Will you be taking a booster?

Ehh, yet another who has never done anything nor will in his life being jealous of successful, hardworking people (GP's) that are really coming through in this very challenging time. With an added dose of the Irish envy at the sniff of another success. "Profiteering," like nialler could even define it without googling.

I'm registered with two GPs in my town and the way they set up vaccinations should allow them to make a profit.

Online booking system (which of course has a cost) which limits need for calls to administration staff.

Vaccines were administered by a nurse and they hired on two students to direct patients and to input/take details.

Observation was in the waiting room.

GP input was non existent in my 3 visits.

€35 per jab, and over a 100 per day.

That was the only way to make a profit, clogging up busy doctors isn't going to work

Opposite two Pfizer and the Moderna booster. Felt grand after the Pfizer but the Moderna has left me bit with cold like symptoms and slight fever.

My 16 y/o son has been offered a booster, vaxxed at end of Sept.

Does anyone know which vaccine is being given to males of this age?

Everything I've read suggests that carditis risk is age related and greater with Moderna than Pfizer, and greater on the second dose than first. He had no obvious issues from either dose of Pfizer.

With Omicron being so prevalent (most of his friends have it) it seems likely his body is going to have to deal with it soon anyway, but I'm unclear about whether booster+Omi is "better" than just double vax+Omi.

I suppose there are two aspects: reaction to vaccine and virus, and protection against possible future variants which are nastier.

I'm not seeing much in the way of published credible advice around this, any pointers?

Doing nothing isn't an option as I see it, as inaction carries consequences too.

I saw a preprint out of the UK that was published on Christmas day which suggested that the estimated risk multiplier for 1st/2nd/3rd doses in men under 40 was:

Pfizer: 1.7/3.4/7.6

Moderna: 2.3/16.5

AZ: 1.3/2.6

After a positive covid test: 2.0

So it seems in every case the risk of myocarditis is higher from dose 2 of a vaccine onward than from covid infection, but Moderna is by far the highest risk.

I don't think they have data yet for Pfizer/Pfizer/Moderna.

If it doesn’t offer significant immunity from infection then it offers little value for low risk groups. I would prefer to have Covid over a booster from now on.

The specific claims made in the EMA conditional marketing authorisation were about reduction of "symptomatic cases".

I read that as one measure of efficacy (reduction in symptomatic cases) in both all trial participants and the at-risk subgroup.

Note that COVID-19 is the disease (hence the "D") not the viral infection, so they are excluding asymptomatic cases.

I didn't calculate them myself, I took them from a post I happened to have open when I saw your post earlier. I can't remember whether it was a forum or a social media site or what now. Sorry!

I'm sure you'll make whatever decision you think is best, anyway. Good luck with it. All the chances of negatives whatever the decision are very very small, at least.

Sure, I'm really just addressing that regular discussion point which comes up concerning whether "we were told" originally that vaccines prevented infection, symptomatic infection or severe disease, and the original approval seemed like a sensible place to look.

I think there has been criticism on here before about the lack of random PCR testing in the clinical trials, but for good or bad, they were focused on symptomatic infection, which seems OK to me.

From what I recall the conversation shifted from symptomatic infection to serious disease once Delta came out, because the efficacy against symptomatic infection dropped, although bearing in mind how people actually behave outside a double-blind clinical trial ("I'm vaccinated, so I'm safe" has been a common sentiment) I think the vaccines were holding up well in suppressing infection before Omicron came along.

But they do prevent spread (or did prior to Omicron). How else would a virus with an R0 of 5-8 result in a flat reproduction rate in a largely open society with low levels of prior infection?