Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements?
From my understanding, yes as soon as positive tests in the country (or some wide area you're likely to mingle with) are near zero. Until then, there is the risk of someone (not yet vaccinated) who carries the virus developing a mutation that can then try itself on the immune system of a vaccinated person (you). It'll spread if it's resistent, so we should avoid such contracts. As soon as we don't have it roaming around, I think we can do away with these precautions indeed.
We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader.
That's why we're still wearing masks even after vaccination until we have better understanding of how the vaccine affects transmission rates.
Yes we do. I'm not sure that we have peer reviewed published A/B studies yet (but I think we do have some initial ones).
But there is absolutely hard evidence that trasmissions rates decrease among vaccinated populations. We saw this with population level testing among groups that got vaccinated.
> Preliminary data points to substantially lower rates of transmission among vaccinated people. [the article then cites a study in Israel, which I was also referring to]
That is some hard evidence. It may not be absolutely conclusive, but yes its evidence. We don't yet have a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard, yes. But we do have hard evidence.
We absolutely do and such studies exist, and furthermore you can see a rapid decline in new cases in countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage, which would not have occurred if vaccines did not prevent onward transmission.
Source please. CDC hasn't said anything about this.
If vaccinated people can't get it, then it will mean that spreaders have less people to spread it to.