Some on this forum have steadfastly maintained that vaccination does not affect the transmission of the Omicron variant. You know who you are.
Now we will see if clear evidence that you are wrong can change your mind. CDC has been tracking data by full vaccination status and has just released what it has for the last two months of 2021 when the Omicron variant was by far the predominant strain (95%). Here are the results.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
The data shows significant increases for all groups as the year ended but with the vaccinated and boosted at much lower levels than the unvaccinated. In November, unvaccinated adults aged eighteen and over had 13x the risk of testing positive for Covid and 68x the risk of death from Covid compared to those fully vaccinated and boosted.
The conclusion from such data is undeniable. Vaccination not only makes Omicron infection less severe; it also greatly reduces the risk of becoming infected. The infected spread the disease to others. Say goodbye to yet another reason to avoid vaccination and to oppose lifesaving public health mandates.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Your cite does not address transmission, and you have an error in logic in your interpretation.
You have a self selecting sample. Asymptomatic people can spread the disease, but they don’t know they have it, so they go right on circulating. Vaccinated people, especially the young, are far more likely to have an asymptomatic infection, but they aren’t counted as ‘cases’ because they don’t go to their doctor.
The CDC has said that vaccinated people spread Omicron just like unvaccinated.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/omicron-variant.html
However, at the time that statement was issued, the BA.2 variant of Omicron had not emerged, and there is evidence from Denmark that vaccinated people do not spread the BA.2 variant as much.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/31/the-new-omicron-subvariant-is-more-contagious-but-vaccinated-people-are-less-likely-to-spread-it-study-finds.html
So, you were wrong, but as BA.2 displaces the original Omicron, you may become right.
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So, the answer is in.
Pretty much as expected.
Compelling evidence has no effect on what you want to believe. You want to believe that vaccine mandates are baaaaad because the unvaccinated only put themselves at risk. This EVIDENCE says they put others at risk as well, so you will stick with what you want to believe and search for ways to ignore the EVIDENCE.
“The CDC has said that vaccinated people spread Omicron just like unvaccinated”
Sure, IF they get infected. This data shows that they are much less likely to get infected. More infected people means more transmission. And you say I have an error in MY logic?!
There are lots of ways for this data and these estimates to be imperfect, but these are not marginal differences. These are huge differences that cannot be wished away.
An asymptomatic carrier can spread the virus but are far less likely to do so. They are asymptomatic because their viral load is low AND they are not sneezing and coughing. Bringing them up is a red herring.
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And yet the CDC says asymptomatic spread is a large part of the problem.
That’s why they’re pushing testing, so people who are exposed but either mildly ill or asymptomatic can quarantine themselves.
Your ‘compelling’ evidence has little connection to the real world. You can’t discount behavior in epidemiology.
A person singing in the choir, or shouting ‘Go Bengals’ or ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ spreads the virus every bit as effectively as one coughing.
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“Your ‘compelling’ evidence has little connection to the real world. You can’t discount behavior in epidemiology.”
Empty – laughably empty – words. Your imagining hordes of vaccinated, asymptomatic, but highly contagious virus spreaders does not “trump” the evidence. The data shows that fully vaccinated people are far less likely to become infected. Infected people, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, are the only people who can transmit the virus to others. The fact that asymptomatic transmission is part of the pandemic problem does not change that.
Finally, with these relative risks (13x and 68x), the evidence IS “compelling” that vaccination helps stop the spread of all known variants. Including Omicron. On your best day, you cannot spin that evidence away.
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And yet the CDC has the nerve to disagree with you.
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“And yet the CDC has the nerve to disagree with you.”
How so?
If your answer is that they say asymptomatic transmission is a problem, then you do not understand what we are talking about.
You think the CDC gathers and publishes this data by vaccination status for no reason at all? Just out of curiosity? If they agreed with YOUR whacky theory that vaccination INCREASES the spread of the virus, they would not encourage people to get vaccinated. Duh.
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RE: “The data shows that fully vaccinated people are far less likely to become infected. Infected people, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, are the only people who can transmit the virus to others.”
Sounds truthy, but before leaping to any conclusions we need to account for the probability (or the reality) of contact between infectious people and people susceptible to infection. Just knowing vaccination status and the probabllity of infection associated with it isn’t enough to draw the conclusions you do.
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“Sounds truthy, but before leaping to any conclusions we need to account for the probability (or the reality) of contact between infectious people and people susceptible to infection.”
