That’s still their decision, though. There’s no law of nature that says they have to distribute things this way. At the individual level, I’m not going to be able to force them to change how they distribute vaccines.
This is unlike getting the vaccine in the first place. There is effectively a law of nature that says that not getting vaccinated will harm others. Getting that vaccine does actually directly help reduce the spread.
The decision of where to send the vaccine needs to be made at a policy level. Assuming boosters help, there is a balancing act here, with many factors. It’s not something an individual can easily decide. All we know is that we want to keep ourselves from getting this, and prevent ourselves from spreading it in our communities.
One of the criteria for “immunocompromised” status per Dr. Fauci is lack of a spleen. I fall in that category, and so does my doctor, who has the same one-in-30K-people genetic trait that I have. I have to keep up-to-date with pneumonia and meningitis vaccinations, and I got my first Shingles vaccination last month. When I am due for my second Shingles shot in the middle of October, I will be 8 months out from my COVID vaccinations, too. I plan on talking to my doctor about a COVID booster around the same time as the Shingles shot.
As pointed out before, the experts are mixed on this. You yourself were one of the ones saying you didn’t trust the CDC. I can agree with that as long as you’re looking at other reputable sources and not anti-vax conspiracy BS.
There are other experts saying that boosters are necessary, which is why they are rolling out elsewhere. Given how the CDC was bad at anticipating delta and how masking would be necessary, I think it is warranted to not jump to conclusions on this.
Especially not when you’re getting your info from places like Politico who like to play up the partisanship. Just because I’m against dismissing the “main stream media” doesn’t mean I say not to notice the biases in that media. They want sensationalist stories.
I’ve gotten most of my info from the Washington Post. Their articles on this issue have said that some within the FDA have agreed that some populations would benefit from boosters at this time, but that the vaccine is still very effective at preventing serious illness, which may mean that young healthy people getting boosters is not providing enough benefit to offset risks.
The folks who support more expansive boosters say the most recent data from Israel hasn’t been factored into that view yet, and they say it’s compelling.
I do agree that FDA should not base approval on whether vaccine doses should be going to other countries before boosters are rolled out here.* That’s a policy decision that should be made via the CDC or the White House. The FDA should be deciding whether the booster is adequately safe and effective. At the same time, part of what they have to decide is whether there’s sufficient evidence yet to approve it, so if there are real questions, that’s a legitimate reason to delay.
*Getting vaccine to other countries should be prioritized, in my view, but it may not be an either/or question. Again, though, that’s a policy decision, not an FDA approval question.
Agree completely that getting this in the hands of all countries is a high priority and agree that it’s not the FDA’s job to concern themselves with that. On the other hand, I’d fully expect the WHO to take that heavily into account, and based on that Lancet entry, get the impression is what is driving them.
I could have simply said “+1”, but that doesn’t seem to be fully accepted here.
But the science of the vaccine’s effectiveness will not be up for debate, one expert said.
There is widespread agreement that the vaccines are primarily intended to reduce hospitalizations and deaths – which data shows they do well, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen said.
“> What not everybody would agree to is the second thing, which I believe, that the point of vaccination is to also reduce the level of infection,” Wen said.
That is the issue now being debated by officials and health experts, just as the average of new daily cases has shot up over the past two months.
Quotes from Washington Post article on the meeting.
The “she” in the next quote is referring to Marion Gruber, one of the FDA officials who is retiring and who signed on to the article questioning boosters:
A lot of discussion about the morality of boosters when most of the world haven’t had their first shots. How’s this? Let people who want boosters have them at the appropriate time. Give the anti-vaxxers’ vaccines to the rest of the world now. If the anti-vaxxers want vaccines later, take a line from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: ‘Had your chance. Muffed it.’
Curious to see what will happen for me – I’m 64.3 (and tired of getting stuck at the kid’s table for all sorts of medical prioritization) with chronic pulmonary disease. I’m a frequent prednisone user which suggest immunocompromise, but not since the pandemic started (isolating has been VERY kind to me), so whether I’m immunocompromised isn’t clear to me, but I’m certainly vulnerable to having a bad case of Covid if I catch it – and I know more and more breakthrough cases in my circle, including my grandson testing positive just yesterday (he was visiting our house on Wednesday). I’m 5 months post second Moderna shot. I see my pulmonologist Tuesday, for my first maintenance appointment in almost two years (she’s been full time treating patients in hospital and her office has postponed our appointments several times now (and I’m worried how she’s holding up, somebody in her forties shouldn’t be dealing with what has no doubt been such a steady diet of death)).
One thing I keep looking for and not hearing clearly enough is whether there’s a vaccine manufacturing shortage or just an end delivery shortage for many parts of the world. That is, does getting a shot here deny one to somebody overseas? Several times I’ve heard it does not, but I also hear public health decisions such as WHO recommendations that seem to implicitly assume getting a shot here does deny one to somebody overseas.
I found a published number that 5.7B doses of vaccines have been delivered to date. I think it was the economist.
I think there is still a global vaccine shortage, but i think it will resolve soon, and then there will continue to be “end delivery shortages”. All the companies that made those 5.7B shots are still making them. Some have ramped up production. Novavax, an excellent vaccine which can be stored in a regular fridge, hasn’t yet delivered any shots, but promises to produce 2B doses next year.
So… The end of the shortage is in sight, except for distribution and payment issues.
It’s been a week now since my Pfizer booster. I let VSafe know and they’re contacting me daily for updates. I’d love to participate in a study looking at my antibody production.
My experience being in the Moderna trial has been very positive. In many ways I’ve felt safer being a guinea pig for a controlled study than being an unstudied guinea pig in the virus’s grand worldwide Nazi-esque experiment. I sneeze, and I get a COVID test. Well, not quite that extreme, but you get the picture. I heartily endorse participating.
My understanding is that it’s pretty much impossible to redirect vaccine that has been shipped to states to go to other countries. There’s just too many bureaucratic obstacles.
The US is also shipping huge quantities of vaccines to other countries. I haven’t been able to find a site that documents how many have been shipped to each country, but when Kamala Harris visited Vietnam a few weeks back, they made a bit deal there about them receiving a million doses at the same time. (China had to one-up this propaganda effort by shipping 2 million doses of their vaccine. Well, whatever gets the vaxx out there.) At any rate, the point is that the more doses used by each state (including second boosters) the more allocation they’ll likely get in the future. So getting a second booster may indirectly reduce the number shipped to other countries in the long run. Of course, the same applies to vaxx-tourists: people from other countries who come to the US just to get vaccinated. My guess is that both are a pretty small effect in the larger picture.
I pointed out over and over again more than a month ago that the CDC and FDA were behind on the science. In fairness, these agencies are being asked to do things that very few public health agencies around the world were truly prepared to deal with: a fast-mutating, highly-infectious novel respiratory virus. CDC has a long track record of all kinds of disease surveillance and coordinating with local health agencies, but what people need is the latest data in real time. They’ve also made some blunders along the way, from the botched testing rollout to prematurely celebrating in the end zone while the delta variant was starting to spread like wildfire.
Israel has had more reliable and valid Pfizer data longer than any country, including the United States. They were seeing waning efficacy and began reporting it in July. The response here by the public health establishment was that Israel was probably not wrong in their analysis. But over time, Israel has been completely right and the U.S. health establishment completely wrong about the Pfizer shot’s efficacy.
And here’s my bottom line: folks, don’t just read US media; it’s a big world out there. Read about studies from other countries. Read publications from other countries. It’s a big world out there and we’ve got Google at our fingertips. We should use it.
