The discussion about COVID vaccine boosters is really many sub-discussions at once. The lack of a transparent decision framework makes it feel more confusing.
A thread below to start to break out the points…
— Natalie E. Dean, PhD (@nataliexdean) July 10, 2021
A text from a colleague: "Ok how on earth has Twitter decided that we know VE against variants?" 🤔
Twitter does love certainty! But better to think about VE against variants in terms of likely ranges rather than precise estimates. So how do make these assessments? A thread.
— Natalie E. Dean, PhD (@nataliexdean) June 7, 2021
How will we know if we need COVID vaccine boosters? If we observe that: (1) Vaccine protection wanes over time. (2) New immune escape variants emerge, resulting in a vaccine-strain mismatch. These are distinct reasons. We can imagine how we would distinguish these in the data.
— Natalie E. Dean, PhD (@nataliexdean) May 27, 2021
