Poynter: “If you don’t read any further, know this: No vaccine is 100% effective against any disease. The COVID shots are no exception. Effectiveness in preventing infection — defined as a positive test result — appears in some studies to wane sharply the more time that goes by after completing the one- or two-shot regimen. But on key measures — prevention of serious illness, hospitalization and death — real-world studies from the U.S. and abroad generally show protection weakening slightly, particularly in older or sicker people, but remaining strong overall, even with the rise of the more infectious delta variant of the COVID virus. The bottom line? Getting vaccinated with any of the three vaccines available in the U.S. reduces the chance of getting infected in the first place, and significantly cuts the risk of hospitalization or death if you do contract COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published a study showing fully vaccinated people were more than 10 times less likely to die or be hospitalized than the unvaccinated. “When it comes to what matters, vaccines hold up really well,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “They were designed to tame the virus.”..