I think these are objectively true statements, but I donāt think your assessment of the magnitudes here is necessarily right. The booster may not lower the risk that much, but it still seems plausible (and likely?) that the reduction in risk due to the booster (even in your situation, as someone who is double-vaxed-plus-infection) is larger than the nonzero risks of the booster. Just because the booster risk happens to be nonzero and the reduction in risk as a result of getting the booster happens to be small doesnāt mean that the first is larger than the second or should outweigh it.
OK I guess Iām mixing up two simultaneous conversations here. I think people generally should get boosters for social responsibility reasons even if their risk from infection is low, but I agree that with a breakthrough infection 4 months ago the value of a booster is uncertain and I donāt care if you personally get one or not.
Youāre not mixing up anything. This is classic online bullshit. You start off with some ridiculous statement (in this case defending that trash Atlantic article), then when various things are pointed out itās always āno itās really just a bit differentā or thereās this one detail you havenāt considered.
Yeah itās certainly possible that a booster is the right move for me. But the risks seem tiny in either direction so just doing nothing right now seems like a reasonable move. My doctor seemed to agree when I asked him about it a few months ago, heās the one who said maybe weāll do it when they start taking about second booster. But he says heās always trying to keep up on this stuff and will let me know if we should do something else. Iāll definitely talk to him about it with him when I see him again in February.
At least heās honest about it. Credit to him for that. It allows people to objectively credit his other posts on the topic of vaccines. Far more insidious would be to just post a bunch of bullshit questioning the efficacy of vaccines in as misleading a way as possible. Thatās the elite anti-vaxxer move.
Thatās not what Iām doing. Iām saying my breakthrough infection is probably at least somewhat equivalent to a booster and so to me it makes sense to delay it until they start talking about the need for second boosters. Iām not anti vaccine, as you said I got the vaccine twice and will likely get another shot in the future. Strange sort of anti vaxxer.
I donāt think thereās been much research on the robustness of immunity from infection and how it interacts with vaccines. That sort of research would be exceedingly difficult to conduct as there would be so many confounding factors. It seems sensible to just ignore it and focus on vaccine trials. As such there really canāt be recommendations about how immunity from infection should impact vaccine decision making because there wonāt be any relevant studies to really back it up. Having said that, thereās really no question that infection and recovery from covid does confer immunity and I donāt see why that shouldnāt be a factor in the timing of booster dosage. Iād have done the same thing if I caught covid a few weeks after the first shot. Iād be heavily inclined to delay the second shot, possibly for quite a while.
Things got a little off the rails but knock on wood we seem to have gotten the incivility out of our systems for now.
Iām on team āKeeed should get boosted and his risks from a booster shot are vastly lower than his risks from getting COVID againā but heās made it very clear heās not getting boosted based on his personal experience and not because he doesnāt want Bill Gates to track him so calling him an anti-vaxxer doesnāt seem accurate.
Sorry, but this is wrong. Most anti-vaxxers arenāt anti-vax because they think that there are bill gates nanochips in the shot or because aborted fetuses were used to make the vaccine. Theyāre anti-vax because of an incorrect and bullshit perception of the health risks of the vaccine. Whether thatās āfertilityā or some other unspecified general fear of the āpossible side effects,ā that is the most common form of anti-vaxxer. Most anti-vaxxers are just like Keeed. Maybe we should use a less polarizing term like āvaccine hesitant.ā