Or maybe they actually read the scientific literature and know the vaccine is completely ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... Or is The Lancet fake news to you?
It beggars belief to imagine that your body is both more adept at fighting it and also somehow just as good at transmitting it.
COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths by Vaccination Status February 02, 2022
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
Summary
Unvaccinated 12-34 year-olds in Washington are
• 3 times more likely to get COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 12-34 year-olds.
• 5 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 12-34 year- olds.
Unvaccinated 35-64 year-olds are
• 4 times more likely to get COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 35-64 year-olds.
• 7 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 35-64 year- olds.
Unvaccinated 65+ year-olds are
• 5 times more likely to get COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.
• 8 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.
• 9 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared with fully vaccinated 65+ year-olds.
This can mean that the risk of hospitalization goes from 0.01% to 0.05%, which isn't something most people would care about. With statistics like that we need absolute numbers, not relative. Your post is basically an example of "how to scare people with meaningless stats".
But what do I know, I'm not a guy trained to Trust the Scientific Authority, just a lowly pleb with a degree who does math and statistics for a living.
> strip them of their rights to move freely?
Is access to airplanes necessary for that right? I don't think so, the existence of a no-fly list wouldn't be consistent with that either.
I just hope in comes from a place of ignorance and heat of the moment.
Banning access to airplanes is already being done in cases where the airline decides a passenger isn't worth the trouble, just like a restaurant owner can ban people. Using a no-fly list is too much, and wouldn't do more than that either way.
Anti-vaxxers/Covid deniers have physically assaulted and sometimes even killed bystanders and it's not far-fetched to assume they don't take safety of other community members as seriously. Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
Some extremists that are also supposedly unvaccinated have done that.
Lumping everyone together under one insulting label and then judging them by the worst apples leaves you with a skewed image.
> and it's not far-fetched to assume they don't take safety of other community members as seriously. Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
I would say it is extremely far-fetched. Of the unvaccinated people that I know, nobody is aggressive or violent or would ever engage in behavior that is risking the safety of other passengers.
Punishing them for what some extremists have done is neither fair nor lawful.
> Why would I want to share a plane with such people?
Would you prefer to share your plane with a psychopath who happens to be vaccinated or a lovely person that happens to be unvaccinated?
"This is not in disupte except by conspiracists"
US data simply doesn't match figures reported by other comparable countries around the world and is likely to be distorted in some way. For example, here's a story from the UK in October/November last year saying that the majority of Covid ICU patients were vaccinated.
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/12/11/majority-of-covid-icu-pa...
That's the British government's own data which is of decent quality (mostly). US data is virtually uninterpretable in comparison.
Your stat is misleading, because ICU rates are much lower overall than would be the case if there was no vaccine at all.
Finally, your link is outdated. Unvaccinated are back to the majority of ICU admissions in Britain, if you look at the most recent source data.
Re: out of date. I'll take your word for it on the UK data now, but it hardly matters. Here's one from today showing the same thing for Israel:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/05/80-of-serious-covid-case...
"Professor Yaakov Jerris, the Director of a coronavirus ward in an Israeli hospital, has said between 70% and 80% of the serious cases in his hospital are vaccinated and that the vaccine has “no significance regarding severe illness”. Israel National News has the story."
user consp said: "[the vaccine] massively prevents hospitalization and severe side effects, including death"
user otabdeveloper4 replied: "Statistics show otherwise. [I do] math and statistics for a living"
To which I replied that severe COVID hospitalizations (i.e. ICU) are dominated by unvaxxed.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674
Are Israeli hospitals really overloaded with unvaccinated COVID patients? According to Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of Ichilov Hospital’s coronavirus ward, the situation is completely opposite.
“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” Jerris told Channel 13 News. “They had at least three injections. Between seventy and eighty percent of the serious cases are vaccinated. So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just twenty to twenty-five percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”
(Oh wait, you will suddenly remember about proper sampling and bias when arguing against a position you find ideologically abhorrent. Neat.)
