the health experts a year ago said vaccines would make this go away, and before that they predicted that masks and social distancing would flatten the curve. With the exception of a few countries, none of that happened. At this ponit, I don't think anyone knows anything.
due to rampant downvoting, I will respond to individual replies here:
"This worked perfectly basically anywhere people actually complied. "
Italy had among the strictest lockdowns in April but saw a huge resurgence at the end of2020
" Largely it did happen, we just don't see the counterfactual. It could have been a lot worse. "
That is moving the goalposts. The claim by the experts was that the vaccines were 95% effective at stopping the spread. It seemd that way until a few months ago when Deltacame along.
> The claim by the experts was that the vaccines were 95% effective at stopping the spread.
No, vaccines are not expected to prevent infection or spread, and almost none do. For example, flu vaccines don't keep you from from getting infected, and the virus still spreads successfully even when vaccination rates are high. What the flu shot does is (hopefully) cause you to have less severe symptoms.
Vaccines are designed and tested to prevent disease in spite of infection. This is a universally understood principle in the field of immunology, regardless of the CDC's confusing messaging.
The current evidence indicates that the vaccines are doing a good job of preventing hospitalizations due to covid.
If that is such an universally understood principle then a lot of people are badly misinformed. I can’t count how often I hear “if everybody just took the vaccine the virus would be gone within insert timespan” even in academic circles.
> if everybody just took the vaccine the virus would be gone within insert timespan
No, the expectation is that a successful vaccination campaign will end the pandemic, by making the burden on healthcare systems manageable. Nobody serious thinks we can eradicate the virus like we did with smallpox. It will always be with us, causing infection.
This is how all vaccines work, with the exception of HPV and possibly measles. Vaccines are not expected to provide sterilizing immunity, and they don't need to as long as they prevent serious disease due to the infection.
Within the field of immunology this is common knowledge, and I wish the CDC would message it more clearly.
First, places with high vaccination rates are crushing it. There basically isn't a fourth wave in Waterloo Region [1], and we have 85% one dose, 78% two doses at present.
Second, those predictions were made ahead of a year of mutation— delta in particular.
> First, places with high vaccination rates are crushing it.
Israel has an epic Delta outbreak and Britain's Delta outbreak keeps rolling on. So no, they're not crushing it at all.
Israel's weekly Covid counts have soared back near record highs.
Britain's weekly Covid counts are not dropping. They're at 200,000+ weekly cases and sustaining. They've been up there for about a month now.
The vaccines are primarily changing the mortality rate, which is of course critical. The current vaccines can't entirely stop Delta even if you vaccinate 100% of the population.
Vaccines, masks, and restrictions did all work to "flatten the curve". Your assertion that they did not is a very minority opinion and the onus is on you to back that up with data.
It should be fully intuitive that anything that reduces the r0 value for spreading the disease flattens the curve compared to what it could have been. That somehow it is not obvious to you suggests your sense making apparatus has been hijacked by something. Take a good hard look at yourself.
It's not enough for vaccines to exist. People have get vaccinated. That has not happened (enough).
How do you know the curve wasn't flattened? I don't know whether it was or not. It seems the only way to find out for sure is to compare the curve to what it would have been in an alternate timeline.
due to rampant downvoting, I will respond to individual replies here:
"This worked perfectly basically anywhere people actually complied. "
Italy had among the strictest lockdowns in April but saw a huge resurgence at the end of2020
" Largely it did happen, we just don't see the counterfactual. It could have been a lot worse. "
That is moving the goalposts. The claim by the experts was that the vaccines were 95% effective at stopping the spread. It seemd that way until a few months ago when Deltacame along.