Ongoing fourth wave of infections around the world — predominantly with the Delta variant — has made many people question the success of the vaccination campaigns.
However, the reality is that everything is happening just as it was predicted.
I think many people misunderstood the role vaccines would play in ending the pandemic by somehow destroying the virus.
In the early days, there was hope that by immunising millions of people they would stop the spread of the disease.
However, this was far from certain and medical experts’ as well as vaccine manufacturers’ warning that while vaccines produce a strong immune response, there’s no guarantee that they prevent circulation of the virus.
Today, we know that they didn’t, even if they may have reduced it. Logically speaking, the less severe your symptoms, the shorter their duration and lower the risk that you’re going to release more of the viral material by coughing, talking or sneezing.
By boosting our immune response to the virus, training the body to fight it off by equipping it with necessary antibodies, vaccines were supposed to reduce hospitalisations for severe infections and resulting fatalities.
And we know that in this aspect, they have performed exceedingly well.
While COVID-19 is still spreading, its toll is nothing like what it was last year.
Let’s take a look at the UK. While it was one of the first major countries to vaccinate a huge proportion of its population and bring the daily case count to a trickle in the spring, it was also one of the first to witness a subsequent bounce-back, reaching very nearly the same daily levels of reported infections as during its worst outbreak in the winter.
In January the wave peaked amidst tight lockdowns, at around 60,000 cases and 1,200 deaths per day (a seven-day daily rolling average).
The most recent surge in July, reached nearly 50,000 cases daily but just 88 deaths a few weeks later (deaths usually trail the detected cases by around a month). This is a ten-fold improvement within six months.
Please see https://vulcanpost.com/756790/global-covid-19-surge-proves-that-vaccines-work-very-well/ for original article and more in depth explanation and analysis.
