| - | - | - |
Vaccines are both about protecting yourself and others. As more of the community gets vaccinated transmission will fall. Breakthrough infections can happen, but if we keep community transmission down the amount of exposure events will decline and our risk of breakthroughs will decline. If those breakthrough infections happen, they'll tend to be mild.
The vaccines will reduce your relative risk of infection, but your absolute risk of infection is also dependent on community transmission levels, your frequency of exposures, and the quantity of virus in each exposure. You can't really control community transmission levels, but you can control how often you are in high-risk exposures and how risky those exposures are.
Watch community transmission levels. We now have data down to the county and town. Masks/social distancing will reduce the quantity of virus you are exposed to in each encounter. Ventilation will help keep an indoor environment safer. Testing will help you detect an infection so you can isolate. Being around vaccinated people will reduce the risk of being around infected people and high levels of transmission. The basic tools still work here with Delta.