"Trust the Science" is the product of well funded social scientists who leveraged focus groups to determine the phrase effectively targeted people who already align themselves with the myriad of establishment pitch men - Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Trevor Noah, et al. Same as (ironically) "My body, my choice."
"Trust the Science" is merely a proxy for "Believe in and defend the Neoliberal agenda against scientific criticism".
If you're still uncritical of it, you might want to start reading the science.
> Across the US counties too, the median new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the last 7 days is largely similar across the categories of percent population fully vaccinated (Fig. 2)
Am I looking at the wrong graph? There is a clear downward trend from 35-40% to the 70%+ categories.
I am not sure why looking at the median county is better than just grouping all the counties in each category and looking at the cases per 100k, but looking at the latter (which the authors provide as a link [0]), and the latest available date (7 day period ending October 8th) the number of cases per 100k is 110 in the 70%+ group of counties, and it's 220+ for any group of counties with less than 55% vaccination rate.
Having twice as many cases per capita (ignoring all the other factors on how densely populated the counties with higher vaccination rates are, etc.) for every county under 50% vaccination rate compared to the ones with 70%+ vaccination rate is "largely similar"?
EDIT: Also of relevance, is the fact that the country data is from September 3rd, when Israel was at the peak of cases with the delta variant. Israel is far from having vaccinated a large enough fraction of the population to achieve "herd immunity" (just 63% fully vaccinated, Portugal has 86% for example) [1]. Another confounding factor is that Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate a large number of people, which means the effectiveness of the vaccine is now declining compared to countries that vaccinated later. They have administered booster shots to vulnerable populations [2] and the rates of covid infections have (as expected) dropped precipitously.
What am I supposed to be critical of, beyond what the authors themselves are saying? Judging by your quote, are you critical of the notion that vaccines slow the spread of covid - great, but I haven't heard that as a main talking point.
"Vaccines don't slow the spread, therefore..." what, exactly? What I've consistently heard since the vaccination campaigns started was that they reduce your chance of severe illness, hospitalization, and post-covid syndrome. Which is still absolutely true, in spite of the fact that (as the authors note) this effect has waned with the Delta wave. So, so what?
I've been listening to the "this week in Virology" podcast, along with Dr. John Campbell on YouTube, since Feb 2020. The difference between what I hear from the actual professionals and what I'm told by people online who use phrases like "Neoliberal agenda" that the professionals say is striking to the point that I wonder if those people are even bothering to listen to science communicators before making straw-man fallacies.
It becomes even more apparent when you live in a small society.
Covid numbers presented in US for example are based on an endless set of definitions and interpretations.
Dr a in state b may not use the same parameters as Dr c in state d to define a covid death or vaccine damage.
In a minuscule society full of obese people with a high percentege of a frail elderly population, such as Iceland, feel the actual result no matter what nature.com or timesofisrael state.
Our high vaccination rate drove down hospitalizations from 5% of the infected to about 2% ehich is where we are as of today.
We have an extremely obese population in Iceland I might add. This is crucial for covid-19 development.
Apologies for using an icelandic website, it is an article from today citing the state epidemiologist in Iceland
"Trust the Science" is merely a proxy for "Believe in and defend the Neoliberal agenda against scientific criticism".
If you're still uncritical of it, you might want to start reading the science.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases..."