sweet00 said:
My question is what is the urgency on boosting for omricon if it isn't effective on this mutation? What am I missing?
Fundamentally, boosting will greatly raise your level of circulating antibodies. The antibodies won't be perfect, since they are against the original spike, but at high levels they will prevent infection. Your immune system makes lots of different antibodies in response to a challenge and not all of them will be directed to the region where the spike is mutated. Unfortunately, the monoclonal antibody drugs probably won't work great against omicron, since they are really specific for only one spot on the virus.
Now I do think we are getting to a place where we need to ask if we really care about infections. All the vaccines seem to prevent severe cases and death, which should be all we care about. But there are caveats. A double vaxed 80 year old is at way more risk than an unvaccinated kid. But in a week I'm taking my kids to see a bunch of 80 year olds. So while I don't care at all if me or my kids get infected at this point, I care a lot about being able to get on the plane, and not giving it to any old people. The booster probably helps with that.
