(09-09-2021, 08:06 AM)Jizbag Wrote: Thanks for the reply, so why don't the vaccines prevent the spread of covid and prevent you from becoming ill Mr know all, I mean Teeftwo. Surely that is the entire purpose of a vaccine?
I'm glad you asked. The COVID vaccines help prevent infection from a specific variant but are not 100% effective. In fact barely any vaccine for any disease is 100% effective. In the case of the COVID vaccines the time from the emergence of the disease to the first vaccine was incredibly short so their efficacy is improving but is not perfect.
You seem to totally misunderstand how vaccines work or their purpose. When you have a vaccine the body create T-cells that can attack the virus. It doesn't prevent you getting the virus but it does allow your body to successfully fight it and destroy the virus cells. In the main this happens before the virus becomes transmissible and as I'm sure you know different viruses have different ways of transmission. COVID is particularly good at moving from host to host so it's no surprise that this can happen before your body kills it off. You may have COVID, never know, never get ill and still have the ability to pass it on. This is known as asymptomatic transmission. You may even transmit it before you get symptoms. COVID is very good at this. The virus itself, outside the body is pretty weak, which is why you need to wash your hands you dirty boy before you stick your hand in your mouth or rub your eyes.
The vaccine does provide good protection to the individual as the T-cells that are created within the body are in most cases effective at fighting the virus when it enters. Even if the individual gets ill the T-cells can attack enough of the virus so as to reduce the severity of the disease.
You ask what the purpose of a vaccination program is. Well generally it's eventually eradicate a disease by getting to the point of herd immunity so the virus dies out. With some viruses that constantly mutate, such as the influenza set of viruses, it's more about protecting the vulnerable than eradicating it.
Further reading here for you on how vaccines work. You'll see that the first vaccine for Measles was introduced in 1968 but it took literally decades to get the numbers down to almost zero and even then this was scuppered by the nutjob Andrew Wakefield who made a lot of stuff up with faked results. As a consequence of his lies, a substantial amount of weak-minded idiots stopped having their kids jabbed and the instances of measles rose causing a lot of unnecessary suffering. Those same weak minded people today (anti-vaxxers) who think they know more than the virologists and infectious disease experts are prolonging this pandemic through their stupidity.
Maybe next time try to actually understand a subject before shooting your mouth off.
