[quote todaysdilemma]@herecomesthsun
Natural immunity causes death? What, for the common cold? Which is exactly what omicron is now for almost everyone. No one has challenged getting the first 2 doses and boosters only when immunity wanes. Or a booster for a deadly variant. Boosters every 3 months to ward off variants that are like a common cold is just insane. Much better to use those doses to vaccinate rest of the world.
Also- have you looked at the registered interests of all the members of sage? Ex directors of GSK, someone with a wife at GSK, a whole bunch of others who's research has been funded by pharma companies... and we wonder why they are main stream. The same GSk who have also come out with a Covid vaccine. All research is funded by someone, scientists aren't bank rolling their own research so I think it's much better to trust those without big pharma connections who have experience in managing pandemics. Not a bunch of researchers with no real world knowledge of how to strategically co-manage a global crisis. We rage against politicians for backhanding contracts to their buddies on testing, yet stay shtum when the scientists dictating policy are not at all transparent about vested interests. The Gov only published their interests after the BMJ issued a FOI request and challenged Valance's shareholding in GSK.
It's exactly like that chap Dalszak who was investigating how Covid came to be and reported it was not a lab leak. Then months later we find out he has a financial/research interest in the Wuhan labs and last week a team from Harvard have presented to our MPs that Covid is most likely a lab leak and an engineered virus.
The level of corruption and profiteering that this pandemic has brought out is so incredibly immoral. And sadly there's no unbiased watchdog here to monitor and investigate. Everything has an opportunity cost and taking boosters every few months absolutely will adversely impact something else. No one has done the research yet to understand the impact on the pandemic, economy or health, and I'm glad to see at least Sunak and Truss are pushing for more data/evidence before they roll out a fourth dose.[/quote]
Infection with coronvirus can be fatal, you know.
More so than the common cold.
That is why it's better to get the vaccine than get infected first off.
As regards boosters, they are especially helpful for the more vulnerable/exposed.
We don't really know how this will pan out exactly, but I'm certainly hoping that a degree of immunity will build up eventually so that deaths & severe illness at least become a lot less common.
Personally, I'm very grateful for modern medicine and certainly don't see it as primarily being about profiteering, though of course there's a financial aspect to do with how treatments are developed, organised and delivered.
With the best will in the world, it's not possible to do that without a lot of funding, and there is certainly an element of wanting to do good in the pharmaceutical industry, AZ wanted to provide a non-profit vaccine.