And I've seen other talk about "experts" saying that boosters are not needed (https://www.axios.com/covid-19-vaccine-booster-not-needed-ex...)
This shit is so fucking exhausting.
"What they're saying: "Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations," the scientists wrote."
In other words, it isn't even saying they aren't needed at all, but that it is better to have everyone fully vaccinated before we start on giving boosters - with the exception of some folks with compromised immune systems.
And to be fair, this is the sort of messaging that other places were handing out. It also isnt all that unusual that different parties give out different information, especially when some of those folks aren't medical professionals versed in such diseases or the intricacies of the immune system.
Your comment also makes me very happy to not be in the US right now. The government here (Norway) simply sent me an SMS when the vaccine was available, and prompted me to schedule both doses at that time. I imagine if we get to the point of booster shots, something similar will happen.
But I hope we get the world a dose or two of the vaccine first so that fewer people might die.
If it's not clear, I'm talking about how "we don't need to wear masks" != "masks don't work" as much as it was "we need all the masks for medical staff right now and there is a shortage". Similarly, the messaging should not be "we don't need boosters" because we we inevitably DO need people to take a booster it will be met with resistance due to "changing facts", instead the messaging should be "boosters help but it's better to get more people vaccinated with 1-2 shots before we focus on boosters".
Places like Israel that immunised large swathes of population very early are already seeing signs of waning effectiveness and are planning to give booster shots in the near term. In the UK we're also in the same boat. Early vaccination has transformed life here, with low death rates despite high transmission. The protection the vaccine gives is providing us with massive benefits. It looks like boosters for older people going into winter make sense.
In the US that's not as clear. Vaccination has become a bitterly contested right vs left issue, in a way that it just isn't in Europe. Our Conservative government in Britain has been at the front line of pushing through a massively successful vaccination campaign, with broad cross party support for the strategy overall. There's plenty of political credit to go around. The contrast with the US couldn't be more stark.
I think the Biden booster plan looks ill advised, but at least he's not talking his voters into getting them or their loved ones killed or crippled by this thing. I'm sitting here, a fully vaccinated British conservative, watching interviews with dying patients in US hospitals saying they didn't get vaccinated because they are conservatives, wondering how things could have gone so horribly wrong.
There's an entire subreddit dedicated to this and the patterns of behavior from these people become clear pretty quickly. They think prayers are more effective than vaccines.
Expecting simple and final answers to questions depending on a myriad of factors (some unknown or even unknowable!) is stupid.
In my opinion, it betrays a complete misunderstanding of how <science> works, and what it can do; the fact that scientific consensus CHANGES with new data is central and necessary.
And it's also completely meaningless to complain about "disagreement between experts" unless you are willing to precisely lay out and compare all those base assumptions that were made to interpret and answer your question (something "sceptics" rarely bother with).
Sorry for the rant if I misinterpreted your position.
I don't think "covid sceptics" are the only ones guilty of this. Far from it in fact.
Vocal believers in "covid orthodoxy" (can't think of a better descriptor right now) seem much worse at acting as if simple and final answers exist for everything.
Annoyingly necessary disclaimer: I am not a "covid sceptic" by any stretch, I am fully vaccinated and believe that many precautions are warranted. But I am sick of being told what to do based on uncertain emerging science.
Case in point: vaccine passports seem to be an example where the policy was concocted based on assumptions about the science which turned out to be untrue (the assumption being that vaccinated people wouldn't carry or transmit Covid.) I believe that most governments are only keeping them in place in order to inconvenience people into getting vaccinated. This is exactly the sort of thing that fosters more scepticism, even if a lot of it is misguided.
There are multiple reasons for experts to be against boosters. A few that come to mind:
- Requiring boosters to maintain "fully vaccinated" status undermines public trust in the vaccine's efficacy. This depresses willingness to get it in the first place, and utterly destroys the confidence of those that already "did their part".
- While the long term prevention of COVID contraction and spread seems to be beyond these vaccines, they do significantly reduce the severity of a COVID infection. I would guess that a large portion of the scientific community has accepted that this may be the best that can be done. Getting COVID and having the vaccine means that you likely have more durable long term protection with severely reduced risk of hospitalization.
Something to remember when it comes to public health: you, the individual are unimportant. What matters is the herd. If that means sacrificing a few to save the many, governments will do it and lie to you the whole way if that is what is required to accomplish their goal.
Booster shots confirm that the vaccine doesn't actually work. IMHO, vaccines for colds cannot work because "cold viruses" are fundamentally different than viral diseases like chickenpox or measles.
A very large percentage of the population thinks the public health authorities are full of it. I gently poke fun at people who half-heartedly take mask recommendations seriously [0].
