Marco Annunziata
2 min readAug 8, 2021

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Matt, thanks for your comment. On your first point, the WSJ article I referenced does not say that 0.01% of infected are vaccinated people, but that only 0.01% of those who are fully vaccinated get infected.

The share of covid deaths who are vaccinated people is extremely low across US states, see for example here: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-cases-data-from-the-states/. Also note as this link points out that these data on covid deaths are to be taken with a pinch of salt because it still the case that people who test positive for covid are recorded as covid deaths regardless of what the cause of death is.

On masks, first of all we've been told again and again that covid is nothing like the flu, so the fact that we did not have a flu season last year proves very little; moreover, there is no convincing evidence that masks have helped slow the spread of covid. Studies across US states, across countries, fail to prove the effectiveness of masks - which might well be because the masks everyone uses are poor quality and let too many particles in and out. Again, the chart in this blog shows no relation between mask adoption and spread: https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/the-destruction-of-trust-in-the-cdc?r=d1uny&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email

Overall therefore: vaccinated people account for a very small fraction of the continuing spread of covid 19. I completely agree with you that the solution is getting to 100% vaccination or as close as possible. My concern is that by imposing the same restrictions on vaccinated people as unvaccinated we have very little benefit in terms of reducing contagion, and we send the message that vaccines are irrelevant, which will make people reluctant to get vaccinated, and so take us away from the 100% vaccination goal rather than closer

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Marco Annunziata
Marco Annunziata

Written by Marco Annunziata

Economics & innovation at www.AnnunziataDesai.com; Co-host, M4Edge Tech podcast; Former Chief Economist & head of business innovation strategy at GE.

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