The FDA didn't approve the vaccines under emergency use to lessen the symptoms, only to prevent transmission.

That’s not correct, the clinical trials explicitly measured symptomatic disease and not transmission

e.g. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427

The applications specifically said that they are for prevention.

The moderna application clearly distinguishes between Covid-19 (symptomatic disease) and SARS-CoV-2 infection, as the sibling comment says.

> On November 30, 2020, ModernaTX (the Sponsor, also referred to as Moderna) submitted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) request to FDA for an investigational COVID-19 vaccine (mRNA-1273) intended to prevent COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

https://www.fda.gov/media/144673/download

Which is is not doing. Vaccinated people are still getting COVID-19.

Prevention of the disease, not just spread.

People that are vaxxed are still getting the disease.

At a lower rate and with far less severity, which is exactly what we expected based on the initial data. Omicron's arrival means that more people are getting sick but when they do, it's still considerably less severe — which is good because Omicron is sending more people to the hospital even though it's ~40-50% less likely to do so compared to Delta.

I realize that you don't want to admit having been so wrong about this for so long but the evidence is very clear that the vaccines are safe and effective:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitali...

Again, there you go quoting CDC ignoring the authorization which is for prevention and moving the goal posts quicker than QAnon. Some vaxxed people are in a constant state of Stockholm Syndrome. The evidence you speak of is unattainable at this point and VAERS is one of the only outlets which is significantly backlogged, and according to pro-vaxxers can't be trusted anymore because it doesn't fit their narrative.

VAERS was never trustworthy as a raw data source, only as a source of information on what to investigate. It is the antithesis of medical research... Self-reported, no control for any known bias effects, no scrubbing for obviously erroneous data.

Here's a VAERS entry about a patient turning getting abducted by aliens and turning into the Incredible Hulk after the MMR vaccine. https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?IDNUMBER=221...

Reasoning from VAERS without controlled studies is, at best, like cutting the ends off a roast before you bake it because you heard your grandmother did it that way. At worst, it's like irradiating a spider and enticing it to bite you because you read once that somebody got spider powers that way.

Why are you continuing to misrepresent the EUA documents? They don’t support your assertion. (If you point to where in the authorization docs they specify the goal is to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, I’ll change my mind. I linked the moderna application in another sub thread, and the pfizer one is easy to find)

Also VAERS is not the only data source we have for vaccine safety, it’s our hypothesis generation system. We have good data from the vaccine safety datalink system that let us actually quantify the risk of different side effects. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.15072

They clearly do, it is like the very first sentence:

https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=14471&forma...

> The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 5 years of age and older.

https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/eua-fact-sheet-...

> The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE, for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.

https://www.fda.gov/media/146305/download

> You are being offered the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2. This Fact Sheet contains information to help you understand the risks and benefits of receiving the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, which you may receive because there is currently a pandemic of COVID-19.

The real question should be, why do you refuse to even just acknowledge basic facts right from the official EUAs? They are for prevention, not for lessening symptoms, and they simply are not preventing COVID-19 with Omicron.

COVID-19 isn’t the same as a positive SARS-CoV—2 test. This is what they measured, from the caption of table 10 in the pfizer fact sheet you linked:

> Note: Confirmed cases were determined by Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and at least 1 symptom consistent with COVID-19 (symptoms included: fever; new or increased cough; new or increased shortness of breath; chills; new or increased muscle pain; new loss of taste or smell; sore throat; diarrhea; vomiting)

That’s kind of squishy, but I think it’s a clear distinction.

I agree that the effectiveness against symptomatic Covid is lower with omicron, but omicron also evades immunity from prior infection as well.

That being said, the vaccines are not effectively preventing COVID-19 in vaxxed individuals with Omicron.