Comment by ppf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ppf | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com