Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology While vaccination reduces the probability of new variants; sadly, there are selfish citizens among us who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Their belief in a decision only affecting themselves. This belief is false. Failing to get vaccinated increases the chances of infecting others and of hosting a more dangerous variant. The latest data I’ve seen shows that even though vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections, the viral load is lower and the infection clears faster than in unvaccinated infections. This means that with more people being vaccinated, the pool of replicating viruses shrinks. The major source of variation in SARS-CoV-2 is mistakes during viral replication,
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Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
While vaccination reduces the probability of new variants; sadly, there are selfish citizens among us who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Their belief in a decision only affecting themselves. This belief is false. Failing to get vaccinated increases the chances of infecting others and of hosting a more dangerous variant.
The latest data I’ve seen shows that even though vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections, the viral load is lower and the infection clears faster than in unvaccinated infections.
This means that with more people being vaccinated, the pool of replicating viruses shrinks. The major source of variation in SARS-CoV-2 is mistakes during viral replication, so the higher the viral burden and the longer the infection, the more viral replication that occurs. Ergo, vaccination not only benefits the vaccinated person and slows the transmission to others, but it also decreases the chance of new viral variants that might be more infectious and/or virulent.
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is associated with lower viral load in breakthrough infections, News Medical Life Sciences, Colin Lightfoot.