More on third dose vaccinations (booster shots):
"As recently as last week, many public health experts were fiercely opposed to the Biden administration’s campaign to roll out booster shots of the coronavirus vaccines to all American adults. There was little scientific evidence to support extra doses for most people, the researchers said.
The Omicron variant has changed all that."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/health/covid-omicron-booster-shots.html
Omircron changed nothing, if at all Omicron could be woven as an argument against booster.
Data from e.g. Israel has even 2 month ago shown that booster not only work and are needed because immuity drop off sharply, but also that they increase the safety level by a magnitude.
The above is a quote from the article and, with careful reading, it is clear that it is the researchers who did not think that third shots are necessary who changed their mind because of Omicron.
As far as I am concerned, I do not even think that calling the third shot a booster is correct. The RNA vaccines were initially investigated as a two injection schedule but experience has shown that it is more appropriate to call the third injection the third injection of a three injection series.
A booster shot is generally understood as a periodic boost (every 10 years with tetanus for example) to bring immunity back up to initial levels.
The third shot of the RNA vaccines results in a qualitatively and quantitatively much improved immunity.
The Israeli study and others like it just confirm that it is more appropriate to think of the RNA vaccinations as three injection vaccination series and to consider everyone who has had only two shots as incompletely vaccinated.
The reason why this is not a minor issue is that a third shot much improves immunity over initial immunity and that would not be expected from a mere booster shot. The third shot is superior to what is generally understood as a booster shot.
What Omicron changed dramatically is the need for early vaccination after recovery from COVID. While it is clear that previous infection results in robust immunity possibly outlasting vaccinations, this immunity does not sufficiently extend to Omicron. There has been a lot of pressure to recognize previous infection as equivalent to vaccination and Omicron has put this idea to rest and has thereby simplified negotiations regarding vaccine mandates.
Omicron means for the COVID survivors that they cannot rely at all on natural immunity for protection and that they need to get vaccinated ASAP.
Omicron also puts to rest the notion of achieving herd immunity via natural immunity.
This idea of naturally acquired herd immunity has been largely discredited, but GOP politicians who have promoted anti-vaxxerism and anti-maskism and anti-mandatism have no other backup to rescue themselves from eventually having to face responsibility for delaying effective disease management among their constituents.
All this has basically blown up in their face with Omicron.
One has to consider that although the situation in undervaxxed areas appears like a succession of events (deaths, hospitalizations, etc), the reality is that the consequences of these events are not going away any time soon, that is they are cumulative. Every death, hospitalization or chronic disability from COVID hits not just an individual but most often a family whose lives are permanently changed often through financial devastation. Families are not monolithic in their thinking and I believe, and have seen some good evidence, that a lot of bad blood is being created with each day going by. The GOP is trying to harness a force of nature to further their ends and might find itself riding a tiger.
edit: added video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsdQ7HDKfis&t=41s I think there is a good chance that we are seeing the beginnings of the slow COVID death squeeze in the undervaxxed areas of the country. This death squeeze does not only involve deaths from COVID but also the inability of chronically overtaxed hospitals to provide non-COVID care. Add to that the financial duress imposed by medical bills and by long term disability and one has a recipe for a grim future for many families unless vaccinations go up dramatically.
Edit: The topic is "How much will non-vaxxing by GOP reduce the population of voting age republicans". The anti-vaxxerism of the GOP can reduce the population of voting age republicans not only through attrition from death but also from loss of confidence in their, largely absent, leadership competence. In any case, they have lost control long ago and all we can see is the struggle to get in front of the parade.
