https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...
The first study finds that "The SAR [secondary attack rate] in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals" and "Fully vaccinated individuals with delta variant infection had a faster (posterior probability >0·84) mean rate of viral load decline (0·95 log10 copies per mL per day) than did unvaccinated individuals with pre-alpha (0·69), alpha (0·82), or delta (0·79) variant infections." (The study did not determine a meaningful impact on peak viral load and on the SAR in households when the index case was vaccinated.)
The second link is a letter that reiterates the fact that vaccinated index cases are just as likely to infect other household members and concludes with "It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission when deciding about public health control measures", which makes sense, but does not mean spread
When you say "which is evident just by looking around what's going on everywhere", it's important to point out that we're now dealing with a variant that is significantly more transmissible than previous ones, so we can't compare the numbers like-for-like.
> It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission
You're going to have to dumb it down for me as to how this doesn't refer to spread.
> we're now dealing with a variant that is significantly more transmissible
And yes, agreed. Many are still focused on data from the previous variants though, whereas the thinking will need to change.
Vaccinated index cases infecting others in the same household are only one scenario, and in that particular scenario, the study found no impact on spread. The study did find that vaccinated household members were less likely to be infected (SAR 25% vs. 38%) and that vaccinated cases had a faster rate of viral load decline - both of these findings (especially the first one) also relate to spread.
(It's arguably a bit surprising that the faster rate of viral load decline did not have an impact on the SAR for vaccinated index cases - one could make a (hopefully) reasonable hypothesis that this would matter more outside of household settings and thus still have an overall impact on spread, but that's not backed by any data from this study.)
There's also a world of difference between not "ignor[ing] the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission" and saying that it doesn't stop spread to any significant degree. It's not binary.
> Prior to the emergence of the delta variant, it was reported that the risk of symptomatic cases in household contacts of vaccinated cases was about 50% lower than that among household contacts of unvaccinated cases(22). However, the impact of vaccination on reducing transmission in the context of the more transmissible delta variant appears to be lower(23).
https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-o...
[0] The first link I posted, reference 23 in the WHO statement
Not downplaying anything here. Reducing the symptoms is great. But interesting also to not that we don't even knows why it does that:
> The reason for the efficacy of the new mRNA vaccines is not clear.
How do you draw that conclusion? I never said that. Vaccines work across the board. But to illustrate an extreme, they do practically nothing to kids. For 80+ year olds they're miracle drugs.
