Another one you may have heard is the idea that vaccinated people are “just as likely” to spread the virus as unvaccinated people.

Sometimes this is said out of an overabundance of caution – as in, “the reason I haven’t left my house in three months despite being fully vaccinated is because vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people” – and sometimes it’s said to justify a complete lack of it – you know, “why should I bother getting vaccinated when vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people?” But either way, it’s a misunderstanding of the facts – so let’s take a look at what’s really going on.

“Let me make one thing clear: Vaccinated people are not as likely to spread the coronavirus as the unvaccinated,” writes Craig Spencer, an emergency-medicine physician and director of global health in emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, in The Atlantic last week.

The statement that “vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people” might be true if you’re talking about vaccinated people who are infected with COVID-19, but if you’re talking about vaccinated people as a whole – both healthy and currently infected with the virus – then it’s not true at all.

“And vaccinated people are far less likely to have the coronavirus – period.”.

The other 24 guests, therefore, were definitely more likely to spread the virus, purely because they got it and the vaccinated group didn’t – and you can’t spread an illness you don’t have