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Comment by phantomathkg | Hacker News Reader

Nope. See https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2200797

The conclusion said it is less effective.

The messenger RNA (mRNA) boosters were highly effective against symptomatic delta infection, but they were less effective against symptomatic omicron infection. However, with both variants, mRNA boosters led to strong protection against Covid-19–related hospitalization and death. (Funded by Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar and others.)

Don't get me wrong, I believe in the vaccine, but I think we are still far away from one vaccine that kill all the the mutations.

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From the link you posted:

In this study, mRNA boosters were highly effective against infection with the delta variant but were less effective against infection with the omicron variant. However, these boosters led to strong protection against Covid-19–related hospitalization and death due to both variants.

We vaccinate in order to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death. The original vaccines, per the link you shared, are extremely effective at this.

Originally, the plan was to vaccinate in order to obtain herd immunity and wipe out COVID.

Smart people adjust plans as they discover new information. Your original hopes for a solution at the start of a disaster will change drastically as you better understand the problem at hand.

There seems to be a pervasive thought that our leaders ought to somehow become superhuman and obtain clairvoyance about how to solve any problem we have. They are no different from any of us, who think a bug has a simple solution before we spend a lot of time figuring out more complicated things were happening under the hood.

"Smart people adjust plans as they discover new information."

The new information, that the world is globalized, with many countries not being able to afford vaccines and also many militant anti vaxxers around?

How was wiping out covid, a realistic goal in the first place?

The problem isn't really affording vaccines so much as being able to administer them. Africa is a big place; it is literally hard to get very cold mRNA vaccines to people even if we donate them.

Similarly, a lot of people have been claiming we're evilly withholding patents from the world, but that can't be a real issue or China and Russia would just have stolen the IP from us. They literally can't produce them any faster even with the rights.

We managed to keep SARS and MERS fairly contained.

But I believe that was a very different situation at that time, with it not already spread globally and being less infectious.

Actually originally the plan was to hope for 50% efficacy, even knowing that coronavirus immunity may wane after several months as is the case with seasonal coronaviruses

Less effective doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely effective. Lightbulbs are less effective at providing light than the sun but they’re still extremely effective providers of light.

This analogy made me smile :-)

There is no disagreement between your comments.

That's the wrong comparison though, you would need to compare a wild type booster vs an omicron specific booster.

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