Coronavirus Information...who do you trust?

[Belsnickel]

(05-26-2021, 10:48 AM)Dill Wrote:
I spoke with a pulmonologist last month who said exactly the bolded--and that he has seen over a thousand people die since the beginning of the Pandemic. 

As I understood him, the vaccine doesn't 'prevent' people from getting COVID, rather it diminishes their chances of ending up on a ventilator and dying.  That's what "90% effective" refers to it. Not "90% don't get COVID after vaccination."

So of course people will "still get COVID"--it's just that a massively reduced number will experience serious effects and/or die from it. And the virus will have more difficulty spreading through them, never achieving much mass.

I think Laura and Tucker have regularly addressed the "problem" of people still getting COVID after vaccination though. How can we trust medical authorities after they lie to us??

I don't know if you misunderstood the pulmonologist, or they were wrong in their explanation, but this is inaccurate. I'm fortunate in that with my connection to Scouting I have access to two very highly regarded immunologists, one Ph.D. and one an M.D., from the University of Virginia. They both volunteer in our local council and have been pivotal in managing our response to the pandemic. Anyway, the way they explain it to the laypeople in these meetings is that the 90-ish percent you see on the effective rates is the effectiveness in preventing the infection at all. The vaccines, however, have a 100% effective rate in clinical studies for preventing a debilitating infection.

The number of times I have been a room with the two of them as they have explained this to people in our Scouting program is in the double digits, so I have definitely got what they have been saying down.