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by kittiepryde 1612 days ago
That's not really how vaccines work. No force fields are deployed, you'll still catch COVID, but, you're immune system is now got some training in how to handle the situation.

I don't remember the promise that, the vaccine would end COVID, I do remember seeing somewhere that if vaccination rates were high enough ( greater than 90%??, been quite awhile now since I read that article ) that herd immunity could be achievable and the spread would eventually end. At least in the US, vaccination rates never even got close.
1 comments
tick_tock_tick 1612 days ago
> That's not really how vaccines work. No force fields are deployed, you'll still catch COVID, but, you're immune system is now got some training in how to handle the situation.

We do have and continue to make "sterilizing vaccines" which for nearly all common use of the words do "deploy force fields". The small pox vaccine was one of the best examples, the measles vaccine is also up there. The COVID vaccines just aren't as good and people aren't educated enough to understand why some vaccines are basically perfect while the COVID ones aren't.

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nate_meurer 1612 days ago
No, small pox vaccines were not sterilizing by any definition of the term. There is debate about measles. Otherwise there is only one vaccine in common use that offers durable sterilizing immunity (HPV), and the fact that it works so well is somewhat of a medical mystery.
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khuey 1612 days ago
Sterilizing immunity probably wasn't real, and we just didn't have the technology to know better back in the day: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz... Plenty of after-vaccination cases of measles have been documented in modern times. Obviously nobody is going around giving people smallpox to test that one.
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tick_tock_tick 1612 days ago
> Post-vaccination measles infections, though still uncommon, are much more “regularly observed” than they were once believed to be, Griffin said.

99.99% is close enough for me in terms of a sterilizing immunity.

> Eventually, all discussions about sterilizing immunity become nerdy quibbles over semantics.

I think the article nails it very clearly we have made vaccines that are for all effective purposes sterilizing. Some people might argue over the world choice but our COVID vaccines are not in the same league as these.

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