MadeAliyah >> are you seriously suggesting that masking and social distancing are as effective as getting vaccinated
yes, if you are the only one vaccinated in the same risky environment. Vaccine reduce risk by a factor of 10-20 (aka 90-95%). So, does keeping whole family out of public places. I am thinking, I was in unsafe places before COVID ~ 10 hour a day (work/shul/stores). Now, maybe 5 minutes total. That is 100x reduction(aka as 99%).
now, you in Israel have, B’H better protection because everyone’s protection decreased overall infection level to 50x from the peak, and 10x from USA.
I posted several posts about this, I need to add some caveats to the analysis:
1. When we say 95% protection, need to differentiate – protection from any infection, from transmission, from serious sickness, from death. For early Wuhan virus or from British etc variants; may change with vaccine type and time passing after vaccine.
2. Not clear to me, what 95% protection means – is it 95% of people 100% protected and 5% unprotected due to weak immune response, or is it 100% of people at 20x strength – that is 20x more virus load is required for the same sickness level? probably, something in between. maybe, doing an antibody test can show how much/less careful a person needs to be after the vaccine
3. when we talk averages, these are your “local average” of people around you. If you surrounded by older people (Florida?) with 90% vaccinations, you are seeing this effect even if whole country is at 10%. Conversely, if you are surrounded by 15-40 y.o. who are least in vaccination and highest in transmission, then you can be still in danger despite your own vaccine