[hvocode]

I’m getting a little tired of articles or chats with people where you get the impression that people think the vaccines will create some sort of covid-proof bubble around them. This is the only explanation I can find for people acting surprised that vaccinated people get sick. The whole point was to prime the immune system so that when exposed, the likelihood of extreme effects would be drastically reduced. That’s it.

(E: I don’t get why people downvote this - all of the benefits of vaccination are precisely due to what I describe. Lower likelihood of individual bad outcomes, which reduces burdens on healthcare, and ideally, reduces community spread by reducing the amount of virus that replicates in an individual and can be passed on. This is why I was one of the first in line when I could get the vaccine. Perhaps daring to critique people with unrealistic vaccine expectations is unacceptable?)

[TobTobXX]

But all the regulations around us create this covid-proof impression.

Eg. where I live, hospitals consider introducing vaccination requirements for visitors. But that somehow defies logic. The vaccine only reduces symptoms (and might thus save yourself, or others, when extended with the hospital-bed-limit-thought), but it wouldn't stop you from transmitting the disease if you are infected (and vaccinated) but you aren't aware.

So I don't even blame the public, but rather the regulators. They ought to know better.

Edit: I might need to support this claim.

The most trustworthy source I found was this article by the JHU [1] (2021-08-02). While there are many that claim different numbers (ranging from stopping roughly 60% to 0%), for transmission, no one claimed that virus infection is influenced.

[1]: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/new-data-on-covid-19-trans...

[uh_uh]

> The vaccine only reduces symptoms (and might thus save yourself, or others, when extended with the hospital-bed-limit-thought), but it wouldn't stop you from transmitting the disease if you are infected (and vaccinated) but you aren't aware

Are you sure about that? Even this article refers to a study which says that vaccinated people are 5 times less likely to test positive than non-vaccinated. _Some_ asymptotic transmission will still occur in the vaccinated but it's reasonable to expect that it happens to a lesser degree. I'd be very curious to see studies that claim that there's no difference in asymptomatic transmission between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

[matwood]

Correct. Whenever people talk about the vaccine not slowing spread they forget that vaccinated people are 5x less likely to catch covid to start with. They only seem to focus on viral loads of break through infections.

[native_samples]

Those stats are all point-in-time and the result of very brittle analysis. Not surprisingly, you can therefore find stats that state the opposite.

In the UK this weekend there was a little blowup on Twitter because a TV journalist had his own breakthrough case, which caused him to do some journalism and download the data tables from Public Health England. He was surprised to discover that in the UK the proportion of vaccinated people getting infected is now higher than the proportion of unvaccinated people, i.e. the UK is experiencing the exact opposite of what your stat claims. Actually he was so surprised by this he posted it on Twitter and openly wondered why there was no debate about it, at which point he found out why not: he was mobbed, shouted down and ended up posting a grovelling apology.

https://dailysceptic.org/2021/09/12/robert-peston-shocked-by...

Part of the problem was that his Twitter followers are innumerate. They assumed that this stat was overall percentage of people getting infected, but it's not. It's proportions of both groups. Therefore, the fact that more people are vaccinated than not in the UK is irrelevant. The vaccinated are - at this point in time - getting it more often than the rest. And journalists are afraid to report on it because they get attacked so you just don't know about it.

Reasons? Unclear. Scientists also seem to mostly refuse to do studies that might undermine vaccine messaging. Most likely the vaccine protection wanes so fast that it simply split the delta wave in two, with the unvaccinated getting it first, leading to lots of headlines about "pandemics of the unvaccinated" etc, and then the vaccinated wave coming second, leading to stats like this one which are simply ignored.

[poopypoopington]

But those numbers don't account for severe disease, hospitalization, and death which are the whole point of the vaccines. You're latching onto this dramatic exchange because of some stupid idea that vaccines are this magic shield against any infection, and while they do reduce risk of infection they are mostly meant to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

Also you don't account for possible explanations for the UK data. For example, maybe unvaccinated people in the UK are more likely to have previously contracted COVID. More likely I think, the vaccinated are taking much more risk than the unvaccinated, leading to their higher case counts. Many unvaccinated are immunocompromised (or know that they are at higher risk for severe complications from COVID because they are unvaccinated) so I assume many of them are taking higher precautions than the vaccinated, i.e. wearing N-95's, not leaving their houses while many vaccinated people I know in the UK are going to 50k person festivals.

