For example the people without (or lower concentrations of) antibodies may share certain traits/attributes (like recently undergoing chemotherapy I read in this thread somewhere), if we know that, we can avoid vaccinating these people too early (and thus needlessly) after treatment and we know we should protect them in another way.
It may all seem obvious, but I can tell you (as somewhat of a scientist myself), that any of these things could easily have been found to be not true and we'd have had to deal with that. Biology is complex, if we would have had to change models of how we think the vaccine works, that could have real world implication for how we deal with (partially) vaccinated populations for example.
I wonder if one's reaction to the vaccine is a measure for the magnitude of one's immune reaction and related to the effectiveness of the vaccine. I for one slept for 14 hrs after my first shot and spend another half day in bed feeling like I had the flu after the second. I'd like to thing I'm well protected now, but who knows. Only studies like this one can prove such hypotheses.
Even if there is a "statistically significant" correlation between (lack of) this particular marker and breakthrough infection, it is still at least as possible that immunity requires a coordinated response from several parts of the immune system, with no part particularly dominant. A weaker response by one part could be compensated for by another part. If you're not good at neutralizing the virus but you're really good at preventing it from entering, you may be just as ok as someone with opposite strengths.
Another way to say that is that there very well might not be a relevant threshold of this one marker, or the threshold may be so extreme as to be uninteresting. We might need to combine additional markers.
(I really ought to read the actual study before nitpicking on its reporting, though.)
And people still die with seatbelts. If these people were around 100 years ago we'd still be suffering from polio.
Maybe they're expecting the vaccine to stop the transmission of the virus to others? Like how nearly every vaccine except the mRNA ones do
The covid mRNA vaccines are extremely effective, far superior to the alternatives (the US is very fortunate to have never approved AstraZeneca), so I have no idea why you'd mention them in particular.
Source: https://www.salon.com/2021/07/28/pfizer-vaccine-less-effecti...
Um yeah, they're great.
Now suddenly a 3rd is necessary? What happens when that fails, a second booster? A yearly vaccine like the flu shot (which barely works anyways)? Unfortunately for us humans, nature finds a way.
Speaking of nature, you know what confers full immunity? Having the infection and then recovering or having cross reactive immunity from a previous coronavirus strain.
Natural immunity is the undisputed champion of immunity.
There is nothing to do with mRNA vaccines here.