Because sex is good. And sometimes spontaneous. And often combined with other drugs (booze) and people make bad decisions.
Is it gonna be “one or two shots one time” like the Covid vaccine was initially pitched or ...
- Flu. Twice per year until age 9 then one per year, forever.
- Td, one dose every 10 years, forever.
- Tdap, 4 doses.
- Pneumococcal, 2 doses.
- Rotavirus, 2 or 3 doses.
- Meningitis, 2 doses.
- MMR, 2 doses.
- Hepatitis A, 2 doses.
- Hepatitis B, 3 doses.
- HPV, 2 or 3 doses.
- Polio, 2 doses.
- Varicella, 2 doses.
Seriously, we've had vaccines for 300 years. This kind of shocked Pikachu reaction to the very concept of a booster is tiring and adds nothing to the conversation.
Honestly, one dose every 3 months to avoid AIDS? In a heartbeat. How is getting an ouchie once in a while anything other than a remarkable scientific breakthrough in the prevention of one of the most insidious diseases we have?
That's not at all true, though the number drops pretty low when you eliminate the various series for infants that have doses at something like 2, 4, and 6 months (and often a fourth at 12-15).
But even eliminating those, there's a 3-dose/6-month HPV vaccine series, and a 3-dose, 6-month series for Meningitis B for populations at elevated risk, and maybe others.
1) Maybe many or most infected have a single strain each, and a targeted vaccine to each's strain could work as a treatment, similarly to the tetanus and rabies vaccines. Even if not a full cure, could be a way to halt the disease progression with lower cost and side effects than the current treatments available.
2) HIV spreads relatively slowly, so maybe flu-style annual vaccinations to at-risk groups for hot strains could be enough to actually revert the epidemic over decades.