Despite the fact that Omicron is milder than Delta, hospitalizations are still at a record high in the US:
Why is this so if Omicron is less severe than Delta? Partly it shows just how transmissible Omicron is: So many people are catching it that there are more hospitalizations even if the percentage of people with serious cases is down.
But there's also this:
For Omicron, the rate of vaccination doesn't really matter. The usual two-shot vaccination provides only modest protection after a few months. It's the booster shot that provides meaningful protection, up in the 90+% range. And when it comes to booster shots, we are way behind the curve of the rest of the world, even more so than we are in ordinary vaccinations.
I'm not quite sure why this is. We're obviously nowhere near the point where we run into resistance from anti-vaxxers. Is it lack of marketing? Or what?
I got the original two, but I'm done. No bullshit boosters. Those are flu shots, not vaccines.
Except they are 90% effective flu shots and the “flu” is a particularly bad one. So bad that 2,000 people per day are dying from it. But thanks for your partial explanation of Kevin’s question. By the way, did you choose your screen name for the irony?
Upvoted
Upvoted twice
Whether or not they are "90% effective" remains to be seen, as opposed to what seems to be 80% effectiveness for non-boosted, but the booster is still the vaccine designed for the original virus, not any of the variants, unlike the flu shots, which are guesses as to what the current dominant variants will be.
As you point out, the boosters are clearly not "flu shots" however. At the same time, there's a semi-desperate energy behind booster shots that is driving their usage well beyond the science. At some point, we need to take a sober look at what's happening, instead of just doubling down on previous choices/commitments.
That's nonsense. You are misinformed. Don't peddle that crap here.
Flu shots are vaccines just as much as the Covid vaccines. The dominant flu virus varies from year to year and flu vaccines vary accordingly. Covid vaccines are far, far more effective that flu vaccines, for a variety of reasons.
But multiple shots for vaccines are very much the standard.
HepB - 3 doses
DTaP - 5 doses
Hib - 3/4 doses
Pneumococcal - 4 doses
Polio - 4 doses
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1471325625516503044?s=20
Here's what you can do to protect yourself and protect others:
1. Get your booster
2. Delete your account
Yep yep yep and yep.
I've noticed a strong current of "for one reason or another, the COVID vaccines aren't real vaccines" over the past year. (Let's ignore the microchip idiots.)
Sometimes it's "oh you need a booster, so they aren't real vaccines." Except many childhood vaccines are multi-shot, as you point out. You need a tetanus booster every 10 years forever!
Sometimes it's "oh, they're not sterilizing, so they aren't real vaccines." Except many, if not most, vaccines aren't truly sterilizing.
It quickly becomes clear when talking to this latter group that they learned about the concept of sterilizing immunity recently, and have latched onto it as the latest justification for resisting vaccination.
Where does this stuff come from?
Somehow I suspect realism is lost on educationrealist
I thought it was education that was lost. 😉
Plus one.
As Dan Quayle said, in his smartest gesture until telling Mike Pence not to seat fraudulent GQP electors, "It's a terrible thing to lose one's mind".
Point taken, but they just don't just keep giving you the same flu shot over and over, as you mention they change it year-to-year.
Flu shots are in fact... wait for it... vaccines. So... what are you saying?
Influenza isn't caused by this coronavirus, or any coronavirus. You're not a scientist, right?
Can't speak to everyone, but no one in my vaxxed family has gotten their booster because two family members had bad effects from the initial vaccine series that are continuing months later. My sister-in-law got postmenopausal bleeding after her second Moderna that continues to this day. You can look that up - it is a known complication of the vaccine, 66%! of postmenopausal women report breakthrough bleeding after the vaccine. My wife developed a blood clot shortly after her J&J shot, and her blood results show she's still at risk of developing further ones even months later. The fact that both those reactions involved blood clotting or bleeding is worrisome.
On balance, we are satisfied with the initial series and are very reluctant to do more. This is one area where I think anti-vaxxers do have a point, albeit they exaggerate it enormously: vaccine negative effects do not get very much study.
Protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death is still highly effective from the original vaccination series, so far the statistics and science still bear this out (despite the nervous set who want to go beyond the statistics and science).
