10 ms·

Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission. The vaccine is still effective, although recent studies indicate that after 6 months

Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission. The vaccine is still effective, although recent studies indicate that after 6 months it may only be 50% effective against severe illness (this will vary tremendously for each individual). This is a non-sterilizing vaccine. It was never designed to stop transmission. It did surprisingly block transmission pretty well before the Delta variant. The theory presented here is that the vaccine effect takes time and kicks in on around day 5. With Delta the virus has already become highly transmissive by then. Pre-delta that probably was not the case.

nucleogenesis 5y ago
50% effective against transmission, severe illness, or both?
omginternets 5y ago
You got it before I could edit :) But this is very much my point: we were sold a benefit-risk ratio that assumed the vaccines effectively curb transmission.
- jrs235 5y ago
  And if what we were/are being sold is reduced severe illness then that seems like a personal issue and the mandates don't make sense. I get it, if beds are in use by severely ill Covid patients that means less beds for others... then let the bed owners decide how they wish to allocate bed usage, just like some doctors are refusing to see non vaccinated patients.
- pif 5y ago
  And the vaccine _did_ curb transmission of the original variant. Variant Delta came later.
  - omginternets 5y ago
    I don't recall the exact figures, but I believe it wasn't spectacular. Moreover, now that Delta is a thing, aren't the ethical issues nonetheless present.
    - croon 5y ago
      From [0] > A recent study found that vaccinated people infected with the delta variant are 63 per cent less likely to infect people who are unvaccinated. [1] > This is only slightly lower than with the alpha variant, says Brechje de Gier at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, who led the study. Her team had previously found that vaccinated people infected with alpha were 73 per cent less likely to infect unvaccinated people. [2] > What is important to realise, de Gier says, is that the full effect of vaccines on reducing transmission is even higher than 63 per cent, because most vaccinated people don’t become infected in the first place. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-l... [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/definition/uk-covid-19-variant-b-1-1-7/ https://www.newscientist.com/definition/uk-covid-19-variant-...
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    delta completely out competed the original variant, but for the sake of due diligence it would be nice to see data on how effective the vaccine is against the original variant
- bedhead 5y ago
  Yes, and rather than admit this plainly observable fact, incorporate this new information, then base policy choices on what we now know, we still have "health officials" and politicians from one side of the aisle sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and shouting "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!" as they push illogical (and arguably wildly immoral) policies like vaccine mandates and perpetual masking and an overall unending bizarro world. I don't know how else to describe COVID anymore other than it's become the world's largest secular religion.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    What do you propose? Let everyone get the virus, repeatedly? What's your target fatality rate?
  - cml 5y ago
    This is how the lead author of the study we are discussing interprets the new information: “Our paper, which had a global impact within 24 hours of publication, provides important support for the following crucial public health actions: vaccinate the unvaccinated ASAP; give boosters to all those who are eligible ASAP; maintain social and public health measures despite vaccination.” (This is the fifth paragraph the linked article).
  - chipgap98 5y ago
    Even if the vaccines don't entirely curb transmission, they reduce it and reduce the risk of severe illness. While for an individual this might impact their decision making framework, I don't see how it should change the framework for public health officials. > politicians from one side of the aisle sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and shouting "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!" Politicians on the other side of the aisle are attempting to ban any COVID prevention measures at all. I agree that vaccine mandates aren't the only tool available to us, but it's hard to argue with the mandates when there are people fighting against mandatory testing, mask wearing, and social distancing.
    - bedhead 5y ago
