Because the risk of transmission is understood to be significantly lower, and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate it's in the governments best interest to get people vaccinated, a way of accomplishing this could be making life inconvenient for the uncompliant.
Hm, so a vaccine that does not stop transmission does not create selective pressure on the virus? Wouldn’t that be unusual from an evolutionary biology standpoint?
Can we at least agree that if infected, as a vaccinated and asymptomatic carrier, there is a higher chance of transmission than if I were unvaccinated and symptomatic? This seems like common sense to me, but I recognize it goes against the Covid orthodoxy.
Also, when you say “inconvenient,” what do you mean exactly? To me, total restriction on movement and segregation from society based on medical status seems like more than an inconvenience. Maybe I’m just an anti-vaxxer, a victim of misinformation… if only I could think for myself.
Your assertion about transmission is definitely not proven. It all comes down to an expected value. An unvaccinated symptomatic individual will shed a lot more virus than a vaccinated asymptomatic one. It would probably take fewer encounters to infect someone else than in the vaccinated case. So although an asymptomatic vaxed person might be out and about more, the lower viral shedding could possibly account for that we don’t know. Also you’re overestimating the intelligence of the average person, symptomatic people do stupid shit all the time [0]. This couple probably infected way more people than an asymptomatic vaxed person. Again not proven.
Vaccines probably reduce the chance of a new variant.
A lower viral load means a lower probability of a mutation happening, given that the number of mutations is proportional to the load over time.
There's some small chance that the opposite is true, and vaccines will mean deadly strains are more easily spread since the person is more likely to be asymptomatic or low-symptoms and will therefore not isolate.
But on net we expect vaccines to prevent variants.
While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, you're not making a valid comparison. We were able to effectively eradicate smallpox (except for a few lab samples) because the vaccines are highly sterilizing and there were no animal reservoirs.
That situation doesn't obtain with SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines are pretty good at preventing deaths but don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. And most mammal species can transmit the virus; cases have been confirmed in dogs, cats, minks, deer, tigers, etc.
This is a fact vaccine-zealots never address (I am double vaccinated by the way).
If the end game is 100% vaccination in human population (including the enormous unvaccinated reservoir of the developing world, since the rate in those countries is often single-digit percentages) we will _still_ get novel variants which bypass the latest vaccines. Are we really supposed to forcibly administer vaccines every n-months to the entire human population for the rest of eternity? It seems utterly absurd.
I don't see why the "just build more hospitals" commenter was down-voted/flagged in this thread. It at least seems more economically viable. Mobilize the national guard to do it if it comes to that. Treating those who develop covid seems a way better route than attempting the futile game of "prevention" via a vaccine regime.
We will never get to Covid eradication. It's just not possible. Yet, most of my vaccinated compatriots seem to buy into that delusion.
The rates of animal transmission are very low. If we eliminate it in humans, it's unlikely that the virus could sustain itself in animal populations and unlikely to reinfect the already-vaccinated humans.
We were setting field hospitals last year left and right in anticipation, most, luckily went unused. I don’t understand why can’t this be repeated, heck implement a protocol for quick deployment of few but massive such facilities and let economy of scale take over.
The end game should be outfitting enclosed spaces with poor circulation of air with proper and adequate ventilation and filtering. Just as we look back at the unsanitary practices of the past (dirty water, not washing hands), we need to realize the unsanitary practices of today.
> The point is vaccinating everyone, just like we did with Smallpox. Which is essentially dead because of vaccination.
It has been shown time and again that the covid jag does not prevent infection/re-infection/transmission so your talk of eradication smacks of propaganda, not science.
Other countries with Zero COVID policies have been successful at suppressing the virus to extremely low levels. Their citizens laugh at us on social media.
At extremely low levels, we can begin to contemplate elimination/eradication.
The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines aren't very effective in people with malfunctioning immune systems.
The link references a specific response to remdesivir, but I don't see how the selective pressure isn't the same in the broader case of low-level or asymptomatic illness persisting in a vaccinated person, particularly when they'll be mingling more and taking less precautions.
A paper, while not specifically addressing vaccination in immunocompromised patients, documents pretty clearly the phenomenon of runaway mutation chains in such patients.
Edit: Another piece, specifically addressing immunocompromised + covid + vaccines:
"Studies have shown that immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to being hospitalized or dying from COVID and less likely to develop strong protection from vaccination. But there are also some hopeful signs: additional doses of some COVID vaccines, strategic timing of immunosuppressive treatments and prophylactic COVID treatments may boost protection among some immunocompromised individuals—and restore at least some of the freedoms they have lost."
> unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate
Maybe I'm missing something, but the vaccinated population is the one that has introduced an additional evolutionary pressure, so wouldn't we expect to see mutations (that affect vaccinated people) in that population? Vaccine tolerance is no advantage in unvaccinated hosts.
“Evolutionary pressure” doesn’t really exist if the virus doesn’t get a chance to replicate. The virus is trying to find a mutation which bypasses the vaccine, the more chances it gets the better. This is why people talk about animal reservoirs and immunocompromised individuals. The chance of a beneficial mutation occurring increases the more the virus is able to replicate within an organism. It replicates more in unvaccinated organisms.
Every single person who's immune system eradicates the virus causes evolutionary pressure.
If your immune system takes a long time to do this, because eg. you didn't have a vaccine so it hasn't got an antibody template to work from, then the virus has much longer to evolve in the host, under a bunch of weird and wonderful new types of antibodies that get thrown against it.
If there's already vaccine exposure then the body just needs to ramp up the antibody production, which is much faster and will result in total virus eradication to each virus as the antibodies encounter them, not halfway-measures which might leave half-functioning viruses which might self-repair in mutagenic ways.
It would put pressure to avoid the vaccine. However:
1. There would be fewer cases compared to unvaccinated people to give it the chance to mutate. It doesn't have any more chance to mutate among vaccinated people. It has less chance. Just a lot of mutations that still look like the current virus will get killed off by antibodies.
2. Randomly making changes to the spike protein, this virus's most important part, is likely to reduce the virus's danger.
> and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate
If you understand natural selection, then this assertion makes zero sense. Where in the genome do we see the accumulation of mutations in all covid variants seen so far? In their S-protein. Where does Omicron have 30+ mutations? In its S-protein.
What is the single protein that the mRNA vaccines code for??
Yes, if you reason from first principles, it is trivial to see that it is in fact the throngs of the vaccinated who are driving the evolution of SARS-CoV-2!
groups of people who know just a little about a subject tend to cease questioning their reasoning, and a dunning kruger is born. groups of people with more knowledge tend to ask more questions before accepting a new position. therefore, a dunning kruger is born more frequently among the former group. however, migrating pesky dunning krugers then tend to persist in either group.
> since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate
We might get more mutations from unvaccinated people, but since the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission we'll get much more virulent mutations from the vaccinated people.
Hence the need to isolate the unvaccinated, to protect them so they don’t get these new breeds and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population.
> and don’t make new ones based on them that reinfect the larger population
The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent, just based on the relevant evolutionary pressures (the more dangerous breeds that make people bedridden don't spread).
The new breeds made by the vaccinated, on the other hand - those have zero evolutionary pressure to become less dangerous, and can just as easily become more so (someone with a mutation that would make an unvaccinated person bedridden feels no effect and spreads it everywhere they go).
If COVID becomes less deadly but more widespread, and becomes part of the yearly flu season, blame that on the unvaccinated. But if COVID mutates to become more deadly and resistant to vaccines, blame the vaccinated.
> The new breeds made by the unvaccinated are necessarily less dangerous and virulent,
This is not a given. The virus is known to mutate more in unvaccinated hosts and this can make either more contagious or more lethal variations. There would be an advantage to have a longer incubation period.
On the vaccinated the same things are beneficial - longer incubation periods and the ability to infect others who are vaccinated. With a lower viral load, there will be fewer variations in vaccinated hosts, translating into fewer differences from the baseline virus.
> The virus is known to mutate more in unvaccinated hosts and this can make either more contagious or more lethal variations.
Of course vaccinated and unvaccinated can produce largely the same mutations. But that's not the point.
As I said, it's the evolutionary pressure which is the problem. If two people, one vaccinated and one not, get the same mutation, then maybe it's a strain which is dangerous enough for the unvaccinated person to go be sick in bed for a week. (Yes, incubation period - but that's the same both ways so it doesn't change the probabilities.) In this case, then because the vaccine mitigates the symptoms, the vaccinated person can go on with their daily life while sick with that more dangerous strain.
The fact that both groups produce similar mutations isn't the point, it's that the people have different reactions to the virus which changes how the mutations are able to spread.
It's not that there's a lower viral load. It's that the vaccinated are transmitting at all which is the problem, because there's no pressure for them to go be sick in bed when they're carrying around a mutation which could kill someone.
