Covid Vaccinés Don’t Work Well Enough to be Mandated

Covid Vaccines Don’t Work Well Enough to be Mandated

John Hinderaker - Powerline 

I have never understood the theory on which covid-vaccinated people are angry at unvaccinated people. If the vaccines work, why do they care? They are protected. But it is actually worse than that: it has become clear that the vaccines offer much less than complete protection. In fact, vaccinated people can easily both catch covid and spread it.

This study has just appeared in the Lancet. It addresses household transmission of the delta variant of covid, the most common means by which the disease is spread. It finds that vaccinated people are less likely than unvaccinated people to spread the disease to others, but not by much:

Households are the site of most SARS-CoV-2 transmission globally. In our cohort of densely sampled household contacts exposed to the delta variant, SAR [the secondary attack rate] was 38% in unvaccinated contacts and 25% in fully vaccinated contacts.
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Our findings help to explain how and why the delta variant is being transmitted so effectively in populations with high vaccine coverage.

Covid vaccines have been shown to reduce the severity of infection in most people, so they are a good idea for the majority, especially those in higher risk categories. But that is all about protecting oneself. Given that vaccinated people can spread covid nearly as readily as the unvaccinated, treating unvaccinated people as pariahs is wholly inappropriate. And the rationale for vaccine mandates evaporates.