Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
It’s hard to see what they could have done differently based on the data that was available at that time. The Oxford/AZ vaccine was rapidly available and relatively easy to handle, and the trial results absolutely supported its emergency certification.
As for ‘pressuring’ young healthy adults, well vaccine efficacy isn’t just about what it does directly for the individual receiving it, but how it impedes spread of a pathogen in the population. Herd immunity is achieved by preventing the disease from spreading, which means vaccinating as many people as you can, even those who would not personally suffer significant illness from it.
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Yes, hindsight is wonderful, but still. People were saying at the time about all of these things, lockdowns, masks, vaccine effects, lab leaks, and were being handed tin foil hats and being called covidiots and the like.
For the older groups the benefit/risk was much clearer and that was where AZ did most of its work.
And it's a true point about herd immunity but the vaccine was never provided to stop covid making people ill or infected but to prevent serious illness, as it later ended up with the omicron variants anyway, but these groups weren't at risk of that really anyway, and so the vaccine didn't really achieve as much when they ended up getting a milder illness in general anyway.
Spreading it to the older or more at risk groups is a moot point when they have already been vaccinated first.
Also, vaccinating people who aren't at risk because they might give it to others is a bit odd, it's not necessarily sensible to give others a treatment to have an effect on others, though the risks of vaccine escape and spillover infections are still there. It's an interesting point though.