This isn't surprising. Vaccines are not expected to prevent infection, and almost none do. Rather, they are designed and tested to prevent disease.
The focus on preventing infection is understandable, but I feel it's largely counterproductive in the national discourse. I wish there were more emphasis on the vaccines' ability to prevent the disease of covid, and the evidence still shows that they are doing this job well.
The question is whether the vaccine against covid prevents people from getting infected with the virus or whether the vaccine protects against the effects of the Covid disease. This is not the same.
Wrong in what way? It's true that the vaccines against covid don't provide durable sterilizing immunity, and they aren't expected to. In other words, the vaccines are not expected to prevent most people from getting infected, but rather only from getting seriously sick.
This is true of vaccines in general; vaccines are not expected to prevent infection, and almost none do. For example, flu vaccines don't keep you from from getting infected, and the virus is still able to spread even when vaccination rates are high. Rather, flu vaccines cause you to have less severe symptoms.
Vaccines are designed and tested to prevent disease in spite of infection. The current evidence indicates that the vaccines are doing a good job of preventing hospitalizations due to covid, and I wish the CDC would message this more clearly instead of fearmongering about "breakthrough" infections.
I didn't mean to imply that the vaccines we use aren't leaky, they are. Even so, there are indications that getting the vaccine provides more effective defense than getting infected [1].
The current covid vaccines are some of the most efficacious vaccines we have ever had. Even with efficacy waning due to variants, they are still very effective.
And no, not all vaccines prevent infection. It has long been well understood in immunology that some vaccines do not prevent infection but rather poor outcomes.
The vaccine reduces level and length of infectivity by anywhere between 50% and 80% depending on which study and which variant.
The anti COVID vaccine rhetoric is directly responsible for the lives of hundreds of thousands. And it may yet lead to many more.
The two major vaccines - Pfizer and Moderna, never tested for infection prevention. There was literally no data to even say if they did or didn't prevent infection.
You can look up the clinical trial endpoints. Patients were only tested for infections if they experienced symptoms. I believe it was only AZ or J&J that regularly tested to capture any effect on infection rate.
But it was stated several times "The vaccine will stop you from getting Covid". Why? Because if you tell people "Well, the vaccine won't stop you from getting it, but it will make it less likely you'll get really sick", they thought people wouldn't take it.
Covid vaccinations have only been proven to protect the vaccinated from severe outcomes. They don't prevent infection or re-transmission. There's no valid claim to pushing this on those that don't want them.
That is great. But still, vaccinated people shouldn't be told that they cannot get infected. There is this weird misconception floating around that just because we get vaccinated we are somehow immune to covid-19. That is a dangerous and misguided belief.
But the vaccines don't prevent Covid infection. If the infection rates from Ontario and the UK were to be believed (before the UK stopped publishing the vaccinated vs unvaccinated breakdowns, that is), being vaccinated might even make you more likely to be infected.
I totally agree. You can still transmit COVID with the vaccine. People who want to be protected from dying of COVID get the vaccine (90% less likely to die), and those who don’t will not get the vaccine. Seems simple to me.
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