>>13636560not a virologist/immunologist but I’ll try to explain what I can.
The covid vaccine, like all others, is designed to trigger an immune response to the virus in a manner that is safe to the patient. The mRNA shots use the spike protein to do so, and some use inactivated covid 19 virus or a different harmless virus that has parts of the covid genome inside. The idea for all of them is that your body has little/no issue fighting it off, but still triggers enough of an immune response so that if the actual virus enters your system, the body remembers it and fights it off more efficiently.
No vaccine as far as I know has ever been 100% in preventing infection, but I very well could be wrong. Usually they are considered effective in preventing severe disease/death, such as the chickenpox vaccine which is about
95% effective or the pertussis vaccine which is about 78% effective. So far, the covid vaccines altogether are about 90% effective at preventing severe disease and death, which seems about on par with many other vaccines. The good thing is that if you do get infected, like the people you mentioned, the body is able to better fight off the virus. I don’t think the vaccine would mask their symptoms so to speak, if the disease progressed to a severe state they would know as the symptoms would make themselves clear like shortness of breath and a bad fever.
Again I am not a doctor or anything, but I have several friends that are, and I’ve talked with them quite a bit about the topic, but I’d still advise anyone with more in-depth questions to talk with your doctor about it.
