Can you share the data on the reduction in spread the vaccines offered across different variants to back up your claim? I've never seen the data so I'd be curious to see what you're referring to.
Do note that neither the Pfizer nor Moderna vaccines actually tested risk of infection or transmission. You can download the clinical trial protocols and read what the clinical trials actually measured. Patients in the trial were only tested upon symptoms and the endpoint measured was severity of disease.
I believe it was only the J&J vaccine that actually regularly tested patients to see if there was a difference in protection against acquiring Covid. They did not test protection against transmission.
Those studies pretty consistently found benefits in the 40-60% range against the original strain. Unfortunately, we had political opportunists discouraging adoption and then Delta and Omicron evolved so the scenario public health experts had been worried about happened.
Regarding the claim that Pfizer and Moderna didn’t test for transmission, this has been muddied substantially by its popularity as a talking point for antivax activists and right-wing pundits trying to present it as a conspiracy of some sort. In reality, Pfizer and Moderna worked with the FDA to design the phase 3 trials and they all decided to focus on protection against serious outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t look for signals in the data or that other studies weren’t in progress. All of this was clearly communicated at the time, too, so I would question the motives of anyone who tries to say it was buried – at the very least, that’s saying they get their news from untrustworthy sources.
The two studies you reference have significant limitations (same author, different time periods) which are stated in the papers.
"We estimated a VET of 71% among household contacts of fully vaccinated index cases. Harris et al. found a VET of 40–50% for unvaccinated households contacts". They estimated it, and if using the 40-50% figure, their study found higher transmission rats among vaccinated.
It was also self-reported data they explicitly state was not collected for research purposes, "As our study used data not primarily collected for research purposes, it has some important limitations. Our data do not contain information on negative tests among contacts, therefore we do not know if contacts did not get infected or did not seek testing."
I would be careful in making any sweeping conclusions from an observational study using self-reported income.
In reality, Pfizer and Moderna worked with the FDA to design the phase 3 trials and they all decided to focus on protection against serious outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t look for signals in the data or that other studies weren’t in progress.
I agree - Pfizer and Moderna never claimed they reduced infection rates because they never tested it. Generally it was politicians who were saying "get vaccinated to protect others" based on some theoretical benefit.
Like I said, look at the Phase 3 clinical trial designs, they are public documents. Risk of infection/transmission was not captured.
Do note that neither the Pfizer nor Moderna vaccines actually tested risk of infection or transmission. You can download the clinical trial protocols and read what the clinical trials actually measured. Patients in the trial were only tested upon symptoms and the endpoint measured was severity of disease.
I believe it was only the J&J vaccine that actually regularly tested patients to see if there was a difference in protection against acquiring Covid. They did not test protection against transmission.