That is simply not how the vaccine was presented by authorities and the media. They literally said the vaccine will stop you from getting it and stop transmission. It took them months to acknowledge you could still get it and spread it with the vaccine and all the data simply points to a reduction in severity of symptoms.
What happened was they rolled out the vaccine before they had all the data, and it was bit oversold despite lack of data, perhaps to encourage people to get it.
It's water under the bridge now. But don't gaslight people on what they were told.
I hate to put it in these terms, but do you have credible peer reviewed literature on this claim? What you're saying is exactly what state media & state authorities started espousing after everyone realized the vaccine didn't offer the protection everyone had assumed and been promised. I'm wondering if there is any actual evidence for their claims or if it's just saving face and moving goal posts.
You're 100% bought into the propaganda. Isn't it time to pause and reflect?
Btw. "the science" hasn't changed. The vaccine never stopped the spread. There were no studies indicating that it did (medical trials were about hospitalisations / death, not infections / spreading). You fell for the fake science propagated by fake news media.
Is that what happened ? According to whatever it says there's only been about 1000 cases and most recover. You remind me of current conspiracy theorists who now attribute any death via a health condition to the vaccine. Show me evidence they ignored reasonable warnings or didn't move fast enough?
From your earlier comment:
> because there was never evidence these vaccinations prevented infection/transmission
You are refusing to admit you were factually incorrect, it's very disappointing.
Everyone knew that the trials did not specifically study transmission rates, I never disagreed with that. The fact is, as soon as the vaccinations went live we had massive data supporting it, and studies were done that completed in the next years that confirmed it. Societally, we knew the vaccines were effective at both preventing transmission (though not as effective as we'd like) and preventing infection (though for not as long as we'd like).
I'm done engaging because you refuse to admit you were wrong regarding the efficacy of the vaccine and are now changing your argument to be about a specific timeline, which is asinine - the studies to confirm what we were seeing in realtime with the vaccine rollout would _of course_ take longer than the trials that started the rollout.
Isn't it obvious? The narrative is that the vaccine continues to works (period - No more thinking allowed for the audience), thus they omit that someone who caught and transmitted to new variant was fully vaccinated.
The truth is nuanced, but CNN doesn't like to report nuances because it detracts from their oversimplified narrative.
As rational adults we need to rely more on data and actual claims than vibes we are (mis?)interpreting. When we fail to do so we can't blame others.
The data was splashed in front of us. We can't even claim it was hidden. Efficacy and uncertainty regarding how the vaccine would save us from COVID was analyzed in the media at length.
Even still, happy to review any links to those implications if you have any because I didn't infer from government/media/research/industry that vaccines were a quick "get out of jail free" card.
The citation for most of the claims is the vaccine trial reports themselves. As for not affecting transmission, I'm on my phone so can't give you links right now but just search Google Scholar and you'll find them. It's obvious anyway isn't it, just look at case numbers.
People chased the vaccines because of the promise of effectiveness. That was reasonable. Going further and making up claims with no basis wasn't.
Why would they do that when it's not certain that the vaccine will work against the virus. I would suspect such news promoting hesitancy and people waiting a while longer.
I’m saying that the government claimed that getting the vaccine would “prevent Covid”. Traditionally, when people take “vaccines” that’s the expectation.
When the government was suppressing information that now everyone agrees is true - that the vaccines don’t prevent Covid and that the effects were short lived, they lost credibility and the same people who didn’t fight traditional vaccines like we all took as kids became anti-vaxxers and now are railing against vaccines that do actually prevent you from getting diseases
What misinformation? I don't see anything misleading whatsoever about OP's comment. The vaccines certainly didn't prevent transmission, and according to his data they didn't help prevent sickness in lower age groups either.
>>>> Vaccination was never about "not getting it".
Of course it was about whether the vaccine prevents you from "getting it" (it being Covid). The original claim was that it was 95% effective in preventing you getting it.
> We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection but not COVID-19.
