Maybe I should have been more concrete earlier. I certainly didn't mean to obscure my meaning or make you feel attacked. I did start out in my first reply with

Maybe I should have been more concrete earlier. I certainly didn't mean to obscure my meaning or make you feel attacked. I did start out in my first reply with a mistaken understanding of the science. I did edit my post to reflect that because I didn't want to lead people astray and maybe I should have even more forcefully. But, I do think while knowing the nuance is important, It is easy to lose track of just now effective vaccines seem to be. They do for example dramatically reduce the odds that I'm currently shedding virus which is most of what I worry about. And statements like viral load being the same really do seem confusing. I also think even on here the terms are confusing. Viral load for example is only for people who are infected, but what exactly does it mean to even be infected. Certainly just having a virus land in say your nose isn't enough. I think most people wouldn't even count a few cells being infected as truly infected. Certainly a test wouldn't right? So I think talking about viral load as a quantity for people who aren't "infected" is sort of reasonable especially when "infected" is being defined essentially in terms of virus concentration. But idk much, my only bio credential is 1 year of undergraduate course work