Your links do not mention the omicron variant. The CDC estimates that an unboostered vaccine (2 doses) is only 38% effective against omicron. Boosting brings the effectiveness up to 82%.[1]

So to be more precise - vaccines work against Omicron, but not as well as the original strains and only if you keep up with boosting every few months. Vaccines are less effective against omicron in general, and the effectiveness wains very quickly.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm?s_cid=mm...

I think we're saying the same thing: vaccines protect you from getting covid, but you should get a booster and even then you obviously can't expect 100% protection. (Just the one booster is fine.)

> Just the one booster is fine.

Its fine for right now. You will need another booster in a few months to remain protected (original estimate was every 6 months, CDC lowered that to 5 months already). Israel is already rolling out a fourth shot, and the CDC now recommends 4 doses for immune compromised people.

Israel put that plan on hold actually. Just one booster is fine for now. It's possible that could change. I'm hoping we'll soon get a variant-specific booster that will provide much stronger and more lasting protection from omicron.

I never understood the preoccupation with the number of shots. Is it the hassle and discomfort of the shot itself?

Personally, it makes me feel like we don't really have a handle on the situation. The vaccine was supposed to be a "virtually 100% effective" silver bullet; now we need constant doses just to maintain some level of protection. It does not inspire confidence.

Is there any other vaccine that needs boosters every 5 months?

Kids have vaccines at 2 months, 6 months, 1 year and 5 years.

Considering that the initial schedule of 2 doses in a month was kinda rushed, and that Israel is not proceeding with a fourth dose because the current wave has been manageable despite the very high number of cases, it seems very unlikely that COVID will need periodic boosters in the general population.

My understanding is that is because they are children, so the doses are much lower.

DTAP, for example, is one of the vaccines that kids need. It has a 5 dose schedule. But, an adult that was never vaccinated can get one shot of Tdap instead.

Notably, the DTAP vaccine is 71% effective after 5 years[1]. Compare to the covid vaccine being 38% after 6 months[2].

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/dtap-tdap-td/hcp/about-vacc...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm?s_cid=mm...

Several vaccines have 3 doses. Flu vaccines get new variants every 6 months.

Every disease is different. Every vaccine is different. What would it prove?

You ignored the part about masks. Leana Wen referred to cloth masks as "little more than facial decoration". Unless there are mask mandates that require better masks, the mandates are effectively useless.

I'm not sure I'd read too much into off-the-cuff remarks from CNN guest experts.

Mask mandates aren't worthless, but I agree they'd be a lot better if they required better masks. I believe that's already the case in other countries and I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually comes to the US.

Leana Wen isn't just some talking head. She was the head of Planned Parenthood and is a nationally-known medical figure. She is especially respected on the political left. That makes her statement especially surprising because the left has been the side pushing the mask mandates.

FWIW "the political left" in the United States is not so much a team and more a loose coalition of folks who have some range of views that don't agree with the more uniform political right. It's not that useful to call this out as a group as if surely 80% of folks in the political left care what Leana Wen has to say unless it happens to be particularly insightful. Most folks don't actually know this woman's name, nor do they particularly care.

It might be healthier for you to see things less as "there are two sides" and reconsider how you analyze individual topics. When you say "this is the view of side L and this is the view of side R" you are in danger of missing nuance and views that cut across. If you identify with say, side R, you will bias yourself toward those specific viewpoints.

The point is that she is a well-known and respected person on the left. She is not loved on the right. If she had made this remark 6 or 12 months ago she would have alienated the people who love her. That would have ruined her reputation.

Don't assume I have a manichean approach to everything. This was just one example where her popularity is very polarized along political lines.

Maybe this person's popularity only looks polar to you because you're making things out to have a team L and a team R, whereas it's more like team R is real and hallucinating a bogeyman team L where surely folks worship named figureheads as much as team R.

You think Planned Parenthood is not polarized? I guarantee you that Wen's favorables/unfavorables break down purely along partisan lines. Plenty of people don't know her. But prior to this statement, all of her favorables were Ds and all of her unfavorables were R's.

Not everything is partisan. But abortion surely is.

