Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
You have to incubate the virus and give it space to infect your cells and multiply. Only once it has had time to do this will there be measurable quantities of viral particles in your body fluids that can then infect other people. As this coronavirus is novel to our species we have no latent immunity and the virus rapidly infects and becomes transmissible from an unvaccinated individual.
If you are vaccinated, while the virus is trying to take hold in your body your immune system is attacking it vigorously. Exactly how vigorous this fight-back is, determines whether or not you become infectious. Six out of ten vaccinated people (IIRC) will have a sufficiently robust immune response that the virus never gets a foothold and they therefore never become infectious. The other four will have an immune response but it is weaker; while the virus is under attack, for a while at least it is still able to multiply to the point where the host can pass it on. Those whose immune response is weakest will likely also display significant symptoms, in a few cases requiring hospital treatment and in the rarest cases still dying.
|
Yep, lower levels of virus in vaccinated patients is the answer (lower viral load is the techy term)
Here's a paper showing this with the Pfizer vaccine.
This is less pronounced with the Delta variant, especially some time after vaccination (
preprint link)