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COVID boosters for wealthy nations spark outrage
The news item I'll discuss in this post comes from the prominent scientific journal Nature. It's here: COVID boosters for wealthy nations spark outrage: COVID boosters for wealthy nations spark outrage. It's probably open source, no subscription required.
It is important to note that like Climate Change, another international disaster that has become highly politicized, Covid involves all humanity. In my view, it is our responsibility in the first world to attend to the third world. We can do this because we are good and noble people, or we can do this for selfish self-interest; it doesn't matter.
The Delta variant, for which the mRNA vaccines are highly effective at saving lives, arose in India, probably among the poor but certainly among the unvaccinated.
Some text from the news item:
Israel has announced plans to begin giving booster shots to older adults next week, in the hope of increasing their protection against COVID-19 — and a number of other wealthy countries are considering the same. But global-health researchers warn that this strategy could set back efforts to end the pandemic. Each booster, they say, represents a vaccine dose that could instead go to low- and middle-income countries, where most citizens have no protection at all, and where dangerous coronavirus variants could emerge as cases surge.
Data do not yet show that extra doses are needed to save lives, researchers say, except perhaps for people with compromised immune systems, who might fail to generate much of an antibody response to the initial COVID-19 shots.
COVID vaccines to reach poorest countries in 2023 — despite recent pledges
An internal analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that if the 11 rich countries that are either rolling out boosters or considering it this year were to give the shots to everyone over 50 years old, they would use up roughly 440 million doses of the global supply. If all high-income and upper-middle-income nations were to do the same, the estimate doubles.
The WHO maintains that these shots would be more useful for curbing the pandemic if they were sent to low- and lower-middle-income countries, where more than 85% of people — some 3.5 billion — haven’t had a single jab. “The priority now must be to vaccinate those who have received no doses,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a briefing on 12 July.
All of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized by most high-income countries reduce a person’s risk of hospitalization and death by more than 90%. Scientists don’t yet know how much more a booster — typically an extra jab of an mRNA-based vaccine on top of the standard doses — would protect the average person, although data are beginning to trickle in. The effects of not receiving any vaccine are more certain. On the African continent, where only 2% of people have been vaccinated, COVID-19 rates are escalating, with fatality rates higher than the global average...
...What’s more, evolutionary biologists say that countries with low vaccination coverage are ripe for the emergence of further dangerous variants of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. “Right now, our destiny relies on distributing vaccines so that continued transmission doesn’t occur,” says Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University in Massachusetts. “We don’t want to be chasing our tail in terms of new variants.”
Contemplating boosters
Israel is not alone in considering boosters for older people. Spurred partly by data1 suggesting that antibody levels wane over time, the United Kingdom has drawn up plans — but not given final approval — for a booster programme to begin in September for older people, front-line health workers and others at high risk of COVID-19...
Data do not yet show that extra doses are needed to save lives, researchers say, except perhaps for people with compromised immune systems, who might fail to generate much of an antibody response to the initial COVID-19 shots.
COVID vaccines to reach poorest countries in 2023 — despite recent pledges
An internal analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that if the 11 rich countries that are either rolling out boosters or considering it this year were to give the shots to everyone over 50 years old, they would use up roughly 440 million doses of the global supply. If all high-income and upper-middle-income nations were to do the same, the estimate doubles.
The WHO maintains that these shots would be more useful for curbing the pandemic if they were sent to low- and lower-middle-income countries, where more than 85% of people — some 3.5 billion — haven’t had a single jab. “The priority now must be to vaccinate those who have received no doses,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a briefing on 12 July.
All of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized by most high-income countries reduce a person’s risk of hospitalization and death by more than 90%. Scientists don’t yet know how much more a booster — typically an extra jab of an mRNA-based vaccine on top of the standard doses — would protect the average person, although data are beginning to trickle in. The effects of not receiving any vaccine are more certain. On the African continent, where only 2% of people have been vaccinated, COVID-19 rates are escalating, with fatality rates higher than the global average...
...What’s more, evolutionary biologists say that countries with low vaccination coverage are ripe for the emergence of further dangerous variants of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. “Right now, our destiny relies on distributing vaccines so that continued transmission doesn’t occur,” says Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University in Massachusetts. “We don’t want to be chasing our tail in terms of new variants.”
Contemplating boosters
Israel is not alone in considering boosters for older people. Spurred partly by data1 suggesting that antibody levels wane over time, the United Kingdom has drawn up plans — but not given final approval — for a booster programme to begin in September for older people, front-line health workers and others at high risk of COVID-19...
A graphic from the article:
There are people selling, in my view, panic.
On this website, I have twice encountered the name of Dr. Eric Topol, who seems to be selling panic for the reward of some kind of fame.
Not all scientists are immune from human frailty, including the spread of hype and outright misinformation.
While I am not claiming to be a Covid expert myself - surely I am not - as a scientist involved in the treatment of human disease, I have been closely monitoring the scientific literature. It may be true that at some point, variants will arise that will require booster or new vaccines. My view is that we're nowhere near that, and that our chief responsibility is to get other human beings, the stupid resistant types as well as the poor vaccinated.
As for media "experts:" I expressed my view of the need for critical thinking when listening to self declared "experts" elsewhere:
In general, the media's job no longer to provide information, but rather to sell advertising.
This requires the use of click bait in internet times.
It is reasonable to ask who exactly "Eric Topol" is, and what is his area of expertise?
I did this, since I never heard of him, by entering his name in Google Scholar and looking at his most recent publications. He's done a lot of work on telemedicine.
While some of his primary papers in the last year relate to Covid, many do not. Opening a few of them leads me to suspect that he is not the world expert in virology.
There is lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of papers published on the subject of the Delta variant, and his remarks do not strike me, even remotely, as consistent with what I read in broader scientific publications.
As for the Nymag reporter, and his choice of whom to designate as the absolute authority, I stand by my claim that one can usually not get a degree in journalism of one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.
Dr. Topol may be a fine scientist, but he is certainly not the only scientist on the planet studying Covid-19, by a long stretch.
If one searches "Delta variant" and BNT162b2 one can see hundreds of papers. The one that comes up for me "Since 2021," is this one from the New England Journal of Medicine, published a week or so ago: Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines against the B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant
It's a little less panicked than Dr. Topol, with all due respect.
It is reasonable to ask who exactly "Eric Topol" is, and what is his area of expertise?
I did this, since I never heard of him, by entering his name in Google Scholar and looking at his most recent publications. He's done a lot of work on telemedicine.
While some of his primary papers in the last year relate to Covid, many do not. Opening a few of them leads me to suspect that he is not the world expert in virology.
There is lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of papers published on the subject of the Delta variant, and his remarks do not strike me, even remotely, as consistent with what I read in broader scientific publications.
As for the Nymag reporter, and his choice of whom to designate as the absolute authority, I stand by my claim that one can usually not get a degree in journalism of one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.
Dr. Topol may be a fine scientist, but he is certainly not the only scientist on the planet studying Covid-19, by a long stretch.
If one searches "Delta variant" and BNT162b2 one can see hundreds of papers. The one that comes up for me "Since 2021," is this one from the New England Journal of Medicine, published a week or so ago: Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines against the B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant
It's a little less panicked than Dr. Topol, with all due respect.
Be safe, be well.
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