In reply to: So what's it going to take to make masks go the way of... posted by 105Marquette
Has there ever been a virus that’s transmitted by immunized people?
Where the heck did this hypothesis come from?
I’m pretty disappointed in “science” that we can’t answer this question.
Scientists did an incredible job of developing an effective vaccince in roughly 1-year. That process usually takes 3 or 4 years.
To do so, the clinical trials were focused solely on safety and efficacy against illness. They did not study transmission. It is being studied now so that we will have an answer. Until we do, or until herd immunity is reached, reasonable precautions are sensible.
The link is from Johns Hopkins. Paragraph 7 addresses your question directly.
but their lack of common sense when it comes to human psychology is stunning.
with common sense
But they also make recommendations regardless. I don't see anything wrong with that.
My doctor wants me to cut salt out of my diet completely. Well, yeah, that draconian thing ain't happenin'. It doesn't mean I'm going to switch doctors or stop listening to her.
completely cut salt out of their diets because some people need to eat less salt.
my salt consumption had the potential to directly affect your health.
Which is why this example isn't a good one from the jump.
First, it's a recommendation, not an order. Second, he's just trying to keep people safe, which is his job. Some people find it inconvenient. Well, boo hoo, so is the entire pandemic.
That continuing to wear a mask was because nobody had a giant sign saying "I'm vaccinated" that people could easily discern, and following social norms until we made some sort of declaration was key both to assuage the public and prevent abuse. I could be entirely wrong of course.
I have to admit I saw an older gentleman take his dog into the vet unmasked and my first thought was "you fool!" before I realized he'd probably been vaccinated for over a month. Hopefully. This'll take a while to get a mental handle on.
It doesn't.
Not to mention, if that is the official stance then they should just say that.
That's why they're not saying that. They think that if they said, "Well, everyone should keep wearing masks in public for show, but we're pretty freaking sure vaccinated people can't really transmit it", that many vaccinated people would ditch the mask anyway and the anti-vax/anti-mask crowd would do it too and just lie.
It's the same reason people were lying about mask-wearing early on - everyone knew it was likely they were necessary, but because they didn't trust people not to buy all the supply up, they tried to dissuade people from doing it.
It's very frustrating and makes otherwise agreeable people wonder whether they're telling the whole truth at a given time.
...but that stance is the most glaring and problematic to me, for myriad reasons.
Their stance is pretty clear at this point. Until we have better information regarding transmission from vaccinated people or there's evidence we've reached herd immunity through vaccination, precautions should be taken when around those who aren't vaccinated.
I also question the idea that Fauci/CDC should be trying to spin the data to make people feel better. That isn't (and shouldn't be) their job. The problem with doing that is evident in the issue surrounding Fauci's early statements on masks. He attempted to manipulate public behavior to avoid a run on masks which were already in short supply, and that's still frequently cited as a knock on his credibility. People have to decide whether they want an honest assessment of what we know or not.
This really isn't that hard.
...and he decided to take the most conservative stance with respect to how one should act after being vaccinated. That is problematic to me. His approach is more conservative than the CDC guidelines. How is that helpful?
He's carrying an umbrella through the Sahara for fear of a thunderstorm.
by presenting vaccination as a ticket to normalcy. When he says vaccinated people still shouldn't feel safe to travel, eat indoors, go to a movie, or attend large group gatherings, he eliminates, or at least lessens, people's motivation to get vaccinated. He should be telling people that while the risk will never be 0.00%, vaccinated people should feel comfortable reverting back to a normal life. They obviously don't have to, but should feel comfortable to do so if they desire.
Government officials shouldn't be making recommendations based on things they don't know. Since we don't know yet if vaccinated people can still carry and transmit COVID-19, we need to continue reasonable precautions.
When in the history of earth have immunized people not gotten sick but transmitted the disease? I'm no biologist, but this seems to be a bizarre hypothesis.
I'm worried we are worrying about an edge case.
I don't care where we draw the line, but we need to define a level of risk we can live with. At that point, we need to judge potential contributors vs that risk line.
I didn't realize that there were vaccines that protects against the disease but not against transmission.
I wish this article gave better examples (e.g. rotovirus is still thwarted by 90%), but this is a phenomenon that we need to understand.
Rats.
In an ideal world, all vaccines would induce sterilising immunity. In reality, it is actually extremely difficult to produce vaccines that stop virus infection altogether. Most vaccines that are in routine use today do not achieve this. For example, vaccines targeting rotavirus, a common cause of diarrhoea in infants, are only capable of preventing severe disease. But this has still proven invaluable in controlling the virus. In the US, there has been almost 90% fewer cases of rotavirus-associated hospital visits since the vaccine was introduced in 2006. A similar situation occurs with the current poliovirus vaccines, yet there is hope this virus could be eradicated globally.
I mean, if the virus can't replicate enough to create symptoms, someone can't be shedding as much as someone who is coughing and sneezing out copies of the virus, right?
That is speculation on my part, though, and I don't have a problem with continuing to wear a mask until science is able to prove it out.
That is fear mongering.
A virus does not die instantly because it comes into contact with a vaccinated person. It still enters the body, but is quickly fought off by that person's immune system.
Is that person shedding virus that can be transmitted to others during that time period? We don't know yet.
Why? It wasn't part of the clinical trials, because they were concerned with quickly determining efficacy and safety.
Why is it so freaking difficult to continue to wear a mask for a couple more months?
I'm not fine keeping kids out of school and extracurricular activities and shutting down large portions of the economy while we confirm what seems an almost certainty. The goal is to reduce the risks to an acceptable level, not to 0, and I feel like we've done that.
Opening up the vaccine to all is awesome, but it will take weeks or months for that to reduce spread.
Even if we could somehow vaccinate everyone tomorrow, we'd be 14 days out from partial protection and 4-5 weeks from full protection. Reality is that this will be staggered, and we have to get enough of the population on board.
I thought this discussion was about vaccinated people continuing to wear masks to prevent spread. Not about keeping kids out of school or business restrictions.
School districts and the local governments that regulate business are going to be influenced by what the CDC says.
I don't see how a recommendation to continue wearing masks becomes a recommendation to shut down schools or businesses.
They've issued guidance on those issues separately.
...we are, with the school districts planning for Hybrid Learning next year.
(or more specifically, a local school district issue) and not a CDC/Fauci issue?
Or are ther preparing for the possibility of hybrid learning because there's the possibility that herd immunity will not happen by fall?
Or that there are still parents who will not be comfortable sending their unvaccinated children to school, and those kids need to get some sort of education as well?
My kids' district here in IL went back full last week (3 days after I contracted COVID, unfortunately, so my kids are still in isolation after I passed it to them), but there are still kids that are full remote, and there are still accommodations being made for kids', like mine, that are in quarantine or isolation.
Next week can't come soon enough.
If the CDC were truly concerned with this, they wouldn't have reversed their stance on vaccinated people traveling or meeting in groups. This is an overly conservative approach that will do more harm than good.
They are recommending that fully vaccinated people can meet with other fully vaccinated people OR small groups of people from a single household that are low risk.
Those are very different situations from a large public setting from a standpoint of virus spread.
The travel recommendation is new to me. I didn't realize anyone was barred from domestic travel.
The CDC says vaccinated people can travel, do not need to self-quarantine, etc.
...then there isn't much risk, is there?
But that doesn't account for all the other interactions one has while moving beyond their bubble.