We’re publishing an excellent piece today about the risks of the booster roll-out by Dr. David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia. He points out that Geert vanden Bossche, a critic of the Covid vaccines, may be right – that leaky vaccines deliver a brief adaptive protection against infection but simultaneously impair innate immunity, causing a reduction in non-specific protection once the initial protection has worn off. If that’s true, he doesn’t think it’s an argument for not boosting the over-50s or the vulnerable. But it is an argument for not boosting the young and healthy. Here are the opening few paragraphs:
The Government’s answer to Omicron is boosters, boosters and more boosters. Everyone over 18 is eligible. Early queues exceeded five hours; December 18th saw 904,000 boosted. Israel is doling out fourth shots to the over-60s and Germany plans to follow suit.
Please don’t lump me with the anti-vaxxers as I roll my eyes. The present vaccines are invaluable for preventing severe COVID-19 – probably via a T-cell mechanism – in anyone of late middle age or above, or with vulnerabilities.
But those of us who broadly support vaccination must be honest: Spring’s fond notion that we could mass vaccinate our way out of the pandemic, as with measles or polio, is a busted flush. The dash for boosters only underscores the point.
The core problem is that the vaccines give only brief protection against infection. Moreover, they are ‘leaky’, and SARS-CoV2 can outflank them. Clinical trials suggested that the doubly vaccinated initially enjoyed 90% protection against infection. But, with ageing vaccination and circulating Delta, this eroded by summer’s end. Omicron is even more evasive. At a December party in Oslo, where 98% of 117 guests had been double vaccinated, 74% caught COVID. Boosters restore protection to 71-76%, but this doesn’t last long. Early UKHSA evidence is that it’s down by 15-25% within 10 weeks.
Worse, by using leaky vaccines, we are conducting a huge Darwinian experiment, with ourselves as guinea pigs.
Worth reading in full.
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