In talks for 4th booster..

[Maddymorphosis]

According to the DM and other sources, Israel and Germany have already announced this.

Ffs.. then the 5th at Easter, 6th in summer and so on?

Are people really willing to get vaccinated every few months ?

Covid booster every 3 months how is this anything like a yearly flu jab?

Well, not quite yet - though nothing would surprise me now

It seems valid to ask how it's anything like a genuinely annual flu jab though, but I doubt you'll get an answer; it's been asked again and again and there never is one

I'd have one every week if it meant the world went back to normal.

Vaccines haven't been the great saviour most of us hoped for. I know that for most people they prevent serious illness but they don't prevent infection, so as long as there are people around who are vulnerable to being hospitalised because they are unvaccinated or have serious health conditions we can't put this all behind us.

The caveat to Omicron being "milder" is that it applies to people with immunity. For those who have never had covid and are unvaxxed are it is only marginally milder. Since these are the ones causing hospitals and ICUs to be filled and operations cancelled, me having a vaccine every week would not help.

What's the alternative? Expand our health service certainly, but you can't do that overnight. Build covid hospitals? You still need the staff.

I'd have one every week if it meant the world went back to normal.

I think that’s the issue though. I don’t think people would mind even quarterly boosters if it was to maintain a completely normal standard of life.

But coupled with the restrictions - what’s the point?

“ They have encouraged people to take up a booster when it wasn't needed. Taking it away from people who actually do. “

Nah, the problem with boosters is that they fucked up third primary doses. It took 4-8 weeks for everyone I know who needed one to get one. Personally it took me 7 weeks I think it was, despite knowing on Sept 1st I qualified. So now an awful lot of the CEV who qualifies for a third primary can’t get the booster until mid-late January. And we can’t even book them online at 61+ days because they STILL haven’t sorted the fucking database out.

I’d have one every day ffs if we could go back to normal (and putting aside supply equity resources realities). After all I eat three times a day (sometimes more ) to stay alive. I could live with a quick jab each morning. (Well that sounded rude!)

Absolutely not.

I'll have as many of the fuckers as I need to get back to some sort of enjoyable life!

I’ll have any booster but I’m not doing asymptomatic tests because that is like poking the boil

[quote todaysdilemma]@NovemberNovemberDarkNights

The WHO, more a shower of shite, compared to our SAGE advisors with Patrick Vallance and his six figure share holding in GSK he was forced to offload in March after pressure on transparency from the BMJ? Yes, I'm sure he has nothing to gain from pharma companies increasing the frequency of boosters.

[[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment]]data/file/971151/Covid-199SAGEregisterrofparticipantssinterests.pdf

The only thing everyone agrees on is that first doses of vaccines are essential to build immunity and resistance to covid being a serious disease. It's simple science that if omicron is not a deadly variant for most but vulnerable groups, a booster is unnecessary. The booster we take now could have been used by another nation as a first dose - that is how you stop deadly variants mutating, they stem from the unvaccinated. All we are now doing is taking a pointless booster as most people are in their vaccine efficacy period anyway to be protected from omicron. And it means taking another booster soon after when the vaccine efficacy of the first dose wanes. And then another unvaccinated person in a region with low herd immunity and low immunisations creates another deadly mutation which needs another booster. Which means we never get to a point of vaccinating most of the world and stopping variants.

That's how we eradicated small pox- concentrated efforts globally to get everyone vaccinated. Because every nation needs to achieve a certain threshhold of immunisation. Not this hyper localisation focus.
[/quote]
I fully agree there

I see analysis has just been released saying that booster effect against Omicron starts to wane as quickly as 4 weeks after having it

Somehow I doubt this news will encourage many to get it ...

Oh no.

That's a short window to cram some life into.

Not that surprising when you think that this is a vaccine that was NOT created for omicron and we knew already that it escapes that particular vaccine…..

I got the booster because at the time we didn’t know whether it would be as serious as delta or less so.
I’m regretting having done it now.
I’m not ready to have some injections every 3 months to keep the efficacy topped up.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

I see analysis has just been released saying that booster effect against Omicron starts to wane as quickly as 4 weeks after having it

Somehow I doubt this news will encourage many to get it ...

Where did you see that? I saw 10 weeks on BBC

@todaysdilemma

No, I won't be getting a fourth. There has been no other vaccine that's needed so many doses in such a short space of time. Not even small pox (it was 3-5 years of immunity) and we eradicated that. And given the CEO of Pfizer went on record in NOVEMBER stating everyone would need an annual jab for years to come (how does he already know that if research is on-going??), this is beginning to seem like a big pharma cash cow. The scientists themselves can't agree on the role of natural immunity vs repeated immunisation or even whether omicron evades immunity against severe disease and death. For every scientist at imperial who think omicron resists delta antibodies and this means terrible terrible things will happen to the human race, there's someone at Oxford (Sunetra Gupta) who empathetically disagrees and thinks for most people natural immunity is the best option.

And frankly all the stats are nonsensical. The fact we still report Covid cases in hospital without reporting on WHAT actually caused the admission is bonkers. It is very dishonest to count anyone with Covid as a Covid admission if Covid is not why they're in the hospital. I could have a heart attack, get admitted, catch Covid in the bloody hospital (and have nothing worse than cold symptoms) and still be counted as a Covid admission. Madness.

I believe in vaccinations and have had three. I see absolutely no reason to have a fourth just because it's on offer. And because big pharma thinks I need it. Like the flu jab, it should be optional for those that need it/want it and I'll be livid if they start using it to control travel and where I can go.

You see, it isn't true that scientific opinion balances out like that. There are a handful of mavericks like Gupta who get a lot of inches in the right wing press precisely because their thinking suits libertarian politics.

Whitty, JVT, Vallance and SAGE & the Imperial scientists are well within the scientific mainstream.

Natural immunity isn't the best opinion because it causes quite a lot of deaths, vaccination is a relatively safe way to get protection against covid.

@Siameasy

I’ll have any booster but I’m not doing asymptomatic tests because that is like poking the boil

How??

You don't want to know if you gave it, you'd rather give it to other people??

Brilliant.

NovemberNovemberDarkNights the report about boosters starting to wanr after just 4 weeks was mentioned on the stats thread

But even if it starts to wane after 4 weeks that doesn't mean that it is pointless. If the waning is slow you could still have decent protection for six months or a year or more. We need to know the rate of decline and whether it is linear.

@Ponoka7

We've lived a charmed life because of our climate. Other nations beg for annual vaccinations to survive. Africa has been desperate for malaria vaccines and simple ones like the flu vaccine. We now have a threat to health, which may need a yearly vaccination, moving forward. If you needed antibiotics over winter, you wouldn't ask when is enough, enough. Or treatment for asthma, hayfever, indigestion etc. Our bubble has burst, we need to get over it.

I completely agree with the above.

Happy to have a jab every few months if it means normal life.

I'm alright with it. Basically took 30 minutes inc travelling. I'm OK to do that every few months, hardly a massive hardship.

*How??

You don't want to know if you gave it, you'd rather give it to other people??

Brilliant.*

Seek help. It is not normal to be this obsessed or scared.

@Ponoka7

That was explained really early on in 2020. If we allow the virus to circulate we could cause a varient that is more worrying, as in affecting children/younger people, or at least cause more serious illness. The scientists want to stop mutations.

Even with vaccines, we can no more stop Covid from circulating than we can the common cold, especially with omicron. Covid is here to stay. Vaccines reduce the severity, they will never realistically stop circulation... at best they reduce spread somewhat.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

I see analysis has just been released saying that booster effect against Omicron starts to wane as quickly as 4 weeks after having it

Somehow I doubt this news will encourage many to get it ...

It's not surprising it starts to wane after a while... A car depreciates when you buy it. It doesn't mean it's worthless after a year.

@ladygindiva

I'm alright with it. Basically took 30 minutes inc travelling. I'm OK to do that every few months, hardly a massive hardship.

Exactly