Direct and Indirect Effects of Vaccines: Evidence from COVID-19

Sorry people, but the verdict on this one continues to come in:

We estimate direct and indirect vaccine effectiveness and assess how far the infection-reducing externality extends from the vaccinated, a key input to policy decisions. Our empirical strategy uses nearly universal microdata from a single state and relies on the six-month delay between 12- and 11-year-old COVID vaccine eligibility. Vaccination reduces cases by 80 percent, the direct effect. This protection spills over to close contacts, producing a household-level indirect effect about three-fourths as large as the direct effect. However, indirect effects do not extend to schoolmates. Our results highlight vaccine reach as important to consider when designing policy for infectious disease.

That is from American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, by Seth Freedman, Daniel W. Sacks, Kosali Simon, and Coady Wing.  So many different methods and papers are pointing in the same direction…