To what extent has the efficacy of natural immunity been characterized? There should be some minimum bar of understanding that must be met before something becomes a policy even in extreme cases such as these.
I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses.
If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a year later, as an extra boost.
But it's unfair – & unscientific – to insist on such doses for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have bad vax reactions).
Other countries are doing this better – just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose vaccinated in early 2021.
Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
> just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses
> Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
Other countries delayed second doses either due to health and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of bureaucracy.
Supply constraints (not anything 'safety' related) were the original driving factor for slower 2nd doses elsewhere - but it was already confidently conjectured by domain experts that a longer spacing would likely be more effective. It's even taught in vaccination textbooks, pre-COVID, that a delay of at least 2 months is usually necessary to train the strongest/longest immune response.
(Much like 'spaced repetition' to consciously memorize facts, an immune-response is more-reinforced if a separate presentation happens at a distinctly-different time, when forgetting has begun but is reversible.)
Thus, those countries that trusted the pre-COVID science – like the UK or Canada – delayed 2nd shots for 8 weeks or more - giving more of their population the all-important 1st-dose sooner, & closely monitoring the effects on community cases.
In the meantime, Fauci did interviews insisting the 3/4 week rapid boosting was "optimal". (That was overconfident bluster unsupported by the rushed & limited trial data, which other more honest scientists pointed out.)
Surprise! With data, the textbooks were right. 8 week or longer delays generate immune responses that are stronger & last longer. In the UK, now without such tight supply constraints, it's considered dangerously negligent to not warn patients they should wait at least 8 weeks for the 2nd shot:
In the US, disease experts like Eric Topol & Monica Gandhi now suggest some of the 'fading' immunity showing up in Israeli & US studies, especially with Pfizer, is due to the rushed 3-week booster.
Our flailing CDC still insists, today in their vaccination FAQ, contra the science & the interests of Americans, that "you should get your second shot as close to the [21d or 28d] interval as possible". They're also still urging people not to use N95-quality masks, even though they are now cheap & plentiful and likely 2x-4x more effective than cloth or surgical masks.
The failure to recognize that prior infections are as protective as vaccinations is another error that's wasting vaccine & creating arguments that we could just... skip & do better for everyone.
Thus: "Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility."
You're rewriting history. The US approved EUA and rolled out warp speed before any of this was known for sure. There was speculation on both sides. One being that delaying would be helpul the other being that it would render vaccines useless or that covid would be so bad by then it wouldn't matter. Either way, the US chose a path based on science and data just like most other countries. It wasn't bureaucracy.
Why should the 2020 EUA or 2020 Warp Speed program excuse an early-2021 error in spacing?
Some countries, & domain experts, got it right from the get-go. Those countries have benefited – saving lives – with their proper reading of the precedent & limited trial data.
Fauci, & the US CDC/FDA advisory committees that could have corrected this early enough to benefit, got it wrong. Fauci, especially, misreported a schedule as "optimal" that better experts knew was conjectural, tentative, & rushed.
These managerial functionaries could correct the recommendations now, to help people, but still haven't. The US maximum delay, 6 weeks, is shorter than the minimum delay the UK's vax lead recommends – which is well backed by latest analyses.
What's that continuing failure, if not bureaucratic inertia? Loylty to 2020 guesses rather than 2021 science?
These institutions are slow to integrate new science, and bad at balancing prior knowledge with new info - instead consistently preferring what earlier committees rubber-stamped. And that's still killing Americans.