Found a KKKlay Travis n' Kukk Sexton Next Gen Dittohead.
How hilarious. All this outrage.
The average person knows the difference between something you have to take constantly and won't even reliably protect you from infection, and a "vaccine", which you take very infrequently and provides an extremely high level of protection from infection. That's why we say "flu shots" instead of "flu vaccines" even though I freely admit that the neurotic nuts they're all vaccines.
Similarly, the "covid19 vaccine" was two shots for most people, and that was supposed to be it.
As is pointed out below, the death difference between the boosted and the unboosted but vaxxed is absurdly fractional and no one cares. There are millions of ways to die. By this time, covid19 is just one of many and all this care is idiotic.
I'm not "peddling" anything. He asked why people aren't getting the boost, I said so. I could care less what you neurotics do. Enjoy. Now, quit obsessing over what others do and go on with your joyless little lives.
So your point is that people aren't getting boosters because they don't know what the word 'vaccine' means and they have no grasp of statistics? That is disturbingly plausible.
“ I could care less what you neurotics do. Enjoy. Now, quit obsessing over what others do and go on with your joyless little lives.”
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Vaccines generally provide a very high level of extended protection from disease, not infection.
Please don't feed this troll. It left this dropping just to get attention.
The unvaccinated end up in hospital. But I got my 3rd shot at the end of October because the wave in Michigan actually started at the beginning of August and showed no sign of breaking… still hasn’t. 5 months later! WTF?
Bad marketing, most likely. Basically, we should have (and didn't) redefined "Vaccinated" as having received a booster.
There was a huge V.A. study published in Science in November that, if you extrapolated their graphs to the time of publication, indicated that all vaccines had lost their effectiveness to prevent infection, even for delta (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620). For whatever reason it got little press and to my knowledge didn't make it into the "booster encouragement" campaigns.
FWIW, in my county's dashboard "vaccinated" and unvaccinated are getting sick at around the same rate (even though 45% had boosters -- would love to see it broken down by booster status) but vaccinated are less than a quarter of the ICU cases.
yes, we should have redefined vaccinated. At my work, before Omicron, you could go without a mask if you show your CDC card to HR. CDC stills allows this, but we upped our definition of vaccinated as you suggest.
The original shots have declined in efficacy from what they were in the first month, but they are still more protective than being unvaccinated. The booster has proven to be very protective.
"While the vaccine effectiveness of a two-dose series against emergency department visits, urgent care visits, and hospitalizations declined to 76% after 6 months, it rose back up to 94% after the third shot, said Walensky, referencing new data from the VISION Network published in an early edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
While vaccine effectiveness more than 180 days after a two-dose series declined to 38% against emergency department and urgent care visits during the predominance of Omicron, it rose back up to 82% 14 days or more after a booster dose, she added.
The numbers for hospitalizations were even more striking, with 90% effectiveness against COVID-associated hospitalizations after a third dose."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/96808?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2022-01-22&eun=g1700464d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202022-01-22&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition
First two shots--administered at work. Third shot required by end of Jan--but you have to organize it yourself.
I feel your pain.
/s
Yes, very much a problem of privilege.
Opposite fir me. First two were on my own. Booster came courtesy of work.
For Omicron, the rate of vaccination doesn't really matter.
Oh yes it does.
https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1484690144665997313?s=20
Weekly COVID-19 death rate via CDC:
Unvaccinated: 9.7 deaths per 100k
Fully vaccinated: 0.7 deaths per 100k
Boosted: 0.1 deaths per 100k
Of course, the booster adds a much higher level of protection against death. We all should get the booster. But the delta between the unvaccinated and vaccinated is even wider.
I would argue that the different between 0.1 and 0.7 deaths per 100k is not significant enough to take any emergency pressing public health action here, whether that means redefining "fully vaccinated" or whatever, and instead the focus should remain on the overwhelmingly significant difference between 9.7 deaths per 100k and 0.7//0.1 deaths per 100k.
Also, I'm a little skeptical of 0.1 and 0.7, would like to see the raw numbers and the methodology behind that.