[native_samples]

OK, a few points here. Firstly, reducing hospitalizations was not the point of the vaccines. That's this week's narrative that was retrofitted onto events when the vaccines failed at their actual goal. We know this because:

• The vaccine trials didn't use "severe disease" or hospitalizations/deaths as their target metric. They used PCR positives.

• The original protocols don't include boosters.

• The pre-2021 definition of vaccine is something that makes you immune.

What's happening now is grotesque: dictionaries are actually changing their definition of vaccine to try and cover up that the COVID vaccines have failed on their own terms. Compare Merriam-Webster before [1] and after [2]. The definition at the start of 2021 is short and to the point, a vaccine is administered to "produce or artificially increase immunity". The definition today is that a vaccine merely has to "stimulate the body's immune response". No actual immunity needs to be created under the new definition, which has been rewritten because the COVID vaccines fail to meet the normal definition of vaccine. We already have a word for what the COVID "vaccines" are doing, the word is prophylactic. And there's nothing wrong with those! They're just different to vaccines.

"some stupid idea that vaccines are this magic shield against any infection"

This idea is not stupid. It is the conventional expectation for vaccines up until this point. Vaccinations against diseases like smallpox, measles, mumps and so on do provide you a magic shield, which is why vaccines were taken so seriously and seen as so important previously. That's also why pre-2021 discussion of vaccines were dominated by discussions of herd immunity thresholds and whether vaccination could achieve zero COVID, a topic that's now vanished. Once again, this new narrative is made up in the last few months as it becomes clear the COVID vaccines aren't working properly.

"Also you don't account for possible explanations for the UK data. For example, maybe unvaccinated people in the UK are more likely to have previously contracted COVID"

I provided a possible explanation in the final paragraph. The one you're proposing is literally the exact same alternative explanation I posted in reply to nradov. I think this is quite possible.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210108224740/https://www.merri...

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vaccine

[nradov]

If everyone wears seatbelts then 100% of the vehicle crash victims in hospitals will be seatbelt users. But seatbelts are still highly effective at reducing injuries and deaths.

[native_samples]

That's not what the stat is saying. You seem to be mis-interpreting it in the same way some of the other people were.

Take 1000 people who are vaccinated. Measure how many get infected in a time span T. Calculate the ratio.

Take 1000 people who are not vaccinated. Measure how many get infected in a time span T. Calculate the ratio.

In the UK the infected:non-infected ratio is higher for the first group than the second. That should be impossible as it implies effectiveness is now negative. Possible root cause - the (relatively small) group of people who refuse to take the vaccine are refusing because they know they already got it, and thus have natural immunity, but the vaccine doesn't build immunity that lasts, so as time goes on the vaccinated group ends up getting infected anyway and having to fall back on building their own natural immunity. That's just speculation but otherwise it's hard to explain what is going on here.

[nwvg_7257]

This is NOT true. https://www.nytimes.com/article/breakthrough-infections-covi...

"after an outbreak among vaccinated and vaccinated workers at the Singapore airport, tracking studies suggested that most of the spread by vaccinated people happened when they had symptoms"

The vaccines substantially help to reduce spread. Doesn't eliminate it, but obviously something a hospital would want to require.

[gridspy]

"most of the spread by vaccinated people happened when they had symptoms"

Sounds like there is still a cultural / communication issue where people are not getting tested or self-isolating when sick.

[thephyber]

The vaccine does a reasonable job at reducing transmission in the aggregate. It lessens the average viral load, shortens the average time a person is infectious, etc.

Treating transmission as a boolean ignores the large-but-not-100-percent improvement. Better to treat it as a distribution.

I don’t see what you are blaming regulators for.

[ProtoAES256]

Ditto. My family and I are all fully 2 dose vaccinated, and I didn't go out from my house for nearly a month. I caught COVID(via my mother) last thursday. The facilities are long overrun since a few months ago, so my symptoms which are: blood coughing, nausea, chest pain, ~93%SpO2 are considered "quite mild" and "home quarantine only".

In the wake of other variants like Delta, I doubt that people who didn't/can't get the vaccine can be protected by herd immunity alone.

A few of my friends are getting breakthroughs too, which seems like a lot in comparison to the global statistics, so it might be just anomalies.

[gridspy]

Best of luck for your recovery. It sounds like it's "Mild" only in the "You're not about to die just yet" sense.

Delta is a cruel variant. I hope all of your family recovers also.

