COVID was more infectious than things like flu, and people who avoided the vaccine typically also were more likely to break lockdown and social distancing rules, so the r value managed to be close to/above one just from unvaccinated people (or people whose vaccines were for earlier strains) passing the virus on to other unvaccinated people. Breakthough cases obviously make things worse, but when one unvaccinated person typically passes it on to at least one other unvaccinated person, even if vaccinated people never got COVID again, it would still have stuck around, and that’s not the vaccine’s fault. A virus won’t go away until the r value is below one in all subpopulations.
The figures for effectiveness that were around 90% weren’t for getting the virus and passing it on, they were for getting enough of the virus to show symptoms, which for COVID, is more (hence why people kept spreading the virus and thinking they were fine). For a standard vaccine like an annual flu jab, that figure would only be around 70%. The figures that were around 99.99-100% were for effectiveness against serious infection needing breathing assistance. E.g. of the first 100,000 people in the AstraZeneca study, none of them needed breathing assistance from a COVID infection from the early strains that the initial version of that vaccine protected against. There’s never been a flu jab that effective.
COVID was more infectious than things like flu, and people who avoided the vaccine typically also were more likely to break lockdown and social distancing rules, so the r value managed to be close to/above one just from unvaccinated people (or people whose vaccines were for earlier strains) passing the virus on to other unvaccinated people. Breakthough cases obviously make things worse, but when one unvaccinated person typically passes it on to at least one other unvaccinated person, even if vaccinated people never got COVID again, it would still have stuck around, and that’s not the vaccine’s fault. A virus won’t go away until the r value is below one in all subpopulations.
The figures for effectiveness that were around 90% weren’t for getting the virus and passing it on, they were for getting enough of the virus to show symptoms, which for COVID, is more (hence why people kept spreading the virus and thinking they were fine). For a standard vaccine like an annual flu jab, that figure would only be around 70%. The figures that were around 99.99-100% were for effectiveness against serious infection needing breathing assistance. E.g. of the first 100,000 people in the AstraZeneca study, none of them needed breathing assistance from a COVID infection from the early strains that the initial version of that vaccine protected against. There’s never been a flu jab that effective.