COVID vaccine works - we're saved!

You originally said it was "your so called experts," not Joe Biden, who were "telling people that vaccination prevents a person from spreading infectious disease." I don't believe there are any true experts in this field saying this.But I can easily believe that Joe Biden would say something like this, even after being properly briefed by experts. The nuances and subtleties of epidemiology aren't easily grasped. If you truly have your patients' best interests at heart, I think you should advise them to find another physician.--Percy

Sorry, no on both counts. Your approach to persuasion seems to be, "There! I've insulted him. That should do it." Actually explaining your interpretation might work better.--Percy

If by experts you mean experts from the medical fields, I assume that Biden receives advice and information from a variety of sources, including from medical field experts.But you originally said it was "your so called experts," not Joe Biden, who were "telling people that vaccination prevents a person from spreading infectious disease." I don't believe there are any true experts in this field saying this. Your responses frequently ignore or indicate no comprehension of what people actually say. Since, as I just finished saying to you, this seems to be a growing area of interest by the medical community, I think the consensus among experts might currently be in a state of flux. I sense that they're tending toward tailoring advice to each specific situation rather than providing a "one size fits all" approach. Just post your information to the thread. I think patients should follow the advice of their doctors.--Percy

I'm losing hope you'll ever tell us. The article is not targeted at the general public. I think the intended audience understands it just fine.--Percy

As I already said, the nuances and subtleties of epidemiology aren't easily grasped, and I can easily believe that Joe Biden would say something like this, even after being properly briefed by experts.I think you're thinking of when Biden said this at a CNN town hall on July 21, 2021:

Joe Biden:

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BIDEN: If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die...You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

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That's obviously incorrect. You later ask if these remarks were ever corrected. I could find no news item about a correction, but check out Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic | The White House for him stating the case correctly.--Percy

As I said, the target audience for the article is not the general public but medical professionals, who understand the terminology just fine.--Percy

As I said, I could find no news item about a correction about his comments at the CNN Town Hall in July (Fact-checking Biden’s town hall on CNN). In the September speech (Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-⁠19 Pandemic) he states the case correctly. Statistically the unvaccinated are at greater risk for illness and death.--Percy

No, I don't think that. Even worse was when Fauci said early on during the pandemic that masks would provide little benefit to the general population. He later admitted that wasn't true, that he only said it out of concern for their availability to the medical community, especially of N95's.--Percy

In Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-⁠19 Pandemic he talks not about vaccines preventing spread, which was incorrect, but about the protections vaccines provide:

Joe Biden:

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While the vaccines provide strong protections for the vaccinated,...
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And fourth, I want to emphasize that the vaccines provide very strong protection from severe illness from COVID-19... But the world’s leading scientists confirm that if you are fully vaccinated, your risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is very low.

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In fact, based on available data from the summer, only one of out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day.
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We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal.
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But as the science makes clear, if you’re fully vaccinated, you’re highly protected from severe illness, even if you get COVID-19.
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That’s where boosters come in — the shots that give you even more protection than after your second shot.

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Moving on: Whose right is greater, that of people to experience a lower risk of infection out in public, or that of people who wish not to be vaccinated? I don't have an answer for you. I do believe that society is best served by individuals who have the best interests of their fellows at heart.--Percy

Judging by what I saw out in public during the mask-wearing phase, a significant proportion of people don't understand that gaps compromise mask effectiveness. The worst gaps occur when people wear the mask below the nose. I don't think the general public realizes how ineffective cloth masks are, or that surgical masks have a sort of running gap all around the edge.I also don't know how much the general public is aware of the debate about the relative effectiveness of surgical versus N95 masks, but laboratory measurements indicate that N95's are far better at capturing small droplets than surgical masks, and they have a much better fit with far fewer gaps. It's a continuum. The better the mask and the more properly and consistently it is worn, particularly when other people are present, the more effective it will be at reducing the spread of respiratory disease. According to Wikipedia, that isn't an accurate statement:

Wikipedia on Anthony Fauci:

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After completing his medical residency in 1968, Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases's (NIAID) Laboratory of Clinical Investigation (LCI). He became head of the LCI's Clinical Physiology Section in 1974, and in 1980 was appointed chief of the NIAID's Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He became director of the NIAID in 1984. Fauci has been offered the position of director of the NIH several times, but has declined each time.