"Among individuals seeking testing for COVID-like illness in the US in December 2021, receipt of 3 doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (compared with unvaccinated and with receipt of 2 doses) was less likely among cases with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with test-negative controls. These findings suggest that receipt of 3 doses of mRNA vaccine, relative to being unvaccinated and to receipt of 2 doses, was associated with protection against both the Omicron and Delta variants, although the higher odds ratios for Omicron suggest less protection for Omicron than for Delta."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788485?guestAccessKey=9c11371f-96e1-4181-a7eb-c87a13eb9df9&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=012122
"I would argue that the different between 0.1 and 0.7 deaths per 100k is not significant enough to take any emergency pressing public health action here, whether that means redefining "fully vaccinated" or whatever, .."
Really? That's for deaths in a week, and what looks like a week with total deaths running considerably below where they are today. So the difference over the whole Omicron surge is probably something more like 10 per 100k. Assuming a potential booster population of 200m that is 20000 deaths. So 20000 deaths isn't significant?
I stand 100% behind that statement, and the assumptions behind your math there are ludicrous.
The difference between 0.1 and 0.7 per 100K does not warrant emergency public health action by the state, and for our analysis purposes here is clearly not the important set difference, which is the set of vaccinated people versus the set of unvaccinated.
Not sure I can put this any simpler.
"I stand 100% behind that statement, and the assumptions behind your math there are ludicrous."
So what is your calculation of the number of deaths that you think are unimportant.
You keep confusing what I may or may not think is "unimportant" to "warrant[ing] emergency public health action by the state".
For what it's worth, I think every life is important, and that every person should get vaccinated. This doesn't mean I believe the government should be able to force you to take a vaccine (although there are risk propositions we are not currently facing where I would agree with this).
"... This doesn't mean I believe the government should be able to force you to take a vaccine .."
How is recommending that people get boosters (and making it easy for them to do so) forcing people to take a vaccine?
Because it directly relates to my point about "warrant[ing] emergency public health action by the state" that you seem to keep missing/mischaracterizing.
But sure, let's keep it to recommendations, and not what I or you think as opposed to what collective action should be.
Bad math skills. Short attention spans. Mass stupidity. Lack of trust in science, or perhaps anything except their own navel. Take your pick. And people don't understand the way the immune system works. It's not just like a first or second shot when it comes to the body's reaction - the immune system is already primed and the protection goes way beyond antibody levels. But I doubt that the last argument will go too far with the terminally ignorant.
Actually, current research is showing that t-cell immunity is not evaded by Omicron, for the first round of vaccinated folks. In fact, some studies have shown that the t-cells have only become more mature/abundant (in breadth) the further out they've studied them.
Looked like OH cases crested last week--then the numbers jumped up, though positivity kept getting lower. Maybe cases are cresting for real this time...
VA--one week into ban on mask mandates, though some school systems kept masking anyway. Next week or two should be interesting.
NY, FL dropping, and IL now. TX too, positivity starting to drop now, but still very high; CA probably cresting now...
Only ME dropped below batshitcrazy levels (cases/100K). If you look at county levels, except for a few small ones that bounce around a bit, and ME, they're all still batshitcrazy....Numbers got really high--so, depending on estimation, places getting to a few percent of population having active cases....
CovidActNow for maps of infection, etc. levels. WorldoMeter has estimations for active cases.
Hospitalizations starting to drop in some areas, but not in TX or CA yet. ICU availabilty getting worse--some of that is because they can not maintain ICU beds due to staffing issues.
Keep masking. Get boosted if you haven't already--you won't be taking away a dose from the rest of the world.
I was looking at the Global Epidemics dashboard: Of the 3006 counties in the US, 11 are below "red," and 10 have no data. That's it.
I looked at the CDC rate of spread dashboard last night. There were four counties in the lower 48 that weren't red: Carter (population about 1200) and Petroleum (population about 500) in Montana, Terrell County in TX, and Rock County, NE.
I guess the Republicans won, because the whole country is red.
And it looks like Petroleum County had a case or two today and so it is now in the "high" category. It is now red.
