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If you don’t get Covid because you got the vaccine, that’s a benefit to others.

• omginternets 3y ago
  And if the vaccine makes you an asymptomatic carrier, that's a harm to others. I think it's more useful to start with the question of what is actually happening, and examine the consequences from there. Otherwise, we find ourselves arguing in favor of our priors, which helps no one.
  • mint2 3y ago
    This PR article doesn’t do a good job explaining but it seems the severity was treated as an independent variable and controlled for, so with that assumption the article actually does imply vaccinated individuals shed less - yes the same amount when controlled for severity - but the cases are less severe. Why I say that is because of the two paragraphs: “”“ Mild and moderately symptomatic patients with COVID still exhale large amounts of virus, though severely symptomatic cases exhale higher levels on average, the study reports. Vaccinated and unvaccinated patients exhale similar levels of virus over the course of infection, the research shows.””” Edit: the actual preprint states “ We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity” so some of these statements in the PR article and article aren’t all squaring together.
    • taeric 3y ago
      My quote was from the study, directly. My interpretation is basically that, to the extent that the vaccine reduces symptoms, it reduces shedding. If you still get sick, you are still shedding. If you are asymptomatic, you shed the same amount no matter your vaccination status.
      • mint2 3y ago
        Edit oops didn’t see it which comment was being referred to at first. the study says severity was controlled for when assessing the impact of vaccination. That leads to an obvious problem as vaccines lead to lower severity.
        • taeric 3y ago
          Yeah, I don't know how to make sense of the quote I pulled out, to be honest. Why say that, if everyone that had the vaccine was lower in symptoms? Seems to be the kind of thing you would only say if the vaccinated people in your study were represented across the spread?
          • mrguyorama 3y ago
            It's pretty clear actually. The point the paper is making about vaccine status is this: If you have strong symptoms, you shed lots of virus, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not. From separate studies, we know that if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to have serious symptoms. Put the two together. Fewer people seriously ill is fewer people shedding lots of virus, and more people vaccinated is fewer people seriously ill
            • taeric 3y ago
              Having these as carve outs, though, gives me pause there. The claim seems to be that, on average, higher symptoms means more shedding. However, trying to control for any other variable results in no significant finding. This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing. I'm willing to chalk that up to them not having enough vaccinated people in their study. That fits the caveat they give regarding vaccinated people. It does not automatically support your read, though.
              • mint2 3y ago
                I don’t think this is quite right of a reading “This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing.” Instead, I think a more accurate rough understanding of their process is they first backed out the effect of severity and then checked if vaccine was correlated with that adjusted number - they found it wasn’t. They didn’t make an assessment on how vaccines effect severity.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        >If you are asymptomatic, you shed the same amount no matter your vaccination status. Which, importantly, is "not nearly as much as a sick person". "Asymptomatic" is just a very very low grade infection, not some magic "you are chock full of virus that you are shedding but somehow unaffected" state.
• version_five 3y ago
  That only happened for a few months in 2021. Since then theh haven't stopped anyone from getting it.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• terminatornet 3y ago
  unfortunately the CDC said early on that if you're vaccinated, you can't spread covid, that's clearly not the case. At this point, the vaccine only seems to prevent severe hospitalization (and that's assuming you still have immunity from your last dose, since it appears your protection wanes to almost nothing after 4-6 months)
• taeric 3y ago
  Has it been shown that the vaccine keeps you from getting it? I do think it is worth calling out my point is FAR from a panic moment. The study calls out they had very few vaccinated people, for one. For two, again, the data is clear that you are much safer for yourself if you are vaccinated.
• aodonnell2536 3y ago
  Receiving the COVID vaccine does not prevent the contraction of COVID or ability to spread it, it only lessens the symptoms after infection
  • taeric 3y ago
    Intuitively, it seems that if it reduced symptoms after infection, than it would have been seen as correlated to exhalation. Now, I realize that it could just negatively correlate with self-reporting symptoms? Or it could be that that correlation between self reporting and how much you exhaled was just very lightly correlated, such that the other correlation is low? Neither of which would be that surprising, I guess. They do disappoint me, for some reason.
  • myko 3y ago
    > it only lessens the symptoms after infection No, it also lowers the possibility of becoming ill in the first place, which does make one less likely to infect others