A source on this has been Geert Vanden Bossche (see his FAQ).
I’m not 100% convinced he’s right, but I have not found any credible attempt at debunking him either. (One such attempt is from Gorski, but it’s almost name calling).
He may be right, in that case you might not be able to find any convincing counterargument either.
Long term we could assess the claim that “a slow rollout of a leaky vaccine” actually applies in the context of Covid, but we know it can be theoretically (link).
Short term, for your next dose in February, I’d weight different factors:
There’s going to be a limit on the number of doses that are effective.
What’s currently going in Israel suggests that it’s probably <4.
It seems uncontroversial that the effectiveness wanes with time, peaking few weeks after the dose, declining after few months.
The risks of additional doses seem to compound (source)
I’m assuming this is your booster shot, so it looks you have one extra shot in your gun and you might want to time it for maximum effectiveness.
If you’re under 40, healthy and male I would wait even at the current prevalence in most countries.
If you’re older, or know to be particularly at risk, you might want to optimize the time of your next dose.
If you take it in February you may be immune for ~3 months. Feb-May don’t seem as risky as Nov-Jan in most of the northern hemisphere. Maybe you want to wait until October? We’ll also know more by then.
If you know to be at imminent risk (for example known comorbidities) then you know what Covid does in those cases and the tradeoff is less obvious, probably you want to go ahead right away.
I spent a bit of time looking at Geert Vanden Bossche’s ideas about six months ago. I came away extremely unimpressed; he takes reasonable sounding things (“viruses mutate under selective pressure”) and tries to extrapolate from them things that we don’t actually see in reality. He describes a plausible sounding reality, that is not our reality.
I agree he paints a bad picture but he’s short on actual, time-bounded, predictions to evaluate his claims.
He shared some predictions in May, with a time frame of months/weeks to see some vaccine resistant variant.
I think Omicron counts as variant that is vaccine resistant, even though there’s no peak in vaccinated deaths rates (deaths may be, but not rates as far as I can tell).
Some other people claim Omicron does not descend from the Wuhan strain, so even this might not be the variant Geert Vanden Bossche predicted.
Were you referring to some other prediction in particular?
A source on this has been Geert Vanden Bossche (see his FAQ).
I’m not 100% convinced he’s right, but I have not found any credible attempt at debunking him either. (One such attempt is from Gorski, but it’s almost name calling).
He may be right, in that case you might not be able to find any convincing counterargument either.
Long term we could assess the claim that “a slow rollout of a leaky vaccine” actually applies in the context of Covid, but we know it can be theoretically (link).
Short term, for your next dose in February, I’d weight different factors:
There’s going to be a limit on the number of doses that are effective.
What’s currently going in Israel suggests that it’s probably <4.
It seems uncontroversial that the effectiveness wanes with time, peaking few weeks after the dose, declining after few months.
The risks of additional doses seem to compound (source)
I’m assuming this is your booster shot, so it looks you have one extra shot in your gun and you might want to time it for maximum effectiveness.
If you’re under 40, healthy and male I would wait even at the current prevalence in most countries.
If you’re older, or know to be particularly at risk, you might want to optimize the time of your next dose.
If you take it in February you may be immune for ~3 months. Feb-May don’t seem as risky as Nov-Jan in most of the northern hemisphere. Maybe you want to wait until October? We’ll also know more by then.
If you know to be at imminent risk (for example known comorbidities) then you know what Covid does in those cases and the tradeoff is less obvious, probably you want to go ahead right away.
I spent a bit of time looking at Geert Vanden Bossche’s ideas about six months ago. I came away extremely unimpressed; he takes reasonable sounding things (“viruses mutate under selective pressure”) and tries to extrapolate from them things that we don’t actually see in reality. He describes a plausible sounding reality, that is not our reality.
I agree he paints a bad picture but he’s short on actual, time-bounded, predictions to evaluate his claims.
He shared some predictions in May, with a time frame of months/weeks to see some vaccine resistant variant.
I think Omicron counts as variant that is vaccine resistant, even though there’s no peak in vaccinated deaths rates (deaths may be, but not rates as far as I can tell).
Some other people claim Omicron does not descend from the Wuhan strain, so even this might not be the variant Geert Vanden Bossche predicted.
Were you referring to some other prediction in particular?