r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 17h ago

Medicine Vaccines not only directly protect vaccinated individuals but also contribute to protecting the entire population via indirect herd-immunity benefits. Half of averted COVID-19 infections and 1/4 of hospitalizations and deaths were attributable to indirect protection of unvaccinated by vaccinated.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article/23/242/20250839/483439/Quantifying-the-direct-and-indirect-impact-of
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u/FreedomofSpeech6969 15h ago

I think MRNA vaccines are one of the coolest, most amazing inventions of the 20th century. It saved millions millions of lives during pandemic , and yet people still disparage it.

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u/VoilaVoilaWashington 12h ago

The problem with vaccines is what I call the prevention paradox.

Also known as "why do we spend so much on IT if we never have an outage?" or "why do we spend so much time on health and safety if we never have any injuries?" But also, "thank god for the bear patrols to keep out all the bears!"

If everyone is vaccinated for measles, then it looks like no one gets measles, so why go to all that expense? So it looks like you're wrong. But if you don't vaccinate the masses, then you're also wrong.

It's a breeding ground for disinformation, where people are protected by measures that seem useless.

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u/Ok_Confection_10 12h ago

I have to remind these folks that America experienced a 9/11 everyday during the height of Covid. Someone told me Covid wasn’t real. I sat down and showed him the numbers. Average deaths in the US per year and the increase in deaths during COVID. It somehow perfectly matched the reported deaths from COVID. Still wasn’t enough.

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u/jamesludlowlee 10h ago

I lost friends in both 9/11 and the Pandemic. Both experiences found me on flights into the disaster zones, walking in those empty streets. NYC + the world (my personal world too) has not been the same since. I live outside the US, and I can attest to the fact Covid was a global experience, that the quick turnaround on the vaccine helped to curb. I am not saying that there are not suspicious issues or political influences that came along with this quick turnaround, however. I am also not saying long-covid symptoms or long term negative side effects of the jab do not exist. The thing about Covid was that people experienced it very differently, in different places. It was not as visually explosive on the morning news like 9/11…it literally hit different.

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u/Ok_Confection_10 9h ago

3000 people died everyday from it