• Nougat@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    Being vaccinated against covid is not a guarantee that you won’t catch it If you do get infected, your symptoms and length of illness will be much reduced, because your body is already primed to recognize and fight the pathogen. I have to imagine that the same thing applies to any vaccinatble disease; the vaccine is not preventing your exposure to the virus, but to your body’s immune response when you are exposed.

    That’s on an individual basis. On the community scale, the more people who are vaccinated against a particular virus, the less everyone is exposed to the virus in the first place.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      That’s the problem, other people aren’t vaccinating their kids or themselves, there is no communiy scale protection if half the community isn’t protected, and in some places in America it’s way more than half.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        That is a problem. Thankfully, you get the same immune protection when you get vaccinated, regardless of who else does. Yes, without enough people community-wide being vaccinated, your exposure will be higher, but your own immune response doesn’t change.

        • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          And the viral load you get is higher and from a virus that had more opportunity to mutate. So in a vaccum your immune response may be the same but in reality you immune system isn’t responding to the same thing. Also idk if you missed the part where my work involves immunocompromised people, so it’s not just my protection I have to worry about.