I've noticed lately an odd mythology building up about how scientists were all wet about the COVID vaccine stopping transmission of the virus. There's an element of truth to this, but it's far from the whole story:
- What's true is that although the vaccine was effective against transmission early on, that's not the case with the Delta and Omicron variants. Today, if you get COVID even after being vaccinated, you can still shed the virus and infect others. The odds of transmission are lower, but not by a lot.
- However, the vaccine does have a protective effect. If you've had the standard 2-dose series of one of the mRNA vaccines, it cuts down your chances of getting the virus by upwards of 30-50% (though the effect wanes over time). This is why, after vaccination rates got high enough, we started to see a sustained drop in population test positivity:
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So: although it's technically true that the COVID vaccine has only a very modest effect on transmission, in practice it does a great deal to slow the spread of the virus.
I don't want to overstate things. The primary effect of the vaccine is still the same: it strongly reduces the odds of getting a serious case of COVID, and with it, long COVID. However, it also does a reasonable job of protecting against infection entirely, which obviously lowers the overall transmission rate of the virus.
The bad news about the COVID vaccine is less that it's ineffective and more that its effectiveness wanes considerably over time. If we want to keep COVID at bay, it's pretty clear that boosters are going to have to become an annual event, just like the flu shot.
... although it's technically true that the COVID vaccine has only a very modest effect on transmission ...
IF you are infected. But as you observe, you are considerably less likely to become infected. That in turn dramatically lowers the overall transmission-infection rate.
It's been an anti-vax go-to that you can still contract and transmit the virus if you've been vaccinated. But both rates are lower, the former considerably so. That part seems not to get mentioned quite as much.
Vaccines aren't a magic force-shield. Physical shields -- that is, masks -- really help when the virus is widely prevalent. Alas, that part also seems to disappear in the noise. Ew masks icky don't wanna!
Honestly, we are a nation of children. Stupid children.
Do you think we should still be wearing masks?
Treating this as a serious question, for now and for the general population, no. There is widespread immunity at this point, the currently prevalent variants are less virulent than earlier ones, and it's not "flu season." Immunologically compromised individuals and/or individuals with respiratory diseases, perhaps yes, depending on the severity of their condition.
Many of them do, as you may have seen.
As and when those things change, more people should probably start wearing masks. Consider that in many East Asian countries, it's considered an obligation to wear a mask in public if you believe you may be carrying a respiratory virus, including even the common cold. We might do well to take a lesson from that.
Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I and my partner certainly wear a mask whenever we go shopping. We most certainly wear our masks while Ubering. And so on and so forth, etc. etc.
You? I don't think you should be wearing a mask.
Is this a business partner?
Don’t feed the troll.
I think everyone knows by now what an unpleasant fellow he is. I only interject from time time -- as I suppose you do -- to remind people that he never argues in good faith.
Only in large gatherings from disparate places; medical facilities.
Basically, places you are encouraged not to avoid for being slightly sick, or have large numbers of people through. The size equaling the distribution of the disease.
And definitely mask if you're coughing, sneezing, and/or know you have a virus.
The other thing about wearing masks? It's courteous. We've had more than a few Uber (actually Lyft) drivers thank us for wearing our masks. Our rule of thumb is that if the employees are masked, we should stay masked out of consideration for them.
They reduce symptoms so over all duration is shorter, too.
Given that I was unemployed a year ago as a result of the terrible economy, it is amazing that I run a home-based business and make a healthy $60k each week. It is now my duty to promote goodwill and make these instructions available to others after being gifted with them.
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Expectations were raised too high when mRNA vaccines were developed so fast. They didn't perform up to those expectations, so vaccine deniers are essentially claiming not only that they didn't work at all but that they were a hoax.
Actually despite the way that large parts of the system were dismantled by the Trump administration and preparedness was not ideal in other respects the reaction was better than in previous pandemics. It should be even better next time, if government can be allowed to construct the right apparatus for developing and distributing vaccines.
I think I recall skepticism about their efficacy because they were developed so fast. And that's leaving aside the decades of research that preceded their development.
It was a pandemic situation, the process of turning science into product proceeded remarkably quickly, and the vaccines exceeded pretty much all rational expectations of their efficacy. That (1) their efficacy was overhyped by a media less interested in information than in sensation, and (2) the entire vaccination effort was the subject of massive hostility and even active disinformation by political opponents (and some truly irrational people), is not the fault of either the developers or the government. Had organized political efforts, and as a consequence large numbers of people, not resisted the efforts of public health officials to limit the spread of the disease, literally millions of lives could have been saved.
The fault is entirely -- ENTIRELY -- that of Republican politicians, Republican anti-science and anti-intellectual movements, anti-vaxxers of all stripes, and the right-wing media that amplified their messages. It's a testament to the seriousness and selflessness of public health officials -- in the face of irrational, noisy, and sometimes violent opposition -- that we did as well as we did.
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Scientists and public health officials are going to have to strike if they want to stop Republicans from flinging poo at them.
Unfortunately, they know that doing this also would mean letting the next pandemic run more rampant. And scientists and public health officials have too much integrity and human decency to let that happen.
So Republicans will continue to fling poo at everyone doing anything helpful in society.
What do you mean by "strike?"
What expectations from whom?
They didn't perform up to those expectations
They performed up to my expectations. There was ample reportage on the clinical trials in the summer of 2020, and anyone reading the coverage would have been informed that the principal protection conferred by the Pfizer and Moderna products was not sterilizing immunity but, rather, protection from hospitalization and death.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say reality didn't match the expectations of people who didn't do a lick of reading about the vaccines (I have no doubt the talking heads on TV often got things wrong, but serious print media outlets, again, reported on the vaccine trials extensively and in considerable detail).
