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Comment by ppf | Hacker News Reader

It's what we have, according to the designers of the various vaccines. Unless you are suggesting that all things are true unless proven otherwise, in which case I'd ask you to go back and check some books on elementary logic.

There is some work after the fact to measure the effect on Covid transmission of the vaccines, but even that isn't very promising.

It's odd when "stopping people dying" is "a huge downgrade". I suspect what you mean is that the vaccines in their current form will not get us out of the restrictions we are currently living under, which is true (and incredibly predicable).

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> It's what we have, according to the designers of the various vaccines. Unless you are suggesting that all things are true unless proven otherwise, in which case I'd ask you to go back and check some books on elementary logic.

That's not a citation. And vaccines are designed with a very general goal of "make the body fight this". That can potentually affect both symptoms and transmission. Don't argue in bad faith and equate that to "anything could be true"

> There is some work after the fact to measure the effect on Covid transmission of the vaccines, but even that isn't very promising.

Huh? Checking if the vaccine does anything at all is after the design is done. The choice of when to test symptoms vs. spreading is more about difficulty of getting the data than anything else.

> It's odd when "stopping people dying" is "a huge downgrade".

Stopping one person from a chance of dying is a downgrade from both stopping that and stopping transmission to more people that have their own chance of dying.

>That's not a citation. And vaccines are designed with a very general goal of "make the body fight this". That can potentually affect both symptoms and transmission. Don't argue in bad faith and equate that to "anything could be true"

>Huh? Checking if the vaccine does anything at all is after the design is done. The choice of when to test symptoms vs. spreading is more about difficulty of getting the data than anything else.

You're the one arguing in bad faith, demanding evidence of a negative. When the vaccines were released, the published testing only covered a few key endpoints - primarily, incidences of lab-tested Covid cases. Any work on measuring effects on transmission was done by 3rd parties (in this case, I believe it was researchers in Israel).

Covid has a very specific (and small) risk profile. That's the idea we were all sold - vaccinate the vulnerable, get on with our lives. Given that it presents very little risk to the vast majority of people, it doesn't really matter about transmission. Except that is, now we are apparently trying to surpress potential mutations, which means we'll be battling a relatively harmelss (compared to the great pandemics of the past) disease forever.

> You're the one arguing in bad faith, demanding evidence of a negative.

I demanded evidence because you stated it as a fact.

And are you trying to imply it's one of those things that's impossible to prove? It's not. You collect some data and it either shows that transmission rates differ or that they don't differ.

> That's the idea we were all sold - vaccinate the vulnerable, get on with our lives.

We were also sold on "vaccinate the people near the vulnerable so they won't spread it to the vulnerable".

It's a fact that the various vaccines were released without any information about their effectiveness on transmission. It's not impossible to prove, it's just not been done (nor, if the tests were done, do we know what the results would be).

>"vaccinate the people near the vulnerable so they won't spread it to the vulnerable"

Why does that matter, if the vulnerable are already vaccinated? That was the whole point of vaccinating them in the first place.

> It's a fact that the various vaccines were released without any information about their effectiveness on transmission. It's not impossible to prove, it's just not been done (nor, if the tests were done, do we know what the results would be).

So do you withdraw the claim that "what we got" are vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity?

> Why does that matter, if the vulnerable are already vaccinated? That was the whole point of vaccinating them in the first place.

Not everyone can be vaccinated and supplies have been limited.

And less people getting sick is good even if it's milder.

If you really want to nitpick, "what we got" are vaccines that are not known to provide sterilising immunity, and the 3rd party testing that has been done shows limited effect on reducing transmission. That being the case, it would be surprising if they did have sterilising immunity.

You still haven't said a single number, url, or searchable phrase.

Asking for a source is not nitpicking.

For what it's worth if I search for "covid vaccine transmission effectiveness" my top results are "COVID-19 vaccines are probably less effective at preventing transmission than symptoms", which is vague on the term "less" but still suggests a large improvement over not being vaccinated, "New research suggests vaccines reduce risk of COVID-19 spread through nose and mouth", and "Pfizer vaccine shots actually stop asymptomatic transmission, too"

It's not nitpicking to ask for a source for the statement "it's not known if the various vaccines give sterilising immunity", it's asking for proof of a negative. The only possible refutation of such a statement is a counterexample (that is, evidence of it providing sterilising immunity). If we were to set this discussion up properly, the burden of proof would be on the person making the statement "this vaccine provides sterilising immunity".

I'm fully aware of the results you found, as I already indicated with statements like "3rd party testing that has been done shows limited effect on reducing transmission". As I already said, it would be very surprising if a vaccine had limited effectiveness at reducing transmission (as your search results indicate), and also provided sterilising immunity. In fact, it seems to me that the known fact that transmission does still occur, preculdes the idea that the vaccines have sterilising immunity.

I don't get what your point is. I suggest you work out what that is, before delving into more complicated subjects. As I have essentially repeated what I said before, it seems we are now going in circles.

> It's not nitpicking to ask for a source for the statement "it's not known if the various vaccines give sterilising immunity", it's asking for proof of a negative.

You're rewriting history. You definitely did not say "it's not known" originally, you made a very clear statement that they didn't confer it.

> I don't get what your point is.

That if "limited" is 80% then you are grossly misrepresenting the situation to talk like transmission isn't affected.

I already clarified my statement, quite a few replies ago. I've also already suggested that the known low effectiveness of reducing transmission would indicate that it does not have sterilising immunity.

But wait!

> 80%

Now, you've made a pretty positive statement there. My turn to ask you for a link, or other proof.

> I already clarified my statement, quite a few replies ago.

You didn't "clarify" because I asked if you were withdrawing the original statement and you ignored the question entirely.

You also accused me of "nitpicking" your new statement, when the new statement is a very different thing from what I originally replied to.

> Now, you've made a pretty positive statement there. My turn to ask you for a link, or other proof.

Sure, that's in the first article I quoted the title of. https://theconversation.com/covid-19-vaccines-are-probably-l... It's talking about the Pfizer vaccine.

> I've also already suggested that the known low effectiveness of reducing transmission would indicate that it does not have sterilising immunity.

Your original statement, and some of your followup statements, argued against the vaccine reducing spread at all. If you're talking purely about sterilizing immunity now, ignoring any other reduction in spread, then either you're moving the goalposts or some massive miscommunication happened multiple times in a row. But sure, it might not be sterilizing. And in that case I say: This whole conversation was pointless because I don't care if it's sterilizing, I care if it reduces spread by a lot.

When you were talking about "80%", I thought you were referring to reduction in transmission. The article you linked only talks about the reduction in numbers of cases (and mostly symtomatic cases), which is not the same thing. By "reduction in transmission", we are talking about the chances of someone catching Covid from someone already infected with it.

>Your original statement, and some of your followup statements, argued against the vaccine reducing spread at all.

Not that it matters much, but I started by saying that it does not confer sterilising immunity (something even the article you linked suggests could be true), later correcting it "it's not know if it does". I've also said, many times now, that it may have some limited effect on reducing transmission.

I'm still not sure why the obsession with transmissison, anyway.

If it reduces the chance you have an asymptomatic case by 80%, and reduces the chance you have a symptomatic case by even more, then almost certainly the reduction in transmission is at least 80%, isn't it?

> but I started by saying that it does not confer sterilising immunity

But you were replying to a comment about reducing transmission. And when I kept talking about reducing transmission you said "limited" sometimes and acted like it was none other times.

80% would be more than enough...

> I'm still not sure why the obsession with transmissison, anyway.

Because stopping people from getting sick is much better than reducing how sick they get. And transmission is the only factor that actually stops the virus.

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