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> The threat from the virus is not only immediate risk to the individual, it is also further transmissions increasing the risk of creating new breakthrough vari
by acituan 5y ago
> The threat from the virus is not only immediate risk to the individual, it is also further transmissions increasing the risk of creating new breakthrough variants
> Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous
Those are very different justifications with very different policy implications, it is best not to conflate the two.
If breakthrough variants was the major concern (and it should have been) vaccine rollout should have been fast in addition to very high percentages, and vaccinated/unvaccinated population mix should have been minimized with policy. Anything less gives the perfect arena for evolutionary algorithm to learn its way around the vaccine immunity.
Second issue is the fading immunity of current vaccines in comparison to natural immunity. Vaccines got disproportionate attention and funding at the expense of covid treatment bets, which would have helped with developing higher natural immunity levels. To what degree conflicts of interests due to EUA play in this, we don’t know. But once booster shots enter the “mandatory” territory, that will cause an additional drop in compliance. How many boosters can we really mandate, for how many years?
- freeone3000 5y agoHow in the world could vaccine rollout have been any faster? This is the fastest a vaccination program has ever been run, for anything, ever. We're at 60% population vaccination after SIX MONTHS, which is absolutely insane -- polio was slower, and they were allowed jet injectors! Vaccination is going as fast as possible, and policy was implemented to minimize all mixing of people, not just Vax/unvax.
- acituan 5y agoYou misunderstand the problem. We’re not talking about the total vaccination rate; it is a matter of how diffuse or concentrated it had to be for a particular locale to minimize variant training. Obviously it brings up questions of fairness thus was avoided by politicians. > Vaccination is going as fast as possible, and policy was implemented to minimize all mixing of people, not just Vax/unvax. It was a lofty aspiration but wasn’t/hasn’t been good enough. We could have had different levels of strictness from the beginning when lifting lockdowns, instead of going a full open and betting on a no variant scenario, instead of now with too late of an attempt, which will anger people and won’t be likely to work well.
- shaklee3 5y agoPlease cite a recent source that natural immunity is better/longer lasting.
- zekica 5y agohttps://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoThat study (at least the abstract) does not support your contention. It makes the case that previously infected individuals do not need to be prioritised for vaccination, not that natural immunity is better than vaccine driven immunity. Perhaps you shared the wrong paper?
- spirodonfl 5y agoPerhaps you misread the paper? You cherry picked a portion of the abstract and made it seem like that conclusion was made. Here, let me help you: "Conclusions: Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before." You can prioritize those who have not been infected before BECAUSE those who HAVE been infected are unlikely to see a benefit in vaccinating to begin with.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoYour point was that natural immunity was better than vaccine induced immunity. The paper does not support this contention. Like, I'm academically interested in this, and I know how easy it is to share the wrong paper, hence my final comment.