@gertrudecloset wrote:
@Porcelain wrote:
The main reason to get vaccinated is to avoid suffering a serious illness. Ditching our masks is just a fun extra.
In areas where the Delta variant is taking hold, those of us who are vaccinated can choose to mask if we wish. Or not.
It all depends on whether or not we care about protecting unvaccinated people from catching the Delta variant. The relatively small number of vaccinated people who have caught the Delta variant as a breakthrough have not gotten seriously ill, with very very few exceptions. Pretty much only the unvaccinated folks are suffering horribly from Delta.
If you care about protecting those folks, even though they clearly and loudly do not want our protection from Covid and the Delta variant, then sure, wear your mask.
Let's not forget that the vaccine does not keep anyone from becoming infected by the Virus. I get so tired of reading "I thought that the vaccine was supposed to make me safe." The vaccine is supposed to lessen your chances of severe illness or death IF you are vaccinated. Aside from that wearing a mask will still help you prevent covid (even though you are vaccinated).
Not completely so. The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines are 95% effective at preventing the vaccinated person from catching Covid. Your odds of getting infected by Covid go way down when you are vaccinated. Your body fights it off. You still have that 5% chance of it breaking through. But you are much much safer than an unvaccinated person.
That is based on mainstream medical science.
From LiveScience in February:
"You have likely heard that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine efficacy is 95%, Moderna's is 94% and Johnson & Johnson's is 66%. But what do these numbers actually mean?
It's not just an academic question. How people understand these numbers affects how they think about the vaccine, whether they get it and how they behave after getting it, all of which have implications for the pandemic on a larger scale.
So how should people interpret these numbers?
"I think it's important for people to understand that this is an extremely effective vaccine," said Brianne Barker, a virologist at Drew University in New Jersey, referring to the Pfizer vaccine. "This is much more effective than you might think."
One common misunderstanding is that 95% efficacy means that in the Pfizer clinical trial, 5% of vaccinated people got COVID. But that's not true; the actual percentage of vaccinated people in the Pfizer (and Moderna) trials who got COVID-19 was about a hundred times less than that: 0.04%.
What the 95% actually means is that vaccinated people had a 95% lower risk of getting COVID-19 compared with the control group participants, who weren't vaccinated. In other words, vaccinated people in the Pfizer clinical trial were 20 times less likely than the control group to get COVID-19.
That makes the vaccine "one of the most effective vaccines that we have," Barker told Live Science. For comparison, the two-dose measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
...
The seasonal flu vaccine is between 40% and 60% effective (it varies from year to year, depending on that year's vaccine and flu strains), but it still prevented an estimated 7.5 million cases of the flu in the U.S. during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to the CDC.
...
All three vaccines were 100% effective at preventing severe disease six weeks after the first dose (for Moderna) or seven weeks after the first dose (for Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, the latter of which requires only one dose). Zero vaccinated people in any of the trials were hospitalized or died of COVID-19 after the vaccines had fully taken effect."
Further proof is the fact that Covid deaths and new cases have plunged very very low in areas with high vaccination rates. That means fewer people there are getting sick and vaccines are working as they are supposed to.
But you are right that the vaccines also reduce your chance of getting severely ill from Covid almost down to zero. With only a few exceptions.
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
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