I am asking what is the alternative explanation why the US covid ICU hospitalizations are dominated (upwards of 90%) by unvaccinated people. If the vaccine were ineffective against hospitalization --as you claimed-- wouldn't the ICU unvaxxed percentage be 50%? I'm legitimately interested to hear if there's an alternative explanation (besides "All the hospitals in the US are lying").
The people doing the research had a foregone conclusion - "vaccines are crucial in our anti-Covid effort" - and then went out of their way to massage the data to prove their point.
Other countries had different foregone conclusions, and demonstrate entirely different results.
It is common knowledge by now, January 2022, that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
A tripple-vaccinated person can infect other people. I was infected by a tripple-vaccinated person and I was vaccinated as well.
We both still live, so maybe the vaccines did something to prevent hospitalization and severe side effects, including death.
How is preventing hospitalization and severe side effects, including death relevant from an airline perspective?
Obviously they need to do their best to prevent spreading of the virus, but if they start mandating things that have almost no impact on that, such as the vaccines, they are overstepping boundaries.
They have always "prevented" transmission in some cases, so reducing transmission. At slightly lower rates than preventing severe outcomes.
Delta was 2x more transmissible than the first strain of Covid. Omicron appears to be around 4x more transmissible than delta, so 8x more transmissible than the original variant.
Even if the vaccines had been 90% effective at reducing transmission and was just as effective against Omicron, we would expect Omicron to spread in a fully vaccinated/boostered population just as quickly as the original variant spread in a completely unvaccinated population.
However, the vaccines were not 90% effective at preventing transmission of the original variant, more like 60-80% IIRC. And Omicron has mutated significantly, so effectiveness is further reduced. And of course there is a significant percentage of unvaccinated (partly due to "the vaccines don't work misinformation, sigh!), and the virus has a much easier time going from unvaccinated → vaccinated or vaccinated → unvaccinated than it does going from vaccinated → vaccinated.
So seeing high(er) transmission rates right now in no way "proves" that the "vaccines don't work at preventing transmission". Neither do anecdotes that do not contradict the actual evidence. Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
Now Omicron is dominant and these earlier strains are not relevant anymore. It is reasonable to expect that the virus will mutate more and faster, maybe even with many different strains that are relevant at the same time.
> And of course there is a significant percentage of unvaccinated (partly due to "the vaccines don't work misinformation, sigh!)
Most of Africa is unvaccinated, because they don't have the vaccine, while some countries are trying to enforce the third injection.
> Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
That is not an argument for mandating vaccines when they only prevent the spread of the currently dominant strains with a very low probability or maybe even not at all. Actually I haven't heard of any good argument for that yet.
Yes they are, when explaining why "it's spreading quickly now" does not imply that the vaccines aren't effective.
They are.
>> It is common knowledge by now, January 2022, that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
And when you stop spreading misinformation like this, I will stop correcting you.
> Most of Africa is unvaccinated
What relevance does this have to your false claim that the "vaccines do not prevent transmission"?
> > Transmission rates would be a lot higher without vaccines.
> That is not an argument for mandating vaccines
You are right that it is not. Fortunately, that is not the reasoning for vaccine mandates, but just a rebuttal of your misinformation, such as:
> they only prevent the spread of the currently dominant strains with a very low probability or maybe even not at all.
No, they do not prevent spread at "very low" probability. Omicron is just much, much more contagious, so even with pretty high probability of prevention the rate of spread is high. This is why comparing with older variants is helpful with understanding the current situation.
You are also making the mistake of thinking of the effectiveness as a completely independent variable. But it is not. Overall effectiveness rises as the vaccination rates increase, because vaccinated → vaccinated has a lower probability of transmission than vaccinated → unvaccinated or unvaccinated → vaccinated.
And since Omicron is so much more transmissible than Delta, never mind Alpha, getting to a higher vaccination rate is more important than ever in achieving the desired societal outcomes.
Furthermore, every sick person puts a stress on the health system. With Omicron being so incredibly contagious, the risk of overwhelming the health system rises, meaning that other people suffer when you become sick, even if you don't infect anyone.
