By the time the Omicron-specific vaccines are approved by the various government health bureaucracies, Omicron will have run its course. Unless you want to live like a hermit for the next few months, it's probably best to get a booster and live your life. All of my friends & acquaintances who've contracted omicron have had a booster shot and all of them said that the worst part was isolating. Their symptoms were extremely mild- just a sore throat or cough for a few days.
It would be nice if one could choose a lower dose of vaccine. The second shot (and booster) of Pfizer were absolutely brutal for me. A baby aspirin version of the vaccine would provide most of the protection without the days of debilitating pain and fever. When I got my booster I asked the guy giving the shot if he could inject a partial dose because my previous reaction was so bad. He just laughed, emptied the syringe into my arm, and told me to drink lots of water. :(
Not having increased risk of heart inflammation and rare dangerous thromboses would be nice too, but then again it seems like Covid causes those anyway. So maybe we just need to update our base rates for those conditions and move on from the way things used to be.
Plus, if I can still spread Covid and make grandma critically ill even after I have the booster, whereas I'm at super low risk for serious illness, is the booster even doing anything to reduce hospital utilization?
I had what I think was omicron, and it seems like I don't really need a booster on top of it... or do I?
The point is that I have no idea what the right thing to do is.
I feel like there's no public health response in the USA anymore. The President is just telling people to f*cking "Google it", everyone seems to be either a paranoid wacko anti-vax Covid denier Bill-Gates-is-coming-for-your-body-fluids-and-children cultist or a "trust the science" cultist, and the big pharma companies (Pfizer, Moderna) seem to be just raking it in hand over fist with all these vaccine doses.
Seems like everyone has to brush up on their statistics and start reading the research, because the news and government agencies just aren't worth a damn anymore when it comes to communicating. It seems that the Trump legacy of "abject societal dysfunction" is here to stay.
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