I think you'll find that the mandates were built off the fact that vaccinations only reduce the risk of transmission via mitigating severity...and the more people vaccinated the more reduced the risk.
Don't think so. The whole mitigating severity only message was a direction only taken after the release and widespread use of the vaccine and it became apparent that "break through" cases werent the exception, but the norm. Even the use of the term "break through" cases should tell you what the intent of the vaccine was. The purpose of the vaccine, like any vaccine before it, was ultimately to mitigate infection. No one gives you a polio vaccine telling you, "hey if you get it, it won't be as bad". The reduction of severity message is what they pivoted to post fact. Not saying reduction of severity is not important, but by that stage mandates we're already being imposed.
Transmission doesn't appear to have had much to do with severity either. People were walking around getting it from asymptomatic people, from people that didn't have more than a runny nose, while others sharing homes with gravely ill partners were at times not being infected.
No vaccine has ever been developed, tested and put on the market as fast as the Covid vaccines. There was no point testing for reduced transmission given the known virulence of the virus at the time. Better to ensure that the vaccine reduced the severity of the disease impact on the individual and worry about transmission (which would and did improve with later variants) later...
No one was developing a vaccine to reduce severity though. They were all trying to provide immunity. Go back to some of the literature and advertising and articles being written during the development of the vaccines. The speed in which they rolled tis out isnt the point or even an argument. What is is that If you're trying to ensure high uptake of this and future vaccines, don't get caught in a lie. It's damaging for future vaccine sentiment. Tell me this isn't going to come up next time we have a pandemic and a vaccine gets rolled out post haste.
Speed isn't the issue, truth about its efficacy is and how that information drives policy. There's no doubt it's effective, but it's quite possible that worldwide governmental and private business approach may have not had had as hard-line a view to imposing mandates if they knew that people would still be susceptible to transmitting the disease. Whether that's a good thing or not is a worthy debate, but not the point I was making.
