Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
I understand how vaccines work.
The Polio vaccine has an efficacy of 99%, Smallpox was 95%, Hep B 98% and they stop you from getting ill. They bolster your immune system to fight the infection.
I had the vaccine and got COVID, and practically everyone I know that had the vaccine also got it and were quite ill with it.
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"quite ill" is a bit vague though and could mean a variety of things. For some it could be that they were lying in bed for a few days but I think clinically they define mild as something which doesn't require ventilation in hospital. There's a massive difference.
Plus it also depends on what vaccine you have and when you had it.
I think the "strains are milder now so it doesn't matter as much" argument may be coincidental too - so in general since omicron it is true that the hospital admissions and deaths from people getting covid has gone down and also that quite a few people have other symptoms like that of a cold and actually have covid. But we are dealing with a group now who have largely speaking some immunity whether that's from having a vaccine (or several) or having one or more covid infections, or both. This would be sufficient in a lot of people to give an immune recognition even if the next infection was a different strain so that it would help to minimise a more severe infection. So it is potentially the case that omicron is milder anyway but vaccinated people or previously infected people would probably get a milder illness than someone who generally speaking hasn't had it or been vaccinated.
I know that the newer bivalent vaccines are different but these also haven't been offered to the general population. Most people had the initial two shots sometime in early-mid 2021 and most likely either AZ in older groups or Pfizer at the start then later with younger people, then when omicron arrived and they weren't sure how bad it would be everyone was offered a 3rd which was usually either Pfizer or Moderna. All of these were based off the original strain of covid for which they were high-90s effective against any type of infection, and also alpha, but slightly less effective on beta, gamma and delta (of which we really only got delta here). But the virus has changed a lot which makes the original vaccines less effective and this seems to be the case for the newer ones too as they're often a few months behind.
I think if we hadn't vaccinated that there would have been more people even in supposed not at high risk groups who would have been ill with covid for a while, which might have progressed to a more severe illness or post-viral conditions, whatever issues there were the vaccination did limit the damage here...