[0] https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1420989505163567107
> - While the long term prevention of COVID contraction and spread seems to be beyond these vaccines, they do significantly reduce the severity of a COVID infection.
I think the injections were only tested/deployed in the spring/summer, when virus 'cases' would be expected to decrease anyways. I expect the injections will be recognized as a total failure by next spring.
IMHO, the pandemic-as-vaccine-marketing-campaign was obvious from the beginning. It reminded me of the time I convinced my passenger that the moon was 'going away' [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881670
> Something to remember when it comes to public health: you, the individual are unimportant. What matters is the herd. If that means sacrificing a few to save the many,
At least you're honest about this.
> governments will do it and lie to you the whole way if that is what is required to accomplish their goal.
The core lie is that SARS-CoV-2 is a super-virus that warrants extraordinary measures, when in fact the commonly-used treatment (oxygenation) for SARS-CoV-2 is what drives the deterioration [2]. Public Health should have stuck with the 2019 plan for pandemics, instead of tossing all the old recommendations.
If the Government had used the "pandemic" to address the 'obesity epidemic' it would have improved public health. But instead lockdowns worsened the obesity epidemic. Whoops.
Maybe you still think there's a ventilator shortage [3]? If so, take SCUBA diving classes. They'll teach you how to not blow up your lungs.
[2] https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat...
[3] https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1439999710702358531
[minor edits]
It's not our job to be virologists, it's not our job even to be scientists. It is our job to conceptually understand science well enough to know that disagreement between scientists does not imply that one of them is wrong, or that their "expertise" is suspect, or that they're motivated by culture wars.
P(vaccine worth it | aforementioned) = low
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/928365 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “This study shows you are twice as likely to get infected again if you are unvaccinated. Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.”
Many people will think it must be like masks: once the "experts" get their boosters, then they'll tell everyone else it's a good idea to get it. They just want to be sure there's enough for them, first.
I have some travel coming up in October. I plan to get the Moderna booster even though I'm not in an eligible group.
Still waaay better than covid or the flu, but damn. The world is never going to be the same.
I get the flu shot every year and have zero side effects, it’s a different type of vaccine but I believe the Chinese have developed an inactivated virus vaccine for covid.
I could have easily lied and said that I am immunocompromised, but that is not my style. Maybe I need to keep looking to find someone who will give it to me.
> Still better than covid, but damn
I mean maybe?
if your decision making is fueled primarily by click bait bylines, youre going to have a bad time. if you read through to the nuance of each story, the narrative doesnt flip flop quite as much as it first appears.
quite honestly, the details havent changed that much since the beginning. primarily effects the elderly, travels by spit through the air but not as airborn as measles, on a spectrum more load is worse, if infected seek monoclonal antibodies and quarantine yourself, vaccines prevent hospitalization, occasional boosters will be likely until entire population develops built in immunity. delta has brought the age bracket down (or is that because the first round of most likely to be infected are already gone) a bit and increased the transmission rate.
No one's ever going to inject a live virus into themselves. Inoculation is effective but we've moved past the need for that with modern vaccines. The current thinking is that we will end up getting a "mRNA cocktail" of different variants, and that that will provide the broad spectrum immune response you're talking about.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-live-virus-vaccine-...
Ironically, that is exactly what people are doing when they get the J&J vaccine.
At this point, I think that's 20 million people proving you wrong.
> natural immunity to more antigen sites than just the spike protean
Current studies show that natural immunity does not seem to be superior to immunity from the mRNA vaccines (for immunologically naive persons) - so heuristically speaking it seems to be better to 'train' antibodies on one thing rather than several antigen sites at the same time (this may seem counter-intuitive at first but is in line with many other infectious diseases).
However, once you have been vaccinated (or resp. have recovered from Covid-19) exposition to the virus (or resp. to the mRNA vaccines) will have additional benefits as you suggested!
- Actual Primary Completion Date : January 22, 2021
- Estimated Study Completion Date : January 2, 2023
There are quite a lot of secondary outcomes listed!
Short term we'll see lots of bursts of news, and new exciting findings, but it's only in the long term maybe even years from now that we'll know which science is truly the "settled" science.
As a layperson I am trying to sit back and watch the experts figuring it all out, because on the surface it is frustrating how hard it is to extract truth and facts instantaneously.
But, it is what it is...
It's all fudged to say you are protected a month or two after your last shot.
This is a crude, but representative analogy to the beta variant - I am sure there are people analysing the reaction kinetics of virion production that lead to the observed 1000 fold increase in peak virion titer as the infection peaks and then wanes. The cell does not need to hold 1000 x virions at lysis - a faster replicative cycle to lysis and repeat will lead to the 1000 fold blood titer with only 20-25% more virions at lysis due to the shorter time to lysis = more completed cycles before the immune response suppresses the virus.
