No. I'm saying that because the CDC stated that fully vaccinated people can and do still spread the virus that the vaccines don't have high enough efficacy to reach herd immunity. They definitely work to a high degree in preventing severe illness and significantly reducing death for people who are fully vaccinated based on the data.
The "can and do still" is carrying a lot of weight in that statement. Vaccinated people can and do still catch COVID, at least statistically. The vaccine is not a force field. Still, that statement sounded like the vaccine was worthless when I typed it, yet it didn't mean that at all.
Do you have any reference to the R0 from vaccinated but still infectious vs unvaccinated people?
As long as it's under 1, even just a little, we'll get there eventually. Clearly, if it's way under 1 we'll get there faster than if it's just slightly under one.
If it's still over 1, but under the unvaccinated R0, we'll expand slower and have to count on other mitigations to get us the rest of the way.
I tried to google it, but I just kept finding the unvaccinated metric.
This is like when the news reports "most people something something". We interpret that as "just about everyone", but that's not what it means at all. If a building has 1,000 people in it and 501 of them love coffee, we can say "most people in the building love coffee". Reading that statement you might think you could ask anyone in the building if they love coffee and you'll get a "yes" almost all the time. Not really though, it'll be like flipping a coin, about half the time, which doesn't feel like most at all.
The "can and do still" is like that. If we have 1,000 vaccinated people and 100 of them develop enough COVID, and then 50 of them infect someone else, then yes vaccinated people "can and do still" infect others. Just 50 of the 1,000 in this example. That doesn't mean it's not super effective. It means if a vaccinated person is concerned they might be one of the 50, say they're visiting an immunocompromised grand parent holding an immunocompromised baby in a rocking chair, they should take precautions in case they're one of the 50 not the 950.
We could use some more reporting on what the actual transmission impact is. Without knowing it, everything is erroring on the side of caution in any area with lots of transmission. It's the conservative safety thing to do.