We have loads of crappy evidence showing that (see below). Crappy means highly confounded observational data.
> Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for example.
No one expects them to be perfect, but the original claims were they were supposed to be 95% effective in preventing Covid. Real world efficacy is no where near that. If there's any efficacy at all it is in the low teens.
[BTW, there's a huge debate about the oral Polio vaccine. The US stopped vaccinating with it two decades ago because of that risk]
> (The idea that "turns out it only prevents hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad result is also lunacy from the start.)
It would be luncay if anyone actually claimed that.
The problem is that claiming that it prevents hospitalizations or deaths requires evidence. Reliable evidence.
A recent NEJM correspondence demonstrates quite vividly how terrible much of the evidence for that claim was:
I wouldn't consider that misinformation. At the time those statements were made it was thought the vaccine would prevent transmission. Not a medical expert, but I always thought the reason you got a vaccine was to prevent infection. Measles vaccine is somewhere near 97% effective at stopping infection. Heck, even when the vaccines for covid first came out it was big news if there was a breakthrough infection.
Fast forward to today. The general consensus is the vaccine typically prevents serious illness and death in most cases for the common variants. It doesn't do a great job preventing infection.
One of the mistakes those in charge made was never admitting something like the following when new, solid information was understood:
1) We were wrong.
2) This is something we've never seen.
3) We're learning as we go.
4) It doesn't do what we said or thought it would do, but it does this.
No one in real power ever says anything remotely like it. They speak in absolutes and it has gotten so bad they are choosing to misrepresent studies to suggest following a path they think is best versus admitting the studies just suck.
Misinformation flagging for something like covid was never going to be practical to implement as there was so much changing on a such a limited timeframe. Toss in politics and the governing structure of the USA and it was never going to work.
Whether the original study said so or not, that is absolutely how it was universally sold to the public. This [1] is a collection of various high profile individuals talking about the efficacy of the vaccines, why that means you won't carry the virus, you won't get sick, and and how that will completely stop the spread of COVID.
It's only as this very obviously failed to be the case that the metric was completely shifted to hospitalization/death. I'd also add this is about the time that the 'public messaging' swapped from talking about efficacy and other topics to outright vitriol and attacks on unvaccinated individuals, which is probably where the politicization of the topic began.
True, but they sure as hell implied it did. For example, this fact check appeared in the search container of google early on: note the use of the double negative in the VERDICT.
The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought it was worth working on that assumption due to the hoped for benefits. It turns out now, after extensive research on transmission by vaccinated people, that they were correct and vaccination does significantly slow transmission through populations even for the more recent highly infectious variants.
>I’m increasingly understanding why some folks are “paranoid.”
I really don't, all of this information has been available all the way through. That Pfizer executive was simply being honest, what the vaccines do and how they work and the benefits they offer has been accurately communicated right back from the trials phases. I know this because all through those times I kept myself well informed and followed the literature. It helps that my wife is a Nurse, and also that I'm in the UK where the whole issue was far, far less politicised and the accuracy and consistency of information from the media was actually pretty good.
The problem is there was an awful lot of disinformation going around in the US from people either getting partial information and making wild unfounded assumptions, or deliberately fomenting opposition to various policies on political grounds. Nevertheless as I said in my previous post, we're all adults. It's our responsibility to inform ourselves, we can't blame disinformation, some of which is genuinely simply mistaken.
They were lying. Or at the very least didn't understand the claims actually made by Pfizer/etc, which was only that these vaccines prevented the disease, not that they prevented infection/transmission. They made no claims about infection/transmission.
It comes down to the stupid conflation of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 into just "covid". Pfizer/etc use the two terms correctly, saying they prevented COVID-19, but didn't say anything about stopping SARS-CoV-2, but because everyone thinks "covid" is the virus they can't seem to understand what was actually said.
What happened was they rolled out the vaccine before they had all the data, and it was bit oversold despite lack of data, perhaps to encourage people to get it.
It's water under the bridge now. But don't gaslight people on what they were told.
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