Pfizer chairman: We're not sure if someone can transmit Covid after vaccination

Oh wow. I don’t see any unmasked people at grocery stores near San Francisco. I saw one woman who had her mask down and the store called police because she didn’t put it back on when asked.

The mask mandate personal choice indignation really cracks me up. Try buying a gallon of milk without pants.

Nobody is asking scientists to say anything without data. What scientists COULD do, for example, is explain what happens with other vaccines, with other viruses.

Is it your take that public health officials shouldn't have been recommending masks before studies came out specifically on covid?

Or should they have followed scientists from Asian nations that said to wear them because even though we don't have all the info, it looks a lot like other viruses we've seen where masks were helpful?

The short answer: we don't know.

The longer answer: contagion is caused by the emission of viral particles, which have been mass-produced by infected cells in your body. The question is if your immune system will suppress the viral infection before there is enough viral matter produced to cause further infection. Whether or not this happen is heavily influenced by specific details of how your immune system has kicked into gear, and immune systems are unfortunately one of the biological systems that varies most from individual to individual.

Shortening is a likely outcome. But in theory it's even possible that the immune response prepared by the vaccine only prevents virus spread to organs where we notice symptoms but does not clear out those places that the virus colonizes during the pre-symptomatic infectivity phase that seems to be the super-power of this particular virus. And that this success prevents another immune response that would otherwise clear out those spreading springboards. Of course this perfect storm of what could be called "vaccine enhanced infectivity" is an extremely unlikely scenario, but at least weak forms of it that cause longer infectivity, but not much longer or even permanent infectivity could remain undetected for years.

The reason for all this uncertainty is simple: testing for infectivity doesn't scale, definitely not enough to continuously observe test groups large enough to experience cases.

But Ithink there is hope: chances are someone is designing a study that recruits a number vaccinated that live together with someone unvaccinated. Then in case their unvaccinated peer falls ill you can observe the vaccinated one, that should be well in the test scaling envelope. We know the attack rate in unvaccinated households and can compare.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. I think your logic is sound. Typically vaccinations don't work this way though. AFAIK contagion is proportional to viral load which is inversely proportional to immune response (via some complex function over time from initial infection).

Not that I agree with GPs concern, but this comment doesn't address it whatsoever.

There is absolutely 0% chance I'll be letting that anywhere near my family. And I was a biomedical scientist formerly.

Over my dead body (one way or another).

> immunity gained from a vaccine

99% effectiveness from natural immunity vs 90-95% for vaccine

I have no clue, I'm not an expert. I just don't see any discussion on this topic and it concerns me. Historically, I don't see any vaccine which was effective against such a virulent virus, unless it had a much higher rate of immunity. I'd gamble on 5% odds if the reward was high enough, so 95% immunity sounds good but it's only half as strong 97.5% immunity, for example.

I do know that the immunity may only be temporary--1 out of 20 cases of the most virulent strains may then have a larger substrate to mutate within, but I'm not sure if you can get many strains at once, for example. I do know that the flu mutates each year, and I guess I'm basing this whole "increased selection pressure could cause more mutations" on that fact. When there is less available space for the virus to propagate, it's only chance of survival is to be able to infect those who are already immune.

In my opinion, we have an immune system crisis here--we need to focus on eating better and exercising more: we have to fight this virus with every tool we've got, but if we wait a few more months it's possible that we'll get a stronger vaccine. I suspect that's why it ended sooner in certain places--I doubt any measure we can take have had any real effect due to the virulence of COVID--it's in the air and on surfaces and lives there for days, and is transmitted by asymptomatic carriers--so your uber eats driver driving in their car with the AC will infect your food etc.

I'm the opposite of a biology expert, but from what I've read, the "miscellaneous non-vaccine compounds" in the solution are adjuvants which make the vaccine more effective by provoking the immune system into a response. Without those "non-vaccine compounds" the vaccine itself could be no more effective than a shot of sterile saline - which itself is probably another "non-vaccine compound."

Perhaps if you're referring to something else you could spell it out.

> Until now the line I have kept hearing is that there is no such thing as herd immunity except that which is realized through universal immunization.

You were either hearing the wrong information or misunderstanding it. Herd immunity is absolutely real, and can occur if a virus infects enough people (or enough people are vaccinated). When more people are immune, it will be harder for the virus to spread to a new host. When enough are immune, the virus dies out.

But since the death rate of COVID is so high, encouraging people to go outside and get infected in the name of achieving herd immunity (an approach often spread by the right wing) would likely cause millions of deaths, especially because the US has limited hospital capacity. This isn't even mentioning that we don't know the long-term effects of the hundreds of millions of others who would have recovered from COVID.

Herd immunity through vaccination will kill or harm very few people in comparison, given that only 1 in a million suffer side effects from vaccines on average.

Who is promoting this "new line of reasoning"? I don't hear that at all. OP here was simply stating that the vaccine is not 100% effective, a completely different point than the one you threw out as a response.