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The "general population" is a large and diverse group, significant proportions of which seem to behave in ways counter to their own best interests. There is a multiplicity of ways that members of this group respond to the medical community and medical advice. I would imagine that most physicians despair of ever developing a good feel for how they will behave.--Percy

To me it's incomprehensible that the White House didn't issue a correction (or at least none that I could find online two years after the fact), but after the CNN Town Hall there were fortunately numerous fact-checking articles noting what he said that was wrong while providing correct information.And returning to your original claim, Biden's comments were based upon his own misunderstandings, not the advice of medical experts who well understand that vaccines do not prevent infection. Correct. And the flip side of this is that if someone has the best interests of their fellows at heart, they don't risk exposing them to potentially deadly diseases. What I actually did was to rhetorically ask whose right was greater, saying that I don't have an answer for you.How we deal with threats to public health should always take into account the severity. If contracting the disease and dying has a rate of .001% then we probably don't adjust public health policy. If that rate were instead 1% (covid was around .3% in the US) then some adjustments to public health policy would be necessary that would depend upon the nature of the threat. And if that rate were 10% then there would need to be significant changes to public health policy, including a number of things that would intrude upon personal freedoms.People respond differently to different threat levels. When they believe there's little to no chance of severe illness or death then they'll tend to ignore public health cautions and advice. But when people they know and people they love begin to fall ill and even die such that it's impossible to deny or ignore the threat then the general tendency is to modify behavior to minimize risk.--Percy

You don't provide examples of the kind of harm you're thinking of, but how do you balance the risk of death to a family's breadwinner against the loss of income from not working? The mentions of mask mandates are all coming from you. I haven't mentioned them or commented on them. Why are you demanding evidence related to your assertions from me?I do believe that the more that people wear high-quality masks in a public settings and the more properly they wear them, the more the spread of respiratory disease will be reduced. No, I don't think that, nor did I make any comment related to that. What I did was show that your claim that Fauci had little to no clinical experience was false. I don't know how to make anyone do anything they don't want to do. Please tell us about it.--Percy

Again, I've never mentioned a general mask mandate, and I leave the epidemiological analyses to the epidemiologists. If you have epidemiological information that would be helpful to the discussion then please provide it. I haven't conducted any risk/benefit analysis for the implementation of a general mask mandate that I've never mentioned, other than to tell you that I've never mentioned it. Are you suggesting that to deal with pandemics government should pass and enforce laws with severe penalties for non-compliance? Sure, tell us, but specific to respiratory infections contagious enough to cause pandemics. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. --Percy

Yes. Yes. The expectation would be that properly worn high-quality masks should reduce spread in public spaces. The only one raising this strategy here is you. Please see Decline in COVID-19 Hospitalization Growth Rates Associated with Statewide Mask Mandates — 10 States, March–October 2020 | MMWR for one. You referred generally to "an infection", so I requested that you focus on respiratory infections to keep discussion more relevant to the thread's topic, which is covid, a respiratory infection. That bit of Latin flotsam is used all over the Internet as filler. That was a joke. I put a smilie on it. You asked about "the four classic signs of infection" but instead gave those for inflammation.--Percy

You seem very interested in mask mandates, so I did a little more searching. Here's another study on mask mandates: State-Level Masking Mandates and COVID-19 Outcomes in the United States. From the Conclusions section:

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Our study builds on growing evidence that, prior to widespread vaccination, public masking mandates are associated with population-level reductions in COVID-19 spread.

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And another: Association of State-Issued Mask Mandates and Allowing On-Premises Restaurant Dining with County-Level COVID-19 Case and Death Growth Rates — United States, March 1–December 31, 2020 | MMWR. From the Summary section:

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Mask mandates and restricting any on-premises dining at restaurants can help limit community transmission of COVID-19 and reduce case and death growth rates.

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And another: Overview ‹ Association between COVID-19 Outcomes and Mask Mandates, Adherence, and Attitudes — MIT Media Lab. From the opening paragraph:

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We show that mask mandates are associated with a statistically significant decrease in new cases (-3.55 per 100K), deaths (-0.13 per 100K), and the proportion of hospital admissions (-2.38 percentage points) up to 40 days after the introduction of mask mandates both at the state and county level.

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It makes sense that to the extent that people properly wear high quality masks in public settings that spread would be reduced.--Percy