| > The evidence for covid vaccines is that they provide robust protection for months, and then protection may begin to wain. Hone your own advice and be precise in your claims. There is good evidence that two doses of the vaccine were protective for at least three months, against the variants dominating 2021. It's 2022, there is a new escape variant about and we endorsed teenagers to get a booster shot to "protect" themselves from this new variant - based on what evidence exactly? > Evidence for ivermectin is that, ehhh it might have some effect. There is lots of weak evidence that it's highly effective and some weak evidence that it does nothing. This adds up no good evidence for anything. > Those aren't the same. Trying to dress them up as similar is wrong. These two things as re not equally scientifically validated. That's not the point. The question is, do you apply the same standard to both? Do you reject weak observational data as evidence? If so, a lot of the claims about vaccine effectiveness (here and now) are not supported by evidence. |
I was. The claims I made are backed by strong randomized controlled trials.
> There is good evidence that two doses of the vaccine were protective for at least three months, against the variants dominating 2021.
And also good RCT based evidence that a third dose (or perhaps just a more recent dose) provides robust protection against delta and omicron variants. The precise level of protection is different because the variants are all a little different, but the conclusion of "boosters provide robust immunity against variants" is strongly supported.
So yes, there is good evidence that boosters provide protection. There is not good evidence that ivermectin does anything.
> It's 2022, there is a new escape variant about and we endorsed teenagers to get a booster shot to "protect" themselves from this new variant - based on what evidence exactly?
To be clear, there are two reasons you run studies
1. To validate effectiveness
2. To validate safety
There's not really a reason to believe that the boosters will be less effective in teens. In fact, there's strong reason to believe that they'll be just as effective as in everyone else. You really don't need a study for this.
What you might need a study for is validating safety, which is why we break out pregnant people, teens, young kids, and adults. Those groups can have different safety impacts (kids and teens weigh less, so doses might need to be smaller to be safe!).
Except that we already know that the exact substance we're sticking in teens is safe in teens, because its half of the exact same thing as in the initial doses. So if your concern is safety, its fine, and if your concern is efficacy, well we have strong RCT evidence of efficacy. We also generally speaking know that ivermectin is safe. But, we have no evidence to its efficacy.
So I apply precisely the same standard.