If you don’t get Covid because you got the vaccine, that’s a benefit to others.
I think it's more useful to start with the question of what is actually happening, and examine the consequences from there. Otherwise, we find ourselves arguing in favor of our priors, which helps no one.
Why I say that is because of the two paragraphs:
“”“ Mild and moderately symptomatic patients with COVID still exhale large amounts of virus, though severely symptomatic cases exhale higher levels on average, the study reports.
Vaccinated and unvaccinated patients exhale similar levels of virus over the course of infection, the research shows.”””
Edit: the actual preprint states “ We further found that levels of exhaled viral RNA increased with self-rated symptom-severity” so some of these statements in the PR article and article aren’t all squaring together.
My interpretation is basically that, to the extent that the vaccine reduces symptoms, it reduces shedding. If you still get sick, you are still shedding. If you are asymptomatic, you shed the same amount no matter your vaccination status.
the study says severity was controlled for when assessing the impact of vaccination.
That leads to an obvious problem as vaccines lead to lower severity.
If you have strong symptoms, you shed lots of virus, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not.
From separate studies, we know that if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to have serious symptoms.
Put the two together. Fewer people seriously ill is fewer people shedding lots of virus, and more people vaccinated is fewer people seriously ill
I'm willing to chalk that up to them not having enough vaccinated people in their study. That fits the caveat they give regarding vaccinated people. It does not automatically support your read, though.
Instead, I think a more accurate rough understanding of their process is they first backed out the effect of severity and then checked if vaccine was correlated with that adjusted number - they found it wasn’t. They didn’t make an assessment on how vaccines effect severity.
I could hope that they mean there is no extra relation between vaccination status and transmission above reduced symptoms. I don't know why they would state it in the way they do if that is what they mean, though.
“We found that vaccinated and unvaccinated participants exhaled similar numbers of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies (Fig 2C), when accounting for age, sex, presence of co-morbidities, days since symptom onset and symptom severity”
It’s like saying night and day in Yosemite are equally bright when effects of the sun and moon are controlled for.
Look, this doesn’t appear to be sticking, it’s a basic statistical modeling thing. At this point the options are accept it at face value, study stats, or be like the kid saying “why” 100 times after every explanation.
Stated differently, you have variables
A = self-reported severity
B = amount shed
C = vaccinated status
They are saying after backing out the correlation between A and B to get adjusted B, there is no correlation between C and adjusted B. That is an ELI5 explanation of their statement “controlled for” about the factors like severity.
Yes their focus is not on how A and C relate, but we know that relation from other sources.
That is what controlled for means. “Hello” means a greeting in English. It’s the definition. Same concept, it’s the meaning of controlled for. It’s what it was defined to mean.
Now, the section "Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals exhaled similar levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA," calls out the actual high data points for unvaccinated as being actually higher, with a max of 876 to 549. Though, again, it shows the CI is wider for vaccinated.
Again, I'm mostly willing to get behind the claim that vaccinated people shed less. But that isn't strongly supported by the data. The data does support that super spreaders of 500+ exhaled breaths are unvaccinated.
So, if you want to limit the claim to "vaccinated people are kept from severe symptoms," I feel that is mostly known and agreed with today. If you try to move the claim to "vaccinated shed less than unvaccinated," the data clearly indicates that is not supported. Again the 95% CI is higher for vaccinated individuals on this study.
What I’m doing is going to the original foundation. What you’re looking at is the decorations they put on the foundation.
I’ve explained over and over what their foundational experiment showed as described. stop being hung up on the decorations.
The decorations are pretty bows and wrapping paper. That’s what you’re focusing on. Stop it.
Bob went to France and got annoying no one said “hi” to him. His friend tried to explain what they said, “bonjour” meant hi. He wouldn’t accept it.
We went to the land of academics, I explained what the academese means. You’re not accepting it, focusing instead on the wrong thing.
You may have tried to go to the land of academics, but you are injecting stronger claims into what this paper reports than they are making. They never say anything about controlling for severity. They only show that self reported severity correlates with more shedding. Though, again, that is with a very high variance across the board for the other severity. Their chart showed, and all they claim, is that there is a correlation of "severe" with higher shedding over the other reported values. Note that this is not reporting that self reported symptoms correlates. It is specifically self reported "severe" does. Indeed, their data shows that folks that report "none" have higher 95% ranges than "mild" reports do.
“ We found that vaccinated and unvaccinated participants exhaled similar numbers of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies (Fig 2C), when accounting for age, sex, presence of co-morbidities, days since symptom onset and symptom severity”
Again, their data literally shows that, outside of samples outside the 95% CI, you can't tell vaccinated from unvaccinated.
I think if you are arguing that this is only breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals, the stronger claim probably sticks, but they don't have the data to make that claim in this study.
And where do they state that vaccinated exhale less than unvaccinated? Specifically, where do they say that? They show the total range of exhaled values is larger for unvaccinated, but the 95% range is higher for vaccinated.
It looks dangerously like you are forcing the reading for what you want the truth to be. Not for what the data supports. Note that i want that same value for the truth. I just don't see the data supporting it. And the paper seems to agree, as they are not making as strong of a claim as you are.
More speculatively, with this in mind, it is troubling to think of how the vaccine safety trials may have been interpreted, and why major pharmaceutical companies insisted upon total civil immunity.
Which, importantly, is "not nearly as much as a sick person". "Asymptomatic" is just a very very low grade infection, not some magic "you are chock full of virus that you are shedding but somehow unaffected" state.
Now, I realize that it could just negatively correlate with self-reporting symptoms? Or it could be that that correlation between self reporting and how much you exhaled was just very lightly correlated, such that the other correlation is low? Neither of which would be that surprising, I guess. They do disappoint me, for some reason.
No, it also lowers the possibility of becoming ill in the first place, which does make one less likely to infect others
I do think it is worth calling out my point is FAR from a panic moment. The study calls out they had very few vaccinated people, for one. For two, again, the data is clear that you are much safer for yourself if you are vaccinated.