FYI ban on mask mandates in VA doesn't take effect until tomorrow and most "blue" counties are ignoring EO as it is actually superseded by state law passed in 2021 mandating that school systems follow CDC guidelines.
It's probably because the messaging has been a little inconsistent on when you should do the booster. I got my booster about a week "early", relative to both my eligibility and the recommendation at the time, but wanted to booster two weeks prior to folks going away and coming back from Thanksgiving. That was 5.75 months after my 2nd shot. I wasn't the earliest in line for the first course, but a bit ahead of the curve than most. (I got a "we're about to throw away 20 doses, can you be here in under an hour" call -- I was there in 15 minutes. 3 weeks later I started getting the calls to register via the more normal routes.)
Going with the initial 6 month after 2nd shot suggestion, the beginning of the rise in booster shot eligibility was probably only a week or two ago. I think they've now pushed that recommendation to 5 months, and given the omicron wave they probably should push that to 4 months. (The fact that I don't even know what the current suggestion for waiting time is is saying something about the messaging.)
I think the timing of this wave was just 1 or 2 months later, we would probably be looking better on the booster front.
Messaging… how to talk to a toddler? Really?
Americans are silly damn fools. They fell sick and still go out and about. They infect their family, friends, coworkers, and stranger in a crowd then wonder why there is an outbreak.
I still haven’t caught the Covid plague. I’m vaccinated and have had a booster. Maybe I’ll get exposed eventually and fall ill. Maybe I’ve already had asymptomatic infection last week or last month. Who can say?
Let’s all just agree that the disease is circulating and everyone knows by now how to avoid getting sick. No messaging required anymore.
I agree, messaging was messed up. I was in an early wave and got my first shot on the 10th of February and the second 3 weeks later. So by the time news started coming out of Israel about the necessity of boosters I was watching closely. Once it was approved for high risk populations (I was 62, obese and with high blood pressure) I had already set up an appointment to get it.
The initial approval for *MOST* people was pretty confusing. 65 and older, 18-64 in a high risk group, 18-64 in an occupation which put you at higher risk of exposure. That group includes a lot of people. Why not just say boosters for everyone over 18? At some point you have to make it easy for people to understand. I think the CDC love for nuance is causing problems. Simple and clear is probably better than nuanced and absolutely scientifically accurate.
This was the problem with the masking guidance in what, May or June, last year where they changed their guidance on masking for *vaccinated* people. I know they were trying to drive up vaccine uptake and were trying to toss a bone to those who got vaccinated. But the moment I heard it my first thought was "that was a dumb move".
But we have a dumbass Supreme Court which doesn't want to allow the federal government any power to address an obviously federal problem. And because of this the pandemic drags on and on. I am as sick of this shit as any anti-vax anti-mask idiot. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that the way to get past this is to wear a mask and get vaccinated.
Hopefully enough people get infected with omicron that enough targets are hardened (have some level of immunity) that the virus finally burns out. In the meantime, even the WHO seems to be admitting the vaccine supply situation is getting better. With CORBEVAX coming online in the next few months is likely to fix supply problems for poor and middle class countries.
Things will get better this year for the developing world, but there is still a world of hurt for the rest of us because of idiots in the developed world.
They should not push it to 4 months and the immunization and vaccine science does not support doing so. The smartest people in that business suggest the gap should be AT LEAST 6 months if not longer, and that the original problem was that the 2-dose regimen was given too close together (1 month).
Yes, hospitalizations are at a record high, but any explanation of that has to start with the fact that confirmed cases recently peaked at three times their previous high point. Hospitalizations per confirmed case are down to a remarkable degree.
Well yes. That the point is that a smaller percentage of a much larger number is still a large number. And it is still causing huge problems for the healthcare industry both because of the huge number of cases coming in and the huge number of healthcare providers who are getting infected and are unable to work for 5 to 10 days.
Kevin did mention the high number of cases, but I thought he soft-pedaled it, compared to the hospitalizations, instead of highlighting both measures of the omicron surge.
Come on folks, quit traveling.
The outbreak in the housing complex is believed to have originated with a woman who was infected while undergoing a three-week hotel quarantine after returning to Hong Kong from Pakistan.
