My understanding is that the Covid vaccines currently available measure the effectiveness by whether people who have received the vaccine exhibit symptoms of Covid at a later date - whether coughing/loss of smell or some other measure. I have yet to see anything which shows that a person who has had a vaccine is not infectious (or minimally infectious) - and the drug firms all seem to say "we have no data" when asked how a vaccine affects infectiousness
Thus, if every passenger on an aeroplane has had the vaccine, we can claim only that (almost) nobody will show symptoms of Covid - i.e. no coughing fits. I don't see how we can claim that passengers are not infectious. We therefore seem to be sweeping the problem under the carpet because nobody *appears* ill instead of knowing if pax are infectious.
The purpose of "PCR test on arrival" or quarantine is to find out who is infectious and ensure arriving pax will not spread the disease to residents of the country of arrival. I don't see how this "no vaccine, no fly" rule would help either passengers or citizens of the arrival country since it would not be possible to make any claim that the arriving passengers are not infectious. The "no vaccine, no fly" rule seems to be about building confidence in passengers to buy tickets to fly (and boosting airline revenues) because nobody on the aircraft will appear ill and thus passengers perceive themselves to be safe. A person who picks up Covid would find it extremely difficult to prove they were infected by another passenger on a specific flight as opposed to somewhere else
If there is evidence that the vaccine significantly reduces the level of infectiousness, then there is a much stronger argument for requiring all pax to be vaccinated. However, I haven't see that evidence. Has anybody else ?
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 23rd Nov 2020 at 23:31.