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Comment by squarefoot | Hacker News Reader

This, a million times.

Over here 80-90% of Covid patients in ICUs are either never vaccinated or in need of a boost because of too much time past since their 2nd shot. So, yes, vaccination may not prevent being infected, but for sure it helps immensely in avoiding being hospitalized and shortening the infection, which does actually translate in less people being infected. And believe me, having both lived and seen this with my own eyes, there's a world of difference between staying home 2-3 weeks with a strong cough and living 2 months in an ICU with chances of being carried out from there in a brown bag.

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>So, yes, vaccination may not prevent being infected, but for sure it helps immensely in avoiding being hospitalized and shortening the infection, which does actually translate in less people being infected.

On the flip side, infections in the vaccinated who are asymptomatic are more likely to leave the house, simply because they have no idea that they're sick. Perhaps they end up at a restaurant with their mask off and turn into a literal super spreaders (if we're to believe Omicron is 4X more transmissable). This was always a potential problem with vaccines that only reduce symptoms and don't prevent transmission. If Omicron is indeed mild and highly contagious as officials in South Africa claim, this could be a huge issue with anyone vaccinated.

Transmissions and symptoms are roughly correlated through viral load.

The household attack rate of ultimately asymptomatic infections is much lower than ultimately symptomatic. The window for vaccinated people is also shorter since mRNA loads peak at about the same levels (where the entry criteria for the study was the same level of symptomology) but they decline faster and have less culturable, infectious virus for the same level of mRNA load.

And delta already spikes viral loads much, much higher in the presymptomatic phase of an infection (doesn't matter if its naive, breakthrough or reinfection) so that people are walking around spreading it before they know they have it. That ship already sailed.

Once someone is infected, then its better that they get less symptoms and less viral load / less shedding and that they're vaccinated.

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