The occurrence of Covid infections among the fully vaccinated is being dismissed as not a challenge to the idea that all is needed to get back to business as usual is a high vaccination rate. It has been said that breakthrough infections are rare. That is correct so far for Australia, but it is more sobering to examine the US situation, as some material below from a mainstream publication, Forbes.com does. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been in the US 4,115 reported cases of fully vaccinated people being hospitalized or dying with Covid-19 breakthrough infections. I think that there is a question about why this has occurred, and saying that nothing is perfect, is a scientific cop-out. The question is, why isn’t the vaccine better? The burden of proof is upon the vaccine supporters. Perhaps even vaccine passports will not be enough? So, since lockdowns are set to cause economic collapse, surely the only answer is the one given by Sweden? Can the Australian authorities start looking into the Swedish situation? Pretty please, with sugar on top of the syringe.
“Epidemiologists warn of more breakthrough Covid infections as the number of fully vaccinated people catching the Delta variant rises.
Queensland reported a Covid case in a fully vaccinated person on Thursday, a worker at the Brisbane international airport.
In New South Wales, a nurse at Westmead Hospital tested positive on Tuesday despite being fully vaccinated and wearing personal protective equipment while working in a Covid-19 ward.
The case was picked up by routine testing, and NSW Health confirmed the nurse was asymptomatic and that no other transmission had been detected.
Hassan Vally, an associate professor in epidemiology at La Trobe University, said although vaccination and PPE reduced the risk of transmission, they were not fail-safe measures.”
“It’s unfortunate when this happens, but it doesn’t mean that PPE is not working,” Vally said. “There’s just a probability every so often that someone’s going to get infected even when they do all the right things.”
“This could have been any of the variants,” he said. “Obviously the Delta variant is more infectious so that does increase your risk.”
“There’s always a chance that someone can have a breakthrough infection when they are vaccinated, because these vaccines aren’t perfect.”
Ok, let’s examine the US situation, again from a mainstream source.
“Here is yet another reminder that Covid-19 vaccines are not like gigantic concrete full-body condoms. Concrete condoms, in general, are a bad idea, and fully vaccinated does not mean perfectly protected against Covid-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have already been 4,115 reported cases of fully vaccinated people being hospitalized or dying with Covid-19 coronavirus breakthrough infections.
That’s as of June 21, 2021. Nearly half (49 percent) of these cases have been female and a little over three-quarters (76 percent) have been 65 years and older. There were a total of 3,907 hospitalizations and 750 deaths among those who had breakthrough infections, although not all of the hospitalizations may have been due primarily to Covid-19.
As I have described previously for Forbes, a “breakthrough infection” is when a fully vaccinated person still gets infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus, otherwise known as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2). The 4,115 number does not represent all breakthrough infections that have happened. They are just reported cases where hospitalizations or deaths happened to occur. Back in April, the CDC stopped keeping track of all reported breakthrough infections, choosing instead to focus going forward just on those in which hospitalizations or deaths were involved.”