We are not talking about individuals or small groups. We are discussing populations in 8 (unvaccinated) or 9 (vaccinated) figures. Whatever difference in individual circumstances you have in mind will be irrelevant in the overall picture.
Also, the question – which we have lost sight of – is. . . Are the unvaccinated risking the well-being of others or only harming themselves? The answer, based on this data from the CDC, is that they are increasing the risk to others by increasing the probability that they will become infected and thus able to infect others.
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RE: “We are not talking about individuals or small groups.”
No, we are not. But even large numbers can’t justify your assertions.
You claim the unvaccinated are risking the well-being of others. The CDC data you cite doesn’t support your claim, except in some debatable theoretical sense.
Show us evidence that those who become infected did so because they had contact with unvaccinated spreaders. You can’t, because you are just guessing that is the case.
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If you are 13x more likely to get infected without vaccination, then wouldn’t that increase transmission among people around the unvaccinated. After all you can’t spread the disease unless you have it, knowingly or not.
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Put another way, if you had an event with 100 vaccinated people and 100 unvaccinated in the same venue, the stats show that if 8 vaccinated were infected, then 13x that, or virtually all, the unvaccinated would be infected. Now which group is more likely to spread COVID based on quantity of infections. Random people coming and going (maybe servers, speakers, guests) are much more likely to get infected if they socialize with the unvaccinated folks.
Or is my logic flawed?
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Maybe flawed. It is backwards to posit a real world scenario based on statistics, because the real world is under no obligation to conform to the statistics.
To illustrate:
Let’s say, too, that every person in the whole population has one of these three statuses, so that no one is left out.
What would it take the predict the future infection level of the population based on the known transmission rates?
We know that for actual transmission to occur there must be a spread-from group and a spread-to group. Therefore, to predict actual transmission we need to know the abc makeup of each group. But, importantly, we need to know the real makeup, not just a statistical projection. Knowing the real makeup optimizes our confidence in the final prediction.
Notice that the real abc makeup of the two groups is new information. This means that we can’t predict the future infection level of the population based on the known transmission rates alone.
Notice, too, that we need to know something about the scope of the spread-from and spread-to groups. Do the two together represent the whole population, or are they one of many subsets of the whole population? If the former, it is important to know whether the abc makeups will remain static over the prediction period. If the latter, the same is true but there’s the additional problem of having to roll up the collection of individual predictions to compute the overall future infection level we seek.
Thus, different versions of the scope parameter become additional new information we need.
In the end, we simply cannot predict the future infection level of the population based on the known transmission rates by vaccine status alone. Hence, the potential error of basing a real world scenario on statistics.
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So how does that dispute the findings that 13x as many unvaccinated get infected and infected people are the spreaders, knowingly or not?
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It doesn’t. It means that using vaccination status as a criteria can’t help you predict the spread of the virus very well.
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Nice try, I guess. But this is hooey.
Your final conclusion was self-evident from the beginning. If you ONLY know the transmission rates of the three statuses, you cannot predict anything. However, if you know or can estimate what portion of the population are in each category, then you can. This is what epidemiologists do all the time.
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How would you answer Mr. Rothman’s question?
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How would you answer Mr. Rothman’s question?
Easy: It doesn’t. Same as yours.
But your answer went beyond that and added this. . .
“It means that using vaccination status as a criteria can’t help you predict the spread of the virus very well.”
That was wrong. Your own analysis leads to this conclusion. . . “It means that using vaccination status as the ONLY criteria can’t help you predict the spread of the virus very well.”
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So you agree with my conclusion, but it is hooey.
I should have asked, How would you answer Mr. Rothman’s question about his scenario, “Or is my logic flawed?”
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I did NOT agree with your conclusion. I agreed with your answer to Len’s rhetorical question.
None of your very silly a, b, c hooey had ANYTHING to do with the fact that the unvaccinated are 13x more likely to be infected with Covid than the fully vaccinated. That was the point of Len’s rhetorical question.
Your “conclusion” was self-evident from the start as I explained earlier.
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RE: “Your ‘conclusion’ was self-evident from the start as I explained earlier.”
Yes it was, because I stated the conclusion before explaining it.
You say, “the unvaccinated are 13x more likely to be infected with Covid than the fully vaccinated.” Unfortunatly, you don’t see that this particular datum is almost meaningless, even if true.
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