I think it was very effective with the original variant. Unfortunately, just as people were letting their guard down Delta came along. Delta was more deadly and more resistant to the vaccine. So it lead to the impression that the vaccine didn’t work. It still did, but not as well and more people who had been vaccinated got serious versions of the disease. Florida was hit particularly hard by Delta because of DeSantis’ presidential aspirations.
I was under this impression from the beginning - this ain't MMR.
But it is like the flu vaccine.
As for boosters the government has already approved another booster for people over 65 and others at risk.
There's an exponential effect. If you can cut the mean transmission rate from, let's say, 20% to 15%, that reduction compounds as individuals are exposed to other individuals. If that minor cut effects 20 levels of contact, that's a factor of 300 reduction in transmission. It definitely wouldn't eliminate the disease the way going from 20% to 0.1% would, but even a small cut could make a big difference.
Isn't this exactly why we can protect children who can't get the ordinary childhood vaccines due to allergy or immune system problems?
If enough of their schoolmates are vaccinated then there are fewer cases for them to be exposed to. And it's exponential as @kaleberg said above.
But this also means that those of us who got our shots early protected the anti-vaxxers and let them continue with their delusions.
...respiratory viruses are going to be different than others. They're basically spreadable the moment they're detectable. And your immune system can only stop them as it detects them.
But essentially, yes, most every bit of prevention we do is for others, not ourselves. That's why selfish people really muck things up.
Does reducing the number of people who get a virus reduce the number of people who get a virus? No! Says the GOP, which goes a long way to explaining why the GOP does not have even a foothold in any highly-educated, wealthy states.
The right wingers and anti-vaxxers are just engaging in word play. There is a difference between chancing a serious disease that results in loss of ability to oxygenate your blood, leads to intubation, and finally to a really lousy death.
Then there is a runny nose and 3 days of light coughing. This is not the same thing.
The vaccine prevents (mostly -- and it is a very good mostly) the first disease, but not the second disease. Who cares?
Right now, the average daily death toll in Los Angeles County (population about ten million) is One. This means that the death rate is down about a hundred fold from just a couple of years ago. I am willing to believe that there are a few strange vaccine reactions, mostly among people who have strange autoimmune conditions or are strongly suggestible. The merit of saving the next fifty thousand deaths in trade for 20 or 30 vaccine reactions is pretty straightforward. Maybe getting vaccinated is an act of courage if you have a strong imagination, but it is an act of courage that everybody should indulge. More likely, the rate of strong reactions is considerably lower, perhaps one or two in a hundred thousand doses.
Anyway, a low level endemic spread of nearly asymptomatic Covid mixed with injections yielding strong protection against the serious form of the disease is pretty much the best case scenario. My guess is going to be that the vaccine actually does cut the spread substantially for several reasons, but we don't have to be wed to that proposal to support the vaccine. Probably the difference is partly due to the vaccine allowing for a minor upper respiratory infection which does not induce as violent a case of coughing, vs. the systemic illness that gets down into the lungs and results in billions of virus particles being expelled just because there are a lot more virus particles in two lungs than in a patch on the back of your throat.
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So: although it's technically true that the COVID vaccine has only a very modest effect on transmission
This seems to be unjustified quibbling. Two parties are involved in virus transmission: the infector and the infectee. If the latter receives considerable protection against getting infected, transmission, in fact, is reduced.
The other guy is wearing the mask so you don't get his disease.
Do you want the other guy's disease?
Conservatives think you should.
Vaccines certainly reduced hospitalizations, i.e. severe disease, so that was a big plus.
It reduced transmission too, but not enough, by itself, to break the cycle completely, i.e. transmission rates were still above 1. In part that was because protection did wane. Here's the thing, immunity after infection waned too.
Interestingly, there were a lot of different vaccine types against Covid: mRNA (Pfizer and Moderna), Adenovirus (?) carrier (J&J and Oxford), protein (it took a while, but Novavax), attenuated virus (out of China), etc. Not sure if the others, e.g. DNA ones, made it into production. And they all suffered the same issue of full protection waning fairly quickly.
There is still talk of creating a vaccine that will work against any Covid virus, i.e. not target the spike protein, but pick an available target that does not change (much). We'll see.
It would be great if we funded more research into these vaccinations too. Some of the choices made when rolling out the vaccines were sensible at the time--but it would be good to retest them. Some work suggests that Moderna and J&J vaccines were way over what was needed. Cutting them in half or even by a quarter, and doing a booster with J&J, would probably cut down on the rare events and side effects while maintaining effectiveness. There was even talk that doing boosters with a different vaccine type (not just updated variant) was better than sticking with the same company for boosters. Not sure if there was any followup.
Different companies picked different adjuvants. too--mainly based on their availability to that company. I hope there is still money for looking at this even though the Covid crisis has mainly passed. The UK's NHS had a rolling study that helped us understand what worked in treating Covid. It would be great to see if that kind of model be established, well, for most any disease.
During the 2020-2021 time period, I was actively tracking Virginia's health department numbers for the three counties where my wife and I were living and working. Sure, the numbers were iffy, but by keeping a daily track I was able to see the worsening patterns. I was even able to see that in coal country the number of deaths and hospitalizations was running bigger than throughout the rest of the commonwealth. (By keeping track, I could also have semi-obective facts at hand to say that our church should not re-open yet.)
So what did I see when the vaccines arrived? It was amazing. The numbers of inections dropped radically. Over the next two weeks, so did deaths.
And remember--this was when the vaccines were pretty limited to health personnel (and then to people over 65). So not only were the vaccines effective at slowing transmission and severe illness. The numbers suggested to me that hospitals and nursing homes were the large transmitters.
It's not proof. But it was strongly suggestive to me.