[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.