> Actually I haven't heard of any good argument for that yet.
Then you're not paying attention.
> And when you stop spreading misinformation like this, I will stop correcting you.
How can this be misinformation when vaccinated people get infected by other vaccinated people?
Claiming that they do not prevent transmission is misinformation.
Claiming that there has been some sort of change in this knowledge is misinformation.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated...
I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting,"
If this is true, then following statement is equally true, since there are cases of "breakthrough" transmission:
> Claiming that they do prevent transmission is misinformation.
If the efficacy against transmission is below 50%, then Statement 2 has more weight than statement 1, because they fail in more than 50% of cases.
b) I doubt that it is true, though Omicron is a tough one.
c) The reason I doubt it is that this is a nonlinear effect, i.e. you cannot easily extrapolate from vaccine effectiveness at 65% vaccination rate to vaccine effectiveness at 91%, 99%, or 100%.
d) The more contagious the virus, the higher your vaccination rate needs to be, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
e) So, seemingly paradoxically, the more the vaccine seems to not be working (it actually still is, the virus is just mostly much more contagious), the better the case for vaccine mandates. We really, really need to starve the virus of hosts, particularly so we don't breed ever more variants.
f) Even if it were true that R would still be > 1 with a 100% vaccination rate, as long as the R rate is lower with the vaccines than it is without the vaccines, the vaccines are preventing (some) transmission.
This seems so unrealistic when most of the world's population is still unvaccinated and the virus can jump from and to animal hosts such as mice too, which seems to be the case with Omicron. So what is left? Mostly just the tyrannic aspect of vaccine mandates, besides of personal protection against severe diseaes for some of the few people who would not get vaccinated voluntarily and some prevention of transmission that does not provide any meaningful personal protection.
Under the current circumstances a more likely outcome is that everyone will be exposed to the virus, regardless of vaccination status and those who survive that (partially due to being vaccinated) will gain some natural immunity and this is what starves out the virus in the long run.
Especially when the vaccines do not prevent (most) transmission.
There is no magical law of physics that ensures that a 100% vaccination rate gets R<1. It all depends on how transmissible Omicron is in vaccinated people. The numbers are currently still in flux, but a reasonable current estimate is that two vaccinations are approximately 70% effective against hospitalisation with Omicron. We also know that it is (much) less effective against transmission than it is against hospitalisation. Even if it were 70% effective against transmission, that might still not be enough to get R<1 given the ease at which Omicron spreads.
Compare, say, with the measles, which has a natural R of about 10. With a 70% effective vaccine, it would still spread. Luckily we have a vaccine that is 99% effective against transmission, so it can be stopped. COVID vaccines are not nearly as good.
To give some indication from my country (the Netherlands) where 86.3% has been fully vaccinated, of the positive corona tests, approximately 66% fully vaccinated. We can see that this 66% is less than 86.3%, indicating that the vaccination is somewhat effective at stopping transmission, but that's still a heck of a lot of vaccinated people who can catch and transmit covid.
> Even if it were true that R would still be > 1 with a 100% vaccination rate, as long as the R rate is lower with the vaccines than it is without the vaccines, the vaccines are preventing (some) transmission.
Of course, but in the long run it would make little difference, because as long as R>1, then more and more people will continue to catch the disease, just over a longer period of time. Smearing out infections can be important if there is a shortage of hospital beds, but this can hardly be called "stopping transmission".
> The more contagious the virus, the higher your vaccination rate needs to be, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
Absolutely correct! And at a certain point, unless the vaccine is 100% effective against transmission, the vaccination rate would need to go above 100%, which is clearly not possible.
Secondly, many lifestyle choices affect the rate of transmission. The singular focus on the forcing people to inject something into their body against their will is unethical (note: I have personally been vaccinated). It is unethical not just because it violates bodily autonomy, but also because it is an easy way to abdicate from your responsibility to take care of your other lifestyle choices that affect the spread.
