XFool wrote: Then again, we can only make our own population immune from what we already know of and know how to counter, not necessarily effectively against possible variants we know nothing about.
Not sure how to link to the specific section, but it's at 13:48 (23/9/2021) ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... navigation"It comes after Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that viruses tend to become weaker as they spread around.
She said:
We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2.
We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses.
Seasonal coronaviruses cause colds, and Gilbert said: “Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those.”
Asked about the comments on Times Radio, Bell said:
If you look at the trajectory we’re on, we’re a lot better off than we were six months ago. So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it’s not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths. So I think we’re over the worst of it now.
And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta [variant], we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who’ve had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology – if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially"
It looks like the consensus, at least in the UK, is starting to drift towards having the virus circulating as being of benefit... adding to our immunity, and likely helping the virus to evolve to become less virulent.
I'm not going to bother digging out the article again, but on sciencedaily there was an article a while back on some research that suggested actually catching covid gives broader protection than the vaccine... makes quite some sense because the vaccines only target one specific part of the virus, whereas catching the virus let's your immune system see the whole thing, so the antibodies generated are broader and more likely to be effective even against mutations.
So as long as the original two doses are doing their job at protecting against hospitalisation and death in the UK, which they largely appear to be doing - as the quote above says, it's not even clear if the few deaths recorded as covid related are even caused by covid now, as they tend to be occurring in the elderly and those with other things that could have bene the cause - then we might as well let other countries have the extra vaccines.
Not so much to reduce the risk of new variants, rather just because it's the more equitable thing to do.
I mean, even a booster dose isn't going to be 100% effective... you're only going to add a few % onto the effectiveness of already very effective vaccines, and that's mostly going to be against symptomatic disease... so where would you stop? Another booster after that? And another?
At what point does it become unacceptably selfish to keep giving more and more jabs to ourselves when others around the world haven't even had a single one yet?
[Edit: Would just add - although I've quoted XFool I'm not sure which 'side' of the ongoing debate my comment is supportive of or countering ... I just offer it as some additional information that seems relevant to the points being discussed]
