Important caveat from @DhruvKhullar: "we know for sure that the vaccines...prevent severe illness in almost all people who are inoculated...we’re not yet certain that the vaccines can prevent people from becoming infected or infecting others."https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/how-getting-vaccinated-will-and-wont-change-my-behavior …
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Replying to @michaelluo @DhruvKhullar
I like how the rest of the article makes the case I heard from every immunologists that I checked with that these vaccines almost certainly *will* dampen transmission, likely a lot, and lists some of the evidence we already have on how and why. That message isn't heard enough.
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Well, it's still an untested (yes the data may exist but still internally) hypothesis where the consequences of being publicly wrong could be extremely grave. Not something I think should be part of any messaging campaign.
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But what we have isn't silence on the topic or, better yet, "we are going to know more soon." The public is perfectly capable of understanding the correct message, which is that we have some idea and some data, but not enough to relax and will know more soon.
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Since the beginning, the public health messaging has too often conflated "we don't fully know yet, but here's what the indications are" with "we have no idea" (not true) or "it won't happen". This has gravely weakened our warnings when we did make them.
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If this is a reference to the immunity issue, it's different. With respiratory viruses there's actually very little if any precedent for vaccines reliably preventing infection. We may be in new territory which would be great! But makes extrapolating from past experience dangerous
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This is not an area where I think it's helpful for scientists to give their best guess, because our knowledge here is very very thin.
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I would agree if "we don't know" were getting across and if "the vaccines don't even block transmission" weren't an anti-vax talking point.
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Yep. We’ve managed to take triumphant good news beyond anything we had expected, and go on to bungle the messaging so badly because we don’t trust the public with the actual case, that we’re letting the anti-vaxxers have a field day.
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