> We really, really need to starve the virus of hosts, particularly so we don't breed ever more variants.
Not going to happen. Even at a 100% vaccination rate it would still have many human hosts as the data I quote above show, but also because many wild animals now have COVID too. Unless they develop a new vaccine that is much more effective than the ones we currently have, there is no stopping it any more. We need to learn to live with it, like we do live with the flu. We are lucky that Omicron is so much milder than Delta. If you are fully vaccinated then the chances that you have serious illness are very very low. It for sure is terrible for old people and those with existing health problems, but we cannot realistically do anything about that, except for instituting Chinese level control. The response against COVID is at this point completely irrational and doing more damage than COVID itself. Not just economically (which directly translates into future deaths), but also because it is tearing societies apart.
And even if there was no difference it would still make sense to me. There's likely a large overlap between anti-vaxxers and people who don't like adhering to safety measures.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated... I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting,"Saying they are completely ineffective is wrong based on what we know, to the best of my knowedge. I read, I talk to friends and family in the medical community, I am not an expert.
My understanding is that the vaccines have some effectiveness in preventing further infection but aren't fully effective, as evidenced by the study in Lancet which you indirectly linked to.
Your letter in reaction to this study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/alrticle/PIIS1473-...
Here's the author's reply to the correspondence:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8694752/
Just because peak viral load is apparently the same doesn't mean infection duration or transmission rates are the same, and the study suggests they aren't, in part because of faster decline in viral load among vaccinated folks.
Of course that data is only about delta. The science may change, and I follow the science.
Getting back to what I said, you know that, in the US, vaccine hesitancy is correlated with both less mask usage and less social distancing, right? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33592035/
If your idea is true, and the vaccine is completely ineffective, that still suggests unvaccinated folks are more likely to get infected with COVID, and to transmit it.
Getting back to the article, "Bastian said Delta has placed nearly 1,900 people on Delta’s “no-fly” list for refusing to comply with masking requirements"
Those aren't people I particularly want to fly with during this pandemic, but I do find the scope creep of the federal no fly list, as opposed to the company's list, disturbing.
The authors of the study that this letter referenced responded to the letter:
"Although our findings support Franco-Peredes’ conclusion that vaccination status should not replace social and physical public health mitigation practices, the above clarifications explain why our findings do not support his assertion that mandatory vaccination of health-care workers would not reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
I was vaccinated and I was infected by a tripple-vaccinated person and one of my best friends is in a similar situation.
The idea that the vaccines prevent the spread of the virus is dead since we saw the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases in highly boostered countries.
This is not true and has never been true.
Vaccines "prevent" the spread in many cases.
Vaccines not not "prevent" the spread in 100% of cases.
Just like they do not "prevent" severe outcomes in 100% of cases. You can be fully vaccinated and boostered and still die of Covid. It's just a lot less likely than if you're not vaccinated. This reduction is the vaccines working as designed and advertised.
Effectiveness at preventing spread was always less than at preventing severe outcomes, even with the original variant the vaccines were designed for (or against). This was in all the literature I read about the vaccines during early 2021 (which also showed that, for example, AZ was significantly less effective at reducing the spread than BionTech, although both were >90% effective [still not 100%!] at preventing severe outcomes).
In the meantime the virus has mutated significantly, and the vaccines are less effective than they were against the original variant, but still effective.
They don't need to be 100% effective, but they need to be reasonably effective in order to be mandated as a tool for mitigating the spreading. At the very least reliably above 50%, I would say. Otherwise they can only be a tool for personal risk reduction, because they don't reliably do something against the spread. An airline has no authority to mandate personal risk reduction that is not related to the flight.
Why should I? It is true, because I was infected after getting vaccinated by someone who was vaccinated as well. There is a lot of data that suggests the same.
> Since you previously believed that they were not effective at all, which is 100% wrong, maybe you are not the ideal person to make that judgement call?
No, I didn't. Don't twist my words. I don't respond to ad hominems and after all you asked me for that answer.
