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skrebbel

And, for a selfish western pitch: reduce the chance that bad new variants develop.

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Was going to answer to say exactly this.

The more vaccinated, the merrier the world with less variants

What if it works the opposite though?

Simple evolutionary biology suggests resistance develops from roadblocks or mechanisms to stifle. We see it all the time in antibiotic resistance, resistance of insects to pesticides used in crops, all kinds of areas.

I don't see a reason this case would be different.

because you are giving the virus less chances to replicate and therefore less chances at mutation

I might be wrong, but it seems obvious to me that this should reduce variants

You are not protected againts new mutations just because they originate from another place in the world. You are not reducing the chances for new mutations.

Keeping the vaccine to yourself will not help you.

I think you're misunderstanding the intent of the parent post.

They are saying letting vaccines go to the rest of the world is still the right course of action even if your motives were purely selfish. By reducing the number of infections elsewhere, the virus has fewer chances to mutate and return to and endanger you.

While in principle that's clearly sound - fewer viral particles means fewer future variants appears to be the consensus opinion - I'm skeptical that the decision to recommend boosters after 8 months will have a measurable impact on that.

First of all, even under rosy vaccine acceptance trajectories that's not going to be many doses vs. the unvaccinated population; secondly, you need 1 dose for a booster, yet 2 for a full vaccination; thirdly, the data for hospitalisations may not be in, but for mere infections it is clearly showing a reduction in efficacy well before a that 8 month mininum so the opportunity cost of not vaccinating half a person will be offset in terms of transmission by the booster dose; fourthly not all vaccines are easily distributed, and as long as the US needs to have a readily available supply to entice the unvaccinated stragglers, you might as well use doses nearing expiration dates for boosters rather than throwing them away; fifth: we're not at 8 months yet for most people, and if the minimum delay is 8 months the average might be considerably more such that by the time this matters vaccine production should be higher and thus the loss relatively less impactful.

Some of those effects might be trivial or zero, but at the very least the small number of doses overall affected probably isn't. I'd be really surprised if the US reaches 100 million booster doses by next spring; and even if we did that's just not a huge number if your aim is to reduce transmission (as opposed to suffering).

I think he is stating the exact opposite: to actually give doses to those countries without, exactly for this reason

How will these vaccines that don't produce immunity lead to less severe variants? If they mute severity of illness they will lead to more severe variants. This is basic.

They do provide immunity in 95% (conservative) of cases, so it massively reduces the population that mutations can happen in.

They reduce severity of illness, and don't produce sterilizing immunity and eliminate transmission. And that's the problem, if you pick up a nasty mutation but because of vaccine you are able to still function, you are more likely to be out and about spreading it.

And when your limited immunity wanes in a few months this mutinous bastard copy you pushed on the masses may come back to bite you in the ass.

Maybe not though if you got your booster in time and if they designed it to match. Better hope your country went with the gold subscription.

What data are you referencing to claim that the vaccines do not provide some immunity? But importantly, the vaccines do reduce transmission. See the below study along with others.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717

Admittedly, one weakness of the above study is that it took place before Delta was widespread. There isn't a lot of data yet on how much the vaccines reduce transmission with Delta, but the likelihood is that they still do even if to a lesser degree.

Reducing transmission isn't good enough! If you have an R naught above one you're still in trouble. It's common knowledge that countries with highest vaccination rates have spikes in cases right now. Israel and Gibraltar for example. Herd immunity for this was always impossible.

Israel isn't among the countries with the highest vaccination rates anymore, quite a few other countries have overtaken it.

Ok well you can't beat Gibraltar at 99%. But you look at other countries. New Zealand is a good one. Their hospitals are getting swamped with kids right now with severe RSV. Why? They've had their immune systems degraded from some of the most severe lockdowns I the planet. And admittedly they aren't in a covid spike but the effective lockdown has created other problems.

This shouldn't be down voted. It appears to be correct and is a subject of active concern in NZ.

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/08/02/fight-against-...

I down-voted because that has nothing to do with a "degraded immune systems". Many of the more common respiratory viruses also died out in New Zealand with the quarantine. Kids never got a chance to develop immunity to those particular diseases previously and now it's coming on in a wave as they are reintroduced. It's not that their response is special, in normal circumstances kids would have gotten sick and been hospitalized, that it's happening all at once is.

No, they would have stronger immune systems from repeated exposure without the extreme lockdowns NZ introduced and less hospitalizations.

Respiratory viruses don't die out, they can persist in animal populations indefinitely. Sars Cov2 antibodies detected in 40% of NE deer populations for instance. Not to mention cats and dogs...

I assume you have evidence of the claim that by being regularly sick your immune system is stronger? Sure, it's run into more things it has learned to fight, but just because it knows how to fight a catalogue of things it doesn't mean that it will be better with the next novel pandemic, right?

The risk is more around autoimmune conditions like asthma and allergies. If the immune system doesn't start fighting off a variety of pathogens from an early age then it might go haywire later.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841828/

We should be focusing on overall health rather than just individual infectious diseases.

I don't much care for the hygiene hypothesis for allergies. I grew up on an acreage with all sorts of animals. I'm allergic to all of them, so much so that my parents got my allergy shots for several years. I'm most allergic to horses, which we had a trio of. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And if it were true I'd much prefer more allergies to COVID.

Of note in that paper they are suggesting therapeutic strategies that involve controlled exposure of particular items, and how those exposures are fraught with potential dangers as well.

Singapore has an 81% full vaccination rates but is experiencing a rise in symptomatic cases.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/seriously-ill-cov...

As a counterpoint, Portugal currently has 81.10% fully vaccinated and 86.85% vaccinated once (meaning they'll be vaccinated again in 4 weeks or earlier), and the new infections are going down slowly but continuously for a while now.

My point is not that you're wrong, but that you were cherry picking examples and there can be numerous other reasons for spikes in infections such as relaxed measures and mask mandates, holiday season, schools re-opening, etc. It requires a more careful analysis than yours.

Yes, lock down and social isolation does work to prevent transmission but it also weakens the healthy immune systems and makes the population more fragile going forward.

Better to inoculate the most vulnerable, not the entire population for a fast mutating respiratory virus.

Polio can't really mutate and it makes a lot of sense to inoculate everyone for this.

The original clinical trials didn’t measure immunity, and, in fact, the claim from day one has been that the vaccines were designed to reduce serious disease and death.

> They do provide immunity in 95% (conservative) of cases

So not conservative. Real world data has all of them at under 80% now.

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-compariso...

I heard against the Delta variant, RNA vaccines help divide the chance of contaminating others by at least two, even if you're asymptomatic (because basically, the virus last half the tine in your body). And also, since you're contaminated for less time, there is fewer chance of a variant popping out of a vaccinated person.

Take it as someone who heard someone talk about it, did not research himself (because i don't really care) and isn't really sure of what the truth is. See this comment as a clue if this stuff interest you.

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