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It seems like you got it in your head that the COVID vaccines would be a able to stop infection entirely, and were disappointed when it didn't for your family.
by grey413 4y ago
It seems like you got it in your head that the COVID vaccines would be a able to stop infection entirely, and were disappointed when it didn't for your family. It's not surprising that you did: a lot of the messaging at the time really counted their chickens before they hatched and painted it as a miracle prophylactic. In the real world, vaccines are a population-level tool with a range of outcomes. It's annoyingly hard to communicate that to the masses.
In practice, it turns out that fighting fast-mutating viral respiratory infections is hard to do. Our immune just aren't that great at it, and vaccines can only stack the deck there so much in our favor. I believe that the (observational, hard to rely on) evidence suggests that the covid vaccine reduced the incidence of infection, but only by about 25-50%. And that's good! That doesn't even cover the much more substantial reduction in serious outcomes! A world with the vaccines is unarguably less hostile than that without. But it's not a miracle, and it's always aggravating when people engage in the nirvana fallacy about it.
- indymike 4y ago> It's not surprising that you did: a lot of the messaging at the time really counted their chickens before they hatched and painted it as a miracle prophylactic. This is exactly the issue. There was so much just bad information out there. > Our immune just aren't that great at it, and vaccines can only stack the deck there so much in our favor. I believe that the (observational, hard to rely on) evidence suggests that the covid vaccine reduced the incidence of infection, but only by about 25-50%. I like to think this . > A world with the vaccines is unarguably less hostile than that without. But it's not a miracle, and it's always aggravating when people engage in the nirvana fallacy about it. It's really disappointing that attitudes towards COVID vaccines are spreading to other vaccines. It's sad when I hear parents talking about MMR and other proved vaccines using the anti-COVID talking pointes.