Vaccination was never about "not getting it".

>Vaccination was never about "not getting it".

What do you base this bizarre claim on?

From the package insert for the Pfizer vaccine:

> COMIRNATY is a vaccine indicated for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals 12 years of age and older. (1)

A single indication, "not getting it". This is what the clinical trials tested and this is what the FDA approved.

> to prevent coronavirus disease

You can be infected with a pathogen without developing the disease associated with the pathogen.

You'll note that insert doesn't say "to prevent infection".

As with HIV (SARS-CoV-2) versus AIDS (COVID-19), the disease you can get from the virus is not the same thing as the infection itself.

The trials were never powered to even test for infetion or transmission. It is quite clear now the vaccine prevented neither.

It was supposed to prevent the disease - basically postive test + symptoms. It didn't.

> The trials were never powered to even test for infetion or transmission.

You called that very statement a "bizarre claim" upthread.

Try this: "Seatbelts prevent injury and death in car accidents."

They don't prevent every single one of them, but no one calls the above statement a lie. Your standard - requiring a vaccine be perfect at its purpose - is an invented one in bad faith to win an argument.

> You called that very statement a "bizarre claim" upthread.

The discussion was about Covid. Covid is the disease (infection+symptoms). The vaccine was supposed to prevent you from "getting it".

We have evidence of it reducing transmission: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-shots-previous-inf...

That alone demonstrates the vaccine can help you not get it.

We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection but not COVID-19.

Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for example.

(The idea that "turns out it only prevents hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad result is also lunacy from the start.)

Again, the debate started over the claim that

>>>> Vaccination was never about "not getting it".

Of course it was about whether the vaccine prevents you from "getting it" (it being Covid). The original claim was that it was 95% effective in preventing you getting it.

> We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection but not COVID-19.

We have loads of crappy evidence showing that (see below). Crappy means highly confounded observational data.

> Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for example.

No one expects them to be perfect, but the original claims were they were supposed to be 95% effective in preventing Covid. Real world efficacy is no where near that. If there's any efficacy at all it is in the low teens.

[BTW, there's a huge debate about the oral Polio vaccine. The US stopped vaccinating with it two decades ago because of that risk]

> (The idea that "turns out it only prevents hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad result is also lunacy from the start.)

It would be luncay if anyone actually claimed that.

The problem is that claiming that it prevents hospitalizations or deaths requires evidence. Reliable evidence.

A recent NEJM correspondence demonstrates quite vividly how terrible much of the evidence for that claim was:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683

(the original author's response is especially hillarious)

I caught covid after getting vaccinated and I would not have even known I had it had a coworker not tested positive and I had to test to come back to the office. Symptoms were incredibly mild. A lot of people my age who weren't vaccinated ended up the in the ER. I never thought the vaccine would prevent disease, it was never claimed that the vaccine prevented catching covid, it always just reduced severity and mortality.

The vaccine was never approved for reduction of symptoms because there was no good evidence to make this claim. And there's no good evidence to make it now.

It was approved for the prevention of Covid (the 'D' stands for disease). It was supposed to prevent you from getting Covid, regardless of severity, and it didn't.

And if we're citing anecdotal evidence. I know of no one who got anything more than flu symptoms, and for most it was mild, regardless of vaccination.

That includes obese diabetic 80s year olds. I know of no one personally who went to the ER except for a vaccinated friend who panicked.

> it was never claimed that the vaccine prevented catching covid The president of the United States made that exact claim: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-governm...

I’m not saying it didn’t reduce your symptoms - it probably did. But there were plenty of people that caught COVID unvaccinated and had the same experience as you.

On the other hand, I had the wonderful experience of catching the first virus and the delta variant. I should have been more protected than with the vaccine by itself as the data clearly showed at the time but it still hit me, a 34 year old decently fit person, almost equally as hard. I had 2-3 weeks of incredibly high fever along with a bunch of other nasty symptoms.

We’re all different. My retirement age mom has never been vaccinated (even though I wish she would have) and she’s either never caught it, which I doubt, or it was so mild she didn’t realize it.