> Fourth, I have seen no actual evidence from you for either (a) 50% being a reasonable threshold
https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/fda-to-require-at-leas...
> or (b) vaccine efficacy being below 50%.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/19/1071809...
> So sixth, an airline is very well within its rights to prevent potential harm from its passengers and employees.
Yes, but not by mandating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. I am sure we will see such questions being clarified in courts soon.
> Why should I?
Because it is false.
> It is true, because I was infected after getting vaccinated by someone who was vaccinated as well.
That does not make your statement true. The vaccines never prevented transmission at 100% effectiveness. Never ever. They were not marketed as doing so, and if anyone did claim they prevent transmission at 100% effectiveness, then that person was spreading misinformation. It was never true.
They didn't even prevent severe outcomes at 100% effectiveness, and they were always much better at preventing severe outcomes than they were at preventing infection. (Initially >90% vs. <~ 80% against Alpha).
The whole idea that one case of transmission proves the vaccines are ineffective at preventing transmission is silly.
> Don't twist my words.
I am not twisting your words. You were making a judgement call, which you are obviously not qualified to make.
> https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/fda-to-require-at-leas...
1. That is a 50% efficacy in preventing the disease, i.e. the severe outcomes, not transmission. All the vaccines pass that bar easily.
2. That was the threshold for approval then. Now is now.
>https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/19/1071809...
"Two weeks after the shot, the booster cuts the risk by about 70%."
Seems to be greater than 50% to me. Drops after that, but once again, it was always known that the effectiveness of the vaccine would be temporary.
>> So sixth, an airline is very well within its rights to prevent potential harm from its passengers and employees.
> Yes, but not by mandating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
By saying who they allow to fly or not. You don't have to get vaccinated. United does not have to fly you.
> I am sure we will see such questions being clarified in courts soon.
Will probably be very short court cases...
There are many cases. Mine is just the one where I know by 100% that the vaccine was ineffective at preventing transmission. However, the CDC itself says that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines cannot prevent transmission anymore:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated...
I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting," > Seems to be greater than 50% to me. Drops after that, but once again, it was always known that the effectiveness of the vaccine would be temporary.
Guess which efficacy is smaller than the efficacy against symptomatic disease? I am not sure if it was always known that the efficacy was temporary. In the initial phase some scientists speculated about decades. Actually we can only now know how temporary they are after testing them on millions of people.
> By saying who they allow to fly or not. You don't have to get vaccinated. United does not have to fly you.
Sure anyone is free to avoid business, but if you want to put people on nationwide blocklists, then that may be illegal.
>> I am sure we will see such questions being clarified in courts soon.
> Will probably be very short court cases...
Sure, if the pro-mandaters still don't have any good arguments and have to resort to ad hominems instead, I am sure it will be quick.
Again: this is 100% expected. Why is it surprising to you? Even if the vaccines were 90% effective at preventing transmission, which they aren't, you should expect millions of such cases when you have tens of millions taking the vaccines. And tens of millions of such cases when you have hundreds of millions of people taking the vaccines.
You seem to be genuinely surprised (horrified?) by the fact that there are such cases. Why is this so?
The CDC director's comments are not misinformation, but your misrepresentation of those comments could probably be classified as such, similar to the way Carlos Franco-Paredes (the Lancet letter writer) misrepresented the findings of the study: vaccines are no longer sufficient by themselves, so you need to do other things as well.
Or as the authors of the study wrote: "Although our findings support Franco-Peredes’ conclusion that vaccination status should not replace social and physical public health mitigation practices, the above clarifications explain why our findings do not support his assertion that mandatory vaccination of health-care workers would not reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
In the same vein, the CDC recommends vaccination as the #1 measure to help "stop the spread", despite your misrepresentations of the director's statement:
"Get Vaccinated and stay up to date on your COVID-19 vaccines
- COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing you from getting sick. COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations, and death.
- Getting vaccinated is the best way to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. CDC recommends that everyone who is eligible stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines, including people with weakened immune systems."
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...
Just in case you missed it: "Getting vaccinated is the best way to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2,..."
