How much does all this focus on Florida ignore other states deserving of questions too?
Re: Florida, it gets a lot of spotlight because Badge keeps posting the Florida numbers whereas many of the rest of us don't post our own state numbers any more, and because so many posters are in (or from) Florida that it makes it a hot topic.
Take Oregon, one of the most vaccinated states, yet their cases keep rising (see below). Even more newsworthy is how many “breakthrough” cases are occurring across Oregon. 60% of Covid cases at a recent outbreak at the Gateway Assisted Living Facility in Springfield Oregon were breakthrough cases.
Regarding an assisted living facility, I would ABSOLUTELY expect most of their cases to be breakthrough cases, because I would think that almost their entire population of residents are vaccinated.
We know the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are only 95% effective at avoiding symptomatic illness. Past data suggests the ratio between symptomatic and asymptomatic infection amongst unvaccinated people is about 50/50. Assuming all these residents are symptomatic (not a safe assumption--in an assisted living facility they may do 100% testing once there was an outbreak), if there is a 90% vaccination rate at the facility and literally EVERYONE in the facility had enough exposure to the virus to catch the infection, you can do the math. 5% of vaccinated residents (4.5% of total) would have symptomatic illness, and 50% of the unvaccinated residents (5% of total) would have symptomatic illness. Thus you'd have nearly a 50/50 split between breakthrough and natural infections.
How much is the CDC’s sudden push for Boosters every 5 to 8 months stemming from a reaction to avoid directly admitting an evidently decreasing effectiveness of the current roster of vaccines that were promoted as our final ticket past Covid? A population thus far only 50 or 60% onboard with getting initially vaccinated is now expected to face Boosters in perpetuity?
I've got some issues with the push for boosters. I'd like to better understand the immunity cycle both for natural infection and for vaccination. How much latent immunity lasts for years in the B cells and T cells, which seem to have "memory" of infection? Is there a difference in the level or duration of that longer term immunity between natural infection and vaccination? I don't really have a good way to answer that, and it appears that the studies on this are all very early-term (because this pandemic is still early term and vaccination less than half the total term).
I do worry how much of the push for boosters is $$$ from Pfizer and Moderna. Is there enough data to say that the immunity isn't long term to justify it?
What we do know about other coronaviruses is that immunity may not be infinite. I.e. if you get a common cold from one virus, you may catch that common cold from the same virus two years later. We don't really understand long-term immunity for this coronavirus, though.
That said, what if we learn that the vaccine only grants 8 months or so of immunity,
and natural infection only grants 8 months or so of immunity? Is that somehow the fault of the vaccines because they're offering boosters?
Unless there is strong evidence that the immunity granted by natural infection is significantly stronger or of longer duration than the vaccine, then the vaccine is much more preferable. In fact, even if the immunity granted by natural infection is of longer duration than the vaccine, the vaccine may still be preferable because of how effectively it reduces symptomatic illness, hospitalization, and death.
