Judge limits Biden administration contact with social media firms

[Sam_Stone]

Replying to myself before seeing anyone else’s posts, because I misspoke. I posted that and had to leave, then realized what I had said and that it was wrong.
When I got home there was a already a big freak-out over it, and I just didn’t feel like wading in.

What I meant to say was that Biden was spreading misinformation about it being a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’, because being vaccinated does not guarantee that you won’t get infected, and if you do you could still spread it.

In the early days, the effectiveness against infection was quite good, but not perfect. However, once Omicron came along (well before Biden’s speech), protection against infection had declined dramatically, especially for the first two shots. If you believed Biden and then behaved as if you couldn’t get infected because you had two shots, you could have been in trouble.

COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against Omicron or Delta Infection and Outcomes.

Estimated VE against symptomatic Omicron infection was 36% (95% CI, 24%-45%) 7 to 59 days after a second dose and 1% (95% CI, –8% to 10%) after 180 days or longer, but 7 or more days after a third dose, it increased to 61% (95% CI, 56%-65%). Estimated VE against severe outcomes was high 7 or more days after a third dose for both Delta (99%; 95% CI, 98%-99%) and Omicron (95%; 95% CI, 87%-98%).

When Biden made his ‘epidemic of the unvaccinated’ remark we were well into the Omicron phase. If you had your two shots in the previous year more than 180 days earlier, it’s estimated that your protection against infection was 1%. If you recently had a booster, it might have been as high as 61% for a while.

So my statement was wrong for the original form of the virus, which the vaccine protected well against, but by the time Biden made his remarks Omicron was around and two shots previously did very little to prevent infection. It still had decent protection against severe outcomes and death. A third shot gave you better protection for while.

I am not a vax denier. My entire family, including myself, are fully vaccinated and we were some of the first ones to line up for the shot. None of us have gotten Covid, either. But the truth is, if you only got the first two shots you have essentially no protrction against infection now, but some protection against severe illness and death. If you’ve had three or four, it depends on the type of shot and how long since you got it. But no one is completely protected from infection, and it is not an ‘epidemic of the unvaccinated’.