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This article (typical of NY Times, honestly) is editorialized. There are so many questions to ask:
> Booster doses cut the risk of infection in vaccinated people by about half across all age groups. The gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated groups was much greater. The numbers most likely reflect only symptomatic cases, and may be different for asymptomatic infections, Dr. Barouch noted.
To this day I have not seen a single study that controls for the obvious confounders. In particular, people who get vaccinated are likely "safer" in general. They most likely work out more, they most likely care about their health, they most like wear masks, and most likely listen to their doctor unquestioningly. ALL of these are confounders that MUST be controlled for in order for any study on booster efficacy to meet the bar of actual science, and not this pseudo-scientific idol worship we have right now.
> Some people have worried about persistent symptoms even after a mild bout of Covid. But a recent study suggested that the risk of so-called long Covid is highest among people with one of four predisposing factors, including Type 2 diabetes and the presence of autoantibodies.
Weird, just recently we were hearing long covid is unavoidable even with vaccination in some cases. This was never mentioned. Yet another ultra low quality "studies say" post written by a non-scientist.
> In those age groups, vaccination itself — two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that a booster shot did not seem to add much benefit.
Indeed, despite my area being pretty well boosted we still had a massive peak in cases. Without a doubt the "journalists" spun it as a catastrophe that is the unvaccinated's fault. Well, if 80% of my location is vaccinated, do you think a positive rate of 38% can only be because the unvaccinated? I suppose if you listen to MSM like NY Times and the mouthpieces at the CDC you'd probably believe so.
This calls into question the vaccine effectiveness in general. Which have the same problem, confounders are everywhere and no one is controlling for them. It's far easier to sell fear than science, because science takes time.
One day we'll get actual information. Until then we're stuck with these faux-journalistic pieces that are just cleverly dressed up op-eds with reddit-tier "studies say" bait.