LogFAQs > #962139830

ssj4supervegeta posted...

the misinformation saying it does is why people are not wearing masks and people saying that you dont have to wear a mask if you have the vaccine.

That was particularly exacerbated by a CDC announcement that fully vaccinated people didn't need masks, but that was back in May. At that point, the science did support eschewing masks post-vaccination, since the vaccines were effective enough to reduce the risk of transmitting Alpha or Beta to acceptable levels.

Of course, at that point, ~30% of the US was fully vaccinated, but most people gave up on masks with no efforts to verify that, which is exactly what everyone with half a brain expected to happen after the announcement was made. Cases surged accordingly, and then Delta happened and the vaccines were less effective against it, but getting people to go back to masks was hard. And now Omicron's here and the vaccines are even less effective, but people just don't want to listen to that.

That, however, is not because people are overestimating the vaccine's effectiveness. Quite the opposite: Most of the people refusing to wear masks or accept that the vaccine's effectiveness has waned (both because of how much time has passed since the doses and because of changing epidemiology) are also the ones downplaying the vaccine's effectiveness (more than is appropriate) because they just don't want to have to do anything. These are the same people who glomped onto the CDC's announcement as an excuse to stop wearing masks, despite categorically decrying the CDC's scientific process and conclusions at virtually every turn before then. Big surprise, they criticized them not on any scientific basis, but because they said something they didn't like.

ssj4supervegeta posted...

if the vaccine was full immunization then yeah i can see why it would be mandatory in some fields, but because it's not that it should not be mandatory.

No vaccine is ever "full immunization." Every single one is a matter of risk reduction, like most workplace safety regulations. Being imperfect protection does not mean a safety regulation should not be mandatory. That's especially true when it's such an easy regulation to adhere to.