my grandkids
2 Likes
No, and don’t plan to. I’m having a hard time seeing the benefits of the vaccine for a 4 year old. We know the vaccine’s preventive ability wanes within a few months, and the risk of severe disease is already miniscule so not really sure if the vaccine would even impact that risk of severe disease for a young child.
Yeah this is where we are currently as well. Oldest has already had covid. Youngest in theory gets antibodies from vaccinated mom breastfeeding (according to at least some science ppl)…and is still too young to get vaccinated anyway. As one who’s had side effects I’ve been hesitant.
From the New Scientist article above:
37.5 per cent effective at preventing infection in those aged 2 to under 6 years old. There were no cases of severe disease, hospitalisation or death in either the vaccinated or control groups.
That just doesn’t give me enough benefits to outweigh potential risks.
2 Likes
My 4 year old granddaughter has just been vaccinated and our 4 month old granddaughter will get her first shot when she hits six months. My daughter (their mother) is a nurse and feels strongly about it. They have been living with us for the past 5 months and will be here for several months longer until they can find their own place. My daughter is concerned about us because we are in the supposedly higher risk 70+ age group. We have no other significant risk factors though and are very healthy, active seniors. We have both had four COVID shots.
Out teenage grandchildren have both had their boosters.
1 Like
Biden administration plans for new COVID booster campaign soon after Labor Day (startribune.com)
link to text
Moderna Sues Pfizer and BioNTech Over MRNA Patents
The litigation might also mark the end of a period of unusual comity among big drugmakers, who looked past traditional rivalries and even joined forces in some cases to find medicines that could fight the coronavirus.
Well, if Moderna is going to be a dick, then I’ll make sure I get the Pfizer booster.
Are they the dick though? I honestly don’t know.
I’ll probably do what I hadn’t considered doing before and wait for an Omicron specific booster, rather than getting boosted as soon as I’m eligible.
1 Like
I don’t think life saving technology that have huge public health implementations should be patentable. Does that mean companies spend less R&D dollars on that type of thing? Maybe. But I don’t think any company or individual should be in the position where they have exclusive rights to something that could literally save the world.
Less being spent on R&D would have negative health ramifications of its own, and there would be massive uncertainty about which things would be patentable. Perhaps an alternative, if we could define the class of intellectual property involved, would be to maximize the profit they could make on discoveries critical to world health
1 Like
I might be wrong but I seem to remember examples of governments funding the research, owning the patents and licensing it for free. If that’s not actually true, it should be.
Yeah, I don’t have sufficient understanding of the agreements in place to have a strong opinion.
Certainly if Moderna was told “If X then Y” and they accomplished X then they are quite reasonable to want Y.
I can’t say for sure if that’s what happened though.
Yeah, tbh, that is just my gut reaction with knowing no facts about the case.
Got Shingrix #1 this morning. Will get flu and omicron-improved COVID booster (if available) in September. Pharmacist says CDC says no break needed between, but he personally would skip 10 days just in case, unless there were some urgency. My doctor said no need for a break between shingrix and COVID (didn’t ask him about flu) but COVID version I want isn’t available yet anyway. Have had 1 COVID booster, and get flu shot every year.
2 Likes
I’ll be evaluating my expected covid exposure, and trying to get the shot to cover as much of that as possible. I usually wait until later October/early November for the flu shot for the same reason – it also provides protection that wanes over time.
(A friend who studies these things tried to get two flu shots one winter, 3-4 monts apart, but that’s not approved. Another winter he succeeded in getting a second flu shot, because “flu + covid” was a different code from “flu”. )
1 Like
The updated booster has been approved. It doesn’t say it in this press release, but it’s expected to be available and the end of next week. They don’t mention anything about a phased release with higher risk individuals having first crack.
I would be higher risk by most standards except “already had 1 booster”, and first booster was not recent. Probably still some protection from it, but I was eligible for booster 2 and waited, not so much for omicron protection but because I thought possible fall travel. Now maybe fall travel, but first half of December is more likely. Will likely not wait longer, as fall travel possible while uncertain and December while a definite opportunity (an in-person exam committee meeting) would also be available zoom if I don’t want to risk in-person
Considering the reports on the lack of human testing, I’ll probably wait until mid-late October before getting mine (as shot #5) unless a doctor hassles me.
I don’t have any particular reason to believe that this go-round is any riskier than prior batches, or that the antivax crowd is suddenly right about the risks…but I am rather risk-averse.
I’d prefer to allow enough time for others find out any unexpected/unintended side effects from this batch, but still have enough time for it to be mostly effective before going to the CAS superspreader event in Minneapolis.