Thank you for the links. I followed them and came to a different conclusion:
1) "The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate".
From the article: "The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated."
You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely), thus confounding the relationship between vaccination levels and reported Covid cases.
2) "And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people".
From the article: "The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab [Pfizer] was 42%, but increased to 58% with time."
Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.
"Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine."
The word "significantly" has a specific statistical meaning. The paper discussed on the Nature article implies it is not a statistically significant difference between 67% and 58% (likely accounting for covariance and measurement error).
Unless you have a different source showing there is statistical significance between those two results?
> You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely)
You may interpret all you want, but I was just pointing out the lack of solid data supporting the claim: "The vaccine significantly slows the spread"
Almost 3 billion people have been fully vaccinated worldwide and yet there is still no evidence that the vaccines have any effect at all in slowing the spread of the virus. I find this rather remarkable.
This situation could very well push the evolution of the virus towards more dangerous strains. Like what happened with Marek's disease among chickens:
> Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.
Pfizer buys you a bit more time, but the downward trend in your immunity is unmistakable too:
1) "The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate". From the article: "The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated." You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely), thus confounding the relationship between vaccination levels and reported Covid cases.
2) "And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people". From the article: "The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab [Pfizer] was 42%, but increased to 58% with time." Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.