My point is simply that it seems odd to describe an individual as "polarizing" when the people who know them are generally either the large number of haters (thanks to R media demonizing individuals) or their small group of personal supporters (because there isn't this huge group worshipping her as you might imagine).

My other point is that Planned Parenthood and abortion are of course polarizing topics but pro-choice folks are not as monolithic in ideology as the core republican base, so it's weird to see statements like this which you made:

> She is especially respected on the political left. That makes her statement especially surprising because the left has been the side pushing the mask mandates.

This rings untrue, and like someone's been watching too much angry news. And characterizing mask mandates as some nonexistent "left-wing agenda" is also really unfair to folks who may not have progressive politics but support masking. My parents for example are Christian capital-R Republicans but think it's bonkers that we can't get folks to do what is best for the common good, in the name of "freedom." At least they understand, very minimally, the difference between fascism and emergency measures.

There are not two sides to this issue until one angry group of people decide "you're either with us or against us" and generate those two sides out of thin air. It's really stupid to do that. Abortion and masking are not related. That are you surprised an individual has a unique opinion different from "their team" is very telling.

You seem to know a lot about an anonymous person on the internet!

If you can't see that abortion is polarized along partisan lines, we live on different planets.

> You seem to know a lot about an anonymous person on the internet!

Yeah I'm going off of the ~20 sentences I've spent time reading from this anonymous person on the internet. You're not doing much in these responses to demonstrate comprehension of my points so maybe it's gg.

> If you can't see that abortion is polarized along partisan lines, we live on different planets.

I didn't dispute this very basic fact. But again, this wasn't what my comments were about.

"Abortion care" is less than 8% of what people go to Planned Parenthood for ... Abortion may be polarizing but to take a minority focus of Planned Parenthood and claim Planned Parenthood is polarizing because of it is silly.

That's one way to frame it! The alternative: Planned Parenthood provides the majority of abortions in the US.

The Washington Post has a good explainer on this. [1]

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/08/...

Yeah yeah we get it, republicans hate planned parenthood. What everyone in these replies is trying to tell you, is that this DOESN'T mean democrats/the left/however you want to group {everyone else}, gives a crap about the details of that specific organization / who runs it, even if they are pro-choice in ideology. And your constant choice of saying "but the left!" is problematic at its core.

How is that your takeaway from the balanced fact check article? It says both sides are wrong. As an enlightened liberal, you clearly know better! Good day, friend.

I'm confused why you think I'm supposed to defend or explain what a CNN guest said.

The comment I was responding to said "masks don't really work," which isn't true. Even cloth masks provide some benefit. Whether that benefit justifies a mask mandate is something reasonable people can disagree about.

You don't have to defend or explain. But you didn't respond to the point about masks. You said that you and GP were on the same page. It didn't seem like that to me since you appear to disagree about masks.

I don't think you understand how many assumptions are baked into the current conclusions that vaccines and masks are effective. This relies on accurate reporting of vaccination status and accurate reporting of breakthrough cases. Meanwhile in the real world covid is spreading unabated, record case counts, regardless of vaccination rate or mask compliance.

Clearly something isn't adding up. Meanwhile the rosy estimates of safety and effectiveness have been repeatedly and consistently walked back. I think it's time to recognize that our institutions have had their analyses and recommendations tainted by strong and pervasive political and social biases, from the laypeople who have no incentive to report breakthrough cases, all the way up through the chain past academics and policymakers who have their careers riding on the validity of 2 years of covid research and policy that cannot be contradicted without trashing credibility. That's not to mention the career and social stigma associated with speaking out or publishing negatively against the vaccines.

It doesn't help that dozens of hours of testimony on behalf of researches and clinicians before congresspeople is simply being ignored[0]. Add media to the rabidly biased groups and you're getting closer to reconciling what is being published and communicated about the vaccines and virus with what is happening in the real world.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U&t=1s

That's hours of "testimony" from conspiracy theorists who all have long records of making flagrantly incorrect statements on COVID. Johnson's big leadoff panelist was a Texas cardiologist who is far from a respected authority in epidemiology and seems to be courting attention by disputing every best practice that ER doctors and the scientific community have agreed works best with acute COVID patients and hyping up silver bullet drugs that have shown limited effectiveness in the best studies. I recommend everyone look up "Dr. Peter Mcullough" and getting a whiff of his reputation before investing any of their time in that panel.

The vaccines are extremely safe and the real world data from shows they protect you from getting covid in the first place (and are much more effective at preventing severe covid).

Here's the data from Sen Johnson's state: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/vaccine-status.htm#ca...

Again, this is based on the assumption that adverse effects are being sufficiently reported and/or attributed to the vaccines.

And once again, the real world data shows that the virus is spreading across the globe at record pace regardless of vaccination rate.

I know it sounds like dangerous conspiracy talk, but sometimes we need to think outside of our official sources. Ultimately it is up to the people to hold our institutions to account. The real world data does not line up with the official claims.

You seem to be alleging a massive global conspiracy that must involve tens if not hundreds of thousands of health officials, academics, and scientists all working together to hide the truth for some unstated reason.

You think Wisconsin health officials are cooking the books? Along with every single other state? C'mon

No. This is the danger of blithely dismissing everything as a "conspiracy theory".

None of this requires a conspiracy. None of this requires explicit communication or collusion. That's not how bias works. Bias works as subtle (sometimes not so subtle) pressure. Pressure against asking certain questions, against publishing certain results (this is hardly unique to covid), massaging data and models (often unconsciously) in favor of certain conclusions.

And then there is the very real stigma - also something which does not depend on an overt conspiracy, just an army of true believers who will publicly castigate those who speak out, putting the livelihoods of dissenters at risk.

There should be stigma for people who spread misinformation during a deadly pandemic, in my opinion.

And yes, what you're implying heavily in your posts would require some sort of conspiracy to be plausible. You're going against dozens of countries' thousands of experts and numerous studies, then choosing to believe quacks on panels on youtube whose wikipedia articles have giant "covid-19 misinformation" sections in them with ample citations.

>And yes, what you're implying heavily in your posts would require some sort of conspiracy to be plausible

Look, regardless of whether what I'm saying is true, your primary argument is that it is implausible because of the logistics of organizing such a vast conspiracy. This is false. All it takes is an emergent culture to instill an implicit bias under threat of ostracization/unemployment/unpersoning and then without any overt conspiracy you will see discourse, studies, and policy all align in a single direction regardless of that direction's validity.

This is the mechanism by which authoritarian governments flourish while simultaneously oppressing their peoples. Life in the Soviet Union was miserable, but the average person would not publicly speak against their leaders. Note that I don't mean to imply that anything about the covid response is "socialist" or anything to that effect, only that emergent consensus, especially when bolstered by propaganda, can influence individuals and society to together behave in an irrational manner in an emergent, implicit fashion.

Let's try to materialize an example. Suppose that you indeed have a society which is irrationally biased in favor of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, and you are trying to study adverse effects. Moving up the chain

1. Patients are less likely to connect adverse effects to their vaccines (e.g. it only recently came out that monthly cycles were disrupted, originally a "conspiracy theory")

2. Doctors are less likely to acknowledge that strange symptoms are related to vaccines (remember, I'm alleging that they're biased)

3. Researchers are less likely to look into adverse events, especially when from the bottom they now have substantially less data to review

4. Policymakers see this lack of evidence of adverse events as proof of safety when it is only bias which has an emergent muting effect on cataloging of adverse events. They continue to distribute "safe and effective" propaganda in good faith (no conspiracy).

5. The cycle continues.

You may not agree that this bias exists, but my point again is that none of this requires a conspiracy, only a pervasive bias.

Now remember, the phrase "safe and effective" was repeated across media from day one, long before there was ample time to gather evidence of harm. The seed of bias was planted early. I hope you'll at least acknowledge that this is far more plausible than some cooky "conspiracy theory".

Those series of events could potentially happen, but I just don't think it's the case with so many disparate countries at play. I don't really want to get into an extended debate about this, but I appreciate your detailed response and civility here nonetheless.

Can you explain specifically what bias leads to Wisconsin reporting most covid cases are among the unvaccinated?

> I know it sounds like dangerous conspiracy talk, but sometimes we need to think outside of our official sources.

... to Dr. McCullough, this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._McCullough#COVID-19

Literally one of the main guys on the panel you cited yourself a post or two ago. Sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theorist / quack to me.