Remember, even if someone goes to the hospital for something else and just happen to have Covid--they are still infectious and have to be treated as such--so that puts almost as much strain on the system as if they were being admitted due to Covid.
(as reported by Ed Yong at The Atlantic a week or two ago)
Well, yeah. I know, I was scheduled to get a hip replacement last October and before I went into the hospital, I had to get a COVID-19 test (negative). I can't imagine not testing anyone going into a hospital for anything not being tested. People who test positive represent a whole other level of infection hazard.
And of course you can't edit a comment with silly sentence construction. Why, oh why, won't Kevin put in the Disqus plug-in so that we can have a real commenting system?
Ya' just gotta' go with it...
😉
You nailed it, between the unvaccinated and those who are just in the hospital for other reasons, but are positive for this virus because it infects everyone including the boosted, you've got nearly all your hospitalizations (and especially ICU).
On my last attempt to get boosted (6 weeks ago) I was told I had to wait until March, 5 months after my 2nd vax shot. Until then, I’m not Omicron protected
I believe that the CDC considers you omicron-protected if you've been boosted OR you've had your second Pfizer/Moderna shot within the last six months.
I think it is 5 months now. Still fqmorris got the right medical advice.
More is not better.
As the Israeli data showed, having an additional (4th) shot does not protect against an Omicron breakthrough infection. The current mRNA vaccines elicit neutralizing antibodies that do not do a good job of recognizing the Spike protein in Omicron. Having said that, boosters protect you from severe COVID-19 illness owing to the mRNA vaccines triggering T-cell memory of the Spike protein.
And if you keep getting shots in short periods, you risk triggering immune exhaustion -- where T-cells stop responding -- leading you with a poor immune response and a worse infection than if you hadn't overdone the shots.
Thanks for pointing this out, more and more and more boosters is not the answer, and doesn't really follow the available science (new or old). Immune exhaustion isn't really a thing at this point though and is being touted without justification.
I say "not really a thing" related to current vaccinations and boosting.
I'm sure we'll hit annual boosters soon so as to obviate the possibility of immune exhaustion. But I am curious to see if the Israelis continue to pursue a maximal strategy of boosters, providing us with data about efficacy and risks.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/covid-in-israel-new-cases-break-yet-another-record-as-isolation-period-cut-1.10549118
"Israel diagnosed 71,593 people with the coronavirus on Tuesday, marking another new record in daily new cases since the start of the pandemic, Health Ministry director-general Nachman Ash said in a radio interview."
"Ash told Army Radio that there are 526 COVID patients who are hospitalized in serious condition, still well below the nearly 1,200 who were in serious condition last January."
“I believe that the peak will occur in another week or so,” [Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman] told FM103 Radio. “However, we are also seeing that the number of hospitalizations is still rising, but the increase is slowing down.”
H3N2 is boosting this stat. Knock 15% off. iCU's peaked notably below last January despite far more cases.
My experience was that the Boosters were still relatively hard to get. For example, Rite Aid sent me an email telling me to make an appointment to get a booster. I tried to make an appointment, and they told me none were available. Took about 4 tries across a couple of weeks before I could find an appointment. With the initial vaccination, we had gotten to the point where we could just walk into a pharmacy and get a shot. This time around, it seemed the vaccine was just not as widely available.
And, both times, health care providers should be calling up their patients asking them to come in and get a shot. Big companies should be offering their employees vaccines. It shouldn't just be about people making the effort to figure out how to get a shot; it should also be about pushing the shots out to people and making it super-trivial to get a shot.
Kevin, perhaps the answer is yes, but do you always eat your veggies like you should? Additional shots are starting to take on the aura of one of those good for you things one is supposed to do regularly.
Is the WHO still disparaging boosters or have they changed their tune on that score?
Meanwhile: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/vaccine-passport-protests-europe-draw-thousands-people-82415992
The WHO is smartly saying gets the rest of the world vaccinated, they are not disparaging boosters, just questioning the wisest use of resources to get us to the end of this pandemic (rather than the rich countries extending it by protecting their own).
"I'm not quite sure why this is. .."
