At current stage, covid vaccines are mainly to reduce severity of infections with significant reduction in mortality. It doesn't really reduce spread of infections. Research has shown vaccinated individuals at least the same amount of load as unvacccinated. The general sayings of herd immunity with vaccinations can protect those unable to get vaccines don't apply for this situation. In fact, it will pretty much condemn those who don't get vaccinated when vast majority have been vaccinated and actively spread the infections.
Covid vaccines cannot 100% prevent infection like polio vaccine. There are papers that talked about vaccinated people with higher load virus for the initial infection. Given vaccinated people tends to display even less symptoms and more asymptomatic, they are able to spread more because more "infectious". If one is severely down with Covid, one will be confine at home or hospital. Hence the OP claims of more infections is correct and it is not spreading misinformation. This is why now healthcare professionals have opt not to use the word "herd immunity" confer by vaccines. Ironically you are actually more inline with spreading misinformation by not clarifying the vaccinated can still be infected and move around way more than severely unvaccinated people. Having say this, I am pro vaccinations. It is still the right and responsibility thing to do.
The COVID-19 vaccines have only a limited and temporary effect on reducing transmission. While I would encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, preventing spread isn't a valid reason.
Vaccines decrease the probability of severe illness and death from COVID-19 but are not correlated with transmission rates. Some researchers go as far as saying it's worse with vaccinated people as they feel more protected and engage in more risky behavior, not avoiding gatherings of people etc.
You can't get herd immunity from a vaccine that does not stop the spread of the disease, even with 100% coverage. Covid starts spreading early in the infection, before your vaccine-stimulated antibodies get into the action. For that kind of contagion, vaccines cannot stop the spread.
For other diseases that become contagious later in the infection, vaccines can, and at the outset it seemed like Covid might behave that way, but it turned out not to.
What the current vaccines can do, is lessen the possibility of serious outcomes, which is great.
If you're less likely to get COVID if you are vaccinated (which seems to be the case; at least in my city, two-thirds of the case rate is coming from unvaccinated people), then it absolutely does reduce spread. Not "prevent", but that was never a realistic outcome.
Meanwhile, among the many people I know who have been vaccinated, there's been just a single breakthrough case, and that case was due to catching covid from an unnvaccinated co-worker.
Since you seem a bit confused, here's what we know and don't know AFAIK:
1) Vaccination reduces your chance of getting infected. The efficacy depends on the strain of covid and the vaccine, but I have yet to see any science indicating that any vaccine has no efficacy against any strain.
2) Vaccination may or may not reduce your infectiousness while you are sick
3) Vaccination does reduce the average duration of infection, which means that while you may be as infectious as a non-vaccinated person while you are sick, you have a shorter window in which to spread that sickness.
So despite the unclearness of #2, we are very clearly able to say that vaccines reduce transmission because of #1 and #3.
Correct. Whenever people talk about the vaccine not slowing spread they forget that vaccinated people are 5x less likely to catch covid to start with. They only seem to focus on viral loads of break through infections.
Vaccination DOES NOT prevent infection or spreading COVID - it ONLY moderates the infection FOR YOU. You are equally infectious vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Seems more nuanced than that. Herd immunity is a function of how contagious you are, which with COVID is a function of how symptomatic you are, right? I think someone who's having coughing fits will more likely spread it. If the vaccine decreases symptoms, then it strengthens herd immunity.
Also, even if herd immunity is impossible, some reduced spread is a good thing by itself
Herd immunity is the biggest benefit of vaccines since vaccines aren't 100% effective, no vaccine is. The Smallpox vaccine is 95+ effective and loses effectiveness over time. Yet, we don't see Smallpox outbreaks. It's all related to herd immunity. The COVID vaccines have a high immunity rate but they will only stop outbreaks, if the majority of people will use them. If we don't act together, it's going to take a long time for that to happen.
> Vaccination is neither prevents infection nor spreading.
Vaccines frequently prevent infection and spreading. (And yes, they do this by way of priming the immune system.) For example, we eradicated Small Pox with vaccines: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/788150/
My understanding is that vaccines do reduce the chance of Covid spreading. But with the Omicron variant, they help a lot with preventing severe illness and only a little bit with helping reduce infectiousness. And Omicron is ridiculously infectious, so it's going to whip right through well-vaccinated areas just like everywhere else.
But in general, reducing the chance that one person infects another is one of the primary purposes of vaccines.
- Vaccinated people (presumably) shed lower viral loads. Just that both can spread them does not mean that there's no difference in transmission rates.
- Unvaccinated people are at greater risk of complications from catching COVID, so limiting the avenues for transmission to them helps curb fatality rates and hospital occupancy.
- And, undoubtedly, it's also an incentive for individuals to get vaccinated. Again, with the goal to reduce the overall number of hospitalizations and deaths.
Can you explain what exactly is the difference between those definitions?
And yes. Covid vaccines don't prevent the virus from spreading, as much as we had hoped they do. This has been communicated extensively.
What they still do is reduce probability of spreading and reduce probability of a hospitalisation.
The former means there are still chances at obtaining herd immunity, it just raises the bar for it. The latter means that vaccines are still important to keep hospitals from being overrun.
Citation needed. This contradicts the most recent research and information available, and all one must do is a quick search to turn up dozens of published papers on this topic. The vaccine reduces the transmission of COVID, and that is an important public health goal.
The evidence suggests this vaccine has zero effect on reducing the spread of covid: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 . The vaccinated have also been found to carry no less viral load than unvaccinated (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34176397/) and a greater proportion of variants: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v... , possibly due to it being a non-neutralising vaccine (unlike e.g. the measles vaccine). Such a vaccine only reduces symptoms, doesn't kill the virus, so much like an incomplete course of antibiotics can encourage the spread of antibiotics-resistant bacteria, a non-neutralising vaccine can encourage the spread of vaccine-resistant bacteria (termed "immune escape").
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