Could it be the media doesn’t want to give people an excuse for skipping vaccinations? The news doesn’t mind downplaying good news. (Conservative media will ignore it because it’s all a hoax anyway.)
“Authorities”?? It’s a political decision, and has been justified in round terms, and all there are is media bytes:
Mr Morrison said there was not yet “considerable clinical evidence that tells us transmission is preventable” after the jab.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says there would be at least 1000 coronavirus cases in Australia every week if the international borders were to open, even when vulnerable people are vaccinated
I don’t think that the borders are remaining closed for a ‘specific’ reason: ScoMo isn’t a ‘specific’ kind of guy.
That’s we don’t know yet. So your post was another instance of the common misrepresentation that I noted in the other thread, in bold below.
CDC:
A growing body of evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people are less likely to have asymptomatic infection and potentially less likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others. However, further investigation is ongoing.
The data we have are limited and mostly indirect at this point, but there are no data that I have seen to indicate the converse. It would be very much contrary to expectation that a vaccine that is highly effective at preventing disease would not also be effective at significantly reducing transmission.
Any more specifics on that? I would expect it would reduce transmission because fewer people would get infected, so am I correct in assuming they mean “among those who still get the disease”? Or are we finding out that people who seem uninfected are actually just asymptomatic?
The claim is not supported by any evidence that @Melbourne has cited, and the Australian authorities did not say that.
I mean, if Australia wants to keep all cases out, a vaccine that’s only 95% effective doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t mean the vaccine doesn’t greatly reduce spread. In fact, the plummeting case counts in places with high vaccination rates, even among groups with lower vaccination rates, makes a very strong case for that.
I can understand that. It was that specific line in his post that gave me pause. If the logic is “vaccination doesn’t reduce spread by enough,” then that makes total sense.
Thank you for that reminder.
1000 cases a week sounds like heaven if the US were there. That would translate to 2 deaths/day rather the 700ish/day currently. Which is 2 too many, but still.
I haven’t cited any evidence about vaccination. I haven’t made any claims about vaccination.
I’ve reported Australian Government policy. I’ve quoted statements made in the media purporting to be statements by the Prime Minister.
If you have any problems with those statements, you should address your complaints to any of the media organisations that have made them, or to ScoMo, not to me.
Anybody that confuses “Government Authorities” with “Scientific Authorities”, or thinks that reports of government policy require some kind of “scientific” evidence, is either malicious or off on their own private vendetta. It’s a “breaking news” thread. Shooting the messenger won’t make you better informed.
Yes, and as I pointed out, you reported those statements incorrectly when you said:
Given your conversational style, I don’t expect you ever to concede that you made an error in that post, or ever, so I’m not going to continue to argue with you. But it would be huge and shocking news if we discovered that vaccines do not prevent transmission. So, to reiterate for the benefit of other readers:
(1) Nobody in the Australian government said that the reason for the extended closure was based on affirmative knowledge that vaccination does not prevent transmission.
(2) Indeed, there is no evidence that vaccination does not prevent transmission. The fact is simply that transmision from vaccinated people is difficult to study directly, so cautious scientists (and the Australian authorities) have pointed out that we don’t know for sure yet to what degree vaccination reduces transmission. But a growing body of evidence is building that vaccines that are highly effective at preventing disease do also reduce transmission significantly, in accord with all expectation.
And I’m honestly mystified by this deflective apoplexy that seems to center on my use of the phrase “the Australian authorities”. In all English dialects I’m aware of, in this context “the Australian authorities” is unambiguously completely synonymous with “the Australian government”, and that’s exactly what I meant. My point was simply that you misreported what the government said.
This is awesome to see and was becoming clear by looking at the daily numbers that you provide. Let’s hope we keep it up!
161,091,539 total cases
3,345,293 dead
138,880,158 recovered
In the US:
33,586,136 total cases
597,785 dead
26,620,229 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
As noted multiple times, I’m not going to debate it in this thread, but that study is not as definitive as the headline makes it out to be. It’s definitely promising, but was based on a tiny dataset and far from conclusive. What the study actually claims is that the antibody levels don’t appear to decline rapidly (good news!), while also acknowledging that the number of antibodies from recovered individuals varies widely in the first place (not as good news). They also haven’t determined how this immunity compares to the various vaccines.
I think it would be a bit premature for the press to make a statement that sounds more certain than the small study suggests.
See you in the pit Riemann
In other breaking news, a certain Prime Minister has relied on weasel words to make a politically convenient declaration.
This hardly seems a sensible topic for a food-fight here.
No, that’s not what happened. The PM made a correct cautious statement that we don’t yet have definitive evidence about the extent to which vaccines reduce transmission. That’s very different from an affirmative claim that vaccines don’t prevent transmission, which would be shocking and unexpected news. I simply pointed out that the PM did not make such a claim.
Okay, there’s already a pit thread about this hijack. Please take any further discussion of it there. This is the breaking news thread.
Riemann is making up stuff in ‘The Quarantine Zone’ - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board
Good news for vaccinated people, but I imagine that this will mean everyone goes without masks now regardless of if they are vaccinated or not.
This news is not quite as good: