[haswell]

I understand what you're trying to say, but it makes two problematic assumptions:

1. That vaccines are 100% effective.

2. That vaccines are only about the person who takes them.

On #1, this is easy: the best COVID vaccines currently available are around 95% effective. Some are less. That leaves a meaningful chance that despite the vaccination I might still get sick.

This provides a nice segue to #2: As the percentage of vaccinated individuals increases, the chances that I'll get sick due to that remaining 5% decreases.

This is a core tenet of herd immunity: folks who are not protected by the vaccine (or cannot be due to health issues) are still protected by the fact that everyone around them is protected. This doesn't mean it's safe to not be vaccinated - one need only look at measles outbreaks to validate this - but the point of getting the vaccine is about more than just the individual, it's about the population as a whole.

[thu2111]

Exactly. You are arguing that vaccines don't work to protect people from infection but do work to prevent transmission, which is a complete inversion of what vaccines are normally understood to do. You believe the vaccines don't actually work, or rather, that everyone should act as if they don't, which amounts to the same thing

At some point I think you have to accept that your stance is an unfalsifiable form of collectivism. You are insisting that everyone injects themselves with something potentially dangerous to reduce your own risk from extremely small to extremely small, on the back of completely novel and extremely questionable claims, and damn the risk to everyone else.

[haswell]

> You are arguing that vaccines don't work to protect people from infection but do work to prevent transmission

> You believe the vaccines don't actually work, or rather, that everyone should act as if they don't

No, and no. These are extremely twisted re-interpretations of what I wrote, and do not reflect my argument or belief.

All I'm arguing is that in the current climate, where the vaccination rate sits at ~45% across the US, it's reasonable to be cautious about situations that involve close indoor contact with unvaccinated folks.

This is a position that I can see changing as vaccination rates and global COVID rates improve.

[thu2111]

But my point is this: your argument is that vaccines work to stop transmission with 100% reliability but not infection. You aren't stating that explicitly but it's the only belief that is consistent with what you're proposing.

1. If vaccines stop infection, then you don't need to care if other people are sick or not.

2. Therefore you argue that because they might not be 100% effective at that, everyone should act as if they aren't effective at all, and ban unvaccinated people from things.

3. But what if the vaccine isn't 100% effective at blocking transmission either? Then a vaccinated person might be both sick and infectious. In which case as they'd be dangerous to other vaccinated people, they should also be banned, which means everyone is banned.

Therefore by contradiction you must believe it's possible that they block transmission 100% but not infection. This makes no biological sense and isn't supported by robust science. In fact even asymptomatic transmission as a concept isn't supported by robust science - actual contact tracing attempts to find this keep drawing blanks. The belief it must be common comes from attempts to make models work mathematically, but those models are so filled with basic errors nothing about them is useful.

[haswell]

> your argument is that vaccines work to stop transmission with 100% reliability but not infection

No, this is not my argument. There is growing evidence that transmission rates are drastically reduced among vaccinated people, but only by ~40-60% [0].

> 1. If vaccines stop infection, then you don't need to care if other people are sick or not.

We already established that while vaccines are very effective at stopping infection, they are not 100% effective.

> 2. Therefore you argue that because they might not be 100% effective at that, everyone should act as if they aren't effective at all, and ban unvaccinated people from things.

No, that is not my argument. My argument is that given current vaccination rates (~20% globally, ~45% in the US), and the significantly higher chance of transmission from un-vaccinated people, there is a meaningful chance that there is still risk despite 95% infection coverage. For sake of argument, if vaccination rates were meaningfully higher, I think this policy would be less necessary.

> 3. But what if the vaccine isn't 100% effective at blocking transmission either? Then a vaccinated person might be both sick and infectious. In which case as they'd be dangerous to other vaccinated people, they should also be banned, which means everyone is banned.

Again no, not my argument. It's not 100% effective at blocking transmission, but the chance of transmission is significantly lower for vaccinated individuals.

> Therefore by contradiction you must believe it's possible that they block transmission 100% but not infection.

No. For some reason, you keep taking my statements about percentages and twisting them into something unrelated.

In summary: there are a number of variables: current case rate, current vaccination rate/percentage, transmission rate for unvaccinated people, transmission rate for vaccinated people, infection rate for unvaccinated people and infection rate for vaccinated people.

There is no absolutely correct or incorrect answer, only risk-based decisions like: "for now, we require all attendees to be vaccinated". Given the variables above, and current values in the real world, I happen to believe the restrictions are reasonable. As those variables change, so will the appropriateness of the restrictions.

If you zoom out a bit, remember that we're coming out of a period of time where no events were happening at all, and folks are cautious, and understandably so.

You don't have to agree with my conclusion, but you do have to stop assigning your own twisted interpretation of these arguments to me.

Hopefully this clarifies things for future readers, but despite the temptation to continue, this is my last reply on this thread.

- [0] https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests...