My cite is any immunology textbook written in the last couple of decades. These are not novel insights; it is basic knowledge in the field.
The “fast job on the current covid vaccines,” is a result of the an unprecedented effort to develop, test, and deploy multiple vaccines inside of a year. We don’t know by how much delaying the second vaccine shot on the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines will make them less effective but it is clear that the effectiveness of a single shot is around 50% after the first 14-21 days, and that dramatic improvements to efficacy only show up after the second ‘booster’ shot. That may be in part because of the curtailed duration of the double blind study and not attempting an adjunct study to assess the effects of different intervals, but again, we want to go by data-driven science, not a random guess at what might be good enough.
Earlier in the pandemic we had people ‘guessing’ that hydroxychloroquine would be an effective life-saving treatment without any evidence and advocated for its wide application, and the we found out from the data that use of hydroxychloroquine actually correlated with increased mortality. Now we have people wanting to guess at the effectiveness of half of the demonstrated vaccine protocol, or hedge against the ability of companies and health departments being able to replace and distribute second shot reserves in sufficient time to still get good long term effectiveness, and any other amount of guesswork instead of applying good science and policy; and all of this because various governments, politicians, and leaders fucked up by not encouraging the public to take this seriously, or worse yet, declared the crisis to be a “plan-demic” and convincing people that wearing masks or maintaining distance was some kind of serious infringement upon personal liberty.
Stranger