      Oh vaccines reduce it by some vague amount, if at all, to vaccinated people whom you admit are at far less risk having been vaccinated? Oh well then go nuts, put in whatever draconian rules you want if it may or may not reduce some spread by some minor amount and means that someone gets COVID in 2023 instead of 2022. That's all the justification we need! Quarantine the kids. Fire police. Make everyone hate each other. Sounds totally worth it!! Yay!! This is the cult of safetyism. A total inability to process risk/reward and tradeoffs, and eschewing basic logic for "protection" whether real or imagined no matter the cost. All I sincerely ask to people such as yourself is, "What is your long-term plan? Is this forever for you?" Usually, I watch as their brains simply break down on the side of the highway. They have no answer because their logic is so bad they get stuck in an eddy with no way to get out. Welcome to the Church of COVID. And no, conservatives aren't banning prevention measures. Everyone alive is free to get vaccinated (and wear a mask) as most have even in places like Florida. They're banning punitive rules, and whether it's Florida or Texas or all of Scandinavia, they've demonstrated that there are no worse outcomes from simply allowing people to make their own health choices without figuratively putting a gun to their heads (mandates) or making them do anything they don't want to (masks). Meanwhile, half the world upon seeing this: "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!"
- acdha 5y ago
  What we were sold, specifically? One of the challenges to the way this has been been politicized is that the original claims (high efficacy against serious cases, imprecise but substantial efficacy against spread, both of which have held up quite well) were often drowned out by people making much stronger claims for political reasons such as they didn't work at all, or that failing to instantaneously stop the pandemic even at vaccination rates far below the target threshold meant the approach had failed.
  - terracottage 5y ago
    "Summer of freedom" "Here we regain our freedom" "There will not be a 4th wave" That's what we were sold. Anyone who questioned it was called an antivax conspiracy theorist. And the worst part is, the namecallers still think they're on the right/smart side even after miles of backpedaling.
    - fsh 5y ago
      Countries with very high vaccination rates such as Portugal or Singapore show quite clearly that all of these statements have been correct. At this point, antivaxers are the only reason why the pandemic is still an issue in industrialized countries.
      - phillc73 5y ago
        Singapore may have been a poor choice of example. In late August it was announced that 80% of the Singapore population was now vaccinated against COVID-19.[1] However, in September and October there has been a dramatic surge in cases and deaths in that country.[2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-vaccinates-80-population-against-covid-19-2021-08-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-v... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/
        acdha 5y ago
        It's true that it's a dramatic increase, but the death rate still seems to be considerably lower, which is what you'd expect from a vaccine which is not sterilizing. The big question I'd have is what this would look like adjusted for age since American vaccination rates for the highest-risk age groups were also pretty high. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-14..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Case+fatality+rate&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=true&country=USA~SGP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
- sjg007 5y ago
  That is not what was sold.
naasking 5y ago
> Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission. Since children have very little chance of a severe COVID infection, why the push to vaccinate them then?
- yehosef 5y ago
  lots of money?
  - yehosef 5y ago
    just to put numbers on that - 28M children[1] * $20/dose [2] * 2 doses >= $1.1 B Considering you can't sue the vaccine manufactures for anything and the vaccines are being mandated in various venues, they are definitely a "safe and effective" way to make lots of money... [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-20/white-house-details-plans-to-vaccinate-28m-children-age-5-11 https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-20/... [2] https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-price-tags-on-the-covid-19-vaccines https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-price-ta...
- gadyke 5y ago
  As I understand it, precisely because they may then pass the infection on to those who may then end up with a severe illness (either because they're unvaccinated or because their protection is waning).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - naasking 5y ago
    > As I understand it, precisely because they may then pass the infection on to those who may then end up with a severe illness But we've already established that the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission. It may slightly attenuate transmission, but nowhere near enough to stop the spread. Given these facts, the vaccine is mainly so the vulnerable populations can protect themselves, but most children aren't among those populations (obviously immunocompromised children are).
mns 5y ago
