> In Australia, and around the world, our government authorities told us repeatably that the covid vaccines stopped you catching the virus and thus giving it to others [1], or at least significantly reduced the likelihood of doing so.
It did reduce spread for pre-omicron strains. And since the data for omicron showed this doesn't appear to be the case anymore they have stopped saying that.
>It then came to light that Pfizer never tested for this during the trials and thus the authorities had no scientific evidence to say that this actually was the case.
Pfizer never claimed it did in their original clinical trial documentation, neither did any government. When the vaccines began to be rolled out to the general population is when that was found, that when they started saying that. And remember here in Australia we got the vaccines late, so that data was available when we did.
It did reduce spread for pre-omicron strains. And since the data for omicron showed this doesn't appear to be the case anymore they have stopped saying that.
>It then came to light that Pfizer never tested for this during the trials and thus the authorities had no scientific evidence to say that this actually was the case.
Pfizer never claimed it did in their original clinical trial documentation, neither did any government. When the vaccines began to be rolled out to the general population is when that was found, that when they started saying that. And remember here in Australia we got the vaccines late, so that data was available when we did.