Is asymptomatic transmission less common after vaccination?

post by Brendan Long (korin43) · 2022-02-02T20:53:42.188Z · LW · GW · No comments

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    7 ChristianKl
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How I understand it, the problem with the first time you're exposed to COVID is that your immune system hasn't seen it before and it takes a while to ramp up and fight it off, allowing it to do more damage.

Vaccines solve this by exposing your immune system to something that looks like COVID so it can ramp up faster if/when you're exposed to real COVID.

One of the things the immune system does is cause symptoms (fever, coughing, running nose, etc.).

My question is, is this "slow immune system ramp-up" the reason for so much asymptomatic spread (since you become contagious before your immune system catches up), and post-vaccination does your immune system ramp up fast enough that you have symptoms earlier (before or while contagious)?

I've had a lot of trouble searching for this since so many people are surprised that vaccinated people aren't 100% immune and it's hard to find anyone who can be bothered to collect data (and of course, running actual experiments is crazy talk).

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answer by ChristianKl · 2022-02-04T09:40:15.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As opposed to RaDVaC, the approved vaccines provide just a systemic immune response while not providing a mucosal immune response.

An infection starts in the upper respiratory system where a mucosal immune response is needed to fight the virus. A patient can be infectious while the infection is just in the upper respiratory system and it's quite plausible that some asymptotic infections stay just in the upper respiratory system.

I've had a lot of trouble searching for this since so many people are surprised that vaccinated people aren't 100% immune and it's hard to find anyone who can be bothered to collect data (and of course, running actual experiments is crazy talk).

There's a lot of money in running trials to demonstrate the benefits of vaccines by the companies that produce them. The decision not to run the actual experiments suggests a fear that the outcomes of the experiments wouldn't be advantageous for the companies that produce the vaccines. 

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