It did reduce spread, but not perfectly so and that fell as more evasive variants evolved.

>It did reduce spread, but not perfectly so and that fell as more evasive variants evolved.

I don't blame you because the governments spread this misinformation. The CDC has recanted this misinformation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...

But we also know the CDC's original position was false.

More importantly, all social media platforms universally censored the scientist who discovered the mrna vaccine because he said... they dont prevent spread.

You're using USAtoday facecheckers against a CDC director?

Do you feel this will be a convincing argument?

If you actually read that link, note that it supports the correct information I gave you. The vaccines reduced spread - not completely but meaningfully - but effectiveness has dropped in the face of different variants. This is not a secret but something scientists and public health officials have been concerned with since the beginning: the retail business lobby wanted to say that you could go back to 2019 as soon as you were vaccinated but that was because of the money they weren’t getting from indoor dining/drinking when people were staying masked - and while some politicians wanted that to be true, too, anyone following the scientific consensus knew that was wishful thinking.

Can you share the data on the reduction in spread the vaccines offered across different variants to back up your claim? I've never seen the data so I'd be curious to see what you're referring to.

Do note that neither the Pfizer nor Moderna vaccines actually tested risk of infection or transmission. You can download the clinical trial protocols and read what the clinical trials actually measured. Patients in the trial were only tested upon symptoms and the endpoint measured was severity of disease.

I believe it was only the J&J vaccine that actually regularly tested patients to see if there was a difference in protection against acquiring Covid. They did not test protection against transmission.

There were a number of studies like this:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34355689/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34738514/

Those studies pretty consistently found benefits in the 40-60% range against the original strain. Unfortunately, we had political opportunists discouraging adoption and then Delta and Omicron evolved so the scenario public health experts had been worried about happened.

Regarding the claim that Pfizer and Moderna didn’t test for transmission, this has been muddied substantially by its popularity as a talking point for antivax activists and right-wing pundits trying to present it as a conspiracy of some sort. In reality, Pfizer and Moderna worked with the FDA to design the phase 3 trials and they all decided to focus on protection against serious outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t look for signals in the data or that other studies weren’t in progress. All of this was clearly communicated at the time, too, so I would question the motives of anyone who tries to say it was buried – at the very least, that’s saying they get their news from untrustworthy sources.

This is covered at considerable length here:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine...

The two studies you reference have significant limitations (same author, different time periods) which are stated in the papers.

"We estimated a VET of 71% among household contacts of fully vaccinated index cases. Harris et al. found a VET of 40–50% for unvaccinated households contacts". They estimated it, and if using the 40-50% figure, their study found higher transmission rats among vaccinated.

It was also self-reported data they explicitly state was not collected for research purposes, "As our study used data not primarily collected for research purposes, it has some important limitations. Our data do not contain information on negative tests among contacts, therefore we do not know if contacts did not get infected or did not seek testing."

I would be careful in making any sweeping conclusions from an observational study using self-reported income.

In reality, Pfizer and Moderna worked with the FDA to design the phase 3 trials and they all decided to focus on protection against serious outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t look for signals in the data or that other studies weren’t in progress.

I agree - Pfizer and Moderna never claimed they reduced infection rates because they never tested it. Generally it was politicians who were saying "get vaccinated to protect others" based on some theoretical benefit.

Like I said, look at the Phase 3 clinical trial designs, they are public documents. Risk of infection/transmission was not captured.

But if the symptoms are reduced, including the ones that spread the virus (coughing), then what happens to the rate of spread?

"Quantity and size distribution of cough-generated aerosol particles produced by influenza patients during and after illness" (2012)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22651099/

I draw your attention in particular to one of the figures: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22651099/#&gid=article-figur...

You will see that there is a great deal of variation in the number of aerosol-sized particles emitted by the individuals in this small clinical study and note that the variation between individuals is greater than the difference, for a single individual, between a person's aerosol output when ill vs. after recovery.

You can also find studies confirming that ordinary breathing constantly generates aerosols. They aren't just something produced when someone coughs or sneezes.

If you were extremely socially isolated, perhaps on a farm or in a cabin somewhere and only going into town once a month to buy some supplies or pick up your mail from a one-man post office or something, slight reductions in other persons' viral load and very conscientious use of a properly-fitted respirator and eye protection might buy you a little more time before you got infection.

But living normally, going out most days and interacting with many people and entering environments with non-negligible foot traffic from other people who have made their own respiratory contributions to the ambient air? With surgical masks or cute cloth masks and everyone having gotten some combination of the currently-available covid shots? No.