Transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 among fully vaccinated individuals

[dimgl]

This is completely anecdotal, but something interesting happened to me recently. My trainer, who is unvaccinated, got really sick one week. Lots of throwing up, high fever, headaches, just feeling awful in general. He tested negative for COVID multiple times.

After his sickness went away, we worked out together (I'm vaccinated and boosted). Two days later, he calls me to tell me he tested positive for COVID but barely feels anything, just has a slight cough. He tested positive for a week and half afterwards.

I didn't get sick whatsoever. I mean, maybe one day I had a little bit of nasal congestion, but it could have just been the cold weather or any number of things. My wife also did not get sick (but she's vaccinated as well).

I think it's too early to write off that vaccines don't prevent transmissibility or even getting the virus. The immunization effects of these vaccines are so unknown to us given that they're so new. This whole COVID-19 situation is so damn weird, and that's why a lot of people are admittedly very skeptical of everything.

[rsynnott]

So one problem with thinking about vaccine protection from infection is that it’s hard to get data. In practice, when you see figures on protection against infection (typically these show limited though existent protection re omicron and significant protection re delta for boosted people) those figures are typically based on household infection. Which is kind of a worst case; constant exposure for days.

It may be that protection against infection by casual contact is significantly better, but it’s almost impossible to study that.

[barathr]

This isn't a reviewed article, btw, but a "correspondence", which per The Lancet: "Correspondence letters are not usually peer reviewed (we rarely publish original research in this section)".

[elil17]

Interesting, but the sample size discussed is very very small - 204 households - and, as the researcher notes, there are many confounding variables to consider. To me, this does not at all suggest that a change of public policy is warranted at this time, but it would definitely be interesting to see more research.

[raxxorrax]

Problem is that any source of data will have the same quality issues. Not alleging general propaganda, but I guess it always tends to confirm the initial suspicions of researchers as the data can be molded either way.

[Tomminn]

This interesting article was posted earlier by another user and quickly received 28 upvotes but was flagged, presumably for editorializing the title. Reposted without the editorializing. A reply to this comment with a link to the unpaywalled pdf would obviously be helpful for many readers.

[mlyle]

PDF isn't paywalled.

This is not a reviewed scientific paper; this is a short letter citing a couple studies that didn't see much of a difference in infection rates between unvaccinated and vaccinated people. Conversely, we have a bunch of data showing the opposite.

[bluenose69]

The link provides the full text. It's just a commentary essay, not a paper. The Lancet provides covid-related content for free. For example, I clicked the first link and got the full text of that particular reference at https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099...

[rlt]

At this point it’s hard to see vaccine mandates (certainly without alternative options such as proof of recent infection/recovery or recent/regular negative test) as anything but punitive against the unvaccinated.

(I am triple vaccinated, for the record)

[TrispusAttucks]

The only logical reason at this point to mandate vaccines is if you wanted to remove the control group from the great human experiment. Or just see how far you can push your population.

* I am triple vaccinated

[raxxorrax]

My government is sadly too incompetent to get out of panic mode and now has evasion ideas like a central vaccination registers...

[TMWNN]

I've heard it mused that with Omicron, vaccination may further spread COVID19 in the sense that those vaccinated are less likely to feel sick (so don't stay home from work/avoid other people) but are just as likely to spread the virus.

[xupybd]

If this article is correct I hope that it will get incorporated into public policy swiftly.

[elil17]

This is not an article, it’s correspondence (e.g. what one guy thinks about some other articles he’s read). Plus, the articles being discussed have very small sample sizes.

[version_five]

The rhetoric has moved on to "prevents severe infection" as the reason you have to prove you've been vaccinated.

[Mountain_Skies]

Ego and the belief it could be used against them in campaigns this year will keep most politicians from allowing a change in public health policy due to the results in the paper. "We need more studies" likely will be how they proceed though there's a chance they'll simply try to discredit the authors and discourage anyone else from finding similar results.

[witrak]

Disregarding the correctness of its thesis article will be used by opponents of vaccinations.