It's because the Biden administration totally botched the roll out of boosters. It was clear from the start that boosters would probably be indicated at some point. But they didn't properly prepare people (perhaps because they were reluctant to admit the original vaccines weren't perfect). Then when studies started to show boosters were needed they delayed authorizing them for no good reason. And when they did authorize them they did so half-heartedly. I had trouble making an appointment for a booster shot and my employer (which follows government guidelines) was less supportive.
The authorization was delayed mostly because the science didn't support it, with the FDA advisory body saying no (except boosters for immune-compromised and elderly/comorbid).
In fact, soon after that the political decision was made to just go ahead and approve for everyone anyway, in spite of the science.
"In fact, soon after that the political decision was made to just go ahead and approve for everyone anyway, in spite of the science."
This may explain why booster rates are low in the US, a significant number of people like Jimm are invested in the belief that they aren't needed.
No, I followed the debate at the FDA as it happened, got familiar with Dr. Offitt's position, which correlated with the positions of top US virologists I've followed since March 2020.
You see the big difference between what I just posted, and what you just posted about me?
Also, don't misrepresent what I'm saying. Boosters are warranted for the immuno-compromised and for people in high-risk groups (especially elderly and those with comorbidities). They are questionably warranted for vaccinated folks not in high-risk groups (especially younger folks), who already have exceedingly low probabilities of hospitalization and death.
Most of this problem has been due to the obsession about neutralizaing antibodies and preventing infections, rather than the established vaccine and immunological science taking the entire immune system into account, especially t-cells, and primarily focused on preventing serious disease and death.
"Also, don't misrepresent what I'm saying. .."
Sounds to me like you are saying that the lower rate of boosters in the US compared to other countries that Kevin Drum is lamenting is in fact appropriate and should not be considered concerning. Is that wrong? Do you believe the lower booster rate in the US is a problem?
What I said is very clear, and repeated throughout the thread. And yes, I disagree with Kevin's inferences (and framing).
Okay, so a possible reason the booster rate is low in the US is that a substantial part of the public health community (whether rightly or wrongly) doesn't believe boosters are important.
I don't know if I would go all the way there, as there seems to be some not-so-evenly split differences between public health and virologists/immunologists/vaccinologists folks, and even splits within these communities.
We can say there's no established consensus, due to there not being any definitive findings in the available science, but whether everyday Americans are really aware of this, and making it the basis of their decisions, I would be skeptical.
Bottom line, look at the demographics who have not got boosted so far, especially the vast majority of vaccinated from 18-50 who are not really at any appreciable risk of hospitalization or death from COVID, and there's probably a myriad of reasons.
"We can say there's no established consensus, due to there not being any definitive findings in the available science, but whether everyday Americans are really aware of this, and making it the basis of their decisions, I would be skeptical."
Everyday Americans are going to be aware that there has been little push for people to get boosters.
I would disagree, there has been a strong push to get boosters, which I don't really have a problem with as long as people aren't jumping on me for not agreeing on the merits.
Please see the comment I made above. When boosters were approved in September they were basically approved for everyone 18 or over who didn't work at home. But the reason this was done seems to have been an argument between the "vaccine equity" people (eg, Paul Offit) and people who thought we should protect the people we can. The result was the muddled recommendation we got in September. At that time the evidence in favor of boosters was pretty clear, but it was not conclusive. But following the evidence in the press, it was pretty clear that eventually boosters would be recommended for everyone. It took a couple of months to convince enough of the vaccine equity folks to just recommend them for everyone. Even after than Paul Offit and a couple of colleagues had an editorial in the WaPo on 11/29 arguing the vaccine equity point. It would be interesting to see what they have to say now that we now more about omicron.
Offit wasn't just about vaccine equity, but also about risk vs. benefit. Offit recently told his 20-something son not to get either the Pfizer or Modern booster because the risk of myocarditis outweighed any benefit of a booster for a young, healthy, already 2-dosed male.
Linky? Because the risk of myocarditis, even for a healthy young male is pretty fucking low.
"Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me that getting boosted would not be worth the risk for the average healthy 17-year-old boy. Offit advised his own son, who is in his 20s, not to get a third dose. Even with Omicron’s ability to sidestep some of the protection vaccines provide, Offit said, he believes that his son is well protected against serious illness with two shots, so a third just isn’t necessary."
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/01/should-teens-get-booster-omicron/621222/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhN4rC19RI
TWiV 844: Paul Offit on children, COVID, and boosters
Dr. Offitt is aware of the current t-cell science and calling balls-and-strikes as he sees them.
"...the "vaccine equity" people .."
These people should all be fired. Or at least not influencing policy.
Science should influence policy, so are you suggesting we should fire the scientists who correctly see the smartest way to end this pandemic? And aside from that, vaccine equity was only one point among several, should we have fired the FDA advisory board for rejecting boosters for all (when they did)?
And trust me, politics and policy won out, the decision was swiftly reversed, but no on the merits of the science.
"Science should influence policy, so are you suggesting we should fire the scientists .."
Vaccine equity is a bunch of woke nonsense that has nothing to do with science.
Please explain further. Is the fastest way to end a pandemic hording and overdosing vaccine doses, or is it to spread effective vaccine doses to the subject population as quickly as possible?
"Please explain further. .."
The scientific question is the cost and benefit of a booster shot. This is input to policy decisions. It is not appropriate for scientists to slant the answers to scientific questions in order to attempt to influence policy in their preferred direction.
"The cost and benefit of a booster shot" for whom? We're talking about the quickest and smartest way to end the pandemic, before we meet a variant we're really not going to like. Which scientists are slanting the answers in favor of a domestic audience (which isn't about science and more about politics), and which are not?
""The cost and benefit of a booster shot" for whom? .."
For the patient, the person potentially receiving the booster.
Individual treatment decisions do not a pandemic fighting strategy make.
Offitt hasn't changed his stance at all, and he was right. Also, as mentioned above, his position was not primarily about vaccine equity.
"Is it lack of marketing? Or what?"
I would say equal parts of disinformation and rugged individualism.
Everything I'm still hearing is that the vast majority (up to 90%) of hospitalized are unvaccinated, and otherwise we don't really have reliable numbers as far as who is "fully vaccinated" versus "boosted", or any reason to believe the fully vaccinated folks are not still significantly protected.
Perhaps to explore this more we could compare hospitalizations across countries, and then compare the booster shots, but the problem there is that's not really as important as the more important set distinction between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/omicron-is-91-percent-less-likely-to-cause-death-than-delta-variant#What-researchers-uncovered
"The California study involving nearly 70,000 people who developed COVID-19 via the Delta or Omicron variants found that people with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 were 91 percent less likely to die from the disease. Admission to the hospital ICU was reduced by 74 percent among people with Omicron. Risk of hospitalization was roughly half for Omicron patients versus Delta patients. Hospital stays for Omicron patients were, on average, 70 percent shorter than for symptomatic Delta patients."
“Reductions in disease severity associated with Omicron variant infections were evident among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, and among those with or without documented prior SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the study authors concluded.
Regardless, “the unvaccinated are at higher risk of everything for Omicron and all other variants,” said Rondello. “The proportionate number of people who get sick who are unvaccinated vastly outweighs the number who are vaccinated.”
TWiV 844: Paul Offit on children, COVID, and boosters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhN4rC19RI
It was a huge pain in the ass for a lot of people to schedule and receive their first two shots last year. I think a lot of the resistance to getting a booster is just inertia/fatigue -- "Man, I have to go through that whole rigamarole again for a *third* shot now?" And so they just put it off. Now of course scheduling and getting a booster is nowhere near as complicated as the original round of shots in most parts of the country, but it's also not the most convenient thing in the world.
As for side effects, a lot of it appears to be the placebo effect: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-caused-placebo-effect/story?id=82355113. The placebo effect is a thing, so people aren't necessarily making it up all the time. But it's also not the vaccine itself causing these issues. By the time peer-reviewed studies come out showing the vaccines/boosters to be incredibly safe and effective, a bunch of crazy shit on Facebook has been shared 10 million times claiming the booster shot causes all your hair to fall out or something.