there are way too many confounding factors particularly in terms of behavior. For instance, isolation is not sustainable nor worth it but it beats pretty much anything in effectiveness. That's widely gone away; people are doing way way way way more stuff.

As for viral load, I am not an expert here, but I'll but that transmission is more complicated than that. My understanding too is that while you can have the same viral load, you are not as likely to get to that point in the first place.

And for Vermont, they had some of the lowest *rates* of infection over the first year, so vaccinated or unvaccinated, they were likely to shoot up at some point unless the vaccine was perfect. There's plenty of room for it to be much worse without impact from the vaccine.

None of that is to say this is evidence that the vaccine causes less transmission, but that I don't think those counter examples are necessarily evidence against it.


[Post edited by jmanatVT at 11/11/2021 7:35PM]