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defrost • today at 4:21 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

The issue specifically is:

  early claims of vaccines preventing infection or even spread weren't supported by the trials.
Who made such stupid claims and __why__? My own recollection, from Australia watching the US, was the the US political administration of the time turned any scientific based discussion into a complete shit show - many images of cowered CDC employees sucking their faces in while Trump v1.0 babbled on about bleach and sunlight.

From my first free of politics encounters with world class epidemiologists in 1980 or so I've not heard one claim that any vaccine had a 100% efficacy rate for both disease prevention and for eliminating spread - it has _always_ been a numbers game, like seat belts, of statistical reduction.

Your own link agrees:

  Conclusions: A two-dose regimen of BNT162b2 conferred 95% protection against Covid-19 in persons 16 years of age or older.
95% protection is pretty good, but for all manner of reasons it's unusual to expect any vaccine to prevent 100% of all infections across millions of people or animals.

Typically, in educated countries, phrases such as "prevent infection and spread*" are understood to mean that in the same manner as "seat belts prevent death and injury*"

( * exceptions expected )

Replies

_heimdall • today at 10:30 AM

Okay got it, I didn't expect that was what you were taking issue with. At least in the US, we were constantly being told by our government leadership that we all needed to take the vaccine to stop the spread.

Fauci, for example, claimed very early on that we needed herd immunity and would get thee with around a 60% vaccination rate. He both knew that number was too low for the hypothesis of herd immunity, raising it as time went on, and that herd immunity requires a treatment to prevent transmission, implying the vaccines were known to do that (they weren't).

More egregiously there was a political push, picked up by the media as well, that basically boiled down to an argument that anyone refusing the vaccine is actively killing old people and children. They would go so far as to say unvaccinated people shouldn't be allowed into hospitals for care for unrelated health conditions.

All that to say, my point was simply that this review paper seems to be making claims that would require research I never saw happen. Sadly the pay wall means I can't read their full claims, but even the overview of their results seem dubious.