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Comment by frafra | Hacker News Reader

Vaccine were never meant to make people immune; they have been approved and evaluated based on their effectiveness to reduce severe cases and deaths. We have been lucky enough that they have also been effective to reduce the spread. Even now, they are still very effective with respect to their main goal: reducing the number of people getting into the hospital because of COVID. After ~1 year of vaccinations and ~2 of COVID, I hoped that would have been crystal clear for most people, or, at least, for most of HN users.

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Wasn't sure which of these responses to shoot down, but prior to the definition change of what a vaccine was (which happened last year, well after the release of these "vaccines") that was precisely the definition. And all these claims now that no medical authority ever claimed the vaccines were going to make you immune... I understand that the "memory hole" is a real thing, but gosh, this is seriously not difficult to find:

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https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-herd-immu... > "If you have 75%–80% of the people get vaccinated, you create an umbrella of herd immunity — that even though there is virus around, it is really almost inconsequential because it has no place to go, because almost all of the people are protected," Fauci says.

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I mean they're even now just distorting the term "immunity" to mean something new, but still pushing it in relation to vaccines:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220111/Third-dose-of-mRN...

I know that it would be better not to reply in order to avoid losing points (and time), but HN users often forget that the world is not just the US. That is not a matter of "memory holes". FDA and EMA evaluated and approved vaccines based on their efficacy with reducing the severe cases and deaths. That is what has been reported and what mattered the most. They also reduced the spreading, by giving some level of immunity, but is a pleasing secondary effect, mostly. No agency gave a red or green light based on that. This is what I said. I agree with you that there has been a huge problem with communicating properly with the wide public, politicians making mistakes, doctors and professionals spending too much time on TV talking about their personal opinion, and too little time spent on the basics, what we know, to which degree, and what we do not know. That is a different matter from what the goals of the vaccines during their development (passing the FDA and EMA parameters) have been.

I respect that you are replying, (who cares about karma though? Internet brownie points are dumb). How is pushing vaccination under the auspices of achieving herd immunity NOT representing that these shots provide immunity? Goal post shifting by saying, "The US is not the whole world" does not answer that question.

I think that we have a misunderstanding, so I am going to stress what I replied to: "the vaccines (falsely) claimed they would make me: immune" -> they weren't supposed to, they were developed based on another criteria. This is a problem of miscommunication in my opinion, as people sold vaccines as a way to reach immunity or herd immunity. People took bets and made guesses on something hard to model and predict. We like to give people news as they are 100 % sure, making simplification, even for good reasons. Scientific research and understanding does not work like this. Reality and complex, and if we have had a better approach at explaining the current scientific consensus regarding the COVID pandemic, including confidence levels, and lack of understanding or to make reliable predictions and such, science as a whole would probably not have suffered in terms of popularity and general trust.

So because I said that "the vaccines" themselves made the claims at immunity, you are interpreting that as false, based on the notion that the approval was not contingent on them providing immunity. This does not seem like a misunderstanding to me. It sounds like the painfully obvious interpretation of "Authority figures representing scientific institutions, with credentials, promoted these vaccines, claiming they would grant immunity." I think the only way you don't interpret it that was is if you are trying to obfuscate things (perhaps to yourself because recognizing corruption in scientific institutions is a direct attack to some people's egos and identities).

That's right. There is no authority principle in science, and a representative of an institution/agency of US saying that something "should be strong enough to", does not mean that the "science" said "it is going to be like this", especially given the so many unknown variables that come into play. That is one of the common misunderstandings. People make mistakes, and we have plenty of people with credentials that made bad predictions. The vaccines worked as intended, thought. The criticism should be targeted elsewhere. My personal opinion is that in many countries there hasn't been a good communication, and being an expert on a field doesn't qualify someone to be good at explaining things to the wide public.

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