I am not horrified by the fact that vaccines do not prevent (and only slow) the spread of the virus, because as you said, that was always to be expected, but by the fact that people are trying to implement mandates on such a weak basis, while ignoring all the social fallout that comes with such mandates.
> The CDC director's comments are not misinformation, but your misrepresentation of those comments could probably be classified as such
"could probably be classified". So you acknowledge that you falsely accused me of spreading misinformation. Thank you for the discussion.
They "slow" the spread of the virus by preventing infections. A breakthrough infection is not a slower infection, it is an infection that happens at the same speed (in fact, a little faster overall because it subsides more quickly). All the slowdown is via infections that do not happen, and were thus prevented.
> So you acknowledge that you falsely accused me of spreading misinformation.
Not in the least bit. You were definitely spreading misinformation earlier, all over this thread to be precise. Your misrepresentation of the CDC director's comments is a slightly less clear cut case, because you might reasonably claim to have just misunderstood her, but the other cases are pretty crystal.
Slowdown != prevention. You will just be exposed a bit later on average, but the spread still happens, just slower.
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Feel free to move the goalpost again. Or, you know... just accept the truth.
You have acknowledged that the vaccines prevent transmission, because that is how they slow the overall spread. You have acknowledged that it was always known that they do not prevent infections at 100% efficacy.
Your word games in constantly switching around individual and global definitions of "prevent", "spread" etc. are of no interest to me.
Bye.
Bye
On the other hand, having no symptoms is no reliable test for being SARS-CoV-2-negative, since many Covid cases are asymptomatic and even asymptomatic people can infect other people. So there is a chance that you unknowingly gave Covid to someone else if you did not self-isolate.
However, even the CDC says that vaccines don't prevent transmission anymore:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that Covid-19 vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus.
"...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated...
I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting,"Maybe I misunderstood you and I apologize for that, but I think you got my point - being asymptomatic says nothing about the efficacy of the vaccine against transmission and hence spread. There are asymptomatic Covid cases in vaccinated and in unvaccinated people. It has been found that there is no difference in viral loads between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who PCR test positive.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
A recent investigation by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of an outbreak of COVID-19 in a prison in Texas showed the equal presence of infectious virus in the nasopharynx of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.6
Similarly, researchers in California observed no major differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in terms of SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in the nasopharynx, even in those with proven asymptomatic infection.7
Thus, the current evidence suggests that current mandatory vaccination policies might need to be reconsidered, and that vaccination status should not replace mitigation practices such as mask wearing, physical distancing, and contact-tracing investigations, even within highly vaccinated populations.
Fully agree. People also need to accept the virus as part of their lifes and stop throwing a fit, because someone else is unvaccinated, because it is obvious (and not misinformation) that the vaccines do not prevent that almost everyone will be exposed to the virus.
I'm glad my parents' and grandparents' generations didn't share this attitude, for the obvious reasons of smallpox, polio, and MMR being practically nonexistent in my time, and with comparatively little fuss about mass societal uptake. [n.b. I am aware of the various efficacy rates of the vaccinations above, I'm just bookending this reasonable conversation we're having]
That's not an attitude, but a conclusion that is based on what we know about the virus and the vaccines.
Smallpox, polio and measles can practically be eradicated with vaccines, while SARS-CoV-2 cannot, at least not with the existing vaccines. It is also important to look at the fatality rates and other risk factors. Denmark has decided that SARS-CoV-2 is not a threat for the society anymore and lifted all mandates. Not because they don't value life, but because they value life.
The US has a vaccination rate of 65%
That doesn't seem so different. But of course it is the unvaccinated rate that counts. 9% in Denmark. 35% in the US. So almost 4x higher in the US.
Denmark has had 667 deaths per million, the US has had 2711.
So Denmark has a good case for dropping restrictions.
(And of course people will reverse the causality on this and claim that "hey Denmark opened, and has much lower fatality rate...")
Maybe because the causality is not so clear:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccinations-vs-cov...