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Originally Posted by jfman
Is there a source that the new vaccines prevent either infection or transmission in workplaces?
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Even without being a nit picker for a minute or two I guess you can see that training the immune system to respond to the spike protein of the original covid has become less effective as the virus has mutated such that omicron variants can get around this much more easily.
So the idea of the bivalent vaccine is that you're injected with the original spike and also the spike of the (original, as it's all they had) omicron. Mutations in the more recent omicrons such as BA.5 are less drastic when compared to this than the previous spike protein is, so the immune system recognises it better.
This will mean that the response the immune system can give to the vaccine is much better (in principle, I doubt there's a great deal of real world data outside clinical trials yet) which usually means it can respond with meaningful antibodies and t-cells quicker. Despite that it's probably not going to be perfect and some people will probably still get covid when they have had it and may be able to transmit it without getting ill but better levels of prevention are clearly more helpful in general.
As for workplaces you're around people all day and if someone's sat at their desk coughing all day because they have covid then if the rest of them aren't vaccinated then they'll probably all get it. If say the original vaccines offer like 20% (hypothetical figure) protection against getting ill from covid then if there's 10 people sat near them all day then 8 of them will get it. If that figure is reduced by bivalent vaccines to 80% then only 2 will get it (again that is just illustrative before you nit pick it). And if only 2 people out of a usual team of 10 were well enough to work then whatever they're doing will be severely impacted for a few days at least whilst they get over covid.