[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.