The Narrative Needs a Boost
Two, Three, Four, or More? The Science tries to battle reality.
The grand narrative is unraveling.
And when a narrative this pervasive starts to unravel, shit gets weird.
So let’s check in on The Science (TM) and see how it’s doing. What does The Science think about two doses of this incredible vaccine?
The Science (proper noun) - propaganda coming from the State and it's allies that you are not allowed to question. No real science is leveraged to create The Science.Here is one of the friendly faces of authoritarianism in Australia, explaining that The Science says that 2 doses provides only a 4% protection against infection:
That this is coming from one of the most vax-happy places on the planet, Australia, should give you a sense of what we’re getting into. But if you want some cross-referencing points, data from the UK, Denmark, and various other countries in Europe also back this up. And if we had any competent data keeping authority here in the States, it would too. If you remember, this is why we had the push toward the booster in the first place. The efficacy of the vaccines trended toward zero after ~6-9 months:
So this is not some one-off guy saying the first two shots don’t work. This is now part of the mainstream narrative. So go be a good boy or girl and get your booster.
And that third dose, don’t worry, that one works! As Mr. Authoritarian Lackey says above here, that one provides 64% protection. The booster is great, they say! Love the boost! Need the boost! Everyone is out hocking that booster.
But just… don’t ask Israelis about the fourth shot (oh, it’s coming, don’t worry) because they already did the leg work and found that it makes people “only slightly less likely to get variant.” Of course, they went to the fourth shot because, surprise! That third shot started to fail shortly after initiation.
The most gullible midwits boost-happy among us could still shrug that off… “Don’t worry, I’ll take as many boosters as often as St. Fauci says I should, man. I trust The Science.” Sure, that sounds insane, but it’s out there, at least in the home of insanity: San Francisco. Here’s a poll from Blind - an anonymous site for tech workers - largely used by those in the Bay Area. This is from January of this year, just 10 days ago:
Maybe, just maybe, saner heads will prevail. The European Medicines Agency recently warned that, shockingly, you can’t just boost your way to immortality:
European Union regulators warned that frequent Covid-19 booster shots could adversely affect the immune response and may not be feasible.
Repeat booster doses every four months could eventually weaken the immune response and tire out people, according to the European Medicines Agency.
Let’s note briefly: we are only speaking about efficacy as it relates to infection and transmission, not hospitalizations and deaths. We did cover that a bit in Vacc-sanity and will cover it more in the future. While the evidence of efficacy there is a bit stronger there are real problems there as well.
But let’s recap the evidence here on efficacy against infection:
2 shots = doesn’t work. 4% protection maybe, but you need a third.
3 shots (what they are trying to sell right now) = yep, this works great, you definitely need this!
4 shots = doesn’t work (but hey, we can sweep that under the rug later when we need to). - Israeli Public Health
More shots = dude, you may seriously harm your immune system. - European Medicines Agency
And sure, maybe these drugs do work just like alcohol. Two drinks can’t quite sustain a buzz, three is golden, and any more than that and things start spinning. Sure, vaccines have never worked like that before, but there is a first time for everything, right?
Of course, if you have any critical thinking skills left to leverage, this may call into mind some questions about how 2 doses don’t work, but 3 do, and 4 or more don’t. As the kids are saying these days, “seems pretty sus”.
There are multiple alternative hypotheses that make more sense than this magical third-shot-is-the-only-one-that-works concept that our crumbling narrative can provide. I mean, it’s not hard to dream up at least a few scenarios that are eminently more likely.
And we’ll get to these at a later time. If you want to get a head start, check out The Bad Cat’s posts on Original Antigenic Sin, Bayesian Data Crimes, and The Problem in Alberta.