Booster vaccinations

[Bic Basher]

I've got an appointment at Tessa Jowell on Dec 21 (Wednesday.)

[AylwardS]

If you have to queue for either a walk-in or booked appointment and there?s a delay try not to take it out on those managing the queue / giving the vaccine. They almost certainly didn?t have any say in taking your booking.

A thank you as you leave or a Merry Christmas would be appreciated. If you had to queue outside spare a thought for those directing you to queue who could have been outside 3 or 5 hours or the person giving you the vaccine who doesn?t have time to stop for coffee. Personal experience from just two shifts. Yes there are badly organised setups but this wasn?t the sheer volume and need to maintain social distance to keep people safe meant queuing was inevitable (though turn up 10 minutes later and the situation could be completely different - if I?d had time and not been so cold I could have taken a picture of no queue and another of a queue going round the corner and everything in between in my three hours outside).

Stay safe, take that book you?ve been meaning to read or listen to that podcast and any more restrictions will be shorter for us all.

[Jellybeanz]

2 hour wait at King's for me - but am very grateful for the staff and volunteers there!

[Nigello]

it is not needed, unless you are extremely clinical vulnerable (eg. undergoing cancer treatment) Studies show that three shots within a certain amount of time are likely to do the job. Maybe a booster will be needed every other year or so, but as of yet, three is your limit (unless you are one of the small number of people who are deemed by specialists to need such extra protection).

[Penguin68]

Note that whilst numbers of triple vaccinated people are catching Covid, it is not normally particularly bad, the vaccines substantially mitigate the effects of the infection, even when it 'gets through'. And many (possibly most) triple vaccinated are dodging the bullet entirely; and this Omicron bullet seems peculiarly efficient at infecting people.

[Penguin68]

Do you have any data to back-up your wild and detailed assertions?

Clearly there have been reductions in 'cover' (hence the booster campaign) and it is known that Omicron is less susceptible to the vaccines (as a function of its genetic make-up) - but the acknowledged fact that those in intensive care and on respirators are most likely to be the unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated does suggest (considering the transmissability of Omicron) that the vaccinations effects are not dissipating as quickly as you imply. The elderly, most likely to have co-morbidities, are still comparatively low down on the infection and death charts still which would not be the case if your assertions were true. It should be noted that the un and partially vaccinated group make up only a small %age of the adult population, so the fact that they still predominate in the 'serious' hospital figures is significant.

As for flu, it is likely that we will continue to need to be vaccinated probably on an annual basis, and with vaccines designed for the most recent variants of concern, at least and until Covid-19 segues into another 'cold' like coronavirus - as it is believed the 19th century (and misnamed) Russian 'Flu' appears to have done.