This is just misinformation that’s been repeated so much as a meme people think it’s true based on a misreading of the simple fact that a study which said if you do experience a breakthrough infection with a high viral load, vaccinated people transmit that viral load as readily as a non-vaccinated person. What is clearly not true is that vaccinated people have the same likelihood of having an infection with that high viral load in the first place. Which they don’t and why vaccines remain an important tool to reduce spread.
In addition to averaging lower peak viral levels for infection, vaccinated people has faster clearance rates, which means they are contagious for shorter amounts of time: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...
Vaccinated people have faster symptom onset as their bodies react to the virus faster, which means they can test and isolate sooner.
Vaccinated people are still less likely to be infected than non vaccinated people: https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/90800
Vaccinated people are also less likely to collapse the local medical system in surges because their disease course is less severe: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/73/12/2257/6124429
But once you have primed your cell immunity with exposure (vaccine or natural), the benefit of repeated boosters is negligible. Protection from infection is affected by changes in variants because only Ig neutralizing the spike can block infection. Cell-based immunity, although it does not prevent infection, is more resilient to these changes (the homology in the SARS-CoV-2 proteins outside the spike is around 80-85%). Also, memory cells last for at least two years after exposure (A.Sette's group works).
IOW, less severe versus an immunologically naive person. But at this point, with 95%+ seroprevalence, these scenarios are becoming very rare.
I would say it does prevent some the spread of the virus, but does not completely prevent spread, and any one claiming that it did prevent all spread, should be removed from any position of authority.
As of when? It’s probably too late to fire Fauci as he’s already retiring, but his exact words were that vaccinations makes one a “dead end for the coronavirus” in May of 2021: https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-...
I’m sure we can find references later than that as well.
> So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people, almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely — not impossible but very, very low likelihood — that they’re going to transmit it
And my understanding is that, in May of 2021, that was very much true and that studies did show that the vaccine greatly reduced transmissibility. With new variants, though, the original vaccines, while still being protective against severe disease, did a much worse job against preventing mild illness and transmission.
Let me know the country you're interested in and I'll dig it up for you.
We need an endgame that makes sense.
UK's SIREN had a lower risk reduction recorded (60% IIRC), but more importantly, it halved after three months. Governments and others thought, wrongly, that elimination was possible. But the writing was on the wall since March 2020.
She says “clinical trials” which is false.
The only trial that measured infection rate was AZ. And it reduced but did not eliminate the risk.
The statement is 100% false and she had no data to back it up.
She expressly names clinical trials. That statement is false.
And she says "CDC data". What data? The vaccines weren't approved until 14 Feb 2022. What data could the CDC possibly have other than clinical trial data less than 2 months after full approval? It hadn't been used outside trials yet for more than a month or so. What data could they possible *collect and analyze" in less than 2 months?
If you can point me to this data, I'd gladly admit I'm wrong.
The statement is a lie. I'm not sure why you're so aggressively defending it.
Please link to the CDC data. Otherwise I presume it doesn’t exist.
And you failed to address that both trials never tested infection rates.
Just because I got dates wrong doesn’t excuse you from addressing those two questions.
To name just a few.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33786969
> Fauci's more detailed quote from your link:
> “So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people, almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely — not impossible but very, very low likelihood — that they’re going to transmit it”
> And my understanding is that, in May of 2021, that was very much true and that studies did show that the vaccine greatly reduced transmissibility. With new variants, though, the original vaccines, while still being protective against severe disease, did a much worse job against preventing mild illness and transmission.
He said for the vaccinated the virus level makes it "extremely unlikely". Everybody knows that's completely false. It's anything but extremely unlikely with vaccinated people spreading the virus all around the globe, both symptomatic and asymptomatic.
Why are you like this?