Instead, as per article, it is about how these shots will save more lives, if administered to people without access to first shots!
If vaccine doses were unlimited worldwide, 3rd shots (according to article logic) would by recommended for all.
It also implies a level of consensus that doesn't exist. "Vaccine experts", as a whole, don't hold this opinion. This is about two specific dissenters in the FDA.
It's not a completely cut and dry subject. There are tradeoffs with all such decisions, such as the value of a booster in one individual vs. a first injection to another in a different part of the world, etc... It's not an unreasonable position.
But it's not a consensus position either. The typical recommendation seems to be that boosters are valuable.
As I see it there _is_ a consensus among scientists and healthcare professionals, but not among politicians who see booster shots necessary to keep their national economies up.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.15.21262067v...
That study suggests that 16% of the elderly have no immunity to covid 2 weeks after vaccination and 70% after 6 months.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but we might as well not vaccinate anyone over 60 if we're not going to be giving them boosters every 3 months or so.
As vaccination rates rise, the mere existence of vaccine stocks in countries with high vaccination rates means doses will be wasted - i.e. keeping the bare minimum on hand to vaccinate people as they need it means we have quite a lot of surplus doses which will otherwise definitely be wasted.
Hence the analysis of boosters: if there's any benefit at all to high risk groups (i.e. healthcare providers who overwhelmingly now were vaccinated about 8 months ago), then that's a productive use of local vaccine capacity which has to exist in some form (i.e. new people are hitting "vaccine recommended" age every day).
As far as I can see, the vaccine that is actually suitable for developing countries is the AstraZeneca one, and this isn't often used in the west because of the blood clot issues.
A - The benefit for young people seems to be outweighed by the risk, for a given time period. The risk of mortality from vaccine induced clots in under 40s is twice the risk of death from Covid [0] (post relates to AZ but other vaccines has similar clot risks). The risk of hospitalisation from myocarditis is a multiple of the risk of hospitalisation from Corona, especially in young males [1] who have a four to six times risk. That alone would be enough to put serious doubt into the vaccines for all narrative, but there's also rarer and weirder confirmed side effects like Bell's Palsy and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
B - The continued dramatic overlooking of natural immunity, which seems to be 6 or 7 times more effective than vaccines alone. Misinformation on this subject from vested interests and uncritical / complicit media has been rife [2].
C - Better, safer, more effective and more traditional vaccines are coming, ie, Novavax.
As a young male with no comorbidities and natural immunity, WHY in God's name would I risk taking an mRNA vaccine that has _far_ higher odds of sending me to hospital or killing me than it has of protecting me from the same by lowering Corona reinfection risk?
[0] - https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40328123.html [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... [2] - https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101
> ...the vaccine on the entire adult population [in France] would avert 10 deaths from Covid among 18-39-year-olds, but would be associated with 21 deaths from blood clotting in the same age grouping over the same time period.
There are ~16 million 18-39 year olds in France. So both those risks seem vanishingly small.
I'm not saying that marketing of vaccines has been honest overall, but that's just my 2 cents about "WHY in God's name I would risk taking an mRNA vaccine".
The argument for vaccination of young boys is more complex, and different expert panels have come to different conclusions there. The UK is more of an outlier in this case. There is still enough uncertainty here, especially on the consequences of the infection itself that it's a really difficult decision.
As for point C, there is no reason to believe that Novavax would be safer than the mRNA vaccines. It could be, but there isn't anything inherently superior here that would automatically make it safer.
1. Do they take into account the underreporting in VAERS? That could mean far higher adverse effects than those reported.
2. Are there any calculations regarding how the situation changes? As new variants emerge (like Delta), as immunity from vaccination wanes etc, how much will a vaccine prevent severe illness and death? Real world data seems to suggest vaccine efficacy isn't as great as previously thought.
3. Another point to keep in mind is that there are therapeutic solutions and as time goes on, hopefully better medications will be readily available, getting covid-19 will result in less severe illness and death.
I'm not against vaccination, I just think that these are all things we should consider.
Perhaps scientists have considered all this very carefully and have reached the conclusion that vaccination for all is better for the individual as well as for the society - I haven't looked deeply to find these answers. However, if all this has been carefully considered they & journalists/media really fail to communicate the science well.
Aside from that, vaccination helps everyone by helping to prevent the spread of the virus.
Also, a million doses to kids will likely result in one less ICU admission but create six myocarditus cases. What's the five year average outcome for those six kids?
That's right, it doesn't prevent it, it reduces it. Just like wearing a seat belt does not prevent dying in a car accident but reduces the risk.
You're just splitting hair.
But vaccinating entire populations for a respiratory virus that mutates and stays infectious is a recipe for never ending boosters and has a strong possibility of creating more lethal variants because these will thrive in the vaccinated less severe masses when normally they'd be bed ridden, symptomatic and easily contained through contact tracing (See sars 1)
You better hope they dial the targeting for the boosters and the timing of them correctly because when you're short lived immunity wanes from the previous dose you may be facing a more tuned up lethal version that was kept circulating by all these vaccinated persons.
Vaccines for the most vulnerable are very appropriate here but not for the individuals that have very low risk. It would be better to unlock this population and let them develop stronger natural immunity while dealing with the edge cases with monoclonal antibodies and other promising viral therapies.
And do you have examples of vaccinations favoring the apparition of variants for other diseases? As far as I know, that's never happened. On the contrary, I've seen researchers point to immunocompromised patients as possible sources for variants, as the infection lingers in them. On the other hand, vaccines, even when they don't work to prevent the infection do shorten it, so by that logic they should reduce the apparition of variants.
Look at what happened with a vaccine that was applied to the poultry industry that didn't prevent transmission and had similar mutational characteristics to SarsCov2: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
If it reduces R, other measures can help bring it down further. Further down the line, inhaled vaccines currently in development targeting the mucosal membrane are likely to enhance efficacy.
> Look at what happened with a vaccine that was applied to the poultry industry that didn't prevent transmission and had similar mutational characteristics to SarsCov2: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
So that vaccine, uniquely, precisely caused the infection to linger instead of quickly killing the host. That's not what's happening with Covid and current vaccines, the opposite in fact is.
The Covid vaccines reduce the duration of the infection (as well as reducing the likelihood of infection). The Marek vaccine caused it to last longer, by prolonging the life of the host. You're drawing the exact opposite conclusion to what your data shows.