Quote (thesnipa @ 6 Aug 2021 17:11)

Its funny that "not effective at reducing spread" is so widely talked about, and yet cases/day are drastically lower than pre-vaccine levels, deaths are lower, and deaths are mostly in the unvaccinated population.

pre-vaccine covid skeptics pointed to low fatality rates as an argument that government mitigation measures were unnecessary.

post-vaccine the goal posts shift from fatality levels, because it looks really bad for unvaccinated swine of the world, and now it's all about spread. a measure that previously many skeptics were calling for to INCREASE because they bought into herd immunity based on anecdotal reports form sparsely populated Scandinavian healthcare utopias with manageable population density.

oh and the CDC and academic studies can't be trusted for years, but now they're used as a counter?

if there's one thing im fully up to date on its the goal post shifting hypocrisy of "patriots" who idolize veterans that were drafted into wars for their country that now wont wear a mask to save grandma and dont stop to buy a paper rose from those veterans for 1$ to raise funds for the VA that's desperate for funds they dont want taxes raised to support.

any person opening with lines like "it doesnt stop the spread" isnt worth an intellectual engagement, they're lucky if i take the time to shitpost at them. im more worried about their existence in the context of overpopulation than i am threatened they might have a single thing worth listening to. hopefully their fear of the deepstate raises to a high enough degree they retreat to the mountains and their population dwindles and interbreeds so badly that they fuck their hillbilly line of inferior blood out of existence. the best case for society is for a hiker 200 years from now to stumble upon the hovels they once lived in as an archeological find.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 6 2021 10:36am)

ramble much?

It is the CDC itself which is arguing that the risk of transmission by a breakthrough infection is no longer lower than by an unvaccinated. Why should it be hypocrisy by the anti-maskers/-vaxxers/covid-deniers to point out that the scientific justification on which the mayors and private businesses are basing their decision to exclude the unvaccinated is no longer applicable? It's the mayors and some private businesses which are acting here, and they claim that their actions are in line with science and CDC recommendations - although exactly that is no longer the case.

"It does not stop the spread" is of course wrong, but saying "it does not stop the spread among breakthrough infetions" is a correct statement (if the CDC is to be believed).

What's really going on here is fairly simple: if the Biden admin, Bill DeBlasio and their ilk were really "listening to the science" like they always claim to do, then they would need to immediately ramp up testing requirements across the board, subject the fully vaccinated to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated and end any exclusion of negatively tested unvaccinated from social life. If they did that, the already low willingness to get jabbed would collapse entirely and the goal of getting as many people as possible vaccinated would become even harder to achieve. That's why they don't take any of the aforementioned steps, and it's the right thing to do. The goal of getting more people vaccinated is too important, but the hypocrisy involved is nonetheless undeniable. At the end of the day, liberals are also very willing to ignore "the science" whenever it's inconvenient.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 6 2021 08:36am)

ramble much?

It is the CDC itself which is arguing that the risk of transmission by a breakthrough infection is no longer lower than by an unvaccinated. Why should it be hypocrisy by the anti-maskers/-vaxxers/covid-deniers to point out that the scientific justification on which the mayors and private businesses are basing their decision to exclude the unvaccinated is no longer applicable? It's the mayors and some private businesses which are acting here, and they claim that their actions are in line with science and CDC recommendations - although exactly that is no longer the case.

"It does not stop the spread" is of course wrong, but saying "it does not stop the spread among breakthrough infetions" is a correct statement (if the CDC is to be believed).

What's really going on here is fairly simple: if the Biden admin, Bill DeBlasio and their ilk were really "listening to the science" like they always claim to do, then they would need to immediately ramp up testing requirements across the board, subject the fully vaccinated to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated and end any exclusion of negatively tested unvaccinated from social life. If they did that, the already low willingness to get jabbed would collapse entirely and the goal of getting as many people as possible vaccinated would become even harder to achieve. That's why they don't take any of the aforementioned steps, and it's the right thing to do. The goal of getting more people vaccinated is too important, but the hypocrisy involved is nonetheless undeniable. At the end of the day, liberals are also very willing to ignore "the science" whenever it's inconvenient.

Quote (thesnipa @ 6 Aug 2021 17:26)

so to get this straight, the vaccine literally sold as 90+% effective was also sold as 100% effective. OK

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 6 2021 10:53am)

You still dont seem to get the distinction between efficacy against infection and efficacy against transmission. No expert ever expected either of these numbers to be 100%, but the expectation was that efficacy against transmission would be significantly higher than 0%.

Something like the following was what experts were hoping for:
"Vaccine reduces risk of infection by a factor of 6 (~85% efficacy against infection), and by a factor of 5-10 against transmission in case of a breakthrough infection"
In that case, a fully vaccinated person would have had a 30 to 60 times lower risk of becoming a link in an infection chain than an unvaccinated person. For practical purposes, the fully vaccinated would play no significant role in the spread of the disease.


What we got instead, as per the CDC, is the following:
"Vaccine reduces risk of infection by a factor as small as 3, and not at all against transmission by breakthrough cases."
In this case, the risk of a fully vaccinated person to continue an infection chain is roughly one third of that of an unvaccinted. So while infections will still be driven more by the unvaccinated, the contribution of the fully vaccinated to the infection dynamics is significant and can no longer be ignored.


As long as the vaccines hold up in terms of preventing hospitalization and death, this is no drama - but if true, this would put the goal of stopping the spread out of reach.

Quote (thesnipa @ Aug 6 2021 09:00am)

90%+ efficacy against infection in a population with 90%+ vaccinated = nearly 100% efficacy against spread.

90%+ efficacy against infection in a population with 50% vaccinated (US total as of 8-1 or so) = nowhere near 100% efficacy against spread.

and the same people saying it wont stop spread are in the 50% not vaccinated.

it is clear you're the one who lacks understanding about how group immunity among vaccinated populations works.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 6 2021 11:02am)

The "reducing spread"-part is where the CDC has changed their assessment in recent days. Let's go through it step by step:

• We really have to distinguish: according to recent data, the vaccinations cut the risk of a person to get infected by a factor of at least 3 (probably higher), so business owners are still justified in (a priori) expecting untested vaccinated customers to carry a lower risk of infecting their staff or other customers than untested unvaccinated.
  
• However, recent studies which the CDC is really playing up suggest that fully vaccinated individuals with a breakthrough infection have similar levels of viral load and thus a similar risk of infecting others as infected unvaccinated persons. I, personally, am not convinced by these studies and this conclusion, but that's where the CDC has pivoted to in recent days. It's the basis for their reversal on mask mandates for the vaccinated, it's the basis for their change in communication.
  
• If these findings really were true (again, I'm still skeptical), then there would be no more virological justification to treat negatively tested persons different based on their vaccination status. So shopping malls, gyms, restaurants, theaters and so on would, from a logical point of view, have to grant negatively tested unvaccinated persons the same kind of access as their vaccinated customers.

Quote (theCrossbones @ Aug 6 2021 11:02am)

its odd.. its exactly the same type of thought process of mask to none vs mask to mask.

Quote (thesnipa @ Aug 6 2021 12:00pm)

90%+ efficacy against infection in a population with 90%+ vaccinated = nearly 100% efficacy against spread.

90%+ efficacy against infection in a population with 50% vaccinated (US total as of 8-1 or so) = nowhere near 100% efficacy against spread.

and the same people saying it wont stop spread are in the 50% not vaccinated by and large.

it is clear you're the one who lacks understanding about how group immunity among vaccinated populations works.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker