It's moving the goalpoasts. The reason the vaccine enjoyed so much initial support was because it was supposed to make covid go away. The politicians seem to think even though the reality has changed, support for the vaccine has remained constant.
I don't remember the promise that, the vaccine would end COVID, I do remember seeing somewhere that if vaccination rates were high enough ( greater than 90%??, been quite awhile now since I read that article ) that herd immunity could be achievable and the spread would eventually end. At least in the US, vaccination rates never even got close.
We do have and continue to make "sterilizing vaccines" which for nearly all common use of the words do "deploy force fields". The small pox vaccine was one of the best examples, the measles vaccine is also up there. The COVID vaccines just aren't as good and people aren't educated enough to understand why some vaccines are basically perfect while the COVID ones aren't.
99.99% is close enough for me in terms of a sterilizing immunity.
> Eventually, all discussions about sterilizing immunity become nerdy quibbles over semantics.
I think the article nails it very clearly we have made vaccines that are for all effective purposes sterilizing. Some people might argue over the world choice but our COVID vaccines are not in the same league as these.
Eh, not really. Even that didn't actually come from the vaccine trials; Pfizer and Moderna never tested for infection/transmission, and only made claims on symptoms/disease. Stopping infection/transmission just sorta popped out of politicians/media in early 2021, not actual research - that came a month or two later, and from what I remember the strongest claim was that it might help.