The government has decided that from the 14th of January there will be very significant changes to the isolation requirements, but only for those who have received a booster vaccine and have no symptoms.
In general, this is probably a welcome move, given that the omicron variant is now dominant and that the numbers in ICU have dropped from about 110 in December to 92 at the current count.
Yes, it brings risk of further transmission of the virus but with the new variant essentially running through the population irrespective of restrictions, it is assumed that there are many, many cases going undetected – and that the self-isolation rules for close contacts are increasingly ignored in any case bringing the law more in line with the behaviour of the population.
But the question has to be asked: why only those with a booster vaccine? Why not those double vaccinated or those with no vaccine at all?
Given what the authorities have been telling us, the main reasons for restrictions are to curb the spread, reduce serious illness, flatten the curve to allow the health systems to cope.
No longer is it a case of this – with omicron – being a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The pressure on the ICU has reduced considerably and although many of those in ICU come from the small portion of the population that remains unvaccinated, these new easing of restrictions will make absolutely no difference as they do not prevent the unvaccinated from acquiring the illness.
The only argument can be that the unvaccinated pose a risk to the rest of the population if they are close contacts, and a much greater risk than the vaccinated.
The science doesn’t tell us that this is the case and any studies that have been done refer to the delta variant rather than omicron, the new, predominant and weaker variant.
A study by the Lancet in October 2021, when Delta was having a serious impact tells us:
“Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, 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.”
Public Health England in August said something similar.
The Centre for Disease Control in the United States, in December advises:
“People who get vaccine breakthrough infections can be contagious”.
Some more detailed work by researchers at Harvard University, looking at the different variants prior to Omicron, give a slightly better overview:
“Virus production and the duration of acute infection were similar for all of the variants. However, breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals cleared faster — on average, in 5.5 days — than infections in unvaccinated individuals, which took an average of 7.5 days to clear. This finding suggests that people with breakthrough infections may be as infectious as unvaccinated people in the early stage of their infection, but that those with breakthrough infections are infectious for a shorter period and therefore less likely to transmit the disease to others over time.”
The study came with a caveat though:
“Although this study provides some of the first direct data for virus production across variants and vaccination status, the authors caution that it was conducted in predominantly young, male, and healthy participants, and is therefore not representative of the general population”.
At the conversation.com, the writers take a more detailed look at the October 2021 Lancet study in November to conclude that overall, the vaccinated transmit the virus at a lower rate than the unvaccinated and others have postulated that maybe the level of infectiousness is about half that of the unvaccinated – at most. It is not a hard science however and the methodologies rely on a lot of assumptions. And remember, all these studies are looking at Delta and not Omicron.
But even if it is assumed to be true, the imposition of requirement for the unvaccinated (and the double vaccinated) to self-isolate, while those that are triple vaccinated, no longer have to, seems like a very heavy requirement for little benefit to society. Considering only 5% are unvaccinated, and over 60% are boosted, the benefits in relation to transmission for a virus that has ‘gone viral’ seems like a heavy handed effort to further encourage/coerce the population to get vaccinated/boosted.
Is there sufficient benefit to society, especially as the impact on the health service is not a factor in this issue, because stopping close contacts that are unvaccinated from mixing with others will have no impact on whether they get seriously ill, to justify curtailing freedoms? No, of course not but if there is science to back this differential treatment then the onus should be on the government to release it.
The world is not perfect, restrictions are not stopping the virus spreading like wildfire, so restricting the movement of unvaccinated close contacts is starting to look like a Macron policy for Ireland, to ‘piss off’ the unvaccinated because they did not do what they were told and another example of petty vindictiveness towards those who choose not to get vaccinated.
For the now weakened virus, and such a small impact (if at all) on transmission, the asymmetric restriction of freedoms (human rights and civil liberties) of the vaccine-free is hardly tenable.
And what of the common good obligation to get vaccinated? The argument was strong when there was the assumption of a very dangerous virus and highly effective vaccines at preventing infection and transmission. It weakened when the virus was found to be less dangerous and that vaccines did not prevent infection or transmission, but reduced the severity.
With the virus weakened considerably in the omicron variant, the vaccines waning and of reduced effectiveness against omicron and having limited impact on transmission, the common good argument has all but disappeared. It is time to acknowledge this and move on from all discriminatory and prejudicial unequal treatment.
Dualta Roughneen