It’s incredible that we even have to state that. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, full stop.

I got the vaccine, and am shocked that I may need to comply with another dose or “booster” shots.

I’m trying my hardest to be a team player but I’m incredibly concerned that one side would be OK with “Life-Saving-Vacinne-as-a-Service” for the low cost of x$ per month, for an unknown amount of time, and the other side is cool with ignoring it completely.

Who will ultimately be right is anyone’s guess, but with all the stories about bullshit “variants”and vaccinated people still getting fucked, I have a depleted confidence “in the science”. The same “science” that got us in here in the first place via “Gain of Function” research.

> It’s incredible that we even have to state that. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, full stop.

How is that bad?

When you go to a car dealer, you know he has an incentive to sell to you.

Is it bad? No, it just is.

It doesn't mean you stop listening to him. You just filter the information to get what you need to make up your own decision.

If you distrust the dealer you can go to another dealer but you can also still work with him and maybe bring your own expert, which is popular practice.

In the end you need to buy a car and you can pretty much assume ALL dealers have the same incentive to sell to you.

You can distrust a car dealer and society will applaud you for doing what's right. If you say you're losing trust in something like an emergency use vaccination, then society will say you're a death cultist.

I wish anti-vaxxers stopped trying to insert themselves into every discussion. It is tiring.

We are talking about procurement of new vaccines and whether this additional shot is actually helping or whether this is due to the fact that Pfizer is going to benefit from this.

What we are not talking about is whether to vaccinate. The case on this is closed and all governments are working towards getting their populations vaccinated because without this they know it would be an either apocalyptic event or forever-dragging crippling restrictions.

I'm not anti-vax. My entire family has all their vaccinations. I'm responding to OP of this thread. I think it's a valid observation.

You're "shocked" you might need a booster when people get a new flu shot every single year? Come on.

Weren’t we told, ‘this isn’t at all like the flu’?

We were told it is much worse than the flu, and it is.

I disagree that they shouldn’t be able to state their option, they should be able to.

But no one should believe them or take what they say at face value.

I fully disagree. This is important topic and they definitely have first hand expert knowledge.

It is up to us (meaning our governments) to require proper documentation for this and make our own minds based on it.

And is government currently competent in even knowing what proper documentation looks like?

Waiting for anyone competent to confirm or correct this person re: CDC's potentially wholly flawed math: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/defining-away-vaccin...

If you are incompetent buyer that is kind of your problem. Governments don't have "buyer protection".

But, typically, governments have armies of people at their disposal and some of these people are experts that can read and understand documentation.

Demand your government to be accountable to find right people to do the right job of checking that documentation provided by Pfizer.

It would seem prudent to do this before you sign a contract for another couple billion dollars.

That's like saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to tell people they should update Windows.

Pfizer created the vaccine. Who would know better than them whether a booster is necessary?

As a public company, they face shareholder lawsuits for *not* disclosing something this "material" to the business.

How so?

There is a strong economic incentive to press for recurring boosters.

And unfortunately too many news outlets are reporting whatever Pfizer says as if it were the CDC or impartial scientists when that clearly is not the case.

Pfizer worked on boosters before the emergence of the Delta virus and already started pushing for the use of boosters when there was little evidence of significant benefits.

It would be great if the news stopped parroting the Pfizer press office.

If they were the ones making the decision I'd have a problem. Just stating their opinion without any attempt to claim it's objective seems... fine. I'd personally be pretty surprised if my government (UK) authorised a 3rd booster dose of the same formula (as opposed to one that adjusted the formula to better target new variants).