11 ms·

I’m confused. I thought vaccinated people can spread the virus. Why are they not locked down too?

bigyellow 5y ago
Because this was never about any virus, it's about social control and covering up for political failures of the last several decades.
lillecarl 5y ago
Because the risk of transmission is understood to be significantly lower, and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate it's in the governments best interest to get people vaccinated, a way of accomplishing this could be making life inconvenient for the uncompliant.
- nradov 5y ago
  The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines aren't very effective in people with malfunctioning immune systems. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
  - adamiscool8 5y ago
    The link references a specific response to remdesivir, but I don't see how the selective pressure isn't the same in the broader case of low-level or asymptomatic illness persisting in a vaccinated person, particularly when they'll be mingling more and taking less precautions.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      A paper, while not specifically addressing vaccination in immunocompromised patients, documents pretty clearly the phenomenon of runaway mutation chains in such patients. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756 Edit: Another piece, specifically addressing immunocompromised + covid + vaccines: "Studies have shown that immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to being hospitalized or dying from COVID and less likely to develop strong protection from vaccination. But there are also some hopeful signs: additional doses of some COVID vaccines, strategic timing of immunosuppressive treatments and prophylactic COVID treatments may boost protection among some immunocompromised individuals—and restore at least some of the freedoms they have lost." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-immunocompromised-people-without-strong-vaccine-protection-are-coping-with-covid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-immunocomprom...
- nazinazinazi 5y ago
  Actually the vaccines themselves are causing the variants. The more you know! :)
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  Hm, so a vaccine that does not stop transmission does not create selective pressure on the virus? Wouldn’t that be unusual from an evolutionary biology standpoint? Can we at least agree that if infected, as a vaccinated and asymptomatic carrier, there is a higher chance of transmission than if I were unvaccinated and symptomatic? This seems like common sense to me, but I recognize it goes against the Covid orthodoxy. Also, when you say “inconvenient,” what do you mean exactly? To me, total restriction on movement and segregation from society based on medical status seems like more than an inconvenience. Maybe I’m just an anti-vaxxer, a victim of misinformation… if only I could think for myself.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    The point is vaccinating everyone, just like we did with Smallpox. Which is essentially dead because of vaccination.
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      This is an entirely different situation then smallpox though. The modes of action are not the same.
      - TechBro8615 5y ago
        Also, the CFR of smallpox is 95%.
    - nradov 5y ago
      While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, you're not making a valid comparison. We were able to effectively eradicate smallpox (except for a few lab samples) because the vaccines are highly sterilizing and there were no animal reservoirs. That situation doesn't obtain with SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines are pretty good at preventing deaths but don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. And most mammal species can transmit the virus; cases have been confirmed in dogs, cats, minks, deer, tigers, etc.
      - 5y ago
- hncurious 5y ago
  Leaky vaccines can make viruses more virulent, though. See Marek's disease: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757475/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757475/
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  > unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate Maybe I'm missing something, but the vaccinated population is the one that has introduced an additional evolutionary pressure, so wouldn't we expect to see mutations (that affect vaccinated people) in that population? Vaccine tolerance is no advantage in unvaccinated hosts.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    It would put pressure to avoid the vaccine. However: 1. There would be fewer cases compared to unvaccinated people to give it the chance to mutate. It doesn't have any more chance to mutate among vaccinated people. It has less chance. Just a lot of mutations that still look like the current virus will get killed off by antibodies. 2. Randomly making changes to the spike protein, this virus's most important part, is likely to reduce the virus's danger.
  - mlazos 5y ago
    “Evolutionary pressure” doesn’t really exist if the virus doesn’t get a chance to replicate. The virus is trying to find a mutation which bypasses the vaccine, the more chances it gets the better. This is why people talk about animal reservoirs and immunocompromised individuals. The chance of a beneficial mutation occurring increases the more the virus is able to replicate within an organism. It replicates more in unvaccinated organisms.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Every single person who's immune system eradicates the virus causes evolutionary pressure. If your immune system takes a long time to do this, because eg. you didn't have a vaccine so it hasn't got an antibody template to work from, then the virus has much longer to evolve in the host, under a bunch of weird and wonderful new types of antibodies that get thrown against it. If there's already vaccine exposure then the body just needs to ramp up the antibody production, which is much faster and will result in total virus eradication to each virus as the antibodies encounter them, not halfway-measures which might leave half-functioning viruses which might self-repair in mutagenic ways.