[dekhn]

honestly, it's just not worth arguing- some folks are going to be permanently convinced that the case for vaccination is much stronger than it really is. Like I said in other comments: the medical researcher community moved on and no longer believes that vaccines were nearly as effective as originally believed, for any criterion. We certainly aren't ever going to reach ongoing herd immunity so the most reasonable approach now is to identify people at greatest risk and spend more resources protecting them.

[didibus]

There could still be vaccines that have the potential to be much more effective, like this one that's soon to enter Phase 1 human trial: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/sars-coronavirus-variant-...

I think it'll be interesting to follow further vaccine development in that sense.

Also, I don't know why you say researchers no longer believes that vaccines missed the mark. Yes they didn't prevent reinfection of future variants, and that I think everyone was hoping they would and no longer believes that, but just recently this study was published: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... showing an estimate of 14 to 20 million lives saved by the vaccines just during the first year of vaccination. And while 80% of that is from direct protection, 20% is from indirect protection such as:

> reducing the levels of burden placed on health-care systems, reducing the number of days that health-care capacity would have been exceeded and therefore contributing to an overall lower fatality rate from infection

That said the study highlights the same conclusion as yours, people at greater risk should be prioritized since direct protection is much more effective, and also low income countries that are not able to get or pay for vaccines are disproportionately affected, it would make sense to send vaccines that are going to young healthy low risk individuals in high income countries to these lower income places.

[belorn]

What has been generally disproved is the concept of herd immunity. Initially this was what scientists and researchers had hoped would occur with vaccinations, and sadly for multiple reasons this did not happen.

Vaccines does significant help in reducing the severity when a person get sick, which reduces the work load on the health care system and allowing the personal to focus their time and skill on people in worse conditions. That is great, but it changes the initial strategy in terms of application and goal.

[didibus]

True, though from my understanding, in some sense herd immunity was reached for the original strain and even delta, both of which are pretty much eradicated from the US.

Those were the deadliest strains as well.

What happened is that COVID started mutating much faster than expected in ways that it can avoid the immune system.

[peteradio]

Fair enough but policy is still standing and being made based on these beliefs. Do you believe we will finally see reversals?

[dekhn]

I'm not sure what you mean. Most of the "reversals" have already been done, the rest is media noise.