That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage.

Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.

COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.

Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general)

We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

Any idea why ?

Vaccination should reduce the risks. But there was a nurses study that 19% of the breakthrough cases had lasting effects. So I would not expect vaccination to eliminate the risk if a breakthrough happens.

Two studies in Brazil have shown a pretty significant reduction in hospitalizations in a RCT of fluvoxamine. More data obviously required.

Plus there has been more work on other treatments, but most are pretty expensive.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi...

It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.

But yes, I'm not qualified for the pinnacle of such a debate either, but those discussions aren't even happening - at least not in public which they need to be.

There are mutations that are occurring however just in vaccinated, that aren't occurring in the non-vaccinated, the virus mutating to escape the immunity of the vaccinations - which then makes those variants easier to spread to other vaccinated [and potentially easier to spread to unvaccinated as well]; UCSF recently released study of 1,300+ patients with COVID,78% had specific variants associated with vaccinated vs. 48% of unvaccinated having those same variants - various conclusions of possibilities could be made from that.

It's not that nobody's talking about it, it's just that people have done the research, and they've proven people like Dr. Montagnier wrong.

Why give air to people who keep saying things that are wrong? https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978

We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta.

Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle.

[1] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.

I mean, those dang morons not getting the available vaccine which does nothing for transmission of the current viral variant! Eesh, well that doesn’t hold water either...

Ugh this is too complicated, let’s just blame the unvaccinated anyways mmkay?

There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.

If we were to pre-suppose you gain a decade of prevention then yeah, that'd be great.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...

The flu, for example as existed longer than COVID and we do not have a "3 dose" vaccine that prevents the flu for a decade. Why would we expect this for COVID as opposed to an annual booster?

All we know is that an additional dose does increase your protection, but it doesn't necessarily give you a decade of protection since there were people who got the 3rd dose and still got COVID.

That doesn't mean anything regarding protection longevity. There will always be instances of individuals who fail to receive immune protection from a vaccine. The vast majority of people could potentially receive years of protection with a 3rd dose, while a small group doesn't get any protection at all. That isn't specific to covid.

Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/

I am not saying anything, JUST SAYIN'

If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet.

I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.

Capital constraints. Most specifically, human capital. mRNA production methods, including for critical precursors, are complicated. There is a limited number of people who can build and monitor the productions systems.

I believe the issue is that too many people fail to get vaccinated so it's challenging. Requiring boosters might also convert small numbers of people who got a vaccine one to not get it subsequent times.

If we don’t significantly vaccinate much of the rest of the world, my expectation is a continued high rate of variant creation as well as continued economic instability due to logistics disruption.

Intellectual property rights.

It's not a "good" reason. But it's a reality that needs to be overcome.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_afric...

Germany doesn't want the Pfizer vaccine made freely: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

and by some co-incidence, this is good for German money: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-...