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Mark Pryce's avatar

Whether booster shots should be allowed is the wrong question. We should be asking whether they should be offered in highly vaccinated populations while there are still so many countries with low or no access to vaccines at all. For pharmaceutical companies, selling boosters in developed countries offers greater profits faster than selling first and second doses in developing countries. Global public health policy should not be dictated by the pharmaceutical investors' desire for greater dividends, but by global public health considerations.

There simply does not appear to be a pressing public health need for booster shots. Easily detectable T-cells and antibodies reduce over time, but there is no reason to believe that immune response (whcih is to say immune memory) disappears along with them. Meanwhile, in many countries, vaccination rates are still so low that capacity does not even meet the needs of front line health workers treating COVID patients, let alone vaccinating at-risk groups.

This is not only a moral failure, it also provides perfect condidtions for the emergence of new variants. Instead of deepening protection in highly vaccinated countries by diverting capacity to booster doses, we should we widening coverage to more countries in order to run as fast as we can towards global herd immunity. Only then will we really be able to learn to live with the virus.

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Marisa's avatar

Me asombra que el aumento de casos en Israel lo quieran resolver con una tercera dosis y sigan sin inmunizar a los palestinos que necesitan a diario para hacer los trabajos que ellos no quieren y por lo tanto entran y salen de Israel y pueden contagiar. No he visto recientemente ningún artículo que hable de esto ni el porcentaje de vacunados entre la población palestina. Creo, aunque puede que me equivoque, que aunque nos pongan 10 dosis si llegan personas sin vacunar a nuestro entorno, voveremos a contagiarnos. Gracias por el artículo y los enlaces y referencias. Interesante para mi la vacuna Novavax

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