Let’s not be naive. The reason you pointed it out was to lower the credibility of the authors. But is the converse also true? Should we also assume that researchers who have promoted the value of vaccines in the past cannot objectively assess the risks of the Covid vaccine? That’s what the anti-Vax folks say. You are using the same tactics as the anti-Vax crowd and don’t even realize it.
Criticize the science. What the authors do on their spare time is irrelevant.
That’s understandable and justified. But it also doesn’t take away from the fact that long-term testing of the effects of the vaccines wasn’t done before they were approved. Such long-term testing is typical for vaccines but because of the emergency wasn’t done here. This means that we in effect represent the human trials for the long-term effects of the vaccines. We are the human trials for the boosters that did not undergo human tests before being deployed. There are very justifiable reasons for why that was done, but to say it shouldn’t be a factor in deciding whether to take the boosters seems nonsensical.
You really believe that was an act of deception, that the folks here are so easily fooled? How much smarter do you think you are than the rest of the board? I don’t have Doshi’s article bookmarked so I have to Google every time I link it. Google gives me multiple choices and I randomly choose one. You seem to enjoy looking for conspiracies.
There was no long term testing of the virus either, at individual or population level - again, because it was not possible in the timeframe - but from what we could see, the long term effects of covid have a far, far worse outlook than any of the vaccines, by orders of magnitude.
All of life is a balance of probabilities and risk*consequence. This is an investing forum. If I saw an investment with the risk/reward of the covid vaccines (as they seemed in Dec 2020) and the alternative was an investment with the risk/reward of covid (as it seemed in Dec 2020), I’d take the vaccines for 100% of my portfolio every time.
Of course, it all depends on one’s definition of “long term”, too. Take the polio vaccine, because I’m sure there are some of us who remember the early days of that programme. Even more pertinent, the tail end of the era before and the specter of so called iron lungs and kids at school with their legs in calipers, right?
How long do you think it was between the start of testing and widespread adoption in the US…have a guess, without resorting to Google? Well, I’ll tell you (because I’ve just spent an interesting more-than-a-few minutes browsing the history of polio and the vaccines) A year…that’s all. Ah-HA!!..I hear…that’s 6x longer than this vaccine was “rushed” through the approval process. Well, considering the advances in technology and the understanding of viruses in general since the 1950s, that looks to me like breakneck speed by comparison.
Boosters were needed also with revisions of the schedule as time passed. Looking back on the history (UK) I must’ve been part of the early wave of the mass immunisations and can recall the mental sigh of relief when this dose was the last…and the heartsink feeling when we got the note from school to take to our parents advising of the need for another shot. Seems to me that it happened multiple times over but that might be False Memory Syndrome …probably closer to twice.
I’m still shaking my head in amazement at the numbers of unimmunised (to polio) kids were walking around in the UK when it was all over the news in England in the Summer. Shouldn’t really have been surprised though.
I agree. But we appear to have reached a point in the pandemic that the level of immunity for most healthy individuals is sufficiently high that infection from the current Covid variants rarely lead to hospitalization. Obviously people at high risk for severe symptoms should get the booster, but for most others it becomes reasonable to ask whether the slight but still significant chance of severe side effects is worth reducing the small chance of Covid hospitalization.
Much of Europe apparently doesn’t think so as the EU recommends boosters only for those most at risk while asserting there was a lack of evidence to justify a similar recommendation for the general public.
> At the moment, there is no clear evidence to support giving a second booster dose to people below 60 years of age who are not at higher risk of severe disease. Neither is there clear evidence to support giving early second boosters to healthcare workers or those working in long-term care homes unless they are at high risk.
What has really happened is far different. The current (Omicron and Q*.*) variants are not the same type of infection as original Covid. So what changed was the cause of disease. It mutated to become far more infectious AND less of a killer–because the first round of Covid killed off the people who were most easily infected–and many of them DIED. Covid changed to become less lethal because it survived better when the host did NOT die fairly quickly (if the host died due to the infection).
This claim requires evidence, which you did not provide.
For example, it would require comparing infections of people who do not have vaccines and have not been previously exposed to any covid strains, to see how the disease severity in a naive human compares with infection by original covid.
I believe we will see the results of a real life experiment along these lines in China in the next few weeks.
The question of ‘lethality globally’, ‘lethality in a population’ and ‘lethality in an individual’ are quite different.
The US population of 2022 is completely different to the US population of 2019 in terms of the presence of T-cells and antibodies.
Whereas, the population of China, many of whom are both unvaccinated and naive to covid infection, will have an naive immune response.
If you choose an ‘immunised-by-previous-exposures/vaccines population’ as your benchmark, you would have to conclude that original covid is ‘effectively harmless’ to a modern population. Indeed it has disappeared completely from circulation as a result of strong immune responses to it.
Let me ask you a question: would you rather be exposed today to a sample of original covid circa March 2020, or a sample of the latest strain of omicron?
Which do you think would be most likely to leave you harmed?
For myself, I’d pick ‘covid March 2020’ every time. Because I’m certain it will be less lethal in the context of my immune response today. In fact I suspect my immune system will shrug off the invading virii without an infection even establishing itself.
There is the problem. Today, the primary Covid infections are BA.5 and BQ1 and BQ1.1. All of which are less lethal than original Covid. These versions spread more readily because the host(s) are not significantly ill–so they do NOT take many preventive actions to stop infection (either getting it from someone OR passing it on).
For example, it is generally believed that omicron spreads more readily than delta, because it replicates 70x faster in the lining of the nose and throat.
And the fact that omicron spreads more readily says nothing about its relative lethality compared to original covid in a covid-spike-naive host. We do not have data on that in human hosts and will not have that data until people pull it out of Chinese statistics. Perhaps never.
The only lethality data we know for sure in covid-spike-naive hosts is in mice, where it has been tested and found to be less lethal than delta or original ancestral covid. It is probable that it is less lethal in humans too, but there is no direct evidence and no studies I’m aware of running to gather it, because covid-spike-naive humans are extremely extremely hard to find nowadays (outside of China).
Yes it is a scientific fact. The theory which proves out with many viruses, if the host is killed then the virus can not spread. The jump from Delta to Omicron was facilitated by Omicron being far less deadly. Nature made an unconscious choice of greater survival. The trade off where Omicron becomes dominant is how fast it spreads. This crowds out any other variants and we just see Omicron. Crowding out is another choice by nature that is unconscious.
This is also the route the Spanish Flu took. Spanish Flu is still with us.
Given how awful RSV and flu were and given how few people have gotten their updated COVID boosters, I thought for sure that this winter’s surge would be at least as big as last winter’s surge. Fortunately, the latest wastewater viral loads (Covid-19 Wastewater Monitoring | Biobot Analytics) have proven me wrong.
This is a good sign. Of course, there no way of knowing what will or will not happen in the months ahead. In 2022, there was a major surge that peaked in summer, and the following drop in the wastewater viral load was anemic. In contrast, the summers of 2020 and 2021 contained the low points in the wastewater viral loads.
I’m not dropping any precautions at this time. The wastewater viral load STILL has to drop a long way to approach the lows of 2022 and 2021.
…probably closer to twice.