[poopypoopington]

I don't think that's true. The vaccine still reduces the likelihood that you'll be infected so only allowing vaccinated visitors reduces the risk that COVID enters a hospital through visitors. I think the vaccine also reduces the likelihood that people with breakthrough infections infect other people

[mcguire]

"Evidence demonstrates that the authorized COVID-19 vaccines are both efficacious and effective against symptomatic, laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, including severe forms of the disease. In addition, a growing body of evidence suggests that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission. Substantial reductions in SARS-CoV-2 infections (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) will reduce overall levels of disease, and therefore, viral transmission in the United States. ... Data from multiple studies in different countries suggest that people vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine who develop COVID-19 have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(41-44) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(45) Two studies from the United Kingdom found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(25, 46)"

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

"Two studies1,2 from Israel, posted as preprints on 16 July, find that two doses of the vaccine made by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, based in New York City, and biotechnology company BioNTech, based in Mainz, Germany, are 81% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. And vaccinated people who do get infected are up to 78% less likely to spread the virus to household members than are unvaccinated people. Overall, this adds up to very high protection against transmission, say researchers."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z

"COVID-19 vaccines appear to help prevent transmission between household contacts, with secondary attack rates dropping from 31% to 11% if the index patient was fully vaccinated, according to a Eurosurveillance study yesterday. The population-based data looked at the Netherlands from February to May, when the Alpha variant (B117) was dominant and the available vaccines were by Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson."

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/study-ti...

"There has been good news, too, on the subject of viral load in breakthrough cases. Researchers in Israel studied vaccinated people who became infected. The viral load in these breakthrough cases was about three to four times lower than the viral load among infected people who were unvaccinated. Researchers in the U.K. reported a similar result. They also found that vaccinated people who became infected tested positive for about one week less than unvaccinated people."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-crucial-vacci...

[R0b0t1]

No. Vaccine reduces viral load and transmissibility, but in close contact situations you're still going to transmit it.

[javagram]

> I’m getting a little tired of articles or chats with people where you get the impression that people think the vaccines will create some sort of covid-proof bubble around them. This is the only explanation I can find for people acting surprised that vaccinated people get sick.

No, it’s because until the Delta variant became the most common variant, the vaccines essentially did create a covid-proof bubble around the recipient. The trials for Comirnaty and the Moderna vaccine both showed >90% effectiveness against PCR positive infections, not just against hospitalization and death.

[jrochkind1]

> The trials for Comirnaty and the Moderna vaccine both showed >90% effectiveness against PCR positive infections

I don't believe the official trials for Moderna and Pfizer measured PCR positive infections at all. (They involved thousands of people, it was a time when PCR test were difficult to obtain; they remain expensive at that scale).

I have not heard of Comirnaty, not sure about that.

There may have been pre-delta studies that showed PCR infection effectiveness (Cite?), I don't think they were the official trials.

[javagram]

Comirnaty is the brand name of the Pfizer vaccine.

According to this article, all of the major vaccine trials studied PCR positivity, not deaths/hospitalizations. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4058.full.pdf

> The first question is whether the right endpoints are being studied. Contrary to prevailing assumptions (including those of a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner8), none of the vaccine trials are designed to detect a significant reduction in hospital admissions, admission to intensive care, or death.9 Rather than studying severe disease, these mega-trials all set a primary endpoint of symptomatic covid-19 of essentially any severity: a laboratory positive result plus mild symptoms such as cough and fever count as outcome events (table 1).

[jrochkind1]

Ah, thanks for the correction.

"a laboratory positive result plus mild symptoms" was the thing being measured, ok.

[choeger]

To the contrary, I don't think that's plausible. In the whole COVID-19 decision the question of the initial load has not been discussed well enough, IMO.

If you think about the virus passing your various layers of protection it is clearly a numbers game, IMO. A mask, even if imperfect, might reduce your initial viral load below a threshold that allows your immune system to kill all infected cells very quickly so you don't develop strong symptoms. The same goes for distance.

So I don't see any reason to not expect a certain "sterile" immunity after a vaccination. The way I see it, the vaccination should prevent some of the low-load infections completely, regardless of the virus variant.

[gridspy]

Any discussion of viral load seems too subtle for a general audience, but that's sound.

It's kind of like Vaccine + mask + low exposure (social distance, short times, good ventilation) is your "armor class" against the virus.

If your armor is good enough, the chance of becoming infected IS very low.

[ianai]

Right. It’s like a hardware update for an immune system.