That is really just rewriting history (see my comment below about some of the original studies from the trials). Vaccines were presented as having an efficiency of around 90% after the second dose - meaning that only around 8% of people (for Pfizer) in the trials actually got sick, all the graphs and charts from the beginning of the year were about this. The fact that now we are rewriting the history books will not help at all in the trust of the public, especially the ones that still didn't get it.
- AzzieElbab 5y ago
  depends what you read when vaccines came out. I dod not see any claims from scientific sources that vaccines stopped transmissions. Those claims came from the politicians and corporate media
  - mns 5y ago
    Actually they kind of did (see "BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6) below": "A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo; BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6). Similar vaccine efficacy (generally 90 to 100%) was observed across subgroups defined by age, sex, race, ethnicity, baseline body-mass index, and the presence of coexisting conditions. Among 10 cases of severe Covid-19 with onset after the first dose, 9 occurred in placebo recipients and 1 in a BNT162b2 recipient. The safety profile of BNT162b2 was characterized by short-term, mild-to-moderate pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headache. The incidence of serious adverse events was low and was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups." https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 Maybe this is legalese, but I am pretty sure your average Joe online, that reads all kind of weird things on Facebook or other places, won't understand the subtleties of this language.
    - vigilantmav 5y ago
themaninthedark 5y ago
>This is a non-sterilizing vaccine. Unfortunately, it was being sold to the public like it was. >Herd immunity against COVID-19 should be achieved by protecting people through vaccination, not by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease. Read the Director-General’s 12 October media briefing speech for more detail. >Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission. Visit our webpage on COVID-19 and vaccines for more detail. >To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population. One of the aims with working towards herd immunity is to keep vulnerable groups who cannot get vaccinated (e.g. due to health conditions like allergic reactions to the vaccine) safe and protected from the disease. Read our Q&A on vaccines and immunization for more information. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockd... To nit-pick, it is not the vaccine effect take 5 days to kick in but that the vaccine trained immune response takes 5 days to kick in. I would be interested in seeing how long it takes for natural trained immune response for someone who had Covid previously. Maybe the best strategy for herd immunity would be to get double vaccinated to prevent serious effects then contract Covid to gain superior antibody response.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Maybe the best strategy for herd immunity would be to get double vaccinated to prevent serious effects then contract Covid to gain superior antibody response. From reading about Covid, I thought the virus had a couple of genes that make it more deadly, one of which tends to suppress the immune system for example. Why not create another variant that is a full virus without those genes and use that as a live vaccine? Sure it might escape, but so what it's less lethal than the one out there right? Obviously this raises a bunch of ethical issues, but they are similar to the issues around forced vaccination.
  - vigilantmav 5y ago
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> This is a non-sterilizing vaccine. It was never designed to stop transmission. Nobody really knew in precise terms what the vaccines were going to do because there was initially no long-term data about their efficacy or studies about transmission. But it's simply a fact that the vaccines were sold to the public as The Way to end the pandemic and return to normalcy. Did you completely miss all of the talk about "herd immunity"? Are you not aware of all of the places, like California, that ended their mask mandates and told vaccinated individuals they could gather indoors together? If the vaccines were never intended or thought to significantly reduce if not stop transmission, why was "herd immunity" ever in our pandemic vocabulary? Why did the mask requirements get lifted? Why were vaccinated individuals told they could basically resume normal activities in the company of other vaccinated individuals? And why are some places pushing so hard on vaccine passports? It's okay that the vaccines haven't proven to be as effective as we had hoped in ending the pandemic. But there is a real issue with the way the vaccines were sold to the public. The messaging that was used to encourage people to get vaccinated was way ahead of what we knew in terms of the science and unfortunately, this is likely going to cause long-term issues. Specifically, I think it's going to be harder and harder to get people to take boosters. I'm predicting that each successive round of boosters will see fewer and fewer takers.

nucleogenesis 5y ago

50% effective against transmission, severe illness, or both?

omginternets 5y ago

You got it before I could edit :) But this is very much my point: we were sold a benefit-risk ratio that assumed the vaccines effectively curb transmission.

jrs235 5y ago
And if what we were/are being sold is reduced severe illness then that seems like a personal issue and the mandates don't make sense. I get it, if beds are in use by severely ill Covid patients that means less beds for others... then let the bed owners decide how they wish to allocate bed usage, just like some doctors are refusing to see non vaccinated patients.
pif 5y ago
And the vaccine _did_ curb transmission of the original variant. Variant Delta came later.
- omginternets 5y ago
  I don't recall the exact figures, but I believe it wasn't spectacular. Moreover, now that Delta is a thing, aren't the ethical issues nonetheless present.
  - croon 5y ago
    From [0] > A recent study found that vaccinated people infected with the delta variant are 63 per cent less likely to infect people who are unvaccinated. [1] > This is only slightly lower than with the alpha variant, says Brechje de Gier at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, who led the study. Her team had previously found that vaccinated people infected with alpha were 73 per cent less likely to infect unvaccinated people. [2] > What is important to realise, de Gier says, is that the full effect of vaccines on reducing transmission is even higher than 63 per cent, because most vaccinated people don’t become infected in the first place. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-l... [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/definition/uk-covid-19-variant-b-1-1-7/ https://www.newscientist.com/definition/uk-covid-19-variant-...
- disambiguation 5y ago
  delta completely out competed the original variant, but for the sake of due diligence it would be nice to see data on how effective the vaccine is against the original variant
bedhead 5y ago
Yes, and rather than admit this plainly observable fact, incorporate this new information, then base policy choices on what we now know, we still have "health officials" and politicians from one side of the aisle sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and shouting "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!" as they push illogical (and arguably wildly immoral) policies like vaccine mandates and perpetual masking and an overall unending bizarro world. I don't know how else to describe COVID anymore other than it's become the world's largest secular religion.
- pjc50 5y ago
  What do you propose? Let everyone get the virus, repeatedly? What's your target fatality rate?
- cml 5y ago
  This is how the lead author of the study we are discussing interprets the new information: “Our paper, which had a global impact within 24 hours of publication, provides important support for the following crucial public health actions: vaccinate the unvaccinated ASAP; give boosters to all those who are eligible ASAP; maintain social and public health measures despite vaccination.” (This is the fifth paragraph the linked article).
- chipgap98 5y ago
  Even if the vaccines don't entirely curb transmission, they reduce it and reduce the risk of severe illness. While for an individual this might impact their decision making framework, I don't see how it should change the framework for public health officials. > politicians from one side of the aisle sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and shouting "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!" Politicians on the other side of the aisle are attempting to ban any COVID prevention measures at all. I agree that vaccine mandates aren't the only tool available to us, but it's hard to argue with the mandates when there are people fighting against mandatory testing, mask wearing, and social distancing.
  - bedhead 5y ago
    Oh vaccines reduce it by some vague amount, if at all, to vaccinated people whom you admit are at far less risk having been vaccinated? Oh well then go nuts, put in whatever draconian rules you want if it may or may not reduce some spread by some minor amount and means that someone gets COVID in 2023 instead of 2022. That's all the justification we need! Quarantine the kids. Fire police. Make everyone hate each other. Sounds totally worth it!! Yay!! This is the cult of safetyism. A total inability to process risk/reward and tradeoffs, and eschewing basic logic for "protection" whether real or imagined no matter the cost. All I sincerely ask to people such as yourself is, "What is your long-term plan? Is this forever for you?" Usually, I watch as their brains simply break down on the side of the highway. They have no answer because their logic is so bad they get stuck in an eddy with no way to get out. Welcome to the Church of COVID. And no, conservatives aren't banning prevention measures. Everyone alive is free to get vaccinated (and wear a mask) as most have even in places like Florida. They're banning punitive rules, and whether it's Florida or Texas or all of Scandinavia, they've demonstrated that there are no worse outcomes from simply allowing people to make their own health choices without figuratively putting a gun to their heads (mandates) or making them do anything they don't want to (masks). Meanwhile, half the world upon seeing this: "Nah nah nah I can't hear you!"
acdha 5y ago
What we were sold, specifically? One of the challenges to the way this has been been politicized is that the original claims (high efficacy against serious cases, imprecise but substantial efficacy against spread, both of which have held up quite well) were often drowned out by people making much stronger claims for political reasons such as they didn't work at all, or that failing to instantaneously stop the pandemic even at vaccination rates far below the target threshold meant the approach had failed.
- terracottage 5y ago
  "Summer of freedom" "Here we regain our freedom" "There will not be a 4th wave" That's what we were sold. Anyone who questioned it was called an antivax conspiracy theorist. And the worst part is, the namecallers still think they're on the right/smart side even after miles of backpedaling.
  - fsh 5y ago
    Countries with very high vaccination rates such as Portugal or Singapore show quite clearly that all of these statements have been correct. At this point, antivaxers are the only reason why the pandemic is still an issue in industrialized countries.
    - phillc73 5y ago
      Singapore may have been a poor choice of example. In late August it was announced that 80% of the Singapore population was now vaccinated against COVID-19.[1] However, in September and October there has been a dramatic surge in cases and deaths in that country.[2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-vaccinates-80-population-against-covid-19-2021-08-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-fully-v... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/
      - acdha 5y ago
        It's true that it's a dramatic increase, but the death rate still seems to be considerably lower, which is what you'd expect from a vaccine which is not sterilizing. The big question I'd have is what this would look like adjusted for age since American vaccination rates for the highest-risk age groups were also pretty high. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-14..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Case+fatality+rate&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=true&country=USA~SGP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
sjg007 5y ago
That is not what was sold.

naasking 5y ago

> Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission. Since children have very little chance of a severe COVID infection, why the push to vaccinate them then?

