FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS:

The good news is that a third dose of the vaccine appears not just to boost immunity back to the level achieved soon after a second dose, but also actually to produce even greater immunity. This was demonstrated in Israel, which led the world in vaccination but then saw that immunity tail off. Third doses have had a dramatic impact on the numbers of people being infected, hospitalised and dying. In the UK, over 26 per cent of people over 12 years old have already had a third dose - and those triple-jabbed people are in the most vulnerable groups. The boosters should help keep a lid on hospitalisations as we head into winter.

Yet some people cling to the idea that vaccines do not really work. They will find some way of cutting the data so that it appears that vaccinated people are more likely to die than unvaccinated people. But such claims rarely take account of age. Almost all older people have been vaccinated, yet because the risk from Covid is much, much greater in older people, they may still die in greater numbers. For example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that for someone who is 85 or older, the risk of hospitalisation is 10 times greater than for someone aged 18 to 29. When we compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the same age groups, it is crystal clear how effective vaccines are.

Another claim being made a lot lately is that vaccines do not have any impact on transmission. This is clearly wrong. A recent study in the Lancet has muddied the waters somewhat. It found that in household settings, the risk of an infected person transmitting the virus to another member of their household is pretty much the same whether the infected person is vaccinated or not. It also appears that vaccinated people have a similar 'peak viral load' as unvaccinated people, on average.

But we need to be clear about what is being said here. The Lancet paper looked at infected people - yet people who have been vaccinated are less likely to be infected. Transmission is impossible until there is infection - that is, until the virus is spreading and reproducing in someone's body. As one respondent to the Lancet study argues, 'a vaccinated person is less likely to get Covid in the first instance, is less contagious and is contagious for a shorter time, resulting in significantly less spread of the virus through a highly vaccinated community'.

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