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Its simply unethical to start administering booster shots when most people in the world are still waiting for their two doses.
by ummonk 5y ago
Its simply unethical to start administering booster shots when most people in the world are still waiting for their two doses.
- dehrmann 5y agoThe Pfizer vaccine has cold chain requirements that mean it can't be used for half the world. It's also not clear if we're better off knocking down cases massively in some countries to prevent mutations or doing a slow (2+ year?) rollout across the world targeting the most at-risk, but at the risk of vaccine-resistant strains. That said, the US is looking like a pretty fertile breeding ground for a vaccine resistant strain.
- ummonk 5y agoMost of the world has no trouble with the cold chain requirements for their urban populations at least. Liquid nitrogen / oxygen is a common industrial good across the world. And vaccine resistant strains aren’t a big deal, as demonstrated in the new article - the vaccines are still 95% effective at preventing severe illness.
- ipaddr 5y agoThey are still 95% effective after 6 months at preventing death. They are unknown effective against new variants. I've seen a variety of studies with different variants tested against Delta. At best I read 92% for Pfizer (but a previous test had them at 60%), other vaccines as low as 30%. The new variants like lambda have shown it responds to antibiotic poorly, it spreads quickly and is more deadly compared to delta. I'm not sure the vaccine strategy will continue to work.
- pseudo0 5y agoIsrael's Pfizer study has it at 64% effectiveness against Delta infection, but 94% against serious illness. That's still pretty decent. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/561627-pfizer-vaccine-less-effective-against-delta-variant https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/5...
- Doxin 5y agoMaybe I've misread, but why would you expect a virus to respond to antibiotics at all?
- pbak 5y agoSome of the indirect effects of Covid are infection by opportunistic bacteria. They don't help you fight Covid per-se, they help you not die.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dehrmann 5y ago> ...as demonstrated in the new article These new strains aren't even close to vaccine resistant, yet. Vaccines haven't been around long enough for that.
- refurb 5y agoLiquid oxygen? You can use it for cooling things. Not safely at least.
- ipaddr 5y agoWhat we are seeing is new variants coming from large populations around the globe. Delta is here. Lambda has just arrived. The Vietam variant which is delta+the British no one is talking about.. it will soon have a name. Better to lockdown, vaccinate those populations before giving a third or fourth or weekly dose. Saving Pfizer doses means other brands can go to hotter climates.
- pbak 5y agoIt took us 6 months to vaccinate 400-500 mil. people in industrial nations with the best logistics systems on the planet. We won't even be able to vaccinate the rest with basic doses for 7 years at a minimum at this rate. Alternatively, we produce cheap prophylactic drugs in industrial quantities and flood the battlefield.
- votepaunchy 5y agoBloomberg reports 3.35 billion doses administered, 10% in the US alone. We also have unknown tens or hundreds of millions of unused (and expiring) doses we have been unwilling to share with the world (as we continue to manufacture millions more per day). Most of the 6 months has been scaling up (and fixing) production, same reason iPhones are in short supply on release day. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
- pbak 5y agoI was wrong on the numbers. I have gone through the article. Still won't be done by early 2023, even at this rate. Logistics are hell, outside of urban centers.
- ummonk 5y agoThat was limited by manufacturing not logistics. If we continue scaling up manufacturing (and not diverting it to unnecessary uses like booster doses), the world can get vaccinated in a reasonable time frame.
- senectus1 5y agoThe Us is already producing a new strain.. B1526 is iota
- KMnO4 5y agoHow does ethics play into this at all? Pfizer is delivering vaccines as fast as they can, and at this point the bottleneck is logistics. It’s not exactly easy to set up the infrastructure to administer 14 billion shots. The fact that Pfizer is ready with a booster has little to do with the actual administration of the vaccine.
- _djo_ 5y agoSharing IP to allow other countries to manufacture their own doses would be a huge step forward.
- refurb 5y agoAin’t no country going to make the mRNA vaccines in time unless they already have the technology.
- Ericson2314 5y agoDo the "tech transfer" step too. Our privatized system of engineering is such garbage.
- refurb 5y agoEven with tech transfer you’d be looking at years before being able to manufacture. This is a very specialized process. It’s not like following a cookbook.
- Ericson2314 5y agoWhat is the evidence for that? Surely it depends on the degree of tech transfer?
- _djo_ 5y agoA lot of countries have the technological capability to manufacture mRNA vaccines with open licensing. However those aren't the only options, and even developing countries can make vaccines like the AZ and J&J ones as evidenced by some of the existing outsourced production. What's lacking is the legal right to do so. This also should be a global engineering effort with technology transfer and an active effort to open up COVID vaccine manufacturing wherever possible.
- hntroll1443 5y agoIt's not true that most people in the world are waiting. Most people have work to do, and they are young and relatively healthy, and have immune systems, so they just get on with their lives, not unduly frightened by a virus that poses very little risk to them.
- niklasbuschmann 5y agoOne could even argue that the second shot - with its comparably small efficacy improvement for hospitalisation and death - should be given to other countries, and much more so a third shot.