I took JNJ and boosted with Moderna I want people to choose to get vaxxed but as far as I can tell nobody is out there saying getting vaxxed will prevent you from spreading the disease.
It’s because they’re being disingenuous.
Vaccination reduces infection severity and length. Reduced infection severity reduces coughing, which reduces spread. Reduced infection length gives less time for transmissibility.
So even if you can still transmit the virus while vaccinated, there is value in reducing the amount of time you’re infectious and the amount of viral load you’re spreading into the air.
It’s not a binary thing, despite what some are trying to suggest.
Possibly vaxxed people are more likely to be asymptomatic and more likely to go out to lunch or something and spread it. Hard to say right?
At the same time, less severe cases would make ideal spreaders: you're not aware you're infectious and you're not hindered from going out by being sick. I don't think that's a compelling reason for "vaccination reduces spread". Portugal's also doesn't suggest that, currently peaking despite 88% with two vaccinations and 26% with three.
The vaccine is tool. We need to pick the best tool for the job. Vaccines reduce severity and risk. Talking about Nations peaking, and only talking about the vaccine is like trying to build a house using nails and your bare hands. There is another tool that we need to be effective. It's called testing and I haven't seen 1 Western Country executes successfully on this.
If it's your kid, you hug them, they touch everything, they drool on everything. It doesn't matter if they're slightly contagious or heavily contagious, you're going to get saturated by them regardless.
So without any "disingenousness", I claim vaccinations help slow the spread for normal interactions, but it probably doesn't help much to stop kids spreading it to their parents.
To speak specifically to your point, the data I've seen indicates that vaccinations are much more effective in preventing infection (and therefore spread) in younger people. That likely compounds with an adults vaccination, so a vaccinated kid is likely significantly less likely to bring an infection home and infect an adult.
I'm not sure "common knowledge" has meaning any more considering that every topic is now polarizing. Anyone will argue anything and then refer to some unspecified "data" they've seen. Moreover, I doubt parents can be objective about this considering there's an evolutionary advantage to not being repulsed by their offspring's illnesses.
> the data I've seen indicates that vaccinations are much more effective in preventing infection (and therefore spread)
I don't even disagree with that. All I'm saying is that parents have a much higher level of exposure to their own children than pretty much anyone else in the world. You could reduce transmission of children by 90%, but that doesn't mean much to the parents who have 100X the exposure to them. We can talk viral load all you want, but at some point they'll cough in your face and the virus is going to start replicating inside of you.
[1]https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0... (see graph 3 in particular)
Couple of related notes:
* Covid statistics without a breakdown by age / date / vaccination status are garbage. Possibly BMI and/or immunosuppressed status should also be added to the mix. The authorities failure to publish this data breakdown 2 years into the pandemic is going beyond incompetence.
* Focusing on "cases" beyond a coarse "going up or going down" is largely useless. Observed "cases" are more likely to indicate test penetration than actual case numbers, and test penetration may significantly vary between age groups, institutionalization settings, etc.
In practice this shouldn't make a difference, because anyone with a cough should stay home, but it's be a problem in the US where you're not guaranteed paid sick days. In Europe not so much, although there are currently problems with a lot of people not working due to being at home with Omicron, but that's temporary.
All in all it's an excellent situation. The hospitals are a bit under pressure now due to everyone running for tests, but it'll subside - after January things should be more or less back to normal (relatively speaking), if people want it to be (which I doubt).
And since kids have never played any significant part in this, mandating vaccines for them just seems like an act of foolish desperation.
Give boosters to those who need them. Even the WHO said it's stupid to waste them on kids.
If the answer was yes, then vaxxing young kids makes more sense.
I understand that we originally believed the vaccine stopped transmission. It is time to let that go.
The vaccine is a tool to reduce the risk of hospitalization and mortality.
Whether or not Kids are Less infectious is not a good criteria to evaluate the worthiness of giving kids the vaccine. It protects them and the people around them.
Please don't conflate the lack of proper disease controls with evaluating vaccine effectiveness. We need better testing contact tracing and community outreach. We have really miss managed this.
I’m sure some people will choose to mask forever but the mandates will end.
Edit: nm, you should. https://www.cnet.com/health/johnson-and-johnson-covid-booste...