https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577Finally found what I'm talking about. Posting just as an FYI as its irrelevant at this point. I thought I discussed this with
Riverdog way back when the vaccines first came out, but maybe with someone else.
This is an excerpt from abstracts of the studies conducted for the vaccines. Read if you like this type of scientific writing or at least understand it.
EFFICACY
The first primary end point was the efficacy of BNT162b2 against confirmed Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose in participants who had been without serologic or virologic evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection up to 7 days after the second dose; the second primary end point was efficacy in participants with and participants without evidence of prior infection. Confirmed Covid-19 was defined according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criteria as the presence of at least one of the following symptoms: fever, new or increased cough, new or increased shortness of breath, chills, new or increased muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhea, or vomiting, combined with a respiratory specimen obtained during the symptomatic period or within 4 days before or after it that was positive for SARS-CoV-2 by nucleic acid amplification–based testing, either at the central laboratory or at a local testing facility (using a protocol-defined acceptable test).
Major secondary end points included the efficacy of BNT162b2 against severe Covid-19. Severe Covid-19 is defined by the FDA as confirmed Covid-19 with one of the following additional features: clinical signs at rest that are indicative of severe systemic illness; respiratory failure; evidence of shock; significant acute renal, hepatic, or neurologic dysfunction; admission to an intensive care unit; or death. Details are provided in the protocol.
What this means is the following to summarize:
1. They were testing people without evidence of prior infection as natural immunity would have confounded the findings.
2. Confirmed COVID19 Disease is described by the FDA as exhibiting symptoms and confirmed COVID by a swab PCR test. That means if you were an asymptomatic carrier, it did not determine if the vaccine was effective at preventing you from transmitting COVID19.
3. Secondary check was done to determine how many positive tests had Severe COVID19 as in admission to the hospital or death.
What does this mean practically for you?
1. All the people thinking that because you test positive for COVID19 even after vaccination the vaccines don't work, well that is wrong. The vaccines never claimed to stop the presence or transmission of the virus. They were not tested for that.
What they were tested for is preventing symptomatic COVID as in the presence of the virus combined with symptoms and preventing severe COVID19 that leads to hospitalization or death with minimal side effects.
2. The vaccines proved exceedingly effective at preventing severe or symptomatic COVID19 against the original alpha variant.
3. Regardless of whether you test positive for COVID19, if you are asymptomatic then it would still effectively end the COVID19 pandemic. Thus the vaccines were still highly effective.
Now I can't remember who I had this discussion with as it obviously wasn't
Riverdog or on this forum I guess. It must have been with my buddies.
It takes a lot of reading of boring and exceedingly scientific jargon to find out that the vaccines were never tested for preventing transmission, though later studies conducted during live use did seem to indicate a reduced transmission of the virus even it not a zero level.
Coronaviruses are notoriously difficult to eradicate as they mutate far quicker than many other types of viruses. So the situation we are in now is not ideal, but also not unexpected. The ideal situation would have been a stable virus that the vaccine would have effectively eradicated for intents and purposes, but I don't think many scientists were expecting this no matter how much we vaccinate because of the nature of coronaviruses.
It seems the overall world is coming around to the reality that many of us realized months ago: this is going to be endemic and we're going to have to live with it.
Personally, I still highly recommend the vaccine as preventing severe COVID is much better than hoping you don't get severe COVID. It has a very high rate of preventing severe COVID.
If you look at the idea that the COVID vaccines were supposed to prevent COVID from spreading at all, then you're going to be disappointed and think the vaccines are not working when they are working for what they were built for: reducing hospitalization and death to make COVID19 manageable.
Time to learn to live with COVID. Let's hope they can improve upon existing vaccines and treatment until COVID19 is hopefully a nuisance at best.