You are aware, I assume, that that is a chart for VE-I, not VE-D. That is, vaccine effectiveness against infection.
Everybody who has a passing understanding of COVID-19 is aware that the Delta variant is dramatically more infectious than earlier variants. You may, in fact, be aware that many scientists were initially highly concerned that the vaccines would be rather ineffective against Delta at all.
Fortunately that has not proved to be the case as VE-I remains reasonably robust (although more like 50% than 90% against earlier strains) and VE-D is still very high, particularly for the mRNA vaccines.
If you did in fact read the study (you did, right?) you would see that the authors attributed much of the decline in VE-I to the increased prevalence of the delta strain. Some may be due to a weakening of the immune response from vaccination - although I believe the strongest evidence of that is actually the Israeli data not this VA study.
Risk of death after SARS-CoV-2 infection was highest in unvaccinated Veterans regardless of age and comorbidity
Benefits of vaccination in reducing risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and death are clearly supported by this study of more than 780,225 U.S. Veterans.
Yet, despite increasing risk of infection due to the Delta variant, VE-D remained high, and compared to unvaccinated Veterans, those fully vaccinated had a much lower risk of death after infection. These results demonstrate an urgent need to reinstate multiple layers of protection, such as masking and physical distancing – even among vaccinated persons – while also bolstering current efforts to increase vaccination.
@agzem, Again, thanks for bringing to our attention yet more evidence that vaccination is important.
Yes all studies have to adhere to the current narrative regardless of the findings in order to get published. If they had claimed that the vaccines didn’t work they wouldn’t get published. This has been noted in the peer review journal BMJ about mask studies:
“… Danish mask study that was well done, showed masks didn’t work. The journal said if they wanted it published, the authors would have to come to a conclusion that masks worked”
If Nefarious Forces are preventing medical journals from publishing studies with conclusions they don’t like, why are they not similarly preventing medical journals from published studies with data they don’t like? Wouldn’t it support their Nefarious Agenda better if the studies were wholly falsified, instead of just partially?
Pharmaceutical companies give Republican politicians tons and tons of money so that they won’t let us negotiate drug prices. Your own side are the ones most in the pockets of big Pharma.
Except that if you read the published paper you find almost the exact opposite. The trial is inconclusive rather than negative, and it points to a likely benefit of mask wearing to the wearer—it did not examine the wider potential benefit of reduced spread of infection to others—and this even in a population where mask wearing isn’t mandatory and prevalence of infection is low.
I suggest stop feverishly posting here and push back the keyboard for a while. Maybe read some of the comments and links people here are sharing with you, and try to understand things a bit more.
And also no big deal because the sniffles I had last month were probably Covid (which is a hoax and not real), so I am immune anyway and don’t need a vaccine
Now you’re just pushing conspiracy theories. That’s not how Fighting Ignorance is done. If you’re starting to feel that everyone here is fighting you, well, Fighting Ignorance is what we do here.
Exactly. The British Medical Journal that’s been around since 1840 is promoting crazy conspiracy theories. Here’s another one of their conspiracy theories:
With al the errors of fact and bad logic posted by agzem, the thread has wandered away from the question in the OP. We can see the ways in which agzem flails about attempting to defend an indefensible position, but we are not getting the Why behind that position that was sought in the OP. It would be interesting to discover the WHY and what sort of reasoning leads to that WHY, but I am afraid that we can only see the odd reaction without being able to discover the actual WHY.
Very unfortunate.
Does anyone recall the AOL poster who was strongly anti-vaxx based on her declared belief that a serious fever and possible brain damage in miniscule numbers of children weighed more heavily than the well demonstrated (and quite frequent) deaths from measles and whooping cough? Her position was that if any vaccine that was supposed to be protective could ever cause harm in one person, that overrode the protection that such a vaccine could provide for hundreds of thousands.
(I remember her name, but I am not going to bring it up for fear of encouraging personal attacks.)