yehosef 5y ago
lots of money?
- yehosef 5y ago
  just to put numbers on that - 28M children[1] * $20/dose [2] * 2 doses >= $1.1 B Considering you can't sue the vaccine manufactures for anything and the vaccines are being mandated in various venues, they are definitely a "safe and effective" way to make lots of money... [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-20/white-house-details-plans-to-vaccinate-28m-children-age-5-11 https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-20/... [2] https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-price-tags-on-the-covid-19-vaccines https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-price-ta...
gadyke 5y ago
As I understand it, precisely because they may then pass the infection on to those who may then end up with a severe illness (either because they're unvaccinated or because their protection is waning).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- naasking 5y ago
  > As I understand it, precisely because they may then pass the infection on to those who may then end up with a severe illness But we've already established that the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission. It may slightly attenuate transmission, but nowhere near enough to stop the spread. Given these facts, the vaccine is mainly so the vulnerable populations can protect themselves, but most children aren't among those populations (obviously immunocompromised children are).

mns 5y ago

That is really just rewriting history (see my comment below about some of the original studies from the trials). Vaccines were presented as having an efficiency of around 90% after the second dose - meaning that only around 8% of people (for Pfizer) in the trials actually got sick, all the graphs and charts from the beginning of the year were about this. The fact that now we are rewriting the history books will not help at all in the trust of the public, especially the ones that still didn't get it.

AzzieElbab 5y ago
depends what you read when vaccines came out. I dod not see any claims from scientific sources that vaccines stopped transmissions. Those claims came from the politicians and corporate media
- mns 5y ago
  Actually they kind of did (see "BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6) below": "A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo; BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6). Similar vaccine efficacy (generally 90 to 100%) was observed across subgroups defined by age, sex, race, ethnicity, baseline body-mass index, and the presence of coexisting conditions. Among 10 cases of severe Covid-19 with onset after the first dose, 9 occurred in placebo recipients and 1 in a BNT162b2 recipient. The safety profile of BNT162b2 was characterized by short-term, mild-to-moderate pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headache. The incidence of serious adverse events was low and was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups." https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 Maybe this is legalese, but I am pretty sure your average Joe online, that reads all kind of weird things on Facebook or other places, won't understand the subtleties of this language.
  - vigilantmav 5y ago

themaninthedark 5y ago

>This is a non-sterilizing vaccine. Unfortunately, it was being sold to the public like it was. >Herd immunity against COVID-19 should be achieved by protecting people through vaccination, not by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease. Read the Director-General’s 12 October media briefing speech for more detail. >Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission. Visit our webpage on COVID-19 and vaccines for more detail. >To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population. One of the aims with working towards herd immunity is to keep vulnerable groups who cannot get vaccinated (e.g. due to health conditions like allergic reactions to the vaccine) safe and protected from the disease. Read our Q&A on vaccines and immunization for more information. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockd... To nit-pick, it is not the vaccine effect take 5 days to kick in but that the vaccine trained immune response takes 5 days to kick in. I would be interested in seeing how long it takes for natural trained immune response for someone who had Covid previously. Maybe the best strategy for herd immunity would be to get double vaccinated to prevent serious effects then contract Covid to gain superior antibody response.

phkahler 5y ago
>> Maybe the best strategy for herd immunity would be to get double vaccinated to prevent serious effects then contract Covid to gain superior antibody response. From reading about Covid, I thought the virus had a couple of genes that make it more deadly, one of which tends to suppress the immune system for example. Why not create another variant that is a full virus without those genes and use that as a live vaccine? Sure it might escape, but so what it's less lethal than the one out there right? Obviously this raises a bunch of ethical issues, but they are similar to the issues around forced vaccination.
- vigilantmav 5y ago

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

> This is a non-sterilizing vaccine. It was never designed to stop transmission. Nobody really knew in precise terms what the vaccines were going to do because there was initially no long-term data about their efficacy or studies about transmission. But it's simply a fact that the vaccines were sold to the public as The Way to end the pandemic and return to normalcy. Did you completely miss all of the talk about "herd immunity"? Are you not aware of all of the places, like California, that ended their mask mandates and told vaccinated individuals they could gather indoors together? If the vaccines were never intended or thought to significantly reduce if not stop transmission, why was "herd immunity" ever in our pandemic vocabulary? Why did the mask requirements get lifted? Why were vaccinated individuals told they could basically resume normal activities in the company of other vaccinated individuals? And why are some places pushing so hard on vaccine passports? It's okay that the vaccines haven't proven to be as effective as we had hoped in ending the pandemic. But there is a real issue with the way the vaccines were sold to the public. The messaging that was used to encourage people to get vaccinated was way ahead of what we knew in terms of the science and unfortunately, this is likely going to cause long-term issues. Specifically, I think it's going to be harder and harder to get people to take boosters. I'm predicting that each successive round of boosters will see fewer and fewer takers.