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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

>If you follow the news, you may have seen a bit of a dust-up in the last week on this topic. Pfizer announced the need for a booster shot has become more apparent, based on serum antibodies. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said such a conclusion would be premature, since vaccine protection looks really good right now, including for the delta variant that has all of us concerned.

Who do we trust in that situation? There are qualified scientists on both sides, but why do they disagree on something so critical, especially on how to message it?

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I wouldn't trust the guy that is going to make lots of money if the decision went their way...

For now? Everyone, because they are saying the exact same thing, but people/media focus on one aspect.

Current consensus is that vaccines are very effective, at least for 6 months, probably a year or more; however, chances are we will need booster shots, we don't know when. People at higher risk will probably need them sooner. If worse variants develop, we will all need them sooner.

Depending on how the question is asked, or who is writing the headline, they will either emphasize 'probably needed' or 'not yet'.

This is the reason conspiracy theories are proliferating so far. The information provided by different parties is always different. I believe the best solution is for the party with the most authority (the FDA in this case) to publish an explanation that covers the differences. Otherwise lay people are completely justified in believing that Government agencies are lying to them.

Pfizer had a desperate need for everyone to get a booster shot every year to boost their revenues. I wouldn’t trust them.

We're headed towards that, anyway, but don't get too excited for Pfizer. The mRNA vaccines are selling for $15-$20 per dose, but flu shots are $2. There's a competitor in the market, and it's a new technology, so prices will drop fast.

Don't trust humans. Wait for scientific studies and replication.

This is the scientific method.

When was the last time you saw a study actually replicated and not just "peer reviewed" and referenced?

This is COVID, not some rat behavior study. It will be replicated.

Slide into the DMs when that happens

I would also be suspect of any Biotech company announcing a "need" for more/variation product of theirs.

But yes. Allow consensus to build before jumping to conclusions when we don't have a time pressure on that front.

Right, but in the case of a vaccine, you wait, you die.

Not if you're under 60 and not obese

Tell that to my old colleague in Brazil, dead at 38 from COVID. Or to one of my first co-workers, back in 2005, dead last year at 45.

None of them obese, the 45 years old guy was running half-marathons.

Please, don't say this kind of shit, it hurts people like me who don't fit your fake narrative for no good reason.

What was their comorbidity?

I’m sorry you lost a couple of colleagues too young. But statistical anomalies need to be notated as such. I don’t warn people not to golf due to the risk of lightning strike

I don't need to tell it to you. I and everyone I know have gotten covid and are doing fine. Covid is not the bubonic plague. Its not even the Spanish flu. The data show that already.

Maybe I know a lot more people than you, but my mother's therapist, my dentist, and a coworker's father died from COVID. The great majority of cases don't die, but given it's extremely contagious, it makes up for it with numbers.

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