[peter422]

I never said the trials showed efficacy, though there are multiple high quality trials which do show serious benefits of 3rd/4th shots in various age groups. I just say they ran human trials, which your comment implied they didn’t.

Also:

- no good evidence the virus is attenuated (lower hospitalizations/mortality likely driven by increased population immunity)

- a lot of FDA/CDC officials agreed with the decision too, and I think on the whole were proved right to offer to the booster to older populations before all the studies were completed.

- nobody is forcing you to get the 3rd/4th shots, why do you want to prevent other people from getting them if they want them? You are sooo sure they are bad?

[taolegal]

Sure let people get them voluntarily. My point is that all this irrational exuberance is very clearly precipitously eroding trust in public health authority & science generally.

[autoexec]

> My point is that all this irrational exuberance is very clearly precipitously eroding trust in public health authority & science generally.

Nobody needs vaccines for this. We have actual evidence of doctors who got kickbacks for giving patients addictive drugs they didn't need, of pharmaceutical companies lying about known risks, of scientific papers that are nonsense being published, of the CDC lying to the public because they didn't trust us to act like adults and not stockpile masks. There is a US doctor telling her patients that their illnesses are caused by alien DNA and demon sperm, and she's still allowed to keep her medical license. These are hurting trust in science and public health.

I don't blame people for being skeptical of what's going on, but far too often what people are doing is just putting their trust into whatever backs up what they've already decided must be true. People who thought the vaccines were bad before they had any evidence at all to support that have total faith in every study and doctor they can find which might support their position while insisting that the mountain of evidence that contradicts them is a lie cooked up by a conspiracy.

Everyone should be distrustful of research papers, doctors, and public health agencies right now. They earned that, but that just makes it more important that people do a better job of avoiding their own biases and evaluating the imperfect information we have. For all the problems that exist in science, when the vast majority of scientists are telling us something it's best that we listen. We should be most cautious when listening to people who are telling us what we want to hear.

[peter422]

You incorrectly said 3 posts ago that the new boosters were only tested in mouse models.

You are actively attempting to erode trust in public health and then lamenting that people are losing trust in public health. Give me a break.

[taolegal]

If you're going to unveil a new vaccine it should be proven to be effective. Anything else at this point (when practically everyone has developed an immune response through infection or previous vaccination) is unethical.

The mouse models were challenge studies, i.e. how do vaccinated mice respond to exposure to the omicron variant? That's what matters. Versus what you are demagoguing. Conflating with "tested", that since the new booster was given to humans and no abnormal AEs were observed & antibody levels rose, that automatically means it must be effective.

This is precisely the scenario that degrades public trust in institutions when this fast-and-loose science is being rolled-out live on large populations.

[peter422]

Don’t take it then, nobody is forcing you.

However this exact issue you are talking about was debated at the public FDA hearing on whether or not to approve the updated boosters. Most, but not all, of the people on the committee believed that it was worth the risk with incomplete information.

It isn’t ethical or possible to run the studies you want given the existing prevalence in the virus, so you do the best you can. It isn’t fast-and-loose to make decisions with imperfect data when all you have is imperfect data.

Also there were even more interesting and nuanced arguments against the updated booster but evidently you didn’t read the FDA meeting notes and see the arguments from the couple people who voted against it. Oh well.

[TechBro8615]

> Most, but not all, of the people on the committee believed that it was worth the risk with incomplete information

This is hardly surprising considering two of the people most likely to disagree resigned from the FDA after the last booster approval, due to their disagreement with the process. [0]

The people who resigned were FDA Office of Vaccines Research and Review Director Marion Gruber, Ph.D. and Deputy Director Phillip Krause, M.D.

After resigning, they also published a critique in the Lancet of the policy of boosters for everyone. [1]

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/af8da7d4-43ea-41d6-90ee-f959b3675...

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[peter422]

First of all you are arguing a decision from a year ago, when there was a lot more ambiguity about the rick and rewards of the booster.

Also those scientists were essentially proved wrong - the booster almost certainly was better for everyone a year ago.

Further boosters is still a bit more complicated but we are doing the best we can.