wae said:
bobzilla said:
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to Slippery (Forum Supporter) :
As I understand it, that is not determined.
So my question from the standpoint of a non-dr moron: If the vaccine doesn't stop the spread, just symptoms in most cases, what's the point? Those at high risk and in the wrong age bracket are still at risk and in the wrong age bracket right?
If that's how the vaccine actually works, then yes: Those that have had the shot will be protected, but it won't do anything to prevent the spread to people that have not had the shot yet. The good news is that if we can get it to the most vulnerable people ASAP then we should be able to improve the outlook for them. They can spread it to us, but the theory would be that it won't be as bad if we get it and they wouldn't be able to catch it from us.
But! The whole thing about the vaccine not preventing you from spreading the virus might be a bit of a red herring. Just like the news reports that tell us that licking copper pipes while crossing your toes doubles your chances of getting cancer of the left eyebrow, they're sort of oversimplifying things. Turns out that your chance for getting cancer of the left eyebrow is 0.000000001% and licking copper pipes makes it 0.000000002%. So not much of a story, right? After reading deeper, they think that it prevents the spread. They don't see any specific reason to think that it wouldn't prevent the spread. But they haven't been able to perform the right experiment yet to test that hypothesis. I fell victim to it as well, but the "Vaccine May Not Prevent Spread" headline is technically true while not really telling the full story.
A link I had posted earlier clarifies this point.
The vaccine is known to prevent the spread as a true vaccine does. The reason that some people took the "only prevents symptoms" ball and ran with it did so without really having all the information. The CDC administered the test, 95% of the recipients did not have symptoms. The reason they only mentioned the symptoms part was because that is the only part they have data on. Until they complete the blood testing for the next phase of the data gathering, they can't definitively say that it is scientific truth. Kinda like if you put muffler repair tape on your exhaust. You know it LOOKS right, but you don't know for sure until you drive it for a while. The same is true with the scientific method. When testing a new theory (vaccine) you administer it in a test phase, record the observations, then do the testing to prove the efficacy of the vaccine. At this point, (or at least at the point when I wrote the original post) they have done the first two - gave the vaccine and observed that 95% of the recipients didn't have symptoms of C19. Until they put in the work and figure out what is actually happening inside their bodies as a result of the vaccine, they can't say much more than what their current data definitively says.
It walks like a vaccine and quacks like a vaccine, but until they receive the verifying data to support it, they can't call it a duck.
It's also important to note that this is the way the scientific method (including medical sciences) has functioned since the 1600s when the method was invented. This isn't some new conspiracy that just emerged with the C19 virus, but this is the first time we have all collectively paid this much attention to a virus and its progress. Basically, all the laypeople have dived in the deep end and its understandable that some of us (myself included) are seeing behind the curtain for the first time and we misinterpret things. Suffice it to say that every single vaccine, drug, rocket booster, mathematical theorem, CAD-assisted aerodynamic design, mechanical engineering feat, and even plant food has gone through this exact set of events before. It shouldn't be misconstrued as "it only prevents symptoms and you can still spread it," rather it should be thought of as "it looks like it prevents the spread, but we have to wait for the data. For now, all we can say is that 95% didn't get symptoms."
