Because that is the guidance from the CDC.

Because unvaccinated people can contract and spread COVID?

So can vaccinated people.

Sure, but the probability of that happening is much, much lower, to the point of it being not worth protecting against, for the most part.

HIV has a transmission rate below 2% - I'd still suggest wearing a condom though.

risk/reward ratio here is way different, no?

Not really. Singapore is finding quite a few infections among the vaccinated. Sure, they don't get severe disease, but they do spread disease.

https://mothership.sg/2021/06/mindsville-napiri-covid-19/

lol

you're totally right, let's just never trust any vaccine or medical developments due to anomalous chance of failure. in accordance to this, i pledge to never leave my home until i leave this barren earth.

The vaccine does not completely prevent you from getting infected or from being able to infect others. It drastically reduces the chance, especially of the more dangerous symptoms affecting the lungs, but it doesn't grant complete immunity.

Besides, measures like masks also affect many other diseases; this recent winter they were effective enough to reduce influenza-related deaths by over 95% compared to the year before.

>this recent winter they were effective enough to reduce influenza-related deaths by over 95% compared to the year before.

A little hard to chalk that up to masking alone given all the other drastic societal changes. What about WFH and distancing?

I never excluded other measures beside masks. I mainly mentioned masks ("measures like masks") because they were the main topic here.

“Drastically reducing the chances” is all you need, because everyone else has also gotten vaccinated and there isn’t a supply of bats dropping fresh virus on you to constantly challenge it.

The COVID vaccines really are so good there’s not much reason to take extra precautions as long as you’ve gotten one. Variants don’t even matter since it’s not the flu.

I never said there wasn't value in being vaccinated. Obviously it reduces death and severe illness.

The popular vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca) are known to significantly reduce asymptomatic infections as well [1].

[1] Table 1b. Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccination Against Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection in https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

Exactly.

Why not?

Just seems like a somewhat arbitrary point to draw the line - I assumed there was some logical justification for it that I was missing.

Are you sure you aren't being facetious and pretending like you have not heard any mention of the numerous studies that show vaccinated people do not spread the virus in any significant percentage and how herd immunity works?

No, I haven't seen any of those studies and I have very little personal motivation to do so as I live in NZ and the only place I care to travel to is Australia - so no need to pretend or be facetious at all.

In fact, my first actual exposure to wearing a mask was less than 3 weeks ago when I traveled to Sydney. TBH, I don't know what the big fuss is about.