Moderna holds up longer, but the immunity from Moderna also appears to decline over time. I am going from memory and may be wrong, but my sense is that Moderna + 8 months is like Pfizer + 6 months.
guys, i’m in another facebook argument.
is it true that vaccinated people have a higher viral load upon coming into contact with the virus and therefore are more likely to spread it, not less? I know there is some truth to this, but there is another side to it I’m missing to not make it entirely factual.
I’m no virologist, but I’m unsure how having a better ability to fight the virus results in more virus in your body.
Perhaps the vaccinated who end up testing positive are those those with more condensed viral contact and some study spiraled out of control.
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My understanding is that prior to delta, vaccinated people with breakthrough cases had a much lower viral load and were less likely to spread it.
With delta, breakthrough cases can create a viral load in the nose, allowing vaccinated people to be as likely, or maybe close to as likely, to spread it as unvaccinated people. Still vaccinated people are less likely to get it and in that sense less likely to spread it.
This idea of vaccinated people being more likely to spread it (assuming you didn’t mistype ”unvaccinated” as “vaccinated”, which is something i might do) sounds like pure nonsense to me.
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No, I didn’t mistype. I’m arguing with an antivaxxer who said it
some of these threads grow faster than I can keep up, so sorry if off base and covered
I thought that the COVID vaccines weren’t a virus, but simply put a way to fool the body, unlike say a flu shot which is a virus
so saying the COVID vaccination gives a greater viral load seems wrong, based on simple logic
But since a flu shot doesn’t make you more likely to spread the flu, even if it was a viral vaccination, it would still seem wrong
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The person you’re arguing with is purposely twisting the fact to support their argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that vaccinated people who get infected have higher viral loads than the unvaccinated. Can a vaccinated individual have a high enough viral load to be contagious? Yup, yup. But they’re less likely to become infected in the first place.
Anyway, vaccinated people with high viral loads is not an argument against vaccines. It’s an argument for getting the shot in many, many arms, as quickly as possible.
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The antivaxxer’s statement has a kernel of truth. That’s why we’re all wearing masks again.
Wait, so because the vaccines are “leaky” (shorthand for “do not provide sterilizing immunity”), “we” have to do something even less effective?
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You are correct: the COVID shots do not contain the virus. The statement about viral loads is conditional on being infected, which is still possible post-jab. Conditional on being infected, those who have received the shots have been measured to have equal or higher viral load as those who have not had the shots.
While the connection between “viral load” and transmissibility is an intuitive one, I don’t think it has been confirmed through experiment or observation, so I take a lot of these statements of the form “the viral load is [high/low] therefore contagiousness is [high/low]” with a grain of salt.
COVID is not the flu! (Did I do that right?)
The flu shots each year are dead virus, so the shot itself doesn’t make one more likely to spread flu. Flu shots don’t always prevent the flu, either. I’m not aware of any credible evidence about the conditional probability of spreading the flu given one gets infected with/without the shot.
There is a less-used flu vaccine that’s a nasal spray that uses live attenuated (weakened) virus, so with that one the idea is you basically get a mild case of flu, but you can shed live virus from the vaccine with that one.
Speaking of the flu, got my flu shot yesterday.
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source? Because that’s not how it works with any other virus.
I bet there’s some study that looked at 15 sick people with breakthru infections and 15 sick people who hadn’t been vaccinated, and found that the viral loads of the two groups of people overlapped, so there existed a sick vaccinated person who had a viral load higher than that of some sick unvaccinated person. But I’d be completely shocked if a study large enough to be statistically significant found higher viral loads, on average, among the vaccinated. And I’d want to read the methodology fairly carefully.
Yes, of course people who actually get sick with any viral disease might shed enough virus to spread it. Whether or not they were previously vaccinated.
But in general,
- vaccinated people are less likely to become infected at all
- vaccinated people who become infected tend to have a lower viral load
- vaccinated people who become infected tend to clear the disease faster, and be infectious for less time.
So vaccinated people are much less likely to spread a disease, even if the vaccine doesn’t provide sterilizing immunity.
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one of the few down sides of vaccines is a sense of security. vaccinated people that actually do catch the virus are likely to have mild or hardly any symptoms. So when they feel a cold coming on, they might think its just that - a cold, or even harsh allergies, and dont even bother getting tested. not arguing any of your points, but wanted to add that its possible they spread the disease more than anticipated since they dont think they have it.
Not a reason to avoid vaccines, just a general observation.
The only legit reason not to vaccine from antivax groups has been people that had covid, and had it badly, likely have a good natural immunity for at least some period of time afterwards. It would be acceptable, imo, to put off vaccination for 6 months or so after having covid.
now i’m being called a sheep. i’m sad.
i was also called a nazi. apparently getting vaccinated makes one a nazi. who knew!
COVID isn’t like any other virus!! It’S nOvEl!
I was more answering where the person Ms fan was debating might have been getting their speaking points. My main points were (1) that the whole thing about similar viral loads is conditional on getting infected: if the vaccinated are less likely to get infected (which appears to be the case, at least for the first few months post-jab), then on an absolute basis the vaccinated would still be less likely to spread the disease, and (2) the relationship between “viral load” and contagiousness is weaker than is often presented, so I take all of these arguments with a grain of salt.
Anyway, I expect Ms. fan’s interlocutor was basing their side of the argument on one of these or similar studies (I have not taken the time to review these for their methodology or sample size, so your pre-emptive critiques may be valid):
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Vaccinated people with "breakthrough" COVID-19 Delta infections carry as much virus as the unvaccinated: study - CBS News
(Story based on study of UK data linked within - study included over 700k infections, about half from early 2021 Alpha & other half from summer 2021 Delta, but not sure how many “viral load” measurements were included) -
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v1
Dane County, Wisconsin lab positives reviewed for CT - 1 month of samples, only 83 individuals (32 jabbed, 51 unjabbed):
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.29.21262798v1
Israel study supports your assertions about lower viral load in the first 2 months following vaccination but the difference in viral loads disappears as vaccine protection wanes - difference completely gone by 6 months.
Again, I am not vouching for the quality of any of these studies, just hypothesizing where the speaking points might be coming from.
I think the argument is if you do what the government says to do then you are a nazi sheep. Probably have to check with @Rickson to make sure.
But I think sheep are adorable, both pre and post shearing. And they make a great MLT.
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Oooh, when the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe… It’s the only thing greater than true love!
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The first one appears to be a good study done in the UK. It found that both the BioNTech and Oxford (Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as we say in the US) vaccines worked. It says that early on, Pfizer works better than AZ, but the vaccine effectiveness of Pfizer wanes faster, and they are about the same at ~4 months out. It says that people who recovered from covid and then got vaccinated have even more resistance than those only vaccinated.
It says that people who actually get sick in either group have similar viral loads to unvaccinated sick people. That’s not a remarkable claim, the “even more” was what was remarkable. It doesn’t support that.
The second is a smaller US study. It also supports “the same”
We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. Furthermore, individuals with vaccine breakthrough infections frequently test positive with viral loads consistent with the ability to shed infectious viruses. Our results, while preliminary, suggest that if vaccinated individuals become infected with the delta variant, they may be sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to others.
And, as you said, the third says “recently vaccinated people have lower viral loads”, and goes on to say the reduction goes away over time.
None of them support “more”, which is the claim I was challenging.
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