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Re:Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers by lamontcg on Thursday September 09, 2021 @06:23PM (#28475351)
What evidence does he have of actual transmission? I want to see actual studies with humans with breakthrough infections giving infections to other humans. I'd like to see one contact tracing case where a breakthrough infection was the index patient that spread it to multiple people at a given venue.

I've already posted studies which contradicts the idea that breakthrough infections are equivalent to unvaccinated infections in terms of actual live viral load, which should show up as reduced transmissibility. And the reduction in severity of symptoms with vaccination is highly unlikely to come without a corresponding reduction in transmissibility. What is his scientific data showing that viral loads, symptoms and transmissibility have somehow become completely decoupled?

And we seem to have forgotten that most of the spread of this disease is caused by individual superspreaders. Only 20% of the infections are responsible for 80% of the forward transmission. If vaccines reduce severe transmission the same way they reduce severe disease then they could very well have a disproportional impact on r0.

> It's impossible to reach 100% coverage

The fact that we can't hit 100% coverage doesn't imply that vaccines in the population that we can vaccinate aren't highly effective at reducing transmission.

Also if you're just making an argument by authority, then go watch all the recent TWiV episodes. I don't necessarily agree with Herr Professor Doktor Racaniello about everything (delta really is a lot more transmissible/virulent), but the whole crew there would tend to agree with me, and wants to see the real transmissibility studies with real humans infecting real humans.

Re:Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers by nradov on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:31PM (#28476416)
This is not an argument by authority. There is strong evidence of significant Delta variant transmission by vaccinated people.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387

Re:Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers by lamontcg on Friday September 10, 2021 @01:12PM (#28484477)
That nature article is still repeating arguments which conflate studies of Ct values of RNA with infectious virus and don't address the fact that vaccines reduce symptoms and that Ct values drop faster in vaccinated individuals.

The CDC article doesn't say anything other than "People who get vaccine breakthrough infections can be contagious" without any citation.

The actual study you cite only tests for viral RNA not infectious virus, they only cultured a single sample from a breakthrough infection to show that it could happen.

Other studies have found that viral RNA drops faster in vaccinated individuals, and that levels of culturable virus are lower at peak in vaccinated individuals indicating the presence of more viral debris than infectious virus:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.20.21262158v...

We also know that viral loads are correlated with transmissibility and symptoms, and that vaccines reduce severe symptoms. We know there's less infectious virus in breakthrough infections and that they're less severe. It is rational to expect a reduction in transmissibility.

Re:Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers by croon on Friday September 10, 2021 @04:56AM (#28479186)
The point is; Is it more (/less/no change) transmittive vaccinated vs unvaccinated? If it lowers transmittion only a tiny bit it's still net positive.