. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.31.2100640 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...

by noobly 5y ago

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago

> This is what I'm asking about, transmission. The data on this is woefully limited however. The most effective way to not transmit is to not get infected in the first place. The vaccines drastically reduce chance of infection. > For example, this is what you're study says: >> The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection The very next sentence states, > Vaccination is associated with faster decline in viral RNA load and a robust serological response. This means that infections in vaccinated people are typically much shorter-lived than infections in unvaccinated people. The time during which you have high viral load is drastically reduced. > it's possible that vaccinated individuals were simply practicing better viral hygiene Reducing infections of family members by 40-50% is a massive effect, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people in this study had only even received their first dose. There's an obvious explanation that fits with everything else we know about vaccination (e.g., that vaccinated people who get infected are far less symptomatic and that the time during which they have high viral load is much shorter). Most vaccines do not confer sterilizing immunity. Nevertheless, many of them still produce herd immunity. Immunity is not an all-or-nothing thing. You're far less likely to get infected if you're vaccinated, and if you do get infected, you're far less likely to transmit the virus. Even if you don't care about dramatically reducing your own risk of getting seriously ill or dying, the vaccine significantly reduces your chance of ever transmitting the virus to others.

noobly 5y ago
>Reducing infections of family members by 40-50% is a massive effect The point is that you're attributing this to vaccine effectiveness, when it may have been viral hygiene. The authors of the study did not attribute this reduction to the vaccine directly as you are.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  Vaccination is the most likely explanation, and there's a very good biological reason to expect it to be the reason: viral load decreases much more rapidly in vaccinated people, meaning they're likely infectious for a much shorter time window. There's more more and more research that strongly points to transmission by vaccinated people who get infected (which, remember, is much less likely) being substantially lower than transmission by unvaccinated people. This study [1] came out just last week, for example: > Our study showed that the COVID-19 vaccines not only protect the vaccinee against SARS-CoV-2 infection, but also offer protection against transmission to close contacts after completing the full schedule. This study finds an even stronger reduction (70%) in transmission by fully vaccinated people. The first study that I posted primarily studied partially vaccinated people. 1. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.31.2100640 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...