CDiddy,
You seem to indicate that a vaccine has binary effectiveness. It's unfortunately not that simple as I see it. These mRNA vaccines do induce an immune response but it doesn't 100% protect from being infected. The vaccines reduce the severity of the disease due to the pre-stimulated antibodies generated by the vaccine, but you can still be infected, be asymptomatic, and still spread the infection.
Going by the responses of a virologist, Dr. Angela Rasmussen, recipients of the mRNA vaccine can still be infected, be asymptomatic, and still transit the virus. She also makes some important comments about even if vaccinated, it's possible that vaccine recipients might still develop COVID long haulers syndrome. If the LL/Vyrologix long haulers study goes well, there probably will still be a need in that percentage of the population - vaccinated or not.
Some quotes from an article interviewing Dr. Rasmussen:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/11/19/a-v...ccines-an/
(emphasis mine)
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You seem to indicate that a vaccine has binary effectiveness. It's unfortunately not that simple as I see it. These mRNA vaccines do induce an immune response but it doesn't 100% protect from being infected. The vaccines reduce the severity of the disease due to the pre-stimulated antibodies generated by the vaccine, but you can still be infected, be asymptomatic, and still spread the infection.
Going by the responses of a virologist, Dr. Angela Rasmussen, recipients of the mRNA vaccine can still be infected, be asymptomatic, and still transit the virus. She also makes some important comments about even if vaccinated, it's possible that vaccine recipients might still develop COVID long haulers syndrome. If the LL/Vyrologix long haulers study goes well, there probably will still be a need in that percentage of the population - vaccinated or not.
Some quotes from an article interviewing Dr. Rasmussen:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/11/19/a-v...ccines-an/
(emphasis mine)
Quote:Rasmussen : Yes, this news is very encouraging. But I'd like to caution people that we should be a little hesitant to jump to conclusions that this is a complete game changer. The reason for that is that, so this trial enrolled almost 44,000 participants in this Phase 3 clinical trial. This interim data analysis was based on what are called events. An event is when somebody in a clinical trial, either in the control group which receives the placebo or in the group that receives the vaccine, gets a case of COVID. In this case they're looking at symptomatic COVID-19 cases. So people who not only have COVID, but also have symptoms of COVID disease, so not asymptomatic people. This was based on 94 events. That's considerably less than the 44,000 that have been enrolled. We don't know about how many people within those 94 cases were in the most high-risk groups.
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Quote:Rasmussen : Yes. Of course, the safety profile is going to be really important and there haven't been any indications that this is potentially dangerous. There haven't been any really worrisome adverse effects reported, but we'll of course, have to wait for more than just the press release that Pfizer released on Monday. The big question that I have , in addition to how well does this work in these vulnerable people, is can these people still transmit the virus? This is protecting again against symptomatic COVID-19. It doesn't necessarily indicate that it prevents against infection with SARS-coronavirus-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. That has huge implications considering this vaccine is not going to be available to everybody for some months. If you get the vaccine and you're 90% protected against COVID, you might still be able to be infected with SARS-2 and shed that and transmit it to other people who have not been vaccinated. It's very much an important question that will need to be answered. In addition to that, if people can get infected while they're vaccinated and they don't develop severe disease, that's a huge public health benefit . I don't mean to discount that. We are getting more and more evidence that up to 25%, maybe even more people have what is starting to be called long COVID or so-called long haulers. Some of the people who have reported these persistent symptoms or symptoms of chronic disease had mild SARS-2 infection. They had mild COVID disease. So it's entirely possible that people might be having fewer symptoms, if they get the vaccine, but may still be susceptible to these longer-term effects of being infected. So there's a lot of really important questions that we need to address before we start celebrating and popping the champagne that the vaccine is here and we're all going to get it and the pandemic is going to be over.
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Quote:...But the vaccine alone is just one thing that we need to keep in mind as we try to end and contain this pandemic. That means that we have to do other things as well as the vaccine. There are a number of countries: Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand that have effectively controlled this virus within their borders without a vaccine. So we're going to need to continue to take some of the measures that allow that. We're going to need to continue to avoid crowds, to wear masks, to physically distance, to ventilate if possible, to practice good hand hygiene, to take all of these measures that are intended to reduce and control community transmission as the vaccines are being rolled out, especially if there are a significant number of people that myself, my colleagues, and other people who are advocates for vaccines won't be able to convince to actually get a vaccine.
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