mhaze,

You're still stuck on the idea that quoting The Lancet study about Delta somehow discredits all earlier data. The study you cited - Singanayagam et al. - was conducted during the Delta wave, and the phrase “circulating variants” is right there in the text. That’s how we know it was about Delta, not the original strain. It’s not something I “made up” - it’s what the study itself states.

If you're going to claim it's definitive for all phases of the pandemic, you need to explain why it doesn't actually evaluate earlier vaccine impact.

You’re not “bouncing” anyone - you’re refusing to engage with the bigger picture: that vaccine performance varied across variants, and early evidence did show reduced infection and transmission, particularly before Delta and Omicron. That’s not pretending. That’s context - something your posts consistently leave out.

Now, on the Biden quotes: you claim you don’t blame the politicians, but then shift to blaming scientists for not jumping in fast enough to correct them. That’s not an argument, it’s hindsight outrage. Politicians oversimplify messaging all the time - on climate, war, economics. Are you saying unless a scientist publicly contradicted every misstatement immediately, they were complicit? That's a high bar, and a convenient one.

Where were the scientists? Well, many did speak out. There were constantly updated guidance documents, press briefings, published corrections, and clarifications. But you’re not looking for nuance - you’re demanding black-and-white admissions of guilt to support your idea that it was all a lie.

This isn’t about the absence of scientific input - it’s about your unwillingness to acknowledge it when it doesn’t support your narrative.

BTW I never quoted from the Singanayagam article but merely mentioned it as part of a quote from the Lancet article that you used and are now trying very hard to disown. But if I did use the Singanayagam article I'd have quoted from it that "fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts."

oops... I leave you to wipe that egg off your face.

mhaze,

There’s no egg on my face. There is, however, a big smile of amusement over how someone can think that continuing to dig will eventually get them out of the hole they've found themselves in.

You did quote the Lancet article containing findings from the Singanayagam study, and you used it to argue that vaccines didn’t reduce transmission. Whether you mentioned Singanayagam by name or not is irrelevant - the quote you used came directly from that study, which focused on Delta, not the original strain. That’s been my point all along.

Your latest quote proves it:

“Fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings...” - mhaze

Yes, that’s true - for Delta. Nobody’s denying that vaccine effectiveness against transmission dropped with later variants. But that quote doesn’t apply to earlier stages of the pandemic, where studies clearly showed vaccines reduced infection and, by extension, transmission.

So no “oops” here - unless you’re saying a study about Delta somehow disproves data from months earlier, involving a different strain, different transmission dynamics, and different outcomes.

If you want to have an honest conversation, stop pretending that one quote from one phase of the pandemic settles everything. You’re still cherry-picking the data that fits your narrative and ignoring everything that doesn’t.

Now, for the third time:
Are you willing to acknowledge that early real-world studies (like those from Israel and the UK in early 2021) showed reduced infection and transmission from vaccinated individuals before Delta emerged?

Or are you going to keep quoting studies from mid-to-late 2021 and acting like they apply retroactively?

How vaccines work....... http://tiny.cc/094e001

Since some think masks solve all problems..... http://tiny.cc/294e001

“If the last pandemic taught us anything, it is that trusting experts during a time of concocted crisis is as useful as interior decorating advice from Stevie Wonder”. (Fred Pawle, ‘Left's weird nostalgia for pandemic’, 27/3/25).

All we need to do in the case of the next “pandemic” the usual suspects bang on about when they have nothing better to do, is “ …. not believe a thing the political, media and medical establishment tells us – and simply get on with our lives instead”.