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate We might get more mutations from unvaccinated people, but since the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission we'll get much more virulent mutations from the vaccinated people.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Hence the need to isolate the unvaccinated, to protect them so they don’t get these new breeds and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent, just based on the relevant evolutionary pressures (the more dangerous breeds that make people bedridden don't spread). The new breeds made by the vaccinated, on the other hand - those have zero evolutionary pressure to become less dangerous, and can just as easily become more so (someone with a mutation that would make an unvaccinated person bedridden feels no effect and spreads it everywhere they go). If COVID becomes less deadly but more widespread, and becomes part of the yearly flu season, blame that on the unvaccinated. But if COVID mutates to become more deadly and resistant to vaccines, blame the vaccinated.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent, This is not a given. The virus is known to mutate more in unvaccinated hosts and this can make either more contagious or more lethal variations. There would be an advantage to have a longer incubation period. On the vaccinated the same things are beneficial - longer incubation periods and the ability to infect others who are vaccinated. With a lower viral load, there will be fewer variations in vaccinated hosts, translating into fewer differences from the baseline virus.
- jyscao 5y ago
  > and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate If you understand natural selection, then this assertion makes zero sense. Where in the genome do we see the accumulation of mutations in all covid variants seen so far? In their S-protein. Where does Omicron have 30+ mutations? In its S-protein. What is the single protein that the mRNA vaccines code for?? Yes, if you reason from first principles, it is trivial to see that it is in fact the throngs of the vaccinated who are driving the evolution of SARS-CoV-2!
  - kmonad 5y ago
    groups of people who know just a little about a subject tend to cease questioning their reasoning, and a dunning kruger is born. groups of people with more knowledge tend to ask more questions before accepting a new position. therefore, a dunning kruger is born more frequently among the former group. however, migrating pesky dunning krugers then tend to persist in either group.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  > unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate Citation?
Arnt 5y ago
Vaccinated people can spread the virus. However, if everyone in .de were vaccinated the R value would be somewhat below 1. It wouldn't be zero, because vaccinated people can spread the virus, but 1 is a critical threshold.
- nradov 5y ago
  Do you have a citation for that? I haven't seen any high quality studies which directly compare long term R0 for vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. While I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, it seems to have only a limited and temporary effect on reducing transmission. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
  - Arnt 5y ago
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v... and... can't find the other just now. Note that population-based studies will find different results, AIUI mostly because of the birthday paradox.
- peteradio 5y ago
  If you would have said 1 year ago, everyone will need this vaccine to reduce R below 1 you would have been laughed out of the room. What kind of shitty vaccine requires literally everyone to get it? Now good thing that wasn't the approach. Instead we said, "these vaccines kick ass" and walked that line back every day to buy compliance one person at a time. Good look. Good luck. Not sure how people can live with the cognitive dissonance of being obviously lied to "for the greater good".
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Go on, laugh me out of the room, laugh whoever you want out of the room, the virus doesn't care how much or how little you laugh.
vkou 5y ago
Sober people sometimes cause car crashes, but that in itself is a pretty poor reason to permit drunk driving. I'll also point out that simply driving under the influence is a crime, even if you don't actually cause an accident. The statistical propensity of impaired drivers to cause accidents is sufficient cause to imprison people for this sort of thing.
xiphias2 5y ago
Because it's cheaper to vaccinate people than to hospitalize unvaccinated, and hospitals are understaffed everywhere in the world.
periheli0n 5y ago
Because they are less likely to get hospitalised and flood the country's intensive care wards.
krater23 5y ago
Because a lockdown of all people is more unpopular than a lockdown of unvaccinated people. It's election year...
globalise83 5y ago
1. incentive - if everyone is locked down, there is no incentive to get vaccinated. 2. lack of contribution to hospital admissions - although some vaccinated people do get ill, once the elderly are boosted voluntarily the burden of this segment will be very low 3. credibility - the government promised and I quote "vaccination is the way back to normality". If they break this promise, they lose future credibility.
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
You should concentrate on the "can". Vaccinated folks are less likely to develop Covid in the first place, and as such, aren't as likely to spread it. And if they do develop it, it is less likely to be serious and require hospitalisation. This keeps us from having to decide who in the hospital lives or dies and takes the stress of of the medical system, workplaces, and families.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
m4rtink 5y ago
Another reason, at least initially, was to motivate people to get vaccinated. Still makes sense when vaccinated people transmit less, less likely will get infected and are much less likely to get infected.

