New findings in the prestigious science journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases blow a hole in the argument that workers need to get vaccinated to protect those around them. The research proves the foolishness of forcing firefighters, cops and other public employees to get jabbed or lose their pay and even jobs, endangering public safety. So too, President Joe Biden should retract his order to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to compel large employers to mandate shots.

The journal reported Friday that COVID-19 vaccines have "minimal" impact on preventing transmission of the Delta strain, which accounts for more than 99 percent of US cases. Shots protect the people getting them from serious illness, but they don't stop those people from spreading the Delta variant to others.

Don't get me wrong: Americans should choose to get vaccinated. The key word is "choose." Though shots are no guarantee against getting infected and spreading it to others, they provide significant protection – 90 percent or more – from hospitalization and death. I'm triple jabbed.

Choosing not to get vaccinated is choosing to risk your own life. The health risk to others is minimal.

Most vaccines – against polio, smallpox, measles and other diseases – prevent infection and spread. But not COVID vaccines now that the battle is against Delta. They've become disease-tamers rather than infection-preventers.

Tell that to Mayor Bill De Blasio, who gave Gotham employees until Monday to get at least one jab or be sent home without pay. As of Monday, 9,000 are on unpaid leave because they've refused the shots. Twenty FDNY companies were shuttered because many of New York's bravest rebuff the vax. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea claims the mandate won't further diminish the number of New York's finest on the street, but that remains to be seen.

Governors and mayors from Maine to Los Angeles are demanding public employees and even nurses and doctors – hailed just months ago as heroes – get vaxxed or get fired.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills says, "Just as vaccination defeated smallpox and vaccination defeated polio, vaccination is the way to defeat COVID-19." Sorry, Governor, but you don't know what you're talking about.

Just as politicians don't read bills before voting on them, they don't keep up with the science – yet still insist on telling us what to do.

The Lancet's groundbreaking findings show that fully vaccinated people who came down with COVID infected household members at the same rate (about 25 percent) as unvaccinated people did (about 23 percent). The vaxxed had just as much viral load in their upper respiratory tract, making them just as contagious. "Our findings show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from being infected with the Delta variant and spreading it," concludes study co-author Ajit Lalvani.

The British researchers also found that vaccinated people were only somewhat less likely to contract the virus (25 percent) compared with the unvaccinated (38 percent). That conflicts with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing the vaccinated are far less likely to contract COVID.

One thing's for sure: The science is uncertain. So government should not be heavy-handedly imposing mandates, claiming they're needed to make workplaces safer.

The White House, though, is pressing large companies to mandate shots and directing OSHA to enforce that policy among two-thirds of the private-sector workforce with hefty penalties. Biden's Build Back Better bill increases fines 10-fold, to as much as $700,000 per incident for hazardous conditions, threatening bankruptcy for all but the largest enterprises.

Yet the science undercuts Democrats' claim that unvaccinated people are a workplace hazard. Foes have challenged workplace mandates 39 times in federal courts with little success, but the new scientific evidence may change that.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases stressed the urgency of improving current vaccines or developing new ones to actually "protect against asymptomatic infections and onward transmission."

Foolishly, Team Biden and Democrats in Congress vilify vaccine-developer Moderna for making a profit and threaten to seize its patents even as COVID could continue morphing into new variants, requiring new vaccines from companies like Moderna.

When you're fighting a war – in this case, against a killer disease – attacking your own ammunitions maker is no way to win.