In the beginning of the pandemic, out of "n" number of people who get Covid-19, 3.4% of them were hospitalized, and 1% of them died. Those were the raw stats.
For the reasoned explained in this video as to the FDA EUA ( Emergency Use Authorization ) only the prevention and mitigation of Covid infection and serious symptoms were considered - not transmissibility. Because to do transmissibility studies it takes much longer ( during and emergency pandemic situation ) and costs much more.
Does the Pfizer Vaccine Stop Transmission?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrMzvasrm8
Roger Seheult, MD of MedCram discusses how and when the transmission prevention capability of vaccines were tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. See all Dr. Seheult's videos at: https://www.medcram.com
Of course, it follows that if you cut down on infections and deaths it will have some effect on transmissibility as well, but it was not studied or a factor in EUA because of the time it would take and the money it would cost. That is, if you are vaccinated you will have less virus in your system and shed less virus as well, and so would more likely to be mess transmittable.
"They" could have explained this to the population and how as an unvaccinated person you could be close to being as susceptible to being infected from a vaccinated or unvaccinated person with Covid, but I think they didn't do a good job with that. But, to be fair, everyone had the same choice to get the vaccination or not, and the data out there said that being vaccinated made you less likely to get Covid, have symptoms of Covid, have to be hospitalized with Covid, die of Covid, or to get Long Covid, so those who did not get the vaccine or expressed distrust or contempt for the vaccines were only hurting themselves and reducing their chances to fight Covid if they got infected.
The point is that just because the vaccine trials did not specifically study transmissibility does not mean the vaccine does not reduce transmissibility.
But, after the vaccines went out to be used, by August 2020 the numbers showed that the incidence of household transmission was 40%-50% lower in households of vaccinated patients. They did not wait to find this out before the EUA on Dec. 11th 2020 because it would have withheld the vaccine back for months. Now that there is a lot of data out there, lots of other followup studies show reduction in transmission of up to 89%.
Dr. Seheult also explains with graphs and data how the low vaccination rate in red-states caused much more death and stress to the health care systems.
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