[stuckonempty]

> They have also indicated that getting vaccinated does not reduce your ability to spread the virus

That is not correct. Vaccination does reduce, but does not eliminate, transmission of the virus

“ We found that both the BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines were associated with reduced onward transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from index patients who became infected despite vaccination.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597

[xkbarkar]

look at data for iceland, 92% of the adult population and spread is mainly among the double vaccinated. Triple is lower but that is expected to wear off ( if Isreal is to be beleiveied ). https://www.covid.is/data. No, vaccination dos not reduce spread of omicron. Not even a little. It does do a fantastic job of reducing hospitalisations among delta infected.

[pdabbadabba]

I fear you're committing the baseline fallacy. If 92% of the population is vaccinated then the virus can easily spread mainly among the vaccinated while still spreading among that population at a far lower rate than among the unvaccinated.

Think of it this way: assume that an unvaccinated person, on average, spreads COVID to 10 people and a fully vaccinated person spreads it to only 1. Then put 92 fully vaccinated people and 8 unvaccinated people (I.e., vaccination in proportion to the Icelandic population.) into a room full of people. The 8 unvaccinated people will infect 80 additional people, while the fully vaccinated will infect 92. Thus, "most" of the transmission was from vaccinated people, even though the vaccine reduced transmission by 10x.

And this is probably obvious, but its worth emphasizing that vaccinating those last 8 (percent of the) people would still have a hugely beneficial effect. If they were all vaccinated, then, in the toy example, they would infect a total of only 8 people instead of 80, leading to only 100 total cases, rather than 172.

Of course, even setting this aside, the bigger issue is that your casual parsing of one country's aggregate statistics is just no substitute for the actual scientific research that GP cited.

[stavros]

90% of the eligible population there is vaccinated. If there are no unvaccinated people left, the spread would be 100% from vaccinated people. Lies, damn lies, statistics.

[choward]

And you don't find that ridiculous? If a virus is spreading quickly among vaccinated people you might begin questioning said vaccine and you definitely wouldn't mandate it.

[pdabbadabba]

> And you don't find that ridiculous?

Of course not. It's not about the absolute transmission rate of vaccinated people. It's about the reduction in the transmission rate compared to the unvaccinated. Regardless of the absolute effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing transmission, it seems to me it should remain fundamental to protecting public health if unvaccinated people spread the virus several times faster.

Of course, if the effect were only marginal, that would be one thing. But that is not what the data seems to show at this point.

[SketchySeaBeast]

If one was of the belief that a vaccine needs to be either 100% or it's worthless, yes, that's the sort of assumption you might come to. Things are slightly more nuanced.

[jhgb]

No, because you can't prove that it would spread slower among UNvaccinated people.

[choward]

The burden of proof is on the people pushing vaccines.

[jhgb]

Their burden of proof has already been satisfied.

[stavros]

I don't care how fast it spreads as long as the vaccine helps them not die.

[benmmurphy]

i've seen some claims that the latest UK data shows negative effectiveness for the vaccine for COVID infection. This is possibly due to Omnicron or due to population differences between the vaccinated/unvaccinated. Also, it is very important to note that even though the data seems to show negative effectiveness for infection the vaccines still show positive effectiveness for hospitalisation and mortality.

I tried to find the original article about negative effectiveness in the UK but all I could find was this:

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/has-covid-vaccine-effica...

This covers Iceland, Denmark and the UK but doesn't really go into much detail about alternative explanations which I remember being covered in the original article I read.

[pw201]

Berenson is a crank: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-...

[nodamage]

> No, vaccination dos not reduce spread of omicron. Not even a little.

You can't really make that conclusion based on a simple case count chart, because you don't know what those numbers would look like if the vaccination rate was lower.

[majormajor]

The Iceland data is interesting and "14-day incidence per 100.000 by age and vaccination status" is different from the California data, where case rate per 100K is still, as of 12/26 numbers, much higher among unvaccinated (no breakdown for 2vax vs 2vax+booster). https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status

Iceland also has a higher vaccination rate, I would be very interested in demographic breakdowns of the unvaccinated there vs in California. Is the Iceland group much more atypical in terms of how often they leave their house, say? Is the California group possibly just much more boosted (the Iceland numbers show that the boosted group has still less Covid than the unvaccinated group stil) - but actually, that doesn't seem like it, because that ratio is still far higher than the CA one. Though... even your own link for data on boosted adults in Iceland contradicts your "not even a little" statement.

Actually I bet it's just a small number problem. Iceland has a population of 366K. 8% of that population is just under 30K. California has a population of over 39 million. Much more significant sample for unvaccinated people in CA.

[vkou]

> look at data for iceland, 92% of the adult population and spread is mainly among the double vaccinated.

If getting vaccinated reduced your odds of spreading the virus by 90%, and 92% of the population were double-vaccinated, then the majority of the spread would be...

Among, and by the double-vaccinated. (8.28% vs 8%)

Most people that die in car crashes are wearing seatbelts, but you'd be a fool to not wear one. Just like you'd be foolish to not get vaccinated.

[yorwba]

> If getting vaccinated reduced your odds of spreading the virus by 90%, and 92% of the population were double-vaccinated, then the majority of the spread would be...

> Among, and by the double-vaccinated. (8.28% vs 8%)

I don't know how you're getting those numbers.

If baseline spread is 100% unvaccinated spreading to 100% unvaccinated, then 92% vaccinated spreading 10% to 92% vaccinated amounts to 8.464% of baseline, 92% vaccinated spreading 10% to 8% unvaccinated is 0.736% of baseline, 8% unvaccinated spreading to 92% vaccinated is 7.36% of baseline and 8% unvaccinated spreading to 8% unvaccinated is 0.64% of baseline. The total sums to 17.2% of baseline, of which vaccinated to vaccinated spread amounts to 49.2%.

(It's not terribly important since the numbers are made-up anyway, but I'd like to know whether I made a mistake somewhere.)

[jusssi]

> Most people that die in car crashes are wearing seatbelts

Funny enough, I just recently checked the stats for that. According to the first report I found with a simple googling, 47% of people who died in car crashes were not wearing seat belts.

[weaksauce]

yeah, because the number of people getting into car accidents and surviving is much, much greater with those that wear seatbelts where if you don't wear one it's a high probability it's not survivable.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

There are a few "buts" here. The biggest one - based on transmission rates in countries with higher vaccination rates vs the ones in lower transmission rates - is that the vaccinated (at least at first, when everybody believed the vaccine is 90+% efficient against transmission) might have engaged in more risky behavior as they felt "protected".