I think a lot of the public communication confuses ‘catching the virus’ with ‘catching the disease’, especially for vaccinated people. If somebody tests positive for coronavirus, but doesn’t get covid, that’s great. But the press makes it sound scary. They call it a breakthrough infection that happened to be asymptomatic.
And I have had people tell me to wear a mask (to an apartment showing) because even if you’re vaccinated, you can still catch the virus. To which my response should have been “of course, do you understand how vaccines work? They protect you after you catch the virus, they don’t stop you from getting it, and they aren’t supposed to.” But instead I said nothing and wore the damn mask.
Fwiw that 8x reduction number from the CDC slides is the first time that I have seen a number put on this difference. Which is very good to know, because I have now heard of several people who got sick despite being fully vaccinated, and I never knew how to adjust my thinking based on that. 8x reduction for getting sick (and 25x reduction for getting seriously sick) sounds about right for how often I have heard of this, while at the same time it won’t make me update my behavior.
I think a lot of the public communication confuses ‘catching the virus’ with ‘catching the disease’, especially for vaccinated people. If somebody tests positive for coronavirus, but doesn’t get covid, that’s great. But the press makes it sound scary. They call it a breakthrough infection that happened to be asymptomatic.
And I have had people tell me to wear a mask (to an apartment showing) because even if you’re vaccinated, you can still catch the virus. To which my response should have been “of course, do you understand how vaccines work? They protect you after you catch the virus, they don’t stop you from getting it, and they aren’t supposed to.” But instead I said nothing and wore the damn mask.
Fwiw that 8x reduction number from the CDC slides is the first time that I have seen a number put on this difference. Which is very good to know, because I have now heard of several people who got sick despite being fully vaccinated, and I never knew how to adjust my thinking based on that. 8x reduction for getting sick (and 25x reduction for getting seriously sick) sounds about right for how often I have heard of this, while at the same time it won’t make me update my behavior.