12-26-2020, 03:50 AM
There's obviously never any guarantee of anything. BUT...the example I've seen cited of where a vaccine prevents illness but not transmission is the meningococcal vaccine, which is for a bacteria. Bacteria can colonize you (for example in your nasal passages) and multiply without actually becoming pathogenic and activating an immune response, which allows them to be in droplets you expel. Viruses, on the other hand, must invade and burst cells in order to multiply, which is almost guaranteed to activate the immune system unless it's somehow done at a very low level.
The upshot is, it's not necessarily due to the type of vaccine, but what the pathogen is. And since this is a virus, it's relatively unlikely (not impossible!) that it can cause and infection and be transmissible even though a vaccinated person doesn't get sick. The fact that people with this coronavirus are often asymptomatic, and in fact most contagious before developing symptoms, might mean it's slightly more likely with this than other viruses, if that means it takes a while for the immune system to pick it up (even if you already have antibodies).
The upshot is, it's not necessarily due to the type of vaccine, but what the pathogen is. And since this is a virus, it's relatively unlikely (not impossible!) that it can cause and infection and be transmissible even though a vaccinated person doesn't get sick. The fact that people with this coronavirus are often asymptomatic, and in fact most contagious before developing symptoms, might mean it's slightly more likely with this than other viruses, if that means it takes a while for the immune system to pick it up (even if you already have antibodies).