COVID VACCINE - The Megathread

[ffemt8978]

US to lift most federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates next week

The Biden administration will end the last remaining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements next week when the national public health emergency for the coronavirus ends. Vaccine requirements for federal workers and federal contractors, as well as foreign air travelers to the U.S., will end May...

apnews.com

So will this mean all those federal employees who lost their job due to not being vaccinated can get their jobs back, even if they habe to reapply?

 

[Summit]

I would assume yes

 

[ffemt8978]

COVID outbreak at CDC gathering infects 181 disease detectives

Nearly all of the attendees were vaccinated, but 70% said they didn't mask.

arstechnica.com

Overall, 181 or (13 percent of the total survey takers) reported testing positive for COVID-19, and 52 percent of the COVID-positive responders indicated it was their first known bout of COVID-19. Nearly all of the survey takers, 1,435 (99.4 percent), reported having received at least one COVID-19 vaccine. But 70 percent of the survey takers reported going unmasked during the gathering. The CDC notes that the conference occurred when transmission levels were low, during which the CDC does not recommend wearing masks.

Interesting that nearly all of them were vaccinated, yet they still tested positive for COVID. Does this indicate the vaccines were less effective then we initially believed, or something else?

 

[Summit]

If nearly all people are vaccinated, and the vaccine is not 100% at preventing infection, them most cases will be in the vaccinated. This is true whether it is measles outbreaks at Disney or COVID at a CDC conference.

The measles vaccine is very effective at preventing infection, but not 100%.

The COVID vaccines are very effective at reducing disease severity, hospitalization and death. However, despite its original high efficacy at preventing infection, the vaccines have for a long while been much less effective at preventing infection for long. This is an unfortunate result of the virus mutating to be so much more infectious than the original that disease onsets rapidly in combination with mutations that make humoral (antibody) mediated immunity much less able to prevent infection variant to variant. That these vaccines remain durably effective against severe disease is just outstanding. The original OPERATION WARP SPEED goal: to decrease morbidity and mortality by 50%.

That said, a 13% attack rate (from the article) is not that high...