Gadol, sounds like the J6 reruns worked as sobering medicine for your tds, or should we just call it a “retroactive vaccine”? great news
re:vaccine, let’s do retrospective review: original ph. 3 results were:
20x reduction in transmission 2 weeks after 2nd vaccine, assuming same behaviors.
what changed or is better understood now:
for getting infected:
1) effect gradually decreases from 2 weeks, so several months later it maybe 5x not 20x
2) did not change: effect is roughly the same for all age groups, with similar decrease for all
3) variants decreased effectiveness
4) there seems to be a conclusion that 3-4 weeks between doses is too short. Better to have more time between them to get longer immunity that is now being improved by boosters. The idea was to get to full 2-doses faster. I think Brits are doing 2 months now, but US still does 3 weeks.
Here, as in other aspects, the big guy dismissed former guy’s successful team and also his own advisors who were useful for pre-election PR and relied solely on government thinkers, severely limiting new ideas, so public policy flows by itself uncontrolled.
5) mixing mRNA and JJ/AZ seems to work well (JJ first), but not tested/advertised enough – companies do not care and gov did not pursue
6) kids were underestimated. They were first presumed not to contribute to transmission.
for serious sickness:
1) immunity seems to be holding against variants and time pretty well despite variants
2) vaccines were not optimized for long-term T-cell production. There are several vaccines in development that try to focus on that. Maybe months away from production