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> Remember people, you have to be vaccinated and boosted to prevent the spread of the virus even though being vaccinated or boosted does not actually prevent th

> Remember people, you have to be vaccinated and boosted to prevent the spread of the virus even though being vaccinated or boosted does not actually prevent the spread of the virus. This is just misinformation that’s been repeated so much as a meme people think it’s true based on a misreading of the simple fact that a study which said if you do experience a breakthrough infection with a high viral load, vaccinated people transmit that viral load as readily as a non-vaccinated person. What is clearly not true is that vaccinated people have the same likelihood of having an infection with that high viral load in the first place. Which they don’t and why vaccines remain an important tool to reduce spread. In addition to averaging lower peak viral levels for infection, vaccinated people has faster clearance rates, which means they are contagious for shorter amounts of time: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v... Vaccinated people have faster symptom onset as their bodies react to the virus faster, which means they can test and isolate sooner. Vaccinated people are still less likely to be infected than non vaccinated people: https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/90800 https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/90800 Vaccinated people are also less likely to collapse the local medical system in surges because their disease course is less severe: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/73/12/2257/6124429 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/73/12/2257/6124429

lbeltrame 4y ago
> Vaccinated people are also less likely to collapse the local medical system in surges because their disease course is less severe But once you have primed your cell immunity with exposure (vaccine or natural), the benefit of repeated boosters is negligible. Protection from infection is affected by changes in variants because only Ig neutralizing the spike can block infection. Cell-based immunity, although it does not prevent infection, is more resilient to these changes (the homology in the SARS-CoV-2 proteins outside the spike is around 80-85%). Also, memory cells last for at least two years after exposure (A.Sette's group works). IOW, less severe versus an immunologically naive person. But at this point, with 95%+ seroprevalence, these scenarios are becoming very rare.

lbeltrame 4y ago

> Vaccinated people are also less likely to collapse the local medical system in surges because their disease course is less severe But once you have primed your cell immunity with exposure (vaccine or natural), the benefit of repeated boosters is negligible. Protection from infection is affected by changes in variants because only Ig neutralizing the spike can block infection. Cell-based immunity, although it does not prevent infection, is more resilient to these changes (the homology in the SARS-CoV-2 proteins outside the spike is around 80-85%). Also, memory cells last for at least two years after exposure (A.Sette's group works). IOW, less severe versus an immunologically naive person. But at this point, with 95%+ seroprevalence, these scenarios are becoming very rare.