Case in point: there is a raging disagreement about booster shots in the news over the past several weeks, and the conflicting statements drive me to news-weariness.
The first case: this story is not an article. It's a press release, and I wish we would stop treating these like "scientific publications".
The second case: there is a real debate going on, on a global level: should we use vaccines for booster vaccinations, or shouldn't we first vaccinate the whole world to get control of the pandemic. This is not only a question of medicine, this is also global politics, the rich North versus the not so rich rest of the world, patents and corporations versus saving lifes – debate is inevitable.
The issue is that the words "necessary" and "sufficient" are left to the reader, and are deeply political.
Some people will argue that we must do every possible thing in our power to save every possible life, so even a 0.01% of increased protection would be enough to make booster shots "necessary" and the current regiment "insufficient".
Some other will accept loss of life, and will even call vaccine shots "unnecessary" since the vast majority of the population - especially the non fragile part - doesn't seem to suffer from covid. In their mind, our our natural immunity itself is "sufficient".
Most people arguing on this subject are actually not arguing over scientific arguments, but are arguing over their own position between those two extremes. And they throw in some numbers / quote experts to sound more scientific than they really are in the vain hope to convince the other part that they are somehow more "right".
1. People (especially experts) are legitimately debating the facts, i.e. what the effect of a booster shot is (not "arguing", this is just the normal scientific process)
2. People also have to make a value judgement about whether we shouldn't now first vaccinate third-world countries instead of getting booster shots, based on our current understanding of 1 (although this isn't purely for ethical reasons, the world doesn't really want the virus to spread and mutate in other regions either)
And for both of these orthogonal issues, most people don't fall into any of the two extreme camps described in GP's post.
The fact don’t change every week only the interpretation.
The only fact that we can say is really changing is the R0 value of the virus but this is expected because it change over time because of our actions!
It’s more like the current price of a company stock on the NeeYork stock exchange will change every week. It change when we get new data about that company and reinterpret how much it”s worth
I wish that as so.
The ‘factual’ statistics can be stretched however one wishes.
For example, what does it mean to be vaccinated? Or, for that matter, what does it mean to ‘hospitalized’? Does it mean Covid symptoms necessitated hospitalization? Or, perhaps, everyone in the hospital who tested positive? Does it include ‘recovered’ patients who, for unrelated reasons, are still in the hospital, albeit no longer in a Covid ward?
Etc.
The statistics for this entire fiasco have been garbage. I wish it were not so.
They certainly aren’t ‘facts’ as you suggest.
The corona's spike protein though is a simple structure that will likely still infect (be able to get inside a cell) after many kinds of mutations - some of which won't be mitigated with previous vaccinations (mu is leaning this way).
Contrast this with polio which has a Tetris like key that must link up with complex cellular proteins in our cells to enter. Slight mutations in this render it unable to pass through the cell wall. It's why vaccinating for this is so effective and long lived.
That question has been asked and answered ad nauseum, it's a resounding yes, especially for the mRNA vaccines.
It also depends how many months have elapsed since your last shot, more than five and it seems to be waning in Israel.
With, mu early indications seem to point towards it not working to reduce severity.