Do the COVID Vaccines Offer 100 Percent Protection From Infection?

No.

By
24

At a town hall on July 21, in Cincinnati, President Joe Biden, in stressing the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, made the following statement: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.” 

The statement is false. 

Although the COVID-19 vaccines are effective, no single vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection. 

Per the Centers for Disease Control, both mRNA vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer, are over 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. Based on data from clinical trials, Moderna is 94.1% effective and Pfizer is 95% effective, according to the CDC. The Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine is 66.3% effective based on data from clinical trials. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    Biden: "If you get in a car, drive safe and put on your seatbelt, you aren't going to get into a fatal accident."

    Republicans: "Liar!"

    Come on, man.

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      rlritt

      Biden ought to know a thing or two about fatal car accidents.

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  2. Patrick E

    The problem we have is that so many public officials, current and former, left and right, have shot their credibility on this issue to hell, that getting people to believe accurate information is nearly impossible at this point. I'm afraid the only thing that will get the immunization rates back up is a major increase in serious Covid cases among the young & healthy, people who thought they didn't have to worry.

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    Not Jonah Goldberg

    Well I know a guy who knew a guy who got sick after being vaccinated and that proves it was all a hoax and Bill Gates is the Antichrist.

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    1. DocHeartless

      This guy is crazy. Thank goodness it's not Jonah Goldberg.

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    Nick H

    Replace "not" in his statement with "highly unlikely" and what he said is completely true. Much like it's highly unlikely that politicians, especially this politician, will embrace nuance and refrain from making hyperbolic statements.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Visibly

    Simply: Vaccination prevents severe illness and death. Vaccination does not always prevent infection.

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    1. Avatar photo
      CynthiaW

      The CDC disagrees:

      "There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19."

      It might be a tough situation for people who care whether they die. I recommend fatalism.

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    I Am the Eggman

    To be fair, Biden didn't say that the vaccines provide 100% protection from infection. He said you won't need to be hospitalized and you won't die. That also, strictly speaking, is not completely true, but it's very close -- one might say "close enough for government work." While breakthrough infections are possible, they are rare (considering how many millions of people have been vaccinated), and even if you do get infected, your symptoms are very likely to be mild because your immune system has already been primed to deal with this virus. You're treating his statement as if it were intended as a mathematically-precise statement when clearly he's speaking casually. Compared to many statements by our previous president about the pandemic, this one is pretty innocuous, and it's correct in terms of statistical probabilities even if it's more absolute than it should be.

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    1. Nicco

      Biden said: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.”
      CDC said: “There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.”
      Does Biden deserve 4 Pinocchio’s? No. Probably 2 (his statement was demonstrably false, but not egregious). Does his inaccuracy improve the chances of vaccine hesitant individuals getting the shot(s)? Also probably no. Rather, it likely reinforces the distrust of many.
      I will grant that the headline isn’t particularly accurate since Biden didn’t claim vaccines protect 100% against infection.

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      1. Avatar photo
        I Am the Eggman

        I wouldn't even rate the statement as false. To do so implies a fundamental misunderstanding of the mode of communication at work here, and the meaning of what he said.

        Let's say you decide to buy a ticket in the state lottery because the pot has gotten really big. I say, "You're wasting your money, you won't win." This is clearly not quite accurate as a statement of your actual probability of winning -- your chance is better than zero -- but on the other hand it should be obvious that that wasn't my intention. I'm making a prediction based on the extremely high probability that you won't win. If you actually win, then I'll be proven wrong, but my prediction was a sensible one nevertheless.

        Biden is doing the same thing here. While breakthrough infections do happen, they are rare, and symptoms are usually mild. If you think he meant to make a mathematically precise statement, the fault is on your end for misunderstanding, since that's obviously not his intention. If he had said, "The chance of your ending up in the hospital with Covid after being vaccinated are exactly zero", then that would be wrong.

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  7. Raincheck

    Well…. The chances of infection are there. But the chances of hospitalization, ICU, and death are very, very, very, very low. And that is what Biden said. So what he said was mostly true, and it was far better marketing than, “yes, a very small percentage of vaccinated people get infected and hospitalized but it is such a small number that it isn’t worth worrying about, and you should get vaccinated.”

    In any reasonable statistical analysis Biden’s statement is true enough for a political leader encouraging citizens to do something good for them and good for the country. And way truer than most of the malarkey he spouts on a regular basis.

    He gets a pass on this on statistical significance grounds.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      Substitute in, for young healthy people, the same survival data we have for those who get Covid but are not vaccinated: still buying their argument based on statistical significance grounds? It's the same argument, the numbers comparable. I still encourage vaccines, but Biden's words only muddled the waters needlessly.

      It was a prepared speech, his handlers screwed up by not writing better lines.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Peter A

    “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.”

    The statement is true 96.55% of the time. Define your policy as needed.

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    1. Jason

      I think your math is off. The ~5400 cases would represent 99.65%. and even this is not real (as it assumes the disease and risk is over).

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        Peter A

        So, the statement is 99.65% true. Thanks. For 99.65% of the vaccinated, live as if you may catch a cold. Which you may.

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    rlritt

    I know 3 vaccinated people who have contracted covid 19. They were only slightly ill for a few days. Still, I where a mask if I'm in a crowd. Unvaccinated and unmaked people can still spread it especially Delt variant.

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      CynthiaW

      "I know 3 vaccinated people who have contracted covid 19. They were only slightly ill for a few days."

      My family had Covid-19 before we were vaccinated. The adults were "slightly ill for a few days." The children had runny noses and were sleepy, which describes their default condition in January anyway.

      Maybe the vaccines totally don't make any difference.

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      1. Avatar photo
        rlritt

        I'm sure they make a difference, they're just not 100% effective and Covid 19 is very contagious. I read in a medical journal that brain scans show shrinkage of brain tissue of people who have had Civid19 even if they were asymptomatic.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Adam Bridge

    We all forget the enormous variety represented by humans. Having ANYTHING be 100% effective across the entire human species is almost unthinkable. Ask any surgeon about variability in human anatomy. I can handle most narcotics for pain but my wife gets very very sick. That's relatively common.

    Political speech has to be more accurate, especially on issues touching on science & health.

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