> Booster effectiveness relative to primary series was 26·2% (95% CI 23·6–28·6) against infection and 75·1% (40·2–89·6) against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19, during 1-year follow-up after the booster.
And then you write:
> Personally, I don't call that a significantly effective treatment.
I don’t think you’ve thought this through very well.
>>COVID vaccines significantly reduce how many people who get exposed to COVID actually get sick.
The boosters are 26% effective at preventing infection.
Sure, they do something if you are particularly at risk of having a bad time with Covid, but that low effectiveness at preventing infection means there isn't much argument that they did much to slow the spread of Covid.
Exactly. That was sort of the point of my original comment, although unfortunately I think I only confused things by mentioning herd immunity.
Another way of making my point might be to say, there’s a “personal standard” (is it worth it for me to take it?) and a “mandatory standard” (is it worth abrogating individual self-determination to make everyone take it?). Influenza clears the “personal” standard for many, but it appears that it does not clear the “mandatory” standard in most jurisdictions, as it has not been made mandatory in most places. On the other hand, smallpox (~7,000 infections per million people before, 0 per million after) and measles (~3,000 per million before, ~1 per million after) are examples where the standard for “mandatory” is cleared with flying colors. My point is not to debate whether the covid vaccine clears the mandatory standard or not - my point is only that we didn’t have that debate.