New Study: COVID-Positive Vaccinated People Are Just as Likely to Spread Delta Variant as Unvaccinated People
A new study stops short of saying that vaccine mandates are as useful in stopping the spread of COVID-19 as a screen door on a submarine, but it admits that the delta variant hops from person to person with no regard for vaccination status.
The way that the experts whose study was published in the British medical journal The Lancet put it was that “fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts.”
When Bloomberg reported on the study, it cut to the core: “People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots.”
The study only tracked a tiny sliver of those impacted in the global pandemic but followed 621 people for a year.
The study’s goal was to look at whether vaccination impacted the spread of the disease, not just whether the vaccine could prevent severe illness or death.
It also sought to look at COVID-19 in the context of households, where exposure is repeated over time — not hospitals, workplaces or schools.
“We found that the secondary attack rate in fully vaccinated household contacts was high at 25%, but this value was lower than that of unvaccinated contacts (38%),” the study’s authors wrote.
They noted that the vaccine did offer greater protection against severe illness among those infected.
The authors added, however, that protection offered by a vaccine dipped quickly.
“Risk of infection increased with time in the 2–3 months since the second dose of vaccine,” they wrote.
“The proportion of infected contacts was similar regardless of the index cases’ vaccination status. We observed transmission of the delta variant between fully vaccinated index cases and their fully vaccinated contacts in several households, confirmed by whole-genome sequencing,” they went on.
“Increasing population immunity via booster programmes and vaccination of teenagers will help to increase the currently limited effect of vaccination on transmission, but our analysis suggests that direct protection of individuals at risk of severe outcomes, via vaccination and non-pharmacological interventions, will remain central to containing the burden of disease caused by the delta variant.”
One of the study’s co-leaders noted that the report does not disparage vaccine use but that vaccination status is no bar to the spread of the delta variant.
“Our findings show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from being infected with the delta variant and spreading it in household settings,” Ajit Lalvani of Imperial College London told Bloomberg.
The study said vaccinations alone will not stop the delta variant.
“Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination is not sufficient to prevent transmission of the delta variant in household settings with prolonged exposures,” the researchers concluded.
“Our findings help to explain how and why the delta variant is being transmitted so effectively in populations with high vaccine coverage.”
The Western Journal has published this article in the interest of shedding light on stories about the COVID-19 vaccine that are largely unreported by the establishment media. In that same spirit, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, 7,439 deaths have been reported among those who received a vaccine, or 20 out of every 1,000,000. By contrast, 652,480 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported by the CDC, or 16,101 out of every 1,000,000. In addition, it must be noted that VAERS reports can be filed by anyone and are unverified by the CDC. Thus, as the agency notes, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.” The decision of whether to receive a COVID vaccine is a personal one, but it is important to consider context when making that decision. — Ed. note
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