I only scanned headlines earlier and wondered how long ago they were vaccinated. It seemed as though none are seriously ill and require hospitalization, which I hope continues to be true.
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The CDC and state health departments have not okayed boosters yet for anyone but:
- Been receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood
- Received an organ transplant and are taking medicine to suppress the immune system
- Received a stem cell transplant within the last 2 years or are taking medicine to suppress the immune system
- Moderate or severe primary immunodeficiency (such as DiGeorge syndrome, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome)
- Advanced or untreated HIV infection
- Active treatment with high-dose corticosteroids or other drugs that may suppress your immune response
This feels like the Wild West. I definitely think that public health info will suffer when so many (1 million+) go in and get a third shot without any system for monitoring effectiveness or side effects.
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They were in the January wave as essential government leaders.
I am not worried about the possibly over vaccinated. It is the under vaccinated causing all the chaos.
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My kids never had RSV either and I didnāt have to put them in a testing group and have them get shots in their head. Thank you for allowing your child to be in the test group. Donāt think I could have made that decision.
Iām curious ā¦ are yāall saying no one asked for any info when you got subsequent shots? I had to fill out paper work for my booster so itās definitely being tracked somewhere. They have to have something to request payment for administration/more vaccine, right? If you donāt have insurance, they ask for your SSN. Iām not sure that Iām using the correct terminology, but itās being tracked somehow as we get a daily update of vaccines given nationwide.
But I agree that anyone who wants a third could act like this is a first and get a shot. I donāt recommend such dishonesty, but I could see it being easy to do.
I donāt know the last time I gave out SSN for medical reason. It is not being tracked in NY. You can voluntarily upload your vaccine info to NYS Wallet, but it is not being shared with pharmacies or doctorās offices.
If you do get any vaccine (booster or otherwise), wouldnāt you want to inform your primary care physician (or their medical group) of that, so that it can be in your medical record?
One can mention it next time a primary care visit occurs. Just once or maybe twice a year for me
They cannot ask for your SSN unless you are asking for credit. You do not need a SSN to get a vaccine, for no charge. They canāt use your SSN to track you.
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No one asked for anything except my name. I expect they are keeping track of the number of vaccines given, and little else.
When I got my other vaccines, I got text messages asking me how I was doing, right after and for a few weeks. This was part of an effort to track side effects.
no way they should be asking for SSN.
I got mine at Walgreens where I fill my prescriptions sometimes. They have my info Iām sure.
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That was probably through VSafe @compmom. But now no one needs to register for a vaccine through VAMS. And VSafe was voluntary.
Funny, I got a VSafe check in text last weekā¦6 months post second vaccine.
I also received a 6 months VSafe check in, as did my mother. I assume my husband did also, although he didnāt mention it.
As per UCSF, 20% of current COVID patients are vaccinated. A lot more than what is reported, pandemic of the unvaccinated, 99% are unvaccinated. It is a bit alarming. They also didnāt minimize the risk of severe cases or deaths. I hope they are wrong but they are quite good and probably not wrong.
As I am trying to think when or if we should do boosters the fact that they will be needed every 6 month for many years is upsetting
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I think this comment from the article is very interesting. Iād really like more information about how vaccines can limit actual infection as opposed to mitigating severe illness and why the mRNA vaccines arenāt accomplishing the former.
āYes, this most recent decision about boosters is rather politicalāthatās what politicians do. Yes, it would be good if all our public health decisions were based on good data and good science. (Science is, after all, data driven.) It would also be really good if all our top scientists started pushing hard for good data and engaging in sound scientific reasoning instead of pointing fingers and cherry picking their data.
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Public health should be data and science driven. At the same time, public health officials have the responsibility to act quickly to protect the public even when the best data may not yet be available. Public health also has to use available knowledge to make decisions which will keep society safe in an uncertain future. If data indicate waning effectiveness of a vaccine, public health officials need to try to develop downstream protocols to deal with that failing before it becomes a serious problem.
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Vaccines should serve TWO purposes. They should protect individuals who are vaccinated. But they should also reduce the prevalence of infectious agents. Current vaccines against COVID-19 do a good job of protecting individuals, but there is plenty of data that indicate these vaccines are losing their effectiveness in stopping the spread of the virusāespecially against new variants.
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The true effectiveness of a vaccine is not measured by antibody binding (useful to know), but rather by the functional capability of the immune system against the pathogen in vaccinated individualsāfunctional immunology. People exposed to a pathogen do not ALL develop the same antibodies or antibody classes against the pathogen. Some produce a lot of antibody much of which may not be terribly effective; some produce effective antibodies in antibody classes that donāt last very long; some produce more moderate amounts of certain antibodies that are highly effective; and some produce antibodies and memory cells that allow the immune system to respond very quickly. (All this has been POORLY studied for COVID-19.)
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It is well established that dangerous mutants propagate most readily under conditions of weak to moderate protection and strong selection. These are precisely the conditions we currently have with COVID-19, where only about half the population is vaccinated (a huge potential pathogen reservoir) and where the vaccine(s) protect against severe disease but donāt protect very fully against infection. If we want to stop this virus (and particularly variants that are dangerous to the vaccinated), we need stronger vaccine response (both percentage of the population vaccinated AND very low viral load in vaccinated individuals who develop breakthrough infections.)
It is profoundly annoying to hear supposedly top scientists ignoring one or more of the above points, and it is downright irritating to hear top scientists whine about the public health process without at the same time pushing hard for the kind of research studies that would give us the data we really need. Estimating virus load from PCR cycle threshold data would be ONE example.
Finally some people argue that giving boosters detracts from vaccinating the rest of the world. This is a stupid argument. We have the capability to do both, and we should DO both. Vaccinating the rest of the world doesnāt accomplish much if the vaccine fails to slow evolution of the virus.ā
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Where are you finding these numbers? I just did a google search and came up empty. I was on their news page, but nothing matched what youāre saying.
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