Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Why would the variant risk die down? This is a worldwide pandemic, and even if we were to vaccinate 100% of our citizens, there are billions of other people out there that have not yet gotten their first jab,
As more people acquire immunity (natural and/or vaccine induced), the reproductive opportunities, and thus mutation opportunities, for covid decline dramatically. There's actually a dramatic difference even between mild symptomatic and more severe symptoms with regards to the mutation opportunity... in fact you'd need logarithms to express it.
Also cross-reactivity should significantly dampen mutations... some mutations which might have a got a lot of traction in the original "novel" scenario will now wind up as nothing-burgers.
Delta evolved before vaccines, and got traction before there was very much vaccine or natural immunity.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
far less all the white-tailed deer, ferrets, mink, etc. Now that it has jumped out of bats, it’s become pretty widely disseminated.
Insignificant. Only way animals are giong to matter much is if it somehow gets established in a large live-stock population which exists in close-proximity to low socio-economic human populations such that the people cannot be isolated from the critters... like the pigs, chickens, peasants which bring us the flu each season. No sign of that so far. Rare exotics and wild animals which aren't a significant food stock are not going to be a significant vector.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
How does one adjust duration without adjuvants that will likely increase - at least to some extent - the side effects and/or risk of the vaccine itself?
They have to balance the risk vs. benefits, and of course there will be trials first anyway.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
But even then, this public health problem appears to have been so badly managed by Fauci and company that the percentage of people who are hardcore antivaxxers has increased, despite the demonstrated ability of the existing vaccines to limit severe clinical disease. You never get a second chance to make a first impression and the public opinion of the Public Health/Preventive Medicine community has taken some big hits. It seems doubtful a second vaccine rollout would go any better than the first one, even with an as yet only hypothetical better vaccine.
Agree with that, but most people who got the first vaccine will be fine with boosters, especially if they have large trials like the first ones. Fortunately with covid it's easy to do very large trails since the funding is available (either from .gov or private sector investing in a potentially lucrative product).