I’m getting my vaccine next week so I decided to give the vaccine podcast a listen. I just have a question about herd Immunity. I was told by quite a right leaning, anti-vaxxy individual that there vaccine doesn’t stop infection but rather negates the symptoms in the individual. The purpose of that statement was that they’re healthy so they won’t get bad symptoms anyway so they don’t need it.
My question is you guys stated that you need about 70% to get vaccinated for herd Immunity. If I recall correctly you also said that the information on infection/transmission decreasing upon vaccination is uncertain.
I was told by quite a right leaning, anti-vaxxy individual that there vaccine doesn’t stop infection but rather negates the symptoms in the individual.
This is not accurate. Since that podcast was recorded we have accumulated much more data indicating that the vaccines do indeed prevent infection, not just symptomatic disease.
Ochir - The vaxx cause a very large reduction in infection against current strains. Your friend’s question probably arose because:
95% or 99% effective doesn’t mean 100% effective
What about new strains? Evidence so far is that the vaxx will still be very effective in keeping you out of the hospital (stopping severe infection), but less effective (like maybe only 50% or 70% or 90%) in stopping infection as such. Picture the new strain still maybe getting you down, just not in the hospital.
People getting bad side effects (e.g. myocarditis, thrombosis), at low rates - and by that I mean very low rates indeed - but still higher rates than they had expected in January from the Stage 3 studies.
Great. Thank you guys! I was just stumped when he so confidently told me that. Definitely just some confirmation bias as he was probably looking for anything here could to deny the efficacy of the vaccine.