Because this was never about any virus, it's about social control and covering up for political failures of the last several decades.

lillecarl 5y ago

Because the risk of transmission is understood to be significantly lower, and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate it's in the governments best interest to get people vaccinated, a way of accomplishing this could be making life inconvenient for the uncompliant.

nradov 5y ago
The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines aren't very effective in people with malfunctioning immune systems. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
- adamiscool8 5y ago
  The link references a specific response to remdesivir, but I don't see how the selective pressure isn't the same in the broader case of low-level or asymptomatic illness persisting in a vaccinated person, particularly when they'll be mingling more and taking less precautions.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    A paper, while not specifically addressing vaccination in immunocompromised patients, documents pretty clearly the phenomenon of runaway mutation chains in such patients. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756 Edit: Another piece, specifically addressing immunocompromised + covid + vaccines: "Studies have shown that immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to being hospitalized or dying from COVID and less likely to develop strong protection from vaccination. But there are also some hopeful signs: additional doses of some COVID vaccines, strategic timing of immunosuppressive treatments and prophylactic COVID treatments may boost protection among some immunocompromised individuals—and restore at least some of the freedoms they have lost." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-immunocompromised-people-without-strong-vaccine-protection-are-coping-with-covid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-immunocomprom...
nazinazinazi 5y ago
Actually the vaccines themselves are causing the variants. The more you know! :)
TechBro8615 5y ago
Hm, so a vaccine that does not stop transmission does not create selective pressure on the virus? Wouldn’t that be unusual from an evolutionary biology standpoint? Can we at least agree that if infected, as a vaccinated and asymptomatic carrier, there is a higher chance of transmission than if I were unvaccinated and symptomatic? This seems like common sense to me, but I recognize it goes against the Covid orthodoxy. Also, when you say “inconvenient,” what do you mean exactly? To me, total restriction on movement and segregation from society based on medical status seems like more than an inconvenience. Maybe I’m just an anti-vaxxer, a victim of misinformation… if only I could think for myself.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  The point is vaccinating everyone, just like we did with Smallpox. Which is essentially dead because of vaccination.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    This is an entirely different situation then smallpox though. The modes of action are not the same.
    - TechBro8615 5y ago
      Also, the CFR of smallpox is 95%.
  - nradov 5y ago
    While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, you're not making a valid comparison. We were able to effectively eradicate smallpox (except for a few lab samples) because the vaccines are highly sterilizing and there were no animal reservoirs. That situation doesn't obtain with SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines are pretty good at preventing deaths but don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. And most mammal species can transmit the virus; cases have been confirmed in dogs, cats, minks, deer, tigers, etc.
    - 5y ago
hncurious 5y ago
Leaky vaccines can make viruses more virulent, though. See Marek's disease: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757475/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757475/
marginalia_nu 5y ago
> unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate Maybe I'm missing something, but the vaccinated population is the one that has introduced an additional evolutionary pressure, so wouldn't we expect to see mutations (that affect vaccinated people) in that population? Vaccine tolerance is no advantage in unvaccinated hosts.
- mminer237 5y ago
  It would put pressure to avoid the vaccine. However: 1. There would be fewer cases compared to unvaccinated people to give it the chance to mutate. It doesn't have any more chance to mutate among vaccinated people. It has less chance. Just a lot of mutations that still look like the current virus will get killed off by antibodies. 2. Randomly making changes to the spike protein, this virus's most important part, is likely to reduce the virus's danger.
- mlazos 5y ago
  “Evolutionary pressure” doesn’t really exist if the virus doesn’t get a chance to replicate. The virus is trying to find a mutation which bypasses the vaccine, the more chances it gets the better. This is why people talk about animal reservoirs and immunocompromised individuals. The chance of a beneficial mutation occurring increases the more the virus is able to replicate within an organism. It replicates more in unvaccinated organisms.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Every single person who's immune system eradicates the virus causes evolutionary pressure. If your immune system takes a long time to do this, because eg. you didn't have a vaccine so it hasn't got an antibody template to work from, then the virus has much longer to evolve in the host, under a bunch of weird and wonderful new types of antibodies that get thrown against it. If there's already vaccine exposure then the body just needs to ramp up the antibody production, which is much faster and will result in total virus eradication to each virus as the antibodies encounter them, not halfway-measures which might leave half-functioning viruses which might self-repair in mutagenic ways.
generalizations 5y ago
> since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate We might get more mutations from unvaccinated people, but since the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission we'll get much more virulent mutations from the vaccinated people.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Hence the need to isolate the unvaccinated, to protect them so they don’t get these new breeds and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent, just based on the relevant evolutionary pressures (the more dangerous breeds that make people bedridden don't spread). The new breeds made by the vaccinated, on the other hand - those have zero evolutionary pressure to become less dangerous, and can just as easily become more so (someone with a mutation that would make an unvaccinated person bedridden feels no effect and spreads it everywhere they go). If COVID becomes less deadly but more widespread, and becomes part of the yearly flu season, blame that on the unvaccinated. But if COVID mutates to become more deadly and resistant to vaccines, blame the vaccinated.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent, This is not a given. The virus is known to mutate more in unvaccinated hosts and this can make either more contagious or more lethal variations. There would be an advantage to have a longer incubation period. On the vaccinated the same things are beneficial - longer incubation periods and the ability to infect others who are vaccinated. With a lower viral load, there will be fewer variations in vaccinated hosts, translating into fewer differences from the baseline virus.
jyscao 5y ago
> and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate If you understand natural selection, then this assertion makes zero sense. Where in the genome do we see the accumulation of mutations in all covid variants seen so far? In their S-protein. Where does Omicron have 30+ mutations? In its S-protein. What is the single protein that the mRNA vaccines code for?? Yes, if you reason from first principles, it is trivial to see that it is in fact the throngs of the vaccinated who are driving the evolution of SARS-CoV-2!
- kmonad 5y ago
  groups of people who know just a little about a subject tend to cease questioning their reasoning, and a dunning kruger is born. groups of people with more knowledge tend to ask more questions before accepting a new position. therefore, a dunning kruger is born more frequently among the former group. however, migrating pesky dunning krugers then tend to persist in either group.
disambiguation 5y ago
> unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate Citation?

Arnt 5y ago

Vaccinated people can spread the virus. However, if everyone in .de were vaccinated the R value would be somewhat below 1. It wouldn't be zero, because vaccinated people can spread the virus, but 1 is a critical threshold.

nradov 5y ago
Do you have a citation for that? I haven't seen any high quality studies which directly compare long term R0 for vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. While I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, it seems to have only a limited and temporary effect on reducing transmission. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
- Arnt 5y ago
  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v... and... can't find the other just now. Note that population-based studies will find different results, AIUI mostly because of the birthday paradox.
peteradio 5y ago
If you would have said 1 year ago, everyone will need this vaccine to reduce R below 1 you would have been laughed out of the room. What kind of shitty vaccine requires literally everyone to get it? Now good thing that wasn't the approach. Instead we said, "these vaccines kick ass" and walked that line back every day to buy compliance one person at a time. Good look. Good luck. Not sure how people can live with the cognitive dissonance of being obviously lied to "for the greater good".
- Arnt 5y ago
  Go on, laugh me out of the room, laugh whoever you want out of the room, the virus doesn't care how much or how little you laugh.

vkou 5y ago

Sober people sometimes cause car crashes, but that in itself is a pretty poor reason to permit drunk driving. I'll also point out that simply driving under the influence is a crime, even if you don't actually cause an accident. The statistical propensity of impaired drivers to cause accidents is sufficient cause to imprison people for this sort of thing.

xiphias2 5y ago

Because it's cheaper to vaccinate people than to hospitalize unvaccinated, and hospitals are understaffed everywhere in the world.

periheli0n 5y ago

Because they are less likely to get hospitalised and flood the country's intensive care wards.

krater23 5y ago

Because a lockdown of all people is more unpopular than a lockdown of unvaccinated people. It's election year...

globalise83 5y ago

1. incentive - if everyone is locked down, there is no incentive to get vaccinated. 2. lack of contribution to hospital admissions - although some vaccinated people do get ill, once the elderly are boosted voluntarily the burden of this segment will be very low 3. credibility - the government promised and I quote "vaccination is the way back to normality". If they break this promise, they lose future credibility.

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

You should concentrate on the "can". Vaccinated folks are less likely to develop Covid in the first place, and as such, aren't as likely to spread it. And if they do develop it, it is less likely to be serious and require hospitalisation. This keeps us from having to decide who in the hospital lives or dies and takes the stress of of the medical system, workplaces, and families.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

m4rtink 5y ago

Another reason, at least initially, was to motivate people to get vaccinated. Still makes sense when vaccinated people transmit